How would British economy looks like without ww1?

Thomas1195

Banned
It'll still be a picnic compared to what befell them in World War One. They lost a lot of money as well as sons and prestige in World War One too.
It would never be a picnic if they are of the landed gentry wing. Actually, the fact that the death of their sons made land reform lose its cause.

Have you heard of One Nation Conservatism? It's somewhat like German Christian Democracy. That is very likely the route that the Conservatives would follow to take votes away from Labour and the Liberals.
Without the war which tore the Liberal Party apart, its transition from Classical Liberalism to modern liberalism (or New Deal Liberalism in the US) would have been completed around 1920s, with the Liberal Summer School. The progress would be easier and quicker as time passes, since there weren't any Whigs among younger MPs in their rank.


IOTL during the whole interwar period, the Tories were quite reluctant if not hostile regarding nationalization and big infrastructure projects, unlike both Liberals and Labour (post Ramsey MacDonald) who called for such things.


The electricity standardization, however, could have been slower because Merz's influence was of course weaker than Labour movement. It's hard to separate economic policy from politics.
 

Thomas1195

Banned
In addition, British electrical, chemical and especially pharmaceutical industries would be still underdeveloped and heavily dependent on foreign (American and German) technology.
(Well, British electrical and related industries were so "great" that they could not produce their own magnetos before 1914).

Oh, forget, Sheffield steel cottages would be wiped out by competition from Krupp or US Steel Corporation.

Unless major changes occur during 1 late 1910s and 1920s, British goods would be eventually driven out of all industrialized markets, and deindustrialization would be inevitable.
 

BooNZ

Banned
Except, you know, you kind of didn't. Not in the post I was quoting. You only did that after I pointed out the poverty of your post. Which was the point I was making--the post I was quoting was not supporting your line of argument. The later post did, but it hadn't been posted yet, so it's unclear why you think I should have taken it into account.
Because it should have been obvious to anyone with even a loose grasp of Russian history that WW1 greatly undermined the Russian regime - millions of deaths, widespread starvation, perception of weak/ incompetent leadership, sponsorship of revolution by third parties etc. Catsman stated it was arguable Russian participation extended the longevity of the Imperial regime, prima facie due to some surge in patriotism. For that to be remotely relevant, it would need to be shown that Imperial Russia faced imminent collapse - not that some small minority of Russian 'intellectuals' felt unloved...

Why are you asking me? I'm not the one making the argument, remember! What is it with people lately and acting like I'm the originator of a line of argument when I step in to point out deficiencies in one side or the other...?
You stated Catsman's position can be credibly argued, but you choose not to actually argue that position yourself (at least not with any credibility). If you were pointing out deficiencies, please do so...
 

BooNZ

Banned
Basically I say it would face deindustrialization.

Of course Germany would not dominate the world, but it would dominate Continental Europe. As I said, the demand for high-tech goods and consumer goods were mainly in Europe (dominated by Germany) or the US (where tariffs were 40+%). For example, car demand in places like Burma, Zulu, Zanzibar or Nigeria would be extremely low due to low living standard and crap roads. Lack of demand means any high-tech industry in the UK would stay weak or be strangled.

For low-tech industries like textile and footwear, eventually, other countries with cheaper labour cost would outcompete Britain.

One of Germany's key advantages over British industry before WW1 was lower wage costs. Further, Mitteleuropa was conceived by German Bankers/Business leaders before 1914 because of the perceived threat of trading blocks including: the Russian Empire; the French Empire; the British Empire; and the USA. Clearly that would have left Germany with limited access to resources or markets if protectionism had gone in that direction, in lieu of a war.
 

Thomas1195

Banned
One of Germany's key advantages over British industry before WW1 was lower wage costs
Lower costs, better technology, better educated workforce, first mover advantage in new industries.
Also, saner economic policies (much better understanding of state intervention - the German state-owned railway system was among the most advanced)

German Bankers/Business leaders before 1914 because of the perceived threat of trading blocks including: the Russian Empire; the French Empire; the British Empire; and the USA.
By 1913, German firms already held a dominant position in Continental European markets including France and Russia. So, the threat would not be so great.
 
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BooNZ

Banned
Lower costs, better technology, better educated workforce, first mover advantage in new industries.
Also, saner economic policies (much better understanding of state intervention - the German state-owned railway system was among the most advanced)
So good, OTL the German productivity was able to catch up to the UK by 1970...

By 1913, German firms already held a dominant position in Continental European markets including France and Russia. So, the threat would not be so great.
Mitteleuropa remained a key plank to German war goals throughout WW1, but by 1914 they had already abandoned the possibility of France and greater Russia being included...
 
