Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Technological diffusion: European experience to 1850

  • Global Economic Evolution: Knowledge Variety and Diffusion in Economic Growth and Development
  • II Knowledge Creation and Historical Learning
  • Published:
Journal of Evolutionary Economics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This paper considers the diffusion of British technology to the Continent, especially France and Prussia, during the industrial revolution. Particular attention is paid to the various transmission mechanisms and to differences in the speed of diffusion. It is shown that the economic growth of a country and its absorption of foreign technology tends to follow a logistic curve. This suggests that linear and purely economic explanations of technological transmission may be inadequate.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Abramovitz M (1986) Catching up, forging ahead, falling behind. J Econ Hist 46: 365–406

    Google Scholar 

  • Abramovitz M (1990) The catching up factor in postwar economic growth. Econ Inquiry 18: 1–18

    Google Scholar 

  • Artz FB (1966) The development of technical education in France, 1500–1850. M.I.T. Press, Cambridge, Mass

    Google Scholar 

  • Ballot C, Gevel C (1923) Introduction du machinisme dans l'industrie française, Rieder, Paris

    Google Scholar 

  • Beer JJ (1959) The emergence of the German dye industry. University of Illinois Press, Urbana, II

    Google Scholar 

  • Benaerts P (1933a) Borsig et les débuts de la fabrication des locomotives en Allemagne. Turot, Paris

    Google Scholar 

  • Benaerts P (1933b) Les origines de la grande industrie Allemande. Turot, Paris

    Google Scholar 

  • Berg M, Hudson P (1992) Rehabilitating the industrial revolution. Econ Hist Rev 45: 24–30

    Google Scholar 

  • Cameron R (1985) A new view of European industrialization. Econ Hist Rev 38: 2

    Google Scholar 

  • Cardwell DSL (1972) Turning points in Western technology. Neale Watson Science History Publication, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Chaptal (1819) De l'industrie Française, vol. 2, Renouard, Paris

    Google Scholar 

  • Chatelain A (1958) Dans les compagnes françaises du XIXe siècle: la lente progression de la faux. Ann Econ Soc Civil 11: 373–85

    Google Scholar 

  • Chevalier M (1838) Des intérets matériels en France: travaux publics, routes, canaux, chemins de fer. Charles Gosselin et W. coquebert, Paris

    Google Scholar 

  • Cipolla CM (1968) The economic decline of Italy. In: Pullan B (ed) Crisis and change in the Venetian economy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, p. 137. Methuen, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Court WHB (1938) The rise of Midland industries. 1600–1838. Oxford University Press, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Crafts NFR (1985) British economic growth during the industrial revolution. Oxford University Press, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Crouzet F (1964) War, blockade and economic change in Europe, 1792–1813. J Econ Hist 24: 567–88

    Google Scholar 

  • Dhondt J (1969) The cotton industry at Ghent during the French regime. In: Crouzet F, Chaloner WH, Stern WM (eds) Essays in European economic history, p. 20. St. Martin's Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Ecole Polytechnique (1895) Livre du centenaire, 1794–1894. Gautier-Vilias, Paris

    Google Scholar 

  • Economic Commission of Europe (1954) Growth and stagnation in the European economy. EEC, Geneva

    Google Scholar 

  • Flinn MW (1965) In: Aitken HGJ (ed) Explorations in enterprise, p. 244. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass

    Google Scholar 

  • Fox R (1975) Seminar “Science policy in restoration France, 1915–30”. M.I.T. Technological Studies Program, Kindleberger notes). M.I.T. University Press, Cambridge, Mass.

    Google Scholar 

  • Geiger RD (1974) The Anzin coal company: big business in the early stages of the French industrial revolution, University of Delaware Press, Newark, Del

    Google Scholar 

  • Gerschenkron A (1962) Economic backwardness in historical perspective. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass

    Google Scholar 

  • Gillespie CC (1980) Science and politv in France at the end of the old regime. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Google Scholar 

  • Habakkuk HJ (1955) The historical experience on the basic conditions of economic progress. In: Dupriez LH (ed) Economic progress, pp. 149–69. Institut de Recherches économiques et sociales, Louvain

    Google Scholar 

  • Halévy E (1937) A history of the English people in 1815, Book II. Economic Life. Penguin, Harmondsworth Middlesex

    Google Scholar 

  • Harris JH (1972) Industry and technology in France and Britain in the eighteenth century. Presented at the Economic History Society Conference at the University of Kent (Kindleberger notes)

  • Heckscher EF (1964) The continental system: an economic interpretation. Peter Smith, Gloucester, Mass

    Google Scholar 

  • Heckscher EF (1952) An economic history of Sweden (translated by Goran Ohlin). Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass

    Google Scholar 

  • Henderson WO (1954) Britain and industrial Europe, 1750–1870: studies in British influence on the industrial revolution in Western Europe, Liverpool University Press, Liverpool

    Google Scholar 

  • Henderson WO (1966) JC Fischer and his diary of industrial England. Frank Cass, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Henderson WO (1967) The state and the industrial revolution in Prussia. Liverpool University Press, Liverpool

    Google Scholar 

  • Henderson WO (1969) The industrialization of Europe, 1870–1914. Harcourt Brace, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Hohenberg PM (1967) Chemicals in Western Europe: 1850–1914. Rand McNally, Chicago

    Google Scholar 

  • Hughes TP (1966) Introduction to Smiles S: Selections from lives of the engineers, p. 11. Cambridge, Mass

