“Tilly and Kopsidis have not only read a prodigious range of secondary sources on the diverse regional economies that evolved into modern Germany, but configured that literature into a narrative that connects its industrialization to geopolitics, state formation, public policy, and institutional development that goes back through heuristically demarcated stages of time into the eighteenth century. This book should be listed first on every bibliography in economic history.”

Patrick Karl O'Brien, London School of Economics

“During the nineteenth century the German economy developed into one of the most advanced in the world. Tilly and Kopsidis masterfully explain this rise to economic and technological leadership, starting with agricultural and institutional transformation in the eighteenth century and following the story through to the development, by the end of the nineteenth century, of distinctive financial institutions that supported an advanced industrial economy. Their account is lucid, creative, and well-grounded in both the research literatures and the broader sources. This volume provides an excellent entrée into the specialist literatures (in both German and English) and will serve as the standard English-language reference.”—

Timothy W. Guinnane, Yale University

"This book describes the fascinating transformation of a backward inland area into a leading industrial economy. In their authoritative synthesis, Tilly and Kopsidis shed new light on subjects that form the staple of the economic history of industrialization—including unbalanced growth, railway construction and financing, and the modernization of agriculture—drawing on recent research to which both authors have made significant contributions."

Ulrich Pfister, University of Münster

"This book is an invaluable source of inspiration for everyone seeking to update themselves on Germany’s industrialization and the current state of research."

Journal of Economic Literature

"Tilly and Kopsidis are opening a new narrative for questioning how institution and political regimes adopt technological change. For our current times, reading their work is an opportunity for expanding the new dynamics of capitalism development, especially in how new models of commercialization and production, as platform capitalism, are disrupting our current institutional regimes."

H-Environment

"Tilly and Kopsidis are opening a new narrative for questioning how institution and political regimes adopt technological change. For our current times, reading their work is an opportunity for expanding the new dynamics of capitalism development, especially in how new models of commercialization and production, as platform capitalism, are disrupting our current institutional regimes. In that way, Tilly and Kopsidis are offering a new question about the sense of institutional change."

H-Net

"With their clearly-structured collation of quantitative economic-historical research, Kopsidis and Tilly succeed in synthesizing the multifaceted nature of German industrialization... The book is a wonderful introduction to the economic history of industrialization and it belongs in every well-stocked library."

H-Soz-Kult (translated from German)

"A concise, yet highly differentiated and insightful narrative of the making of the German industrial economy that connects industrialization to agriculture, state formation, the emergence of a modernizing bureaucracy, public and social policy, scientific knowledge and technology, migration and demography, and the change in
financial institutions."

Agricultural History

"For historians of the industrial revolution, contemplating Germany’s rise to an efficient, innovative and productive industrial economy is a must. Tilly and Kopsidis provide a fresh perspective on German economic history by considering many previous explanations and using the most recent scholarship, their own work as well as their deep reading into the subject matter."

EH.Net

"This concise book is an update of Tilly’s 1990 Vom Zollverein zum Industriestaat, first of all taking account of new material that enables the authors to move beyond the then conventional account of German industrialization; but second, extending the coverage back to the institutional roots of German development in the eighteenth century. This is a major shift. . . to a history in which the role of state and public administration, demography, and education gains due emphasis."

Journal of Modern History