You stated Catsman's position can be credibly argued, but you choose not to actually argue that position yourself (at least not with any credibility). If you were pointing out deficiencies, please do so...
Okay, let's walk back through this whole long comment thread. This is going to be a bit tedious, actually, so bear with me. It starts out, actually, rather before you came in, with Catsmate commenting on the prospects of revolution in Russia without World War I:

Not necessarily a communist revolution, but a major (and probably violent) 'readjustment' is IMO inevitable.
The Russian system with it's mix of Tasarist absolutism (for example Alexander's violation of the 1906 constitution to alter the Duma election laws), administrative incompetence and corruption, pan-Slavism (leaving it vulnerable to entanglements in the Balkans), historical problems with Britain (notwithstanding the Anglo-Russian Entente and the agreement around 'spheres of influence'), increasing industrialisation (creating a larger urban working class) and the consequent appalling working conditions, is simply not tenable in the medium-to-long term.

In fact historically the outbreak of the Great War acted to reduce the level of worker unrest; the wave of strikes that began in April 1912 (with the massacre of miner and workers in the Lena goldfields [1]) were damped down by an upsurge in patriotism and nationalism (and anti-semitism)[2]. It also heavily disrupted the organising of labour activity.

Alexander's incoherent and incompetent mix of liberalising and repressing was the worst option for the situation. Sooner or later there will be a repeat of the factors [2] that triggered the 1905 revolution (because the causes haven't been addressed), and the second revolution (heaving learned from the Tsar's renegading on his earlier promises) will not be as easily stopped.

[1] An event that led to the first public notice for Kerensky, who reported on the massacre in the Duma.

[3] In the first seven months of 1914 Russia saw 3,493 strikes involving 1,327,897 participants; in the final five months there were 49 strikes with 9,561 participants.

[3] Shooting unarmed marchers, the peasant communes and their petitions to the Tsar, an upsurge in liberal demands for political reform (e.g. the appointment of Sviatopolk-Mirskii) which led to the General Strike of October 1905 and the Moscow Uprising.

As you can see, this does provide evidence that Russia was vulnerable to some type of unrest, both qualitatively through the listing of various factors which (at least in Catsmate's opinion) made the Tsarist regime unstable and quantitatively, in the statistics on strikes. Following a little bit of largely irrelevant back and forth between Catsmate and hipper, Catsmate commented

Before the war started in 1914 industrial unrest was on a massive scale, and increasing. I don't see it quietening much without the war, it's possible to argue that the outbreak of WW1 actually saved the Tsarist regime for a period.

This was, of course, the comment that brought you in,

Alexander?

Not with any credibility...

Catsmate responded with,

Really? So there wasn't a huge diminution in urban/industrial and rural/agricultural unrest? No surge of patriotism?

To which you responded with

Not especially, no. Any surge of patriotism would have been firmly behind the monarchy. More Russians considered Nicky a god than wanted rid of him - Russia did have serious educational issues...

This, of course, is where I came in. Now, if you please, look back over this comment chain. Catsmate made an argument, backed up with numbers--albeit from what source, I do not know, since none was provided--that the Tsarist regime was, in fact, facing difficulties in 1914, and at least in the short run the surge of patriotism from the war damped down this unrest. You, in contrast, had been counterarguing merely by saying in various ways "no, you're wrong," without actually making any attempt to show that Catsmate was wrong. Who do you think looks more credible? Worse than that, you pretty nearly literally repeated Catsmate's argument while apparently trying to counter their point:

No surge of patriotism?
Any surge of patriotism would have been firmly behind the monarchy. More Russians considered Nicky a god than wanted rid of him - Russia did have serious educational issues...

Hence,

I believe [that the fact that any surge of patriotism would support the monarchy] was rather Catsmate's point, yes.

It was a gentle reminder that when you're arguing against someone you should probably not simply repeat their points word-for-word. I'm not sure why you interpreted that post as an argument in favor of Catsmate's position, and why you've therefore been demanding that I make their argument for them--and doing so very rudely, I must point out--since.
 
Oopsie, I should have cited my sources. The numbers I quoted are from Yuri Kirianov. They're in his "The Strike Movement in Imperial Russia During the First World War. A Discussion of Statistical Data" which can be found in a number of publications (e.g. Strikes edited by Giulio Sapelli and Leopold H. Haimson). He also used the data in other papers (e.g. "The Mentality of the Workers of Russia at the Turn of the Twentieth Century") and books and it's quoted in detail in (for example) Moss's A History of Russia (Volumes 1 and 2) and Afflerbach's The Purpose of the First World War: War Aims and Military Strategies.
 
By 1913, German firms already held a dominant position in Continental European markets including France and Russia. So, the threat would not be so great.