  • Jones E (1930) Les voyageurs français en Angleterre de 1815 à 1830 Boccard, Paris

    Google Scholar 

  • Kindleberger CP (1976) Technical education and the French entrepreneur. In: Carter II EC Foster R, Moody JN (eds) Enterprise and entrepreneurs in nineteenth and twentieth-century France, pp. 3–39. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore

    Google Scholar 

  • Kindleberger CP (1978) Germany's overtaking of England, 1806–1914. In: Kindleberger CP (ed) Economic response: comparative studies in trade, finance and growth, pp. 185–236. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass

    Google Scholar 

  • Krantz F, Hohenberg PM (1975) Failed transitions to modern industrial society: renaissance Italy and sevententh century Holland. Interuniversity Centre for European Studies, Montreal

    Google Scholar 

  • Landes DS (1965) Technological change and development in Western Europe, 1750–1914. In: Habakkuk HJ, Postan M (eds) The Cambridge economic history of Europe, vol VI. The industrial revolution and after: incomes, population and technological change (1), pp. 274–601. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Locke RR (1978) Les fondéries et forges d'Alais et l'époque des premiers chemins de fer. Marcel Riviere, Paris

    Google Scholar 

  • Lord J (1966) Capital and steam power, 1750–1800, 2nd edn Frank Cass, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Lowie RH (1946) The German people: a social portrait to 1914. Rinehart, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Lundgreen P (1980) The organization of science and technology in France: a German perspective. In: Fox R, Weisz G (eds) The organization of science and technology in France, 1808–1914. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge and Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, Paris

    Google Scholar 

  • Marshall A (1920) Industry and trade. Macmillan, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Mathias P (1975) Skills and the diffusion of innovations from Britain in the eighteenth century. Transact R Hist Soc 5th Ser 23: 93–113

    Google Scholar 

  • Mokyr J (1990) The lever of riches: technological creativity and economic progress. Oxford University Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Mollien FN (1845) Memoires d'un ministre du trésor publique, 1780–1815, Vol. 1. Fournier, Paris

    Google Scholar 

  • Myllyntaus T (1990) The gatecrashing apprentice: industrializing Finland as an adopter of new technology. Communications of the Institute of Economic and Social History. University of Helsinki, Helsinki

    Google Scholar 

  • Parker WN (1959) National states and national development: French and German ore mining in the late nineteenth century. In: Aitken HGJ (ed) The state and economic growth. pp. 201–12, Social Science Council, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Poni C (1971) Archeologie de la fabrique: La diffusion des moulins à soie ‘alla Bolognese’ dans les états Venétiens du XVIème au XVIIIème siècles. Monograf, Bologna

  • Postan MM (1967) An economic history of Western Europe, 1945–1964, part 2. Methuen, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Prost A (1968) Histoire de l'enseignement en France, 1800–1967. Collection “U”, Paris

    Google Scholar 

  • Rapp RT (1976) Industry and economic decline in seventeenth-century Venice,Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass

    Google Scholar 

  • Redlich F (1968) Frühindustrielle Unternehmer und ihre Probleme im Lichte ihrer Selbstzeugnisse. In: Fischer W (ed) Wirtschafts-und Sozialgeschichte. Probleme der frühen Industrialiserung, pp. 344–5. Colloquium Verlag, Berlin

    Google Scholar 

  • Rimmer WG (1960) Marshall of Leeds, Flax-spinners, 1788–1886. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Ringer FK (1969) The decline of the German mandarins: the German academic community, 1890–1933. Harvard University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Ritter UP (1961) Die Rolle des Staates in den Frühstadien der Industrialisierung. Duncker & Humbolt, Berlin

    Google Scholar 

  • Rosenberg N, Birdzell Jr LR (1986) How the West grew rich: the economic transformation of the industrial world. Basic Books. New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Rostow WW (1960) The stages of economic growth. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Rostow WW (1975) How it all began: origins of the modern economy. Methuen. London

    Google Scholar 

  • Sandberg LG (1979) The case of the impoverished sophisticate: human capital and Swedish economic growth before world war I. J Econ Hist 39: 225–41

    Google Scholar 

  • Saxonhouse G (1974) A tale of Japanese technological diffusion in the Meiji period. J Econ Hist 34: 159

    Google Scholar 

  • Sayers RS (1950) The springs of technical progress in Britain, 1919–1939. Econ J 60: 278–91

    Google Scholar 

  • Thuiller G (1959) Georges Dufaud et les débuts du grand capitalisme dans la métallurgie, en Niverais, au XIXe siècle, S.E.V.P.E.N, Paris

    Google Scholar 

  • Vial J (1967) L'industrialization de sidérurgie française 1814–1864. Mouton, Paris

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilson RG (1971) Gentlemen merchants: The merchant community of Leeds, 1700–1830. Manchester University Press, Manchester

    Google Scholar 

  • Zunkel F (1962) Der Rheinisch-Westfälische Unternehmer, 1834–1879. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des deutsche Bürgertums im 19. Jahrhundert. Westdeutscher Verlag, Köhn Opladen

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, A-406 Brookhaven, 1010 Waltham Street, 02173, Lexington, MA, USA

    Charles P. Kindleberger

Authors
  1. Charles P. Kindleberger
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Kindleberger, C.P. Technological diffusion: European experience to 1850. J Evol Econ 5, 229–242 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01198305

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01198305

Key Words

JEL-classification

Search

Navigation