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. 2011 May 15;70(7):1280–1288. doi: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2010.08.013

Foreign trade and early industrialisation in the Habsburg Monarchy and the United Kingdom — Two extremes in comparison

Simone Gingrich 1,⁎
PMCID: PMC3092985  PMID: 21760665

Abstract

The concept of socio–ecological transitions is used to analyse the quantitative importance of physical imports and exports for the Habsburg Empire and the United Kingdom in the 19th and early 20th centuries. For the Habsburg Empire, a new dataset of foreign trade and social metabolism is presented. For the United Kingdom, the analysis relies on previously published data. Foreign trade volumes increased in both countries in the long run. Total trade volumes were much higher in the United Kingdom throughout the entire time period, on average by around a factor four. Physical factors explaining the disparities in structure and volume of foreign trade in the two countries are differences in (1) the temporal patterns of the socio-ecological transition and (2) domestic resource endowments. In both countries, energy carrying materials, i.e. fossil fuels and biomass, were the dominant resources in physical foreign trade. The analysis focuses on the physically most important material groups: coal, wood and cereals, and discusses the role of imports and exports in relation to domestic resource provision and environmental pressures. Physical foreign trade increased at a faster pace than domestic resource extraction and consumption. The socio–ecological transition was thus accompanied by rising international integration of resource supply.

Keywords: Foreign trade, Material and Energy Flow Analysis (MEFA), United Kingdom (UK), Habsburg monarchy, Environmental history, Long-term socio–ecological research (LTSER)

1. Introduction

Industrialisation has been described from a materialist perspective as a “socio–ecological transition” (Krausmann et al., 2008b, Fischer-Kowalski and Haberl, 2007), a process of increasing resource use (McNeill, 2000; Krausmann et al., 2009) which is accompanied by a shift from mainly organic materials to increasing amounts of mineral resources. This transition goes along with specific changes in energy use (e.g. Bartoletto and Rubio, 2008; Gales et al., 2007) — again, from mostly organic and renewable to more and more non-renewable energy sources, as well as particular changes in land use (Sieferle et al., 2006; Krausmann, 2001; Kuskova et al., 2008; Erb et al., 2008; Musel, 2009). In many empirical studies on this subject, the role of foreign trade in the transition process is addressed to some extent, usually as proposed within the methodological framework of Material and Energy flow Analysis (see e.g. Schandl et al., 2002; Haberl et al., 2004). Import and export flows are in this framework considered as one of several socio-economic material or energy flows. But the role of foreign trade in the process of the socio-ecological transition as such was not the focal point of these studies.

There is reason to assert that foreign trade did – in various ways – contribute substantially to Europe's industrialisation in the 19th century. O'Rourke and Williamson (1999) even suggest that globalisation in the 19th century was comparable to the present globalisation process in terms of the speed and extent of increasing global market integration. Economic historians have dealt with the history of foreign trade in Europe in most detail. Studies have traced monetary flows of foreign trade between European countries and the rest of the world (e.g. Bairoch, 1973; Jacks, 2005), others have discussed the (economic) reasons for this development (Olson, 1974; O'Rourke, 1997). The approach of economic history entails the use of (historical) economic statistics and the application of economic concepts, such as price convergence, while the cognitive interest lies in a better understanding of economic interrelationships.

A culturally informed environmental history has dealt with the issue of 19th century foreign trade from a different perspective. Works from this field have been concerned with environmental impacts (or preconditions) of export production in colonised countries (Brannstrom and Gallini, 2004). Most trace the environmental history of a single raw material in a specific producing region, such as Bananas in Central America (Soluri, 2002), sugar in Cuba (Funes Monzote, 2004), rubber in Brazil (Dean, 1987), or ivory in East Africa (Hakansson, 2007). Recently, environmental historians have increasingly taken a more systemic perspective and have attempted to quantify the environmental pressures exerted on the exporting countries by 19th century imports, such as Hornborg (2006) or Pomeranz (2000). The focus of these studies was the United Kingdom, the most important 19th century economic power. Ideas from ecological economics were adopted, in particular the notion of “ecologically unequal exchange”: based on world systems theory, studies from this field argue that ecological goods are being exported from the global “South” to the “North” while ecological burdens are being exported (or externalised) in the other direction (Giljum and Eisenmenger, 2004; Hornborg, 1998). The concept of social metabolism has been used successfully for such analyses, particularly for Latin American countries (Perez-Rincon, 2006; Eisenmenger and Giljum, 2007; Muradian and Martinez-Alier, 2001), and has shown that Southern countries tend to be net-exporters of raw materials while Northern countries tend to act as net-importers. This research strand has focused mainly on recent periods, starting from the 1970s.

This article offers a materialist perspective on the environmental history of foreign trade. It applies the framework of material and energy flow analysis to elucidate the role of foreign trade in two very different European economies of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Habsburg Empire and the United Kingdom. It presents new empirical data on physical foreign trade relations of the Habsburg Empire in 1830–1915, including data on domestic resource consumption, and compares them to previously published data for the United Kingdom in 1850–1915 (Schandl and Schulz, 2002).

