Prussian Customs Act of 1818
The Prussian Customs Act of May 26, 1818 or "Law on Customs and Consumption Taxes on Foreign Goods and on Traffic between the Provinces of the State" created a uniform economic area in the Kingdom of Prussia . It is considered to be the forerunner of the German Customs Union of 1834. The Prussian Finance Minister Karl Georg Maaßen had a major share in the law . The customs law abolished all internal tariffs between the Prussian provinces. All imported goods were subject to a moderate duty of half a thaler per hundredweight.
root cause
Within the Prussian states alone, there were over 67 local customs tariffs with as many customs borders at the beginning of the 19th century. During a transport from Königsberg to Cologne, for example, the goods were checked around eighty times. After the Congress of Vienna , Prussia was split up into an industrial western part (the province of Westphalia and the Rhine province ) and an agrarian eastern part. The state was therefore existentially dependent on a more uniform economic area.
consequences
The free trade that existed as a result of the Customs Act was linked to the hope of the Prussian Ministry of Finance that other member states of the German Confederation would also give up their protectionism . However, since this did not happen, the Prussian market was flooded with British, French and Belgian industrial goods. The Prussian manufacturing system had no chance against the mechanical mass production of these Western European countries . For this reason, a partial revision of the Prussian Customs Act followed in 1821, with which the external tariffs were increased again. The inner-Prussian economic area remained, however, and was finally merged into the Prussian-Hessian Customs Union in 1828 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Thomas Stamm: Pomerania in the 19th Century: State and Social Development in a Comparative Perspective. Cologne 2007, Böhlau GmbH, p. 96
- ^ Hubert Kiesewetter: Industrial Revolution in Germany: Regions as Growth Motors. Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2004 page 43
- ↑ Brigitte Beier: The Chronicle of the Germans. Media Verlag GmbH Gütersloh / Munich 2007 page 215
- ^ A b Wolfgang Ribbe: History of Berlin: From early history to industrialization . S. 540 .
- ^ Friedrich Seidel: The poverty problem in the German Vormärz with Friedrich List. In: Cologne lectures on social and economic history. Issue 13, Cologne 1971, p. 4.