log in  Neil Faulkner writes about the The Long Depression – an
unprecedented economic slump which started the countdown to the
First World War.  Police attack Trafalgar Sq protest  Between
1848 and 1873, the European economy experienced an economic boom
without historic precedent.  Exports of British cotton goods
increased in the single decade 1850-1860 by the same amount as
over the entire preceding three decades. Exports of Belgian iron
doubled between 1851 and 1857. Overall, world trade, which had
increased by just under 100% between 1800 and 1840, increased by
more than 250% between 1850 and 1870.  Europe had just 14,500
miles of railway in 1850, but 63,300 miles of it by 1870. The
tonnage carried in British steamships rose 16-fold between 1850
and 1880, that of the rest of the world more than four-fold.
All the indices pointed upwards. After the trade depression and
revolutionary ferment of the 1840s, a new epoch of confidence,
growth, and endless opportunity seemed to have dawned. Eric
Hobsbawm, the g