The concept of socio–ecological transitions (Fischer-Kowalski and Haberl, 2007; Krausmann et al., 2008a,b) is used to analyse the biophysical features of foreign trade in these two economies during the early stage of industrialisation: how was the socio–ecological transition reflected in the foreign trade relations of the two countries? A detailed analysis of the biophysically most important material categories (coal, wood and cereals) serves to discuss how foreign trade in the Habsburg Empire and the United Kingdom contributed to domestic resource consumption and which international shifts of environmental burdens were associated with foreign trade. With a physical perspective on the history of foreign trade, this article aims to contribute to long-term socio–ecological research (LTSER, see Haberl et al., 2006) and to fill a gap between the quantitative economic history of the 1970s and 80s interested in the (monetary) extent of European foreign trade flows and current research on ecologically unequal exchange, as performed by ecological economics.

The article is organised in the following way: In the next section, the two case studies will be briefly introduced. The materials and methods section presents the data sources and the conversion and aggregation procedures which were undertaken to compile the empirical basis of the analysis. The results of the study will be presented, starting with an overview of total physical foreign trade relations in the two countries. Then, a detailed account of the physically most important material categories will be given: coal and biomass (with an emphasis on wood and cereals). The final section draws some general conclusions on the role of foreign trade in the socio – ecological transition.

2. Apples and Pears — Comparing the Habsburg Empire and the United Kingdom

The Habsburg Empire1 and the United Kingdom make promising cases for comparing physical foreign trade relations in the early stage of European industrialisation for three reasons: (1) They represent the pioneer and a latecomer of European industrialisation and can be viewed as economies at different stages of the socio–ecological transition. (2) They differ strongly in terms of economic orientation, including their economic foreign trade policies. Finally, (3) they are very similar in terms of their population totals, allowing for a comparison of total numbers. However, the two countries differ in terms of population density and resource endowments. Comparing these two countries thus illuminates the variations and commonalities of European physical foreign trade during the coal stage of the socio–ecological transition.

The economic differences between the Habsburg Empire and the United Kingdom in the 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as some indicators on resource use are presented in Table 1. The United Kingdom was the most powerful economy in Europe – and the world – throughout large parts of the 19th century, with a per-capita GDP of more than 1500 US Dollars in 1830 and more than 4500 US Dollars by 1910 (Maddison, 2003). The economic power of the United Kingdom went along with distinct features of resource use. In the 19th century, the United Kingdom was home to advanced industrial production, particularly of textiles and iron, and its economy relied on the use of coal much more than continental Europe (see e.g. Allen, 2009): As early as 1830, coal accounted for almost half of the United Kingdom's primary energy use (or Domestic Energy Consumption, DEC, which includes fossil fuels and biomass), and by 1910 it made up over 80% (Krausmann et al., 2008b).

Table 1.

Structural data on the United Kingdom (UK) and the Habsburg Empire (HE)a.

UK 1830 UK 1910 HE 1830 HE 1910
Total population 1000 cap 23,814 44,915 28,511 49,066
Total area km² 313,183 313,183 667,251 624,865
Population density cap/km² 76 143 43 79
Agricultural population % of total 28 8 71b 52
GDP intl Geary-Khamis $/cap 1773 4611 961 2172
Domestic Energy Consumption GJ/cap/yr 68 148 46 66
Share of biomass in DEC % 54 19 100 67
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a

Sources: see text. Data on GDP were derived from Maddison, 2003. For an estimate of the GDP in the Habsburg Empire, I used a weighted average of the values presented for Austria, Czechoslovakia and Hungary.

b

This value refers to Cisleithania in 1840. In the entire Monarchy in 1830, the share of agricultural population was very likely even higher.

The Habsburg Empire on the other hand was a typical continental European economy in the 19th century (Milward and Saul, 1977). On the edge between centre and periphery, it experienced the shift from handicraft to industrial production comparatively late in the 19th century with large divergences between West and East (Komlos, 1983); in fact, some sectors were dominated by small-scale handicraft until the early 20th century (Good, 1984). In terms of energy use, the Habsburg Empire experienced the shift from biomass to coal only relatively late in the 19th century (Gross, 1971): In 1830, coal contributed less than 1% to total primary energy use, and by 1910, the share was still fairly low at 33% (sources: see Table 2). From an energetic perspective, the Habsburg Empire was thus far behind the United Kingdom on its way along the socio–ecological transition from an agrarian to an industrialised economy. Interestingly, the United Kingdom and the Habsburg Empire had quite similar population totals in the 19th century, see Table 1: increasing from around 24 mio. in 1830 (29 mio. in the Habsburg Empire) to 45 mio. in 1910 (49 mio. in the Habsburg Empire). Given that the Habsburg Empire was roughly twice the area of the United Kingdom, population density was almost two times higher in the United Kingdom, with implications in terms of urbanisation, transport and per-capita land availability.

Table 2.

Sources for the analysis of material and energy flows in the Habsburg Empire.

