Intergovernmental economic cooperation and institutional integration before the founding of the German Empire

Abstract

‘German unity has been created and so has the Emperor’, Prussian Chancellor Bismarck proclaimed in an intimate setting on 23 November 1870, when the Kingdom of Bavaria agreed to join the new German Confederation founded a week earlier by the North German Confederation and the Grand Duchies of Baden and Hesse. With the implementation of the German Customs Union on 1 January 1834, an internal market was created with uniform external customs duties for initially 18 German states, including Bavaria, Hesse-Darmstadt, Electoral Hesse (Hesse-Kassel), Prussia, Saxony, the Thuringian states, and Wurttemberg. When the Zollverein was founded, there were 34 states and four free cities with minting sovereignty and their own currency in the territory that would come to form the German Empire. In the 1830s, Prussia had often made considerable concessions to persuade other states to join the Zollverein. From the very beginning, specialist officials played an important role in the expansion of the Zollverein.