The great surges in corporate activity after the Crimean War appear all the more impressive, notwithstanding the illegalities, absurdities, and excesses of the stock-exchange fevers, when we recall that no major reform of the corporate law of 1836 occurred to precipitate the rush to incorporation. In contrast to the Russian experience, some of the economic dynamism of Western Europe can be explained by the gradual loosening of the law to accommodate the needs of large-scale undertakings. By the early 1870s, after the great panic of 1873 had swept through the stock exchanges of London, Paris, and Vienna, fundamental differences between European capitalist institutions and those of the Russian Empire had become clear. In Europe, legislation to allow unstable corporations appeared less harmful than restrictions that would hobble the growth of the entire economic system, and if the occasional panics swept away the weakest firms, a resilient structure of corporate capitalism remained.