Topic Region Years Source
Foreign trade Habsburg Empire 1830–1865 Anonymous (1830–1871)
1866–1881 K.K. Statistische Central-Commission (1866–1884)
1882–1914 K.K.Statistische Central-Commission (1882–1914)
Domestic trade Between Cisleithania and Transleithania 1900–1914 K.K. Statistische Central-Commission (1901–1914)
Extraction of fossil fuels Cisleithania 1819–1874 Komlos (1983)
1875–1915 Hwaletz (2001)
1870–1889 Kön. Ung. Statistisches Bureau (1871–1889)
1890–1914 Kön. Ung. Statistisches Zentralamt (1895–1914)
Extraction of anthracite and lignite Transleithania 1830–1914 Komlos (1983)
Extraction of crude oil Transleithania 1864–1867 K.K.Statistische Central-Commission (1864–1867)
Harvest of biomass Cisleithania 1830 Sandgruber (1978)
1831–1865 K.K. Finanz-Ministerium (1831–1865)
1866–1869 K.K. Statistische Central-Commission (1866–1869)
1870–1917 Sandgruber (1978)
Harvest of biomass Transleithania 1830 K.K. Finanz-Ministerium (1858)
1831–1865 K.K. Finanz-Ministerium (1831–1865)
1866–1869 K.K. Statistische Central-Commission (1866–1869)
1870–1914 Komlos (1983)
Population, agricultural population Cisleithania 1830–1865 K.K. Finanz-Ministerium (1831-1871)
1866–1881 K.K. Statistische Central-Commission (1866–1884)
1882–1914 K.K.Statistische Central-Commission (1882–1914)
Population, agricultural population Transleithania 1830–1869 K.K. Finanz-Ministerium (1831-1871)
1870–1889 Kön. Ung. Statistisches Bureau (1871–1889)
1890–1914 Kön. Ung. Statistisches Zentralamt (1895–1914)
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The two economies differed greatly in terms of their foreign trade relations: the United Kingdom played a unique role in the world economy. Its trade volume surpassed that of any other country of the world throughout much of the 19th century (Bairoch, 1973), especially after the abolition of the Corn Laws which had restricted cereal imports until 1846. In contrast to the continental European countries, its foreign trade relations were dominated by overseas trade, particularly with the United States and India (Bairoch, 1974; Foreman-Peck, 1983). The country's geographic characteristics, an island with relatively flat terrain suitable for the construction of canals, certainly contributed to the early importance of medium- and long-distance transport. The biophysical importance of foreign trade in 19th century United Kingdom has been addressed in previous studies: Hornborg (2006) analyses imports of cotton, wool and wheat to the United Kingdom in 1850 and demonstrates that they represented imports of productive potential, reinforcing British economic development. Pomeranz (2000) presents calculations on British imports of “ghost acres” in the early 19th century, i.e. the amount of land externalised to other countries by importing products, such as sugar, cotton and timber. Schandl and Schulz (2002) discuss the changing social metabolism of the United Kingdom. They stress the importance of food imports during the 19th century and their effects upon domestic land use change (see also Krausmann et al., 2008b; Musel, 2009). Adams (1982) holds late 19th century coal exports partially responsible for the relative “decline” of Great Britain compared to continental Europe and North America. All these studies indicate that foreign trade, both in terms of imports and exports, was of fundamental importance in the United Kingdom's industrialisation process in the 19th century.

In the Habsburg Empire on the other hand, foreign trade played a much less important role: production was to a large extent aimed at the domestic market. The Western part of the monarchy (in particular the provinces of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia) specialised in the production of manufactured goods, such as textiles, while the Eastern part focused its production on agricultural raw materials, and in the late 19th century, increasingly on processed food such as flour. This development was supported, though not triggered, by the abolishment of the tariffs between the Austrian and the Hungarian parts of the Monarchy in 1851 (Komlos, 1983). Foreign trade was hampered not only by the Empire's policy, but also by its geographical position – its centres (Vienna, Budapest, Prague) lay distant from the Adriatic sea ports, the terrain was unsuitable for the construction of canals, and the most important river — the Danube — connected the country to the Black Sea, a region remote from European centres (Werner, 1949). Most of the Habsburg Empire's foreign trade was exchanged with its North-Western neighbour, Germany (Rudolph, 1976). The biophysical dimensions of foreign trade in the Habsburg Empire are much less studied than those of the United Kingdom. Some economic history has touched upon biophysical questions of resource supply, sometimes including foreign trade, of certain materials, such as coal (Gross, 1971), metal (Hwaletz, 2001; Rudolph, 1976), or agricultural products (Komlos, 1983; Rudolph, 1976). However, no systematic analysis of the Habsburg Empire's biophysical foreign trade relations has been performed until now.

3. Materials and Methods

The empirical analysis of physical foreign trade flows in the 19th and early 20th century Habsburg Empire and United Kingdom makes use of quantitative data derived from historical statistical publications and relies on the framework of Material and Energy Flow Analysis (MEFA). MEFA is used to account for the physical inputs to and outputs from an economy (Schandl et al., 2002; Eurostat, 2007). Inputs include extraction from the domestic environment (“Domestic Extraction”, DE) and imports from other economies, outputs comprise exports and emissions or wastes. This framework aims at a potentially complete depiction of an economy's physical activities. Material Flow Analyses aggregate all material flows to one of the following categories: (1) biomass and biomass products, (2) metal ores and concentrates, processed metals, (3) non-metallic minerals, primary and processed, (4) fossil energy carriers, primary and processed, (5) other products, and (6) wastes. Energy flow analysis covers only those material groups of energetic content, i.e. biomass and fossil fuels. All categories can be disaggregated to more detail (Eurostat, 2007). The MEFA classification thus aggregates material categories and does not distinguish between different levels of processing (unless products cannot be allocated to one of the material categories).

