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The Powers Of Europe During 1914 History Essay



During the start of the 19th century Great Britain was the kingpin of economic development. This was mainly because of its overseas colonies. 1815 to 1914 was referred to as Great Britain’s “Imperial Century”. During that time 10 million square miles and close to 400 million people were made part of the British Empire in which it had access to loads of extra resources. But while Britain’s economy had jumped during the industrial revolution, its growth had started to slow. This can be shown through its coal production. In 1914 Great Britain’s coal output was 292 million tons from 250 million tons in 1900, only a 42 million ton increase. This growth compared to Germany, it had a 156 million ton increase in production. As these statistics show, while Britain was growing it wasn’t growing as fast as it was during the Industrial Revolution and could soon be overtaken by any potential competitor. Despite this, London was still the world’s financial and entrepreneurial center for international payments and Britain still remained a very large creditor nation, lending funds to other countries.

The German economy in 1914 was growing at a phenomenal pace and should be considered as one of the greatest economic powers of the world at the time. During the earlier years of Imperial Germany’s existence its economy had lagged far behind its competitors (Great Britain, France and Belgium) due to the fact that it was a new country and had to unify all of its affairs from the countries that were created from it, as a result the social structure was not at all suitable for economic or entrepreneurial development. But by the beginning of the 20th century Germany had become one of the world leaders in industrialization second only to Great Britain (which was in a slow decline after the industrial revolution). An example of this would be Germany’s steel production. In 1914 it had produced an estimated 14 million tons compared to Great Britain which only produced 8 million tons. The prosperity of Germany’s economy was also reflected in the way its population had “exploded” during the late 1890s yet when absorbed into the labor market living standards went on without any drastic decline. By 1914 the country’s NDP (Net Domestic Product) was over 20 billion reichsmarks. This statistic can be disputed though. According to Knut Borchardt, “the poor state of the statistical material undermines the reliability of many of the detailed figures” (Borchardt, 1954)


During 1914 Russia’s economy was not in such great shape. It had an abundance of resources but most were “locked in” by the vast size of the country and the extreme climate that they were located in. It would seem that Russia may have been a “dying man” but historians unanimously agree that its economy did grow. By 1900 it had taken France’s 4th place position in iron production and 5th in steel production. Railway mileage had increased by 87% between 1892 and 1903 and its oil extraction had even tripled between 1892 and 1903. All of this industrialization though, required lots of capital to start up and maintain. This though was capital that Russia did not have at its disposal. As a result, Russia’s industry ended up being predominately owned by foreigners. A few examples of this would be Russia’s steel and mining industry; 69% and 85% respectively were owned by foreigners. An interesting fact about other ownership of Russia’s industries is that the knowledge capital that was utilized in Russia’s industrialization were either foreigners or Russian minorities like Jews, Poles or Старообрядцы (Old Believers). Despite all of these improvements on Russia’s economy there were very few people in the middle class and most were living in close to medieval-like poverty while the nobility were extremely wealthy. This created a giant imbalance in the workforce which in turn drastically lowered industrial efficiency. These were the main hurdles for Russia to become a major economic superpower and also resulted in unrest within the country.


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