82
DYNASTIC EMPIRE, c. 1765 1B67
METTKRNICH'S AUSTRIA
83
people in industrial or commercial employment, at 17%, compared wiih Germany's. Here Hungary is not included. Of course, the scale was still very small relative to what was to come - a million tons of coal produced in 1850, for example, compared lo 43 million in 1913.
How had this come about? The Monarchy had several of the traditional prerequisites for industrialisation. Its population increased ■by:;!; 40% from the late eighteenth century to 1848, to some. 33.7 million, i More to the point was the particularly rapid growth in German;!! Bohemia, whose strong traditions of domestic textile industry made!!! it easier to support larger families than on the land, thereby creating a reservoir of labour. The presence of coal and iron in largely German!; parts of Bohemia and Moravia, as in Styria and Upper Austria^; enhanced the highly regional bias in Austrian development, for cultural dominance, proto-industrial traditions and natural resource^;;! went together.
Communications also improved greatly in these years. Some tyyitiijii thousand mites of main roads were built and the network of side roads grew two and a half-fold. Large areas of the Hungarian plaiiil between the Danube and the river Tisza were opened to trade, while a canal linked the Danube (now regulated; with the Moldau and;! thence the Elbe, Bohemia's outlet to the North Sea. Regular steamy! ships began lo ply the Adriatic in 1818 and the Danube in 1831. Government was relatively quick to see the importance of railways. Not!; long after Salomon Rothschild's .Mardhahn from Vienna to Olmútiř!!! (Olomouc) in Moravia had been begun in 1836 official plans pro-;;; vided for an additional three main routes south, south-west and west, to be built by the state if necessary. Austria's engineering tradjli lion, expanded in the Enlightenment, had continued to develop, wi9)S the foundation ofpolytechnics in Prague (1807), Vienna (1815) andj Graz (1844). Their teaching staff were not just pedagogues. Ttjii Prague mathematician Gerstner planned the first, albeit horse-' drawn, railway in Austria, from Linz to Budweis (České Budějovic*!! on the Moldau. later built by his son (1832), while the Viennese polpl technic professor Riepl brought back experts from a study tour of England to introduce the iron-puddling process to Austria.
This example suggests (he crucial role of foreign and particularly!; English techniques in early industrial development in the Habsburg;!! lands. Count Karl Zinzendorf had praised Manchester as early as::: 1769. The Lombard Count Confalonieri, returning from England! in 1819, ordered from there an engine for a steam-boat on the Popij
|£i:j:gas-making apparatus and information on the Lancasterian schools !!; ^system. He became involved in the Carbonari movement, was impri-j|!i;!!!!sohed in the notorious Spielberg prison in Brno and received a visit from Metternich. intrigued to plumb the workings of the revolution-]|!;i:!!;;!ařy mind. Early borrowings often had to be surreptitious: a Brno iffip&mpany in 1805 claimed to have spent 70,000 florins on purloining ISSIlilijhe 'secrets of wool-spinning machines from England. As time passed :; . English skills could be transmitted more openly and in person, (hough they were also often mediated through German agents, parti-JPlMlkrly Rhinelanders. Between them the British engineers EdwaTd |l|!!Bid John Thomas, Thomas Bracegirdle and David Evans, and :;   Joseph Lee helped set up what became the three leading firms in the illB&hemian machine-building industry. Englishmen were involved in liffiiepioneering Moravian iron works of Vítkovice, the start of the :|ij;;í|ánube and the Adriatic steamship companies, the construction of Í!|;J!Í|ie first bridge over the Danube at Budapest and the supply of gas-lill&h.tfng- to Vienna. It was a time when British prestige was at its IBjjíiiight and the Hungarian aristocratic reformer István Széchenyi lllljiitildi write lo a native audience, 'Bless a thousand limes the ashes of JiliPidarn] Smith and [Arthur] Young and their immortal works which ::4!*iiU certainly be known to the reader'.'
IIJllJEconomic liberalism pervaded the upper reaches of the adminis-liÉiation itself 'All kinds of compulsion and restriction are the mortal igplnernies of industry', opined the Hofkammer; 'only where a liberal lllljiriinistration leaves free play for the spirit of enterprise will it raise I (. its mighty head and take bold wing'.H Frequently central govern-! lijiprit overrode local authorities when these withheld the issuing of :!; : factory liceners. A perceptible embourgeoisement ofindustrial enter-SilÉpse.followed, though great nobles could still be preponderant in jlijUfiain fields like the iron industry and the new, agrarian-orientated jlllliigar beet manufacture. Three-quarters of the sugar beet fac-'IISÍSics founded in Hungary before 1848 were on noble properties and iiHiates often maintained their own machine workshops and made I 111 Heir own paper.
j jji||;Lt;: was in the textile industry that middle-class entrepreneurs ! lilliie. most clearly to the fore. A trading background was more lllÉiirimon than one in banking or handicraft. Thus Moravian carpet SIfiioties, when not foreign-owned, were founded by Jewish wool J ||$ji#chants; early Slovene industry was pioneered by Ljubljana i iiáihplcsalers; Jews again built on their traditional mercantile roles in I ippihgary, which varied from local hawker and regional factor to the