The trading patterns of what would eventually lead to the EEC/EU were already emerging in Europe before WWI. That is a dominant Germany, with France in second place as the leading supplier of goods to other European countries.
By 1913, Russia imported more than half of its goods from Germany, it also sold more goods to Germany than to any other country in Europe. Austria-Hungary was of course another country where German trade dominated. To France, Germany exported far more to France than it imported, so by 1913 France was importing 1,068,800,000 Francs worth of goods from Imperial Germany, while Britain was still #1 with 1,113,100,000F, but Franco-German trade was growing at a faster rate. In the Ottoman Empire on the other hand, Germany ranked behind Britain and Austria-Hungary as a source of imports.

Russian Imports 1913 (millions of rubles)
Germany 642.8
Great Britain 170.4
USA 74.2
France 56.0
Finland 51.0
Austria-Hungary 34.7
Netherlands Indies 30.0
Netherlands 21.5
Ottoman Empire 16.9
Italy 16.7
Sweden 16.1
China 15.3
Denmark 12.8
Norway 9.9
Belgium 8.6
Egypt 5.9
Spain 5.7
Switzerland 5.6

Russian Exports 1913 (millions of rubles)
Germany 452.6
Great Britain 266.9
Netherlands 177.5
France 100.9
Italy 73.7
Austria-Hungary 65.3
Belgium 64.6
Finland 55.3
Denmark 35.8
Ottoman Empire 34.5
Romania 21.7
USA 14.2
Sweden 11.4
Spain 8.9
Egypt 8.6
Norway 6.7
 

Deleted member 94680

So is the general consensus that Britain's secondary sector would contract, save for certain "essential" elements, whilst the tertiary sector would become more dominant? Would Britain's "informal Empire" expand to secure imports from countries that produce materials that they do not, owing to their relatively small primary sector?
 
Lower costs, better technology, better educated workforce, first mover advantage in new industries.
Also, saner economic policies (much better understanding of state intervention - the German state-owned railway system was among the most advanced)
Yes, but such predictions of Britain being economically eclipsed by the Germans always assume that the past and present is an indicator of the future. We should not assume Britain will continue with its educational, industrial and societal ways and will not react to German economic ascendancy. You can't turn an economy and national identity on a dime, but Britain has fine engineering schools and the Scots built or designed half the structures in the world it seems.

Secondly, does it matter if Germany overcomes Britain economically? The USA past the British empire in economic power in the last century, and yet life went on. If Germany appears to be using its economic power to outpace Britain militarily, then yes, Britain will have to act, likely leading to a later WW1. However, if the Junkers and industrialists can convince the Kaiser to let Germany win economically, then there's no much Britain can do, other than double down and work harder.

One big challenge for Britain, if there is no arms race with Germany, what does Britain do with the hundreds of thousands of men that would otherwise can joined the navy and other forces? Huge unemployment can lead to trouble. On the plus side, if military spending can be reduced, money can be invested into re-tooling the country.
 
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Deleted member 94680

One big challenge for Britain, if there is no arms race with Germany, what does Britain do with the hundreds of thousands of men that would otherwise can joined the navy and other forces? Huge unemployment can lead to trouble. On the plus side, if military spending can be reduced, money can be invested into re-tooling the country.

One would assume minus WWI, Britain would still have the Empire which would need defending and policing. There would still be a requirement for a sizeable navy and relatively large army, even without the Arms Race.
 

BooNZ

Banned
Well, ww1 delayed Germany's progress by decades
If the German economy did not have the resilience to cope with war, why do you insist (over multiple threads) that Germany should always adopt bizarre foreign policies that make war with the Britain (and the wider world) inevitable?
 
that Germany should always adopt bizarre foreign policies that make war with the Britain (and the wider world) inevitable?
I can't speak for Thomas, but it does seem throughout history that Germany has often used foreign policy blunders to counter its economic/industrial success.

There was no reason for Germany to declare war on Russia Aug 1st or on France Aug 3rd or to invade Belgium Aug 4th, defacto declaring war on Britain. The German STEM (science, tech, engineering, math) and industrial leaders must have been wondering WTF, we've just declared war with the three major powers, for nothing but for the honour of the Austrians?

And it's not just blunders in WW1 of course. Throughout the 1930s, Germany, and all of the western economies were in recovery. But the Germans had to scupper their economic success by again invading all their neighbours, only to once again get the crap kicked out of itself by the same folks as the last war.

800px-Graph_charting_income_per_capita_throughout_the_Great_Depression.svg.png


If Germany can only control its presumably inherent need for aggressive foreign policy, they could have been the preeminent global economic power well before Japan (arguably, without the war's reset, Japan never makes it, but that's another thread).
 
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BooNZ

Banned
As you can see, this does provide evidence that Russia was vulnerable to some type of unrest, both qualitatively through the listing of various factors which (at least in Catsmate's opinion) made the Tsarist regime unstable and quantitatively, in the statistics on strikes. Following a little bit of largely irrelevant back and forth between Catsmate and hipper, Catsmate commented

Sorry, but there is no underlying nexus between striking workers (seeking improved economic/ employment conditions) and regime change - especially, when the total number of striking workers over a 7 month period represents substantially less than 1% of Russia's total population. By that measure, much of the western world has been facing imminent collapse over the past century...