This study presents physical foreign trade flows, covering both their material and energetic dimension. In order to analyse original data from statistical publications, they were converted to metric values and aggregated to fit the categories proposed by the two-digit “Standard International Trade Classification” (SITC) and then allocated to meet the MEFA material categories. In order to assess the energetic dimension of foreign trade, data were converted to their energy content, using factors from Sieferle et al. (2006) and Haberl (1995). Indicators such as the “Physical trade balance”, i.e. imports minus exports, expressed in “net exports” or “net imports” will be discussed. Using the MEFA framework, the study focuses on the environmental burdens associated with the trade of certain (raw) material groups, but does not consider environmental effects of specific manufacturing processes potentially associated to these foreign trade flows (see Weisz, 2008).

The extent of foreign trade was compared to domestic extraction for all materials of energetic importance, i.e. for biomass and fossil fuels. The indicators Domestic Material Consumption (DMC) or Domestic Energy Consumption (DEC) refer to Domestic Extraction plus imports minus exports. Data on the domestic extraction of metal ores and non-metallic minerals were not included in the data discussed here. Wastes and emissions were not included in this data set either.

The foreign trade of specific biomass products was further translated to assessments of land requirements. Thereby the amount of land was estimated which was – actually or in theory – required for net imports or exports. The contemporary domestic yields (again, derived from statistical publications, see below) of the respective years were used, and assumptions were made on processing losses and seed demand. The results of these assessments illustrate one type of environmental pressure exerted by foreign trade. Furthermore, for particular food crops, the nutritional value of net imports was assessed in order to elucidate their importance for domestic food consumption. The specific calculation procedures will be described in the respective results sections.

The Habsburg Empire dataset presents newly compiled data from periodical or single statistical publications, as well as secondary data compilations (for sources see Table 2). Primary data reported in various units of mass or volume (or just as pieces) were converted to metric units, using factors from literature (Hitschmann and Hitschmann, 1923; Sandgruber, 1978), as well as some estimations. Data on the domestic extraction of biomass and fossil fuels in the Habsburg Empire were compiled separately for the Austrian and the Hungarian parts of the Monarchy (“Cisleithania” and “Transleithania”) and summed up to cover the entire Habsburg Empire (see Table 2). The dataset for the Habsburg Monarchy covers the time period 1830 to 1915.

In general, data reported by statistics seemed complete and produced reasonable trends on aggregated levels. Minor distortions occurred due to changes in reported categories, particularly in the foreign trade data set. Small modifications to the original data were performed when statistical publications were obviously over- or under-reporting specific material categories: In single years (1840, 1849/50 and 1858/59), no data on foreign trade were available. Values for these years were interpolated. Foreign trade of wood was reported incompletely in years prior to 1851 — the extent of lacking data was estimated according to trends after 1851 and added. Lacking data for grazed biomass were assessed on the grounds of feed demand of grazing livestock (Krausmann et al., 2008a), for which data were reported roughly at 10-year intervals. Harvest data were cross-checked with land use data, and where yields seemed implausibly high or low, data were corrected, usually by interpolation between previous and forthcoming years.

For the United Kingdom, the dataset discussed here relies on previously compiled and published data (Schandl and Schulz, 2002) on foreign trade and domestic extraction of biomass and fossil fuels, land use and population. Here also, the data sources are annual statistical publications, as well as some data compilations, including Statistical Abstracts of the United Kingdom and the Annual Abstracts of Statistics. For a detailed description of the sources and the performed adjustment procedures see Schandl and Schulz (2002). The dataset covers a slightly shorter time period than that of the Habsburg Empire, from 1850 to 1915.

4. How Much of What? Material Extent and Composition of Foreign Trade in the Habsburg Empire and the United Kingdom

How did the physical foreign trade relations of the Habsburg Empire and the United Kingdom change during the 19th and early 20th centuries? Fig. 1 presents the totals of materials imported to and exported from the two economies: In the United Kingdom, export volumes rose from around 5000 kt per year (kilotons, 1000 t) in 1850 to 100,000 kt/yr in the early 1900s. Imports started off at a similar value as exports in the 1850s but rose only to little over 40,000 kt/yr in the early 20th century. In the Habsburg Empire, trade volumes were much lower. Both imports and exports surpassed 1000 kt/yr only in the 1850s. The highest values of both imports and exports were reached in the early 1900s at around 20,000 kt/yr (see also Supporting online material). Total trade volumes in the Habsburg Empire thus amounted to only roughly one quarter of those of the United Kingdom. In fact, the United Kingdom reached particularly high total physical import and export values in the early 20th century (Schandl and Schulz, 2002): similar values were reached again only in the late 1970s.2

Fig. 1.

Fig. 1

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Physical foreign trade relations in the Habsburg Empire a) and the United Kingdom b)a: imports are presented as positive values, exports as negative values. aThe peak in the United Kingdom's exports in 1898 is due to a very high value in coal exports, reported by statistics. This may be a misreporting and will not be further analyzed.

