Coal supply in the German Empire in 1881
trains
boats
This project, carried out as part of the Master in Digital Humanities at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), aims to make old maps accessible in an interactive interface. The map presented here was made in 1881, following a commission from the Ministry of Public Works of the German Empire. It is currently kept at the French National Library. This very impressive map describes in detail the coal supply to the Prussian territory.
Introduction
Coal is the most important ressource of the industrial nations of the 19th century. Indeed, coal supply was essential to the nation's survival and prosperity at the time. The map we were working on represented the discontinuous flow that irrigated the German Empire, as blood could irrigate a human body. The accessibility of this information is an important historical fact because the Empire's coal supply during this key period built Germany as it exists today. The urban planning and social tissue of many actual cities has been shaped by the coal economy.
More generally, the development of tools enabling the representation of networks and flows of goods is of particular interest to digital humanities. Networks are everywhere: in economics, social sciences, art history. They allow complex phenomena and multiple interactions to be transposed. The exploration of new ways of presenting networks in interactive form also provides a better understanding of abstract concepts and causal relationships between different events.
Our algorithm was designed to allow to separately study the supply and demand of important cities, the trade routes as well as the trade hubs. It will also be possible to view separately the cities which have the main deficits or surplus in production over consumption. It creates the possibly of interacting with a map that was previously static.
To enhance reuse opportunities, we have also created a guideline page on the website for anyone to be able to work with this algorithm in order to analyse any generic dataset of another year on Germany's coal consumption and transport or even completely different flux of goods. The algorithm is conceived in order to be easily reusable by anyone. The user do not have to dig into the code, the settings necessary to fit the model to any project which aims to represent a transport network are grouped in a single settings.py python folder (see thumbnail).
Ultimately, the website, by associating the interactive representation of the data with the historical insights provided by the secondary literature, is drawing the visitor into a very concrete and visual characteristic of Germany's development ten years into its creation as a nation-state.
Simon Schropp, (Berlin: Schropp, 1881) ‘Karte über die Production, Consumption und Circulation der mineralischen Brenstoffe in Preussen während des Jahres 1881 / herausgegeben im königl. preuss. Ministerium der öffentlichen Arbeiten’, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Gallica <https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b53021137x> [accessed 12 December 2018]
Historical introduction to the map
We are working on a historical map that originates from Germany and is dated from 1881. On this map of central and northern Europe, the German Empire is represented as it existed in the year 1881. The originality of the document is that it features the consumption, and the production of coal of many important German cities of the Empire, as well as the annual fluxes of coal being transported between cities by train or by boat. It was commissioned by the German Empire's Ministry of Public Works, authored by Simon Schropp and edited by Schropp (Berlin).
Large-scale coal mining developed during the Industrial Revolution, and coal was the central source of energy for industry and transportation in industrial areas of 19th century Germany. The link between the two strategical assets that are coal production and railway deployment is reciprocal. Railway transportation system, because of their high coal consumption, influenced the development of coal production more than coal production influenced the development of the railway system, but the necessity to transport that ever-increasing amount of coal in order to feed the newly integrating German economic system and gain independence from British coal did boost the development of the railway network[1].
What is particularly interesting about that map is that the complex and interwoven network of coal production and transportation that it represents is happening only 10 years after the German unification. It confirms what secondary literature has already established: the economic union of Germany preceded the political union, the latter one being the culmination of the economic integration. It started with the formation of the Zollverein, the German custom union which allowed the easier transport of goods between the German states. But more importantly, the development of the rail technology and the states' investment in the corresponding rail network allowed the growth of a German-wide supply-chain.
The Union was a coalition of German states managing their tariffs and their economy as a unified economic territory. The Zollverein was launched on 1 January 1834. But in reality, its foundations started in 1818 with the creation of a variety of custom unions among the German states. By 1866, the Zollverein included most of the German states. The foundation of the Zollverein was the first instance in history in which independent states had created a full economic union without the simultaneous creation of a political federation[2]. Politically, Prussia was the member state driving the creation of the customs union while Austria was excluded from the Zollverein because of its highly protected industry[2]. After the unification of the German states in 1871, the Empire assumed control of the Zollverein. Indeed, the three main Prussian objectives in the development of the Zollverein were first, as a political tool to eliminate the excessive Austrian influence in Germany; second, as a way to improve their economy; and third, to strengthen the concept of a Prussian Germany against potential French aggression while reducing the economic independence of smaller states[3]. The full political unification was the result but not the stated goal of the economic integration. That same integration made the creation of a rail-way system necessary, while that system rendered the integration easier in a positive loop of economic and political harmonization. Before the Zollverein, the political infighting between conservative states made it a challenge to build railways in the 1830s but the growing importance of the Zollverein made the construction of a coherent infrastructure a possibility. By the middle of the 19th century, rail linked the major cities; each German state being responsible for the lines within its own borders.
Until the 1820s, the nobility championed economically inefficient but prestigious canal projects over railways. In the 1830s, the growing liberal middle classes supported state-sponsored railways as a form of progress with direct benefits for the German people’s capacity to move around as well as for the shareholders in the joint stock companies that built and operated the railroads. Though private railway enterprises did exist, they were taken over by state companies in the 1840s. However, those state-owned enterprises copied many of the private companies' methods and organizational structures[4].
The complex links between political goals and economic objectives is made clearer by the fact that the nationalization of the railway system allowed the states to subsidize the transport of merchandise and commodity throughout the Zollverein. The development of that positive integration loop continued in the second half of the 19th century until the cost of transporting one person for one kilometre was equivalent to that of transporting one ton of freight by 1880, the time of our map’s creation. It allowed for the complex network of coal production, supply and consumption that is present on our map.
[1] Arnold H. Price, The Evolution of the Zollverein: A Study of the Ideals and Institutions Leading to German Economic Unification between 1815 and 1833 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1949) pp. 9–10.
[2] David T. Murphy, "Prussian aims for the Zollverein, 1828-1833", Historian, Winter 1991, Vol. 53#2, pp. 285-302.
[3] David J. S. King, "The Ideology Behind a Business Activity: The Case of the Nuremberg-Fürth Railway", Business and Economic History, 1991, Vol. 20, pp. 162-170.
[4]Toni Pierenkemper, Richard H. Tilly, The German Economy During the Nineteenth Century pp. 59-70.