This, of course, is where I came in. Now, if you please, look back over this comment chain. Catsmate made an argument, backed up with numbers--albeit from what source, I do not know, since none was provided--that the Tsarist regime was, in fact, facing difficulties in 1914, and at least in the short run the surge of patriotism from the war damped down this unrest. You, in contrast, had been counterarguing merely by saying in various ways "no, you're wrong," without actually making any attempt to show that Catsmate was wrong. Who do you think looks more credible? Worse than that, you pretty nearly literally repeated Catsmate's argument while apparently trying to counter their point:

I thought it was self evident, but for the record, entering world war one was not the optimal way for Imperial Russia to address economic discontent with less than 1% of its population.
 

BooNZ

Banned
I can't speak for Thomas, but it does seem throughout history that Germany has often used foreign policy blunders to counter it economic/industrial success.

Yes, the German foreign policy under Wilhelm was indeed tragic. Wilhelm ordinarily gets the blame, but he was poorly served by German foreign policy department. Pre-war German foreign policy worked on the assumption an Anglo-German understanding was inevitable, because the British had irreconcilable differences with both the French and the Russians. Accordingly, German foreign policy worked to extract the maximum price from the British for an Anglo-German accord. With the benefit of hindsight, we know the Germans were working on deeply flawed assumptions.

German foreign policy was otherwise rather benign during the decades leading to WW1. Actions often cited as German aggression include, (1) publically congratulating the defeat of clandestine British efforts to usurp an independent state, (2) condemning the subsequent British invasion of same independent state, (3) deciding to make efforts to build a significant fleet following British threats to blockade Germany, (4) protesting French colonial gains without German compensation (which apparently was a reasonable expectation in the day) and (5) providing unconditional support to a long term ally following a case of state sponsored terrorism.

There was no reason for Germany to declare war on Russia Aug 1st or on France Aug 3rd or to invade Belgium Aug 4th, defacto declaring war on Britain. The German STEM (science, tech, engineering, math) and industrial leaders must have been wondering WTF, we've just declared war with the three major powers, for nothing but for the honour of the Austrians?

By July 1914 diplomatic niceties had given way to perceived military expediencies, but with the benefit of hindsight, the1914 German excursion through Belgium in was the ultimate blunder from both a military, economic and diplomatic perspective.

And it's not just blunders in WW1 of course. Throughout the 1930s, Germany, and all of the western economies were in recovery. But the Germans had to scupper their economic success by again invading all their neighbours, only to once again get the crap kicked out of itself by the same folks as the last war.

Actually, in the 1930s German diplomacy had the mark of genius, that is until September 1939...

If Germany can only control its presumably inherent need for aggressive foreign policy, they could have been the preeminent global economic power well before Japan (arguably, without the war's reset, Japan never makes it, but that's another thread).

I think the dice remain fully loaded in the favour of the US, but Germany has a better than even chance of ultimately nudging Britain and Russia out of the way for second place.[/QUOTE]
 
I wonder if growing German economic might would lead to a closed British Imperial market, and an abandonment of Smith's free market ideas, instead putting in place his proposal for an imperial economic federation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Smith#In_British_Imperial_debates

If Britain and its empire (24% of the world's population and land area) block the import and sale of German goods, well, that forces Germany to find other markets or be limited in its continued success.
 

Thomas1195

Banned
I wonder if growing German economic might would lead to a closed British Imperial market, and an abandonment of Smith's free market ideas, instead putting in place his proposal for an imperial economic federation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Smith#In_British_Imperial_debates

If Britain and its empire (24% of the world's population and land area) block the import and sale of German goods, well, that forces Germany to find other markets or be limited in its continued success.
IOTL, despite the experience of the war, support for free trade was still larger until the Great Depression. ITTL, with a strong reforming Liberal Party in the medium and long term, the anti-protectionism faction would be much stronger.

And protectionism no cure to its internal weaknesses. The main problems were that Britain could not keep up with technological developments and new business practices after 1870. For example, specialist industrial R&D was basically unknown in Britain before ww1. Also, the majority of British firms were family businesses rather than managerial corporates directed by professional managers. These two alone proved that Britain still stuck in the 19th century. I think I don't have to tell you again about Britain's lag in new/high-tech industries.

If Britain and its empire (24% of the world's population and land area) block the import and sale of German goods, well, that forces Germany to find other markets or be limited in its continued success.
Well, these markets were less important for Germany than Europe.

Germany has a better than even chance of ultimately nudging Britain and Russia out of the way for second place
Well, they would succeed before 1950 if not 1940.
 
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