Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution [Paperback]

Thorstein Veblen (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0887388353 | ISBN-13: 978-0887388354 | Publication Date: January 1, 1990

IMPERIAL GERMANY AND THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION. PREFACE: Some apology may seem due on offering at this season so unwarlike a study as what here follows on the case of Imperial Germany and its place in modern civilisation. The essay was projected before the current war came on, though the complexion of subsequent events has also doubtless had its effect o the particular direction taken by the argument at more than one point in the inquiry. The inquiry in hand, therefore, is concerhedeittjer with the controverted merits of the internationaTquarrel nor with the comparative force and probable success of either belligerent. Its aim is the less polemical one of a comparison and correlation between the German case on the one hand and the English speaking peoples on the other hand, considered as two distinct and somewhat divergent lines of the cultural development in modern times and the ground on which the inquiry runs is that afforded by the economic, chiefly the industrial, cir cumstances that have shaped the outcome in either case. It aims to account for Germanys industrial advance and high efficiency by natural causes, without drawing on the logic of manifest destiny, Providential nepotism, national genius, and the like. It is believed to be the first attempt yet made at an explanation, as distinct from description or eulogy, of this episode in modern economic history unless Professor Sombarts Deutsche Volkswirtschaft im Jahrhundert may be so regarded. Apart from Professor Sombarts study of this period, it is believed, nothing of consequence has appeared in the way of a theoretical inquiry into this Imperial era and the run of its industrial affairs, although many scholarly and workmanlike studies have presented the run of the facts from one point of view and another. There is of course no intention here to impart information on the history of this period, whether political or economic 5 and the historical information made use of as material for argument is of the commonplace kind familiar by common notoriety or from the standard manuals accessible to all readers. Anything like a comprehensive citation of sources and authorities has accordingly been dispensed with, though citations and references covering given points have been brought in where special occasion appeared to call for it. The argument runs between the lines of the histories, as conventionally written, and does not lean on recondite mate rial or niceties of detail. To English readers, it is true, the chapter on the Old Order may appear in part to rest on recondite information. The argument bearing on this topic presumes a degree of familiarity with the archseology of the Baltic region, to gether with a fairly exhaustive firsthand acquaintance with what there is extant of literary remains in the Old Icelandic.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

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“The World War, the Treaty of Versailles, the Weimar Republic, the invasion of the Ruhr, inflation, acute depression, Hitler--all this and more has been unable to date Veblen's analysis.... History must be more than biography and accident or else a book written a quarter of a century ago could not remain the best guide to the most terrifying country in Christendom.”–Saturday Review of Literature --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 386 pages
• Publisher: Transaction Publishers (January 1, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0887388353
• ISBN-13: 978-0887388354
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,443,663 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Veblen writes like a college professor should., March 12, 2002

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Bruce P. Barten - See all my reviews

This review is from: Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution (Reprints of Economic Classics) (Hardcover)

In the recent hardcover edition which I have, the dates of printing of Thorstein Veblen's book IMPERIAL GERMANY AND THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION are listed as 1915, 1939, and 1964. In the first two years listed, America was safely sitting on the sidelines, observing the kind of warlike behavior attributed to the dynastic state in this book in Europe, much as Elizabethan England enjoyed several centuries of isolation from the wars which were devastating Europe in the years in which its economic activities became industrial, though socially, as Veblen observed, "Conventions that are in some degree effete continue to cumber the ground." (p. 30). By 1964, America was playing such a large role in the world that Germany might have been the kind of problem that America, from a unique position of political and military superiority, ought to have been able to resolve, and possibly did by acting as if the major problems in the world were somewhere else.

Chapter I, Introductory -- Races and Peoples, compares the mixture of races which populated England and Germany to be quite similar, if not exactly the same. A note on page 23, in Chapter 2, The Old Order, compares such mixing with what occurred in Japan, "and possibly also the Aegean peoples of antiquity." "By a curious coincidence, the period of Japanese prehistory and history seems to cover loosely the same general interval of time as that of the Baltic peoples; and as with the latter, so in the case of the Japanese, the cultural life-history of the people is a history of facile and ubiquitous borrowing done in the most workmanlike manner and executed with the most serviceable effect."

In the chapter on The Dynastic State, Veblen notes that printing was a handicraft which was well practiced in Germany, and included "the circulation of obnoxious literature that purveys excessively modern ideas" (note on p. 76), but that it appeared to be best "to engender that habit of reading as to make the assimilation of the new industrial order an easy matter, resulting in a marked advance in efficiency and physical comfort, and then to temper coercion with a well-conceived cajolery." (note, p. 76).

One of the pleasures of reading Veblen is encountering philosophical ideas in an utterly different context, as on page 109:

. . . While the corresponding English movement, in so far as touches the point here in question, has tended strongly to an atheistic and unmoral scheme of opaque and impersonal matter of fact. This work of the human spirit as it has come into play under the German habituation is spoken of as "nobler," "profounder,"--a point not to be disputed, since such discrimination is invidious and is an affair of taste and perspective.

The final paragraph of the chapter on The Case of England is devoted to the "direct waste of time and substance involved in this ubiquitous addiction to sports." (p. 148). I enjoy Veblen's offhandedly remarkable description of how "persons with a predilection for artistic and intellectual dissipations may be moved to deprecate addiction to dissipations of this crude and brutalizing nature," (p. 148) but this book deserves far more serious readers than I am.