The purpose of this article is to illuminate the last aspect of the decisive struggle between Prussia and Austria for the economic supremacy in Germany in the period of the establishment of the German Empire especially from the viewpoint of the customs and trade policy. As the historical premise of the economic unification of Germany there was the alternative of the Zollverein, which was founded in 1834 under the Prussian leadership, or the "Zollunion", which was proposed for the first time by the Austrian Minister of Commerce, Ludwig Bruck, in 1849 and was revived by the Foreign Minister, Rechberg, in 1862. The "Zollunion", which Austria proposed to deprive Prussia of the political and economic supremacy in Germany through the entry of Austria into the Zollverein, was the very core of the dispute on the customs and trade policy in the 1850's and the 1860's. The dispute in the 1850's was ceased com promisingly with the conclusion of the Austro-Prussian commercial treaty in 1853 called the "Februarvertrag", which made the system of mutual trade preferences. The 1860's began with the conclusion of the Anglo-French commercial treaty, and this meant also the first step toward the formation of the worldwide network of the free trade commercial treaties, through which Britain at the center of the world market intended to grasp the backward countries around her as the food and material supplier and the purchaser of her manufactured goods for her capitalistic reproduction. The conclusion of the Franco-Prussian commercial treaty in 1862 and the approaching renewal of the Zollverein treaties treshed out once more the old controversy between Prussia and Austria. Prussian Goverment adhered to the free trade policy in order to prevent Austria from entering into the Zollverein. But the intention of the Austrian "Zollunionsplan" was to found the Austro-German Customs Union called the "Siebzig Millionen Reich", surrounded with the protective tariffs against the industrially advanced countries, particulary against Britain. After all, the dispute ended in a great victory for Prussia and the Austrian "Zollunionsplan" was finally frustrated. In order to understand the reasons of this failure of the Rechberg's "Zollunionsplan", first of all it's necessary to analyse the trade structure between the Zollverein and Austria in the world market under the system of the "Februarvertrag" (1854-1864), and then to clarify the political intentions of those interested, whose influences were crusial to the decision on the customs and trade policy of the governments. In short, it may be given as a conclusion that the "kleindeutsch" free trade policy of the Prussian Government, the severe resistence of the Austrian protectionists, who were much afraid of the competition with the relatively more developed industries of the Zollverein, and the financial crisis of the Austrian Government hindered the realization of the Austrian "groβ deutsch" protectionism, in other words, the free trade policy to the Zollverein from the Austrian point of view.
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