Thomas1195
Banned
British chemical products were mostly low tech, did not require extensive R&D and capital investmentLikewise though Thomas your chosen paper for chemicals production rather suggests that taken as a whole the German chemicals industry was ahead but certainly not by a margin sufficient to deserve the hyperbole light years.
Interestingly in 1913 while Britain had only a 20% share of world chemical exports compared to Germany's 40% (as can be seen in table 2 of your papers by Murmmann) it still had near parity per capita in Sulphuric acid production with the ratio only favouring Germany by 1.05 to 1 (Murmann page 5). Basically what we see is that Britain focused efforts where she was most competitive and merely kept the ability to expand production in others.
This meant war cost Britain a far smaller share of the export market as it could more easily recover position post war hence having the cited post war numbers are 17.% in 1929 and 17.9% 1950 going by Murmann and for Germany 30.9% in 1929 and 10.4% in 1950...if World War 1 hurt its global position then World War 2 was twice as bad.
It also suggests that contrary to assertions British chemicals production was not stuck in the First Industrial Revolution but remained competitive afterwards.