The Protectionism in the German Revolution of 1848

Abstract

The commercial and tariff problem was one of the most important issues in the German Revolution of 1848. After the fall of the Continental System there was a flood of foreign, especially English manufactures in German market. English manufactures, brought from Hanse towns such as Hamburg, Bremen and Lubeck, were spread over the Germany by merchants through the fairs and yearly markets. The German industries suffered damage from those foreign competition. The mercantile and shipping interests, which had much profit from the foreign trade, demanded for free trade system with the landlords of Ostelbe, most of whose agricultural products were exported to England. The German industries had made the rapid development during the thierties and forties. The machines were introduced by capitalitalists in the textile and metal industries, which led to the establishment of factories. The German industrialists, driving out the foreign manufactures, were step by step recovering the home market. The tradesmen from manufacturing districts such as Rheinland, Saxony and the South travelled with the sample of goods all over the country to accept the orders from the consumers and the local merchants. The Zollverein and the establishment of railroads accelerated the formation of these modern commercial organisation. Immediately after the outbreak of the Revolution the industrialists of the textil industries of the South and of those of the iron of Rheinland began to campaign for the economic unification of nation and an upward revision of tariff rates. In November there formed the "Allgemeine deutsche-Verein zum Schutz der vaterlandischen Arbeit," in which the factory-owners of the textile industries of the Sonth and those of iron in Rheinland had played the most important part. The Verein launched a campaign for the economic unification of Germany with the high tariff system. Protective industrialism had found vigorous spokesmen in Frankfurt Parliament, the members of the economic committee, of whom Bernhard Eisenstuck, Moritz Mohl and Bruno Hildebrand had been the eagerst. They thought the Parliament had its foundation on the working classes and their movements, which had demanded for the protection and maintenance of their own trade and labour. The protective delegates of the Parliament maintained the importance of economic problems, above all, the commercial unification of the nation with the higher tariff system, the freedom of industry and the abolition of feudal system. Thus the protectionism was not merely on the commercial and tariff problem, but, connected with the land and industrial problems, was one of the most important and basic ideas of the Revolution of 1848.