In the Habsburg Empire and the United Kingdom both imports and exports increased significantly during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Even the pattern of growth rates is similar to some extent: the highest growth rates in both imports and exports occurred in the mid-19th century (between the 1850s and 1870s), while towards World War I, growth rates declined and even negative growth rates are observed. Both the Habsburg Empire and the United Kingdom were – in physical terms – net exporters of raw materials throughout most of the 19th century. In the early 20th century, the Habsburg Empire turned into a net importer of materials.3 This is in line with the economic data presented by Bairoch (1974) who shows a surplus of gains from exports for the Habsburg Empire in the late 19th century and a trade balance deficit in the early 20th century. The United Kingdom's monetary foreign trade balance on the other hand was negative from 1860 to 1910 despite the fact that much more materials were exported than imported. This indicates that the price for a material unit of exports was much lower than that of imports.

The difference in prices per ton of imports to and exports from the United Kingdom becomes clear when we look at the material composition of foreign trade (Table 3). In the 19th and early 20th centuries, exports and imports consisted of very different material categories. While imports were dominated by biomass, in exports, the most important material category by far was fossil fuels, accounting for more than 75% throughout the period. The high volumes of coal exports did – in monetary terms – not compensate for the imports of biomass. Metals were the second most important material category for both imports and exports – while metals were important export products in the mid-19th century, from around 1880, the United Kingdom became a net importer of metals.

Table 3.

Composition of foreign trade in the Habsburg Empire and the United Kingdom in material categories.

Habsburg Empire
 United Kingdom
1830 1850 1880 1910 1850 1880 1910
Total imports 1000t/yr 421 758 4443 13,635 5074 22,031 44,965
Biomass % 100% 82% 36% 16% 92% 78% 67%
Metallic minerals % 0% 0% 3% 7% 2% 18% 24%
Non-metallic minerals % 0% 8% 6% 7% 5% 1% 5%
Fossil fuels % 0% 9% 53% 68% 0% 1% 3%
Products and wastes % 0% 1% 1% 2% 1% 1% 1%
Total exports 1000t/yr 547 812 8076 16,215 4921 23,607 92,031
Biomass % 89% 82% 44% 35% 1% 1% 1%
Metallic minerals % 2% 2% 2% 2% 22% 17% 5%
Non-metallic minerals % 8% 9% 8% 8% 1% 1% 1%
Fossil fuels % 0% 6% 46% 55% 75% 81% 93%
Products and wastes % 1% 0% 0% 0% 1% 0% 0%
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In the Habsburg Empire on the other hand, imports and exports were structurally quite similar. In both imports and exports, biomass was the most important material category in the early 19th century, and was gradually overtaken by fossil fuels. In exports, the share of biomass settled at a higher level than in imports, owing largely to higher exports of wood. The shift away from biomass as most important trading product is effectively a shift towards the trade of non-renewable or mineral resources. Metallic minerals, i.e. metal ores, metals and finished metal products, were quite important import products in physical terms around 1870, when the rapid construction of railway lines (K.K. Statistische Central-Commission, 1913) required more metals (iron in particular) than were produced domestically (Werner, 1949). Non-metallic minerals made up for relatively high shares of exports in the early and late stage of the period under investigation — they consisted largely of construction material such as cobble stones.

In contrast to the Habsburg Empire, the United Kingdom was a net exporter of non-renewable resources throughout the entire period. In general, the United Kingdom was not only a much more active, but also a much more specialised trading partner than the Habsburg Empire.

What can we learn from these observations with respect to the role of foreign trade in the coal stage of the socio–ecological transition? Obviously, there are strong differences in the physical foreign trade patterns of the two countries. The amount of goods traded was roughly four times higher in the United Kingdom, the country which was more advanced in terms of its transition to an industrial mode of production. While the Habsburg Empire changed from a net exporter to a net importer of materials, the United Kingdom was a net exporter of materials throughout the observed time period. And finally, the physical (and economic) structure of foreign trade differed in the two countries: the Habsburg Empire imported and exported similar materials (at similar prices), while the United Kingdom traded (low-value) minerals for (higher-value) biomass.

Despite these differences, there are also some similarities between the two countries: the physical amount of foreign trade increased at similar rates throughout the time period. In addition, though the structure of foreign trade differed strongly in the two countries, in both the United Kingdom and the Habsburg Monarchy, fossil fuels and biomass taken together made up more than three quarters of total imports and exports throughout most of the time period. The further analysis will focus on these material categories.

5. Fossil Fuels: the Energy Transition of Foreign Trade

Coal was the most important energy carrier in early industrialisation: the shift from woodfuel to coal marks the first stage of the “energy transition” and represents an important feature of the first stage of the socio–ecological transition (Gales et al., 2007; Krausmann et al., 2008b; Bartoletto and Rubio, 2008). In both the United Kingdom and the Habsburg Empire, coal consumption increased strongly in the 19th century, and so did foreign trade of coal. Coal was by far the dominating material in fossil fuel trade of both economies, making up over 90% of fossil fuel exports and imports in the Habsburg Empire and virtually all fossil fuel exports of the UK, see Fig. 2.

Fig. 2.

Fig. 2

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Physical foreign trade relations of coal in the Habsburg Empire a) and the United Kingdom b)a: imports presented as positive values, exports as negative values. Note that the scales are different. aThe peak in the United Kingdom's exports in 1898 is due to a very high value in coal exports, reported by statistics. This may be a misreporting and will not be further analyzed.

