Migration and Inequality in Germany 1870-1913 (Oxford Historical Monographs)
Oliver Grant
Language: English
Pages: 416
ISBN: 0199276560
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Grant's study is a rigorous analysis of migration in Germany within the demographic and socio-economic contexts of the period studied. Focusing particularly on the rural labour market and the factors affecting it, it also examines the 'pull' factor to cities, and offers more nuanced interpretations of German industrialization in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Mo v e m e n t i n N i n e t e e n t h - Ce n t u r y G e r m a n y : G e n e r a l Co n s i d e r a t i o n s Historical analysis of the nineteenth-century agrarian reforms has tended to look for statistical indicators to judge the impact of the reforms: Wgures for peasant (or smallholder) land losses, information on the numbers of landless labourers and their incomes, the extent of peasant indebtedness, the overall structure of land holding before and after the reforms, the balance between
systems; Levy (1911) explains the advantages that smallholdings specializing in livestock produce had over larger units. 31 For a more detailed discussion of the importance of the pre-reform legacy see, inter alia, Conze (1969), Lu¨tge (1963), Harnish (1986), and Perkins (1986). 32 Schissler (1986) stresses the way the aristocracy controlled the reform process east of the Elbe. Sources of Inequality in Rural Germany 37 strong reasons to regard the eastern reforms as successful, despite the
Silesia. In Posen, compensation was more likely to take the form of an annual monetary payment. The heaviest payments in kind were made in Brandenburg. The Wnal column gives the amount of land given up as compensation, and this reXects both the extent of the reforms, and the amount of compensation paid in other ways. Thus, the low level of land losses in Saxony and Silesia can be connected to the relatively high level of capital sum payments in these provinces. In Posen, land losses were not so
the analysis of particular countries shows that historical circumstances and geographical conditions matter a lot and can lead to large diVerences: Do these favour large estates or plantations? Has there been an attempt at land reform? Was this successful or unsuccessful? In the German case, the agrarian reforms produced a relatively egalitarian rural sector, which meant that the starting point for the Kuznets Curve was a low one.60 If inequality in the industrial sector turned out to be high,
making it possible for the savings of those who lack technical knowledge to be channelled into industrial investments: the German banking system performed such a function. 3. Lewis has been accused of overemphasizing the importance of agriculture as a source of surplus labour. Surveys of modern developing economies show that the main area of underemployment is in fact the informal urban sector. Whether this also applies to nineteenth-century Germany is another matter. The phenomenon of high rates