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Chapter 14 - Epilogue: economic disparity and alternative postwar economic regimes

from Part III - The peripheries: semi-success or failure of modern transformation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2012

Ivan Berend
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
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Summary

Europe was enormously prosperous, and continued to constitute a huge part of the world economy at the end of the long nineteenth century. (See Figure 14.1.) The affluence of the West led to the advance of Western ideas. Admirers of the West in the luckless peripheries eagerly called for the emulation of the British paradigm. This was precisely what István Széchenyi urged Hungary to do in his book Hitel in 1830. “England has reached a level higher than ever before achieved by any people…[and has become] practically the core of the world…copying others presents no danger, we can adopt their century-long experiences” (Széchenyi, 1830, 139–40, 258). Having stagnated in their anciens régimes until the mid-to late nineteenth century, the peripheries gradually adopted Western institutions through reform. They joined the Western club of laissez-faire countries, introduced the gold standard, and pursued an export-based industrialization policy. They took the first steps toward modernization in the 1860s and 1870s, but most areas did not get around to it until the turn of the century. Facilitating these policies were Western investment, the construction of railroads, and the opening of markets for agricultural and other primary products. Some peripheral regions made significant progress, but even the best cases only partially succeeded and did not become industrialized. Other regions managed to create only isolated enclaves of economic modernity in a vast sea of self-sufficient agriculture and traditional proto-industry. The least successful regions of Europe failed to industrialize and modernize. Their attempt to follow the West did not lead to their catching up. According to Angus Maddison's calculations, Southern Europe's per capita GDP was 62% of Western Europe's in 1820, but only 53% in 1870 and 47% in 1913. The same was true for Eastern Europe: its per capita GDP fell from 60% of that of the West in 1820 to 51% in 1870 and 46% in 1913. The gap thus kept widening (Maddison, 1995).

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An Economic History of Nineteenth-Century Europe
Diversity and Industrialization
, pp. 462 - 468
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2012

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