Geography.
Along with human factors that reinforced the strengths there.
Please elaborate.
Please elaborate.
Could you explain to me the evolution of Germany's education system?theres a lot of coal and iron their, the two main ingredients in any industry, especially warfare. Along with having one of the best education systems in the world this allowed it to grow and create factories,trains,ect... that allowed them to have one of the best industries in the world.
the human factor can be credited to Prussia before the Deutschland, which already had factories and trains before german unification (which allowed them to win their war against france). Prussia was known for having intelligent men who made great soldiers, and excellent generals; all willing to die for their fatherland.
Some other things to consider, too:
- neighbourhood. It's nearly impossible to be across the street from Belgium, the Netherlands, Northern France and Britain and not see some industrialisation.
- A tradition of urbanism. Germany has a long history of cities, and while they tended to be smallish before, the institutions scaled reasonably well. People moving to town was not strange.
- a tradition of mechanised artisanal production. People were already machine-minded.
- a relatively high degree of social disciplining in place, especially in the towns and cities. Germany produced industrial workers before it had industry on an appreciable scale.
- ambition. Industrial development was a field through which it was possible for a middle-class person of artisanal background to rise to the highest levels of society. Few others were open.
I also suspect that Prussia was in part responsible both through providing a market and through creating resentment. Berlin was not popular in the Rhine and Ruhr, and a lot of the influential families from there were very consciously not like the Junkers. Embracing business and modernity was a good way of distinguishing themselves, much like the people in the Hanseatic cities defined themselves through commerce as opposed to traditional inward-looking civicness.
If there's one GOOD thing the incredible Balkanization of the HRE did, it was giving Germany a head start on urbanization.
How did that increase urbanization?
More polities = more towns. Contrast to, say, France, where centralization effectively meant fewer urban areas.
The way I see it is if you have a small principality or princedom or whatever those things were called back then, each tended to create some central capital from which all power emanated. The people of the area naturally gravitated there, creating urban centers around provincial capital (most likely palace or castle of some sort) with many blacksmiths and other artisan shops necessary to provide for ruling noble military and other needs.
Well a good part of it was state-driven; Imperial Germany was one of the few centralized nations that actively pursued industrialization (for military applications) . It's harder to start up infant industries without government assistance.