In the Habsburg Empire, the share of coal in both total imports and exports increased dramatically since the first reports in the 1840 s. Just before World War I, coal accounted for up to 50% of all exports and 70% of imports.4 The Empire shifted several times from being a net-importer of coal in material terms to being a net-exporter during this period. In the late 19th century, net exports increased, but in the decade before World War I, the Empire turned to a strong net importer. Only from 1882 did Austro-Hungarian statistics distinguish between higher quality hard coal (containing more energy per unit of mass) and lower quality brown coal. At this stage, hard coal made up almost all coal imports, while coal exports consisted by more than 85% of brown coal. The Habsburg Monarchy was a net importer of coal in energetic terms already from the mid-1890 s onwards (see also Gross, 1971).

From the perspective of social metabolism, the increasing importance of coal in total resource consumption in the 19th century Habsburg Empire becomes evident: Coal was a marginal energy carrier in 1830 (consumption amounted to 10 kg/cap/yr or 0.2 GJ/cap/yr) and contributed only less than 1% to total Domestic Energy Consumption (DEC), which was dominated by biomass. By 1914, coal consumption had – on a national average – increased to over 1000 kg/cap/yr (or more than 20 GJ/cap/yr). Coal consumption now accounted for around one third of DEC. Through most of this period, net trade of coal had little effect on the Empire's energy use. This changed in the decade before World War I, when net imports contributed almost 20% to domestic energy consumption of coal, or 10% to total DEC.

In the United Kingdom, the foreign trade pattern of coal looked very different. Coal was not imported at all during the period of investigation. However, coal represented the most important material category in exports. Despite the fact that British coal exports experienced increasing competition from Germany and the United States in the late 19th century (Foreman-Peck, 1983), export volumes kept rising until 1913. Around 1910, British coal exports at over 80 million tons were more than 50% higher than total coal consumption in the Habsburg Empire. Britain fuelled Continental Europe with coal exports (Adams, 1982). These massive coal exports were an economic necessity to allow for the growing imports. They represented a relatively small, though increasing share of coal extraction in the United Kingdom: Around 1850, 7% of domestic coal extraction was exported, while around 1910, exports amounted to almost one third. Per-capita domestic consumption of coal still more than doubled in this period from 1700 kg/cap/yr in 1830 to 4500 kg/cap/yr around 1910. Coal dominated the United Kingdom's energetic metabolism throughout the 19th century (Schandl and Schulz, 2002; Warde, 2007). The use of coal in 19th century United Kingdom crucially affected the United Kingdom's energy and land use systems (Fouquet and Pearson, 1998; Musel, 2009). Krausmann et al. (2008b) estimate that from the 1850 s, the use of coal in the United Kingdom accounted for more energy than the (hypothetical) amount of energy which could have been provided by the nation's territory in the form of wood.

In both the Habsburg Empire and the United Kingdom, foreign trade of coal increased at significantly higher rates than domestic extraction of coal: the average yearly growth rate of coal exports in the UK was 6% in the period 1852–1915 as opposed to 3% in domestic coal extraction. In the Habsburg Empire, domestic coal consumption grew from a lower level at a yearly rate of 6% from 1842 to 1914, while imports increased by 10% and exports by 9% on average.

In both economies foreign trade thus increasingly affected domestic coal consumption and impacted the domestic energy system: In the Habsburg Empire, coal imports enhanced the socio–ecological transition by adding to and upgrading national coal supplies. In the United Kingdom, exports increasingly diminished domestic coal provision, but economically allowed for large-scale imports of other materials, such as biomass.

6. Trading Land: Foreign Trade of Biomass

Biomass is a very diverse material category, fulfilling various societal functions. Biomass products range from wood for fuel and construction purposes to agricultural products used as food or fibres, to live animals. What all biomass products have in common is that their production relies on land to grow (or to feed) — therefore, the production of different biomass products competes for land area. Foreign trade in biomass can thus be seen as a trade in land area.

In the Habsburg Empire, while the share of biomass products in total physical foreign trade declined, both imports and exports of biomass increased substantially during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Biomass exports from the United Kingdom were negligible throughout the time period, but imports increased dramatically, see Fig. 3.

Fig. 3.

Fig. 3

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Physical foreign trade of biomass and biomass products in the Habsburg Empire a) in the United Kingdom b): imports presented as positive values, exports as negative values. Note that the scales are different.

Foreign trade of biomass – similarly to foreign trade of fossil fuels – increased substantially faster during this period than Domestic Extraction of biomass. The physically most important types of biomass in 19th and early 20th century foreign trade were similar in the Habsburg Empire and the United Kingdom: Wood was – in mass units – the most important biomass trading product for the Habsburg Empire, followed by cereals. In the United Kingdom, exports of biomass were negligible compared to imports. Biomass imports were dominated by cereals and wood.5

