How repressive was Austria's industrialization?

[Agent327]

Right. As to the actual question:

For example, England kicked the peasants off the land with the enclosure acts and forced them to work in factories to jumpstart their industrialization. That's pretty bad. But how free or oppressive was Austria's industrialization?

The first thing to note is that enclosures actually preceded the beginnings of industrialization by a fairly safe margin. So it's more of a matter of coincidence than cause and effect. Now as to the development in Austria-Hungary, I can't answer that directly. There's no comprehensive work on the social and economic history of Austria-Hungary, and recent publications don't seem to have addressed this. So all I can offer is some suggestions as to where to look.

- Ferdinand Tzemel, Wirtschaftsgeschichte und Sozialgeschichte Österreichs: Von den Anfängen bis 1955 (Vienna, 1969)

- Herbert Matis,Österrecihs Wirtschaft 1848-1913 (Berlin, 1972)

- Vilmos Sandor, Peter Hanák (ed.), Studien zur Geschichte der österrecihisch-ungarischen Monarchie (Budapest, 1961). Marxian essays on various economic aspects of 19th century development

- Ervin Pamlényi, Social-Economic Researches on the History of East-Central Europe (Budapest, 1970). Similar

- Ivan T. Berend, Györgi Ranki, Economic Development in East Central Europe in the 19th and 20th Centuries (New York, 1974). Published by Columbia University Press

More recent is Berend's Case Studies on Modern European Economy: Entrepreneurship, Inventions, and Institutions. (New York, 2013)

There might also be information is articles in historical journals, but that is a bit harder to search for.

 

[Agent327]

Here's a quote from Robert A. Kann, A History of the Habsburg Empire 1526-1918 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1974, p. 342-343):

The Hungarian economic interests in the 1860's and 1870's, or more correctly those of the big landowners, who represented them primarily, were not much different from those of the neoabsolutist era, but now demands of the Magyar establishment carried much greater weight than previously. They strongly favoured free trade, because the relatively modest Hungarian industrial interests did not get tariff protection. This policy was to change to some extent after the 1870's. In the era under discussion demands of industry had to yield to agrarian interests. A free-trade policy facilitated the possibilities of Hungarian grain and cattle exports abroad, in particular to Germany. Austrian industry, on the other hand, in the face of strong German competition, felt to be in need of protective tariffs, whereas Austrian agriculture, which to play second string in export polcy, was not strong enough to balance industrial-commercial requirements and to counterbalance Hungarian demands. The Austro-Hungarian customs policy in the late 1860's and the 1870's therefore accomodated primarily the interests of the aristocratic owners of big estates in Hungary, even though they collided to some degree with Austrian industrial-commercial objectives.

Now this doesn't tell us much about how free or oppressive Austrian industrialization was. It does hint at something else though, which isn't in this specific passage: Austrian farmers were generally not big landowners. In addition, Austrian industry was relatively small and uninfluential politically.

Austria's agriculture consisted primarily of small and middle-sized homestead farms with a sprinkling of large estates in the possession of the aristocracy and of some monasteries.

(p. 463)

So, in short, it would seem that Austrian industry had no need for a large influx of farm labourers or rural poor, since it was relatively small. The chief Austrian industries were actually located in Bohemia.

Lower Austria continued to be a seond important center of textile and paper industry and of manufactured luxury goods of various kinds, particularly leather, china, and furniture. (...) Significant was also the machine industry in Lower and Upper Austria, armament works in Steyr and chemical industry in Carinthai and Carniola.

(p. 464)

This is a survey work, however, not a specialist economic study.