Uneven Development in Central Europe

The study investigates the impact of interregional connections and exchange processes on the economic development of Habsburg Galicia between its conquest by the Viennese Court in the First Partition of Poland-Lithuania and the outbreak of World War I. The guideline of the analysis consists in a critical revision of the traditional historical narrative according to which the Galician economy was characterized by persistent poverty and failed to catch up with other regions in Habsburg governed Central Europe in the long 19th century. In a second step the causes for this precarious developmental pattern are identified following the entangled history approach, in particular the centre-periphery model and postcolonial studies, thereby taking into account the combined impact of political, economic, social and cultural elements. The first part of the study, which follows a quantitative approach, analyses through structural features and quantitative indicators the low level of wealth and productivity of Galicias economy and points out its growing integration into transregional trade, capital and migration flows. In the course of this longue durée perspective of the long 19th century Galicias external trade structure was gradually peripheralised, meaning a development towards imports of finished goods and exports of raw materials, while Galicias productive status in the commodity chains was downgraded, driving a range of crafts and industries off the market. In contrast the second part, which follows a narrative and discursive approach, uncovers not only the actors of these interactions, but also highlights the regulation of interregional competition by the states institutions. In this context, discourses legitimizing or transforming socioeconomic spatial orders in connection with developmental paradigms are paid special attention as they shaped Galicias gradual degradation in the interregional division of labour: While the cameralist spatial economy (1772-1830) forced the regions incorporation in the Habsburg division of labour after its conquest in the First Partition of Poland-Lithuania at the cost of disintegration of trade relations beyond state borders, the liberal, de-territorialized economic space (1830-1873) again opened up Galicias contacts to foreign countries and improved existing networks through the construction of railway lines. Organized capitalism (1873-1914) in turn accentuated Galicias integration into the internal market by the return to protectionism and the consolidation of the railway network. In spite of their differences regarding impulses for transregional entanglement and state intervention into the economy, all three developmental paradigms assigned Galicia a subaltern status in the interregional division of labour and legitimized the existing spatial order by applying a discourse based on ideas derivated from Orientalism: This pattern fits with the lacking capacity for innovation and reform on behalf of the Galician agrarian elite, which maintained an extensive production model as well as its socioeconomic privileges. This in turn accelerated peripheral integration into interregional exchange processes, the contradictions of which led to ethnicizing solutions locally.