6.1. Wood

The history of foreign trade of wood has followed a somewhat paradox pattern (Williams, 2007): despite being a relatively cheap bulk product, wood has a very long tradition in long-distance foreign trade. Wood was an important trading product both in the Habsburg Empire and the United Kingdom in the 19th century, but played very different roles in the energy systems of the two countries. In the Habsburg Empire, woodfuel was the most important technical energy carrier for a large part of the 19th century: total wood consumption made up between 15 and 20 GJ/cap/yr in the early and mid-19th century and was – in energetic terms – overtaken by coal consumption only in the 1890 s. In the early 1900 s, wood consumption was still about one third of coal consumption. Despite relatively stable woodland areas (which were comparatively high at 25 to 30% of total land area), total wood production declined slightly in the second half of the 19th century. The substitution of wood for coal had important effects on land use: the lower demand for wood frceed woodlands from pressures and fostered forest expansion, a process which has been observed in many industrialised countries and termed “forest transition” (Mather, 1992; Rudel et al., 2005). In the case of Austria–Hungary, the energy shift from wood to coal did not directly translate into a forest transition, because wood became an important export product from the 1870 s onwards. In the early 20th century, net exports decreased domestic wood supply by up to 17%. The area that was needed to produce these exports made up no less than 4% of the Monarchy's total land area in the early 1900 s.

In the United Kingdom, wood was a far less important resource. Woodland areas were extremely low at 3 to 5% of total land area in the 19th century, and had been very low previously for centuries (Rackham, 1988), allowing for very limited wood production. Wood was an only marginal resource in terms of domestic energy consumption. In the early 19th century, the energetic value of extracted wood was only one quarter of that of coal extraction, and the share decreased to less than 1% until the early 20th century. Still, domestic wood extraction did not meet the rising domestic demand: Increasing amounts of wood were imported in the 19th century. By the late 19th century, wood and wood product imports made up over 7 million tons, consisting almost entirely of timber (as opposed to woodfuel). At the United Kingdom's domestic wood productivity, the area required to produce this wood would amount to over 2.5 times the domestic woodland area.6 This indicates that the United Kingdom's forest areas did not recover to meet domestic demand even after the shift from wood to coal, and wood imports continued to be crucial for domestic wood provision.

The socio–ecological transition affected foreign trade of wood in the Habsburg Empire and the United Kingdom in very different ways: In the United Kingdom, wood trade in the 19th and early 20th centuries was dominated by rising imports of timber, an area-intensive construction material. These imports reflect the United Kingdom's increasing dependence on international land resources. In the Habsburg Empire on the other hand, wood exports dominated wood trade from the late 19th century onwards, a period when domestic woodfuel use was increasingly replaced by the use of coal. Woodland areas which were freed from domestic pressure were used to supply international wood markets – the Habsburg Empire thus “exported” significant shares of its land area.

6.2. Cereals

Cereals were the most important staple food in both the Habsburg Empire and the United Kingdom during the 19th and 20th centuries. Demand for cereals was therefore closely connected to population numbers.

The economic history discussion of cereals trade in the Habsburg Empire is dominated by the issue of domestic trade between the Austrian and the Hungarian parts of the Monarchy. It deals with the question if the large transfers of cereals from Hungary to Austria were beneficial or detrimental to Hungary's economic and industrial development (Berend and Ranki, 1980; Eddie, 1977; Komlos, 1983). The Habsburg Empire was largely self-sufficient on cereals throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. Domestic cereal production provided between 900 and 1500 kcal per inhabitant and day7 in the 19th and early 20th centuries, which is about half of the total nutritional requirement. Domestic trade of cereals and cereal products was very important, also from a biophysical perspective: around 25% of all cereals produced in Transleithania were transferred to Cisleithania in the early 1900 s. The physical analysis of domestic trade of cereals between Cis- and Transleithania in the early 20th century indicates that the land expansion and intensification of Transleithania's cereal agriculture in this period was strongly connected to Cisleithania's demand.8 The Austrian part of the Monarchy thus externalised agricultural areas to the Hungarian part. Compared to the intensive exchange between the two parts of the Habsburg Empire, foreign trade of cereals was of negligible importance in the 19th century. Only in the 20th century did net cereal imports grow significantly and reach around one quarter of the value of imports from Hungary. While this did not affect land use within the Monarchy much (the amount of imports translates to below 1% of total land area), it hints at a decrease in self sufficiency before World War I.

The United Kingdom was the world's most important importer of cereals. From the abolition of the corn laws in 1846 (see e.g. O'Rourke and Williamson, 1999), the UK's nutritional supply relied increasingly on imports: In 1850, cereal imports accounted for 20% of domestic production. In the 1880 s, imports first outnumbered domestic production, and just before World War I they accounted for over 160% of domestic production. The large cereal imports heavily affected land use in the country and led to a strong decline in agricultural areas from around 1850 (see also Krausmann et al., 2008b; Musel, 2009). The area externalised amounted to up to 30% of the total land area of the United Kingdom. Hornborg (2006) assessed that the actual land required for wheat production in the United States aimed at exports to England was 1.5 times larger than the wheat producing area in England.

In the Habsburg Empire, cereals demand was met by regional integration rather than international foreign trade until the early 20th century. Population growth in the Austrian part of the Monarchy was made possible by cropland area expansion and yield increases in the Hungarian part of the Empire. Only in the early 20th century did imports of cereals play a relatively important role in domestic food supply. The United Kingdom on the other hand represents a (probably quite unique) case of early import dependence for the provision of the most important staple food. While the United Kingdom accessed international land and labour for the production of its food supply, the Habsburg Empire largely relied on domestic land resources and work force for cereals production during the early stage of its socio–ecological transition.

7. Discussion and Conclusions

The analysis has shown that in the Habsburg Empire and the United Kingdom the early stage of the socio–ecological transition was accompanied by rising volumes of foreign trade. While the total amount of imports and exports differed greatly between the two examined countries – the Habsburg Empire and the United Kingdom, both import and export volumes in both countries increased dramatically in the long run. The most important material categories in foreign trade were – from a physical perspective — in both countries energy carrying material groups, i.e. fossil fuels and biomass. In these material groups, foreign trade increased even more rapidly than domestic extraction or consumption.

Based on the data and analysis presented in this study, two important physical factors can be identified for explaining the differences of foreign trade relations between the Habsburg Empire and the United Kingdom, which add to the socio–economic differences discussed in economic history literature: Firstly, the stage along the socio–ecological transition impacted the amounts and types of materials traded by a country. Differences in the amount and structure of resource use between the Habsburg Empire and the United Kingdom are reflected in both imports and exports of the two countries. Secondly – and closely related – the endowment with resources, a factor inversely related to population density, affected the relation between foreign trade and resource use. The United Kingdom's higher trade volumes were closely connected to the country's higher resource consumption in general, with coal playing an important role in both domestic consumption and foreign trade. On the other hand, the Habsburg Empire's relative autarky from foreign trade until the mid-19th century was associated to the country's large-scale dependence of domestically-available resources, dominated by biomass. Foreign trade volumes in the Habsburg Empire significantly affected domestic resource supply only when the country's energy base shifted towards the increased use of fossil fuels.

These observations lead to the general conclusion that the socio–ecological transition was closely connected to rising foreign trade volumes and a shifting structure of foreign trade. Not only were resource extraction and consumption enhanced during the socio–ecological transition, but also, and even more so, did the exchange of resources between different economies rise. This increasing international integration of resource use went along with a complex transfer of environmental burdens. The question if foreign trade was a prerequisite for the socio–ecological transition (by loosening the links between resource demand and domestic supply) or a consequence of it (e.g. through improvements in transport technology) remains to be investigated.

The following are the supplementary materials related to this article.

Physical foreign trade of the Habsburg Empire.

mmc1.xls (20KB, xls)

Acknowledgements

This article was written during a research stay at the Sustainability Research Institute, University of Leeds, United Kingdom, in fall 2009. It is part of the research project “GLOMETRA — The global metabolic transition” (P21012), draws on data compilations from the project “The transformation of society's natural relations” (P16759) and benefits from the project “Patterns, dynamics and implications of global HANPP” (P20812), all funded by the Austrian Science Fund. I wish to thank Fridolin Krausmann, Verena Winiwarter, Jakob Calice, Jouni Paavola and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on previous versions of the text. All remaining errors are solely mine.

Footnotes

1

I will use the term “Habsburg Empire” synonymously with “Habsburg Monarchy” and, when I talk about the period after the “Dual Settlement” or “Compromise” in 1867, “Austro-Hungarian Monarchy”. To describe the two parts of the Habsburg Empire, I use the terms “Austrian part of the Monarchy” synonymously with “Cisleithania”, and “Hungarian part of the Monarchy” referring to “Transleithania”.

2

The Habsburg Empire ceased to exist after World War I. Current Austria's per-capita trade volumes according to Statistik Austria amounted to 10t/cap/yr (imports) and 6 t/cap/yr (exports) in 2006, both values are around twenty times higher than those of 1914.

3

For two of the successor states, Austria and Czechoslovakia, net imports have been detected also for recent decades (see footnote 2 and Kuskova et al., 2008). The United Kingdom on the other hand increased its physical foreign trade deficit after 1900. After World War II however, it too turned into a net-importer of resources (Schandl and Schulz, 2002).

4

In economic terms, the importance of coal in the Habsburg Empire's foreign trade did not increase at the same rate: In 1910 it made up only 3.8% of exports and 5.9% of imports in monetary values (Rudolph, 1976).

5

A discussion of fiber trade, including wool and wool products as well as cotton, seems very promising too: Studies by Hornborg (2006) and Pomeranz (2000) have shown that the imports of North-American cotton to the United Kingdom substituted for highly area-demanding domestic wool production. Sugar also makes a good material category to study because its transformation from a luxurious rarity to a mass product in the 19th century (Mintz, 1985) is particularly interesting. However this was beyond the scope of this study.

6

The numbers calculated in this study are lower than Clapp's (1994) who aggregates wood and wood pulp imports to the United Kingdom in 1899 at 10 million tons per year and assesses their area requirement at four times the United Kingdom's forest area. They also appear lower than Pomeranz's estimates for the early 19th century (Pomeranz, 2000). However, all these assessments support the same argument.

7

This calculation is based on the conservative assumptions that 250 kg/ha/yr of cereal cultivation were used as seed, 20% of cereal harvest could not be used, 22% of the remaining amount were lost during processing. Water content of cereals was assumed to amount to 14%, and nutritional value of cereals was between 11 MJ/kg (rye) and 13.9 MJ/kg (barley).

8

The land area used for cereal cultivation in Transleithania grew by 6% between 1900 and 1913, and the average cereal yield grew by 24%.

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Physical foreign trade of the Habsburg Empire.

mmc1.xls (20KB, xls)

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