This essay examines home towns in the “Third Germany,” and suggests that important assumptions about the insularity of the hometown economy might need revision. Ironically, a revised understanding of hometown economies that sees them as active participants in long-distance trade networks can help to confirm Mack Walker's core insights about the resilient strength of German home towns.

Walker argued that home towns did not engage in long-distance trade or “great commerce,” as he frequently called it.Footnote ¹ Indeed the autarkic nature of the hometown economy was one of the most important characteristics of Walker's home towns. Statements about the economically isolated nature of the home towns recur with frequency throughout the work, beginning with the assertion that home towns had little contact with “alien goods.”Footnote ² Instead Walker proposes a hometown economy “based almost entirely on local consumption of local production,” in which “communities lived unto themselves and were part of no larger economy” and exhibited “freedom from economic penetration from a larger outside world.” Two pages later the “home towns of the individualized country were communities free from outside commerce.”Footnote ³ Similar formulations about “the localized economies of the home towns” and communities that “lived apart from the whole of society” can be found in later chapters as well.Footnote ⁴ Indeed Walker pressed his argument about home towns and the absence of long-distance trade further, formulating a converse speculation that the presence of “extralocal commerce” played an important role in preventing the consolidation of home towns in the core Prussian territories.Footnote ⁵

Walker saw this high degree of economic autarky as an important economic limitation that protected towns from external market disturbances and allowed them to avoid the external government controls that would have followed such highly visible commercial activity. Explications along these lines follow many of the descriptions of hometown autarky, again beginning early in the book with the idea that “administrators, tax collectors, and Roman lawyers” paid little attention to home towns precisely because home towns “had so little to do with alien goods.”Footnote ⁶ As long as home towns did not engage in long-distance trade, they remained “fiscally unimportant” and “could easily be left out of the state's concerns.” As a result, home towns were largely left “to their own devices” by eighteenth-century state governments.Footnote ⁷

Forty years later, many historians of the early modern European economy will probably wince when they encounter such an overdrawn portrait of economic isolation in German town life. The area from which Walker drew his home towns—the “individualized country” of the Holy Roman Empire, as he called it, or what today is commonly referred to as the “Third Germany”—included some of the most economically dynamic areas in the old Reich. Walker's field of exploration certainly included the German territories that were in fact most closely linked to larger regional and transnational economies, because it included all of the Rhine basin with its extensive tributary network, an area that extended south to north from the Alps to the Netherlands with east-west links that ran from Bohemia up the Main River to the Rhine, Moselle, and Saar rivers, and ended in Lorraine.

Over the past forty years our understanding of the economic trends and relationships that operated in the Third Germany during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has moved away from the picture of isolated islands of autarkic economic activity advanced by Walker. Reference to just a few of the landmark works in early modern European and German history shows that Walker's characterization of the hometown economy has generally not been endorsed by subsequent scholarship. Some scholars have questioned the idea of towns as autarkic units in the early modern period. Roughly contemporary with the appearance of Walker's Home Towns, Fernand Braudel warned about the difficulties in untangling “the division of labour between the countryside and urban centres” in the early modern period.Footnote ⁸ Almost two decades later James Sheehan was more direct, noting that “eighteenth-century cities were tied to their hinterlands. None of them was self-sufficient.”Footnote ⁹ Other scholars have emphasized the extent of commercial trade in the Third Germany. In 1976 Franz Petri reminded readers that the older historian Bruno Kuske (1876–1964) “had been able to prove [the existence of] approximately 150 lower Rhenish export products” in the early modern period.Footnote ¹⁰ More recently, Thomas Brady described the “highly commercialized” economy of Alsace with “dozens of smaller towns that specialized in cloth and wine” as just one example of the “complex landscapes” that demonstrated a “combination of urban and rural economies” that “sustained the peoples of numerous German lands.”Footnote ¹¹

The general trend lines of growth in agriculture, commerce, and manufacturing that buoyed the Rhineland and other portions of the Third Germany, though not them alone, have become important parts of our current understandings of the eighteenth century. Historians may continue to debate the extent of growing “commercialization” of the economy, but few would question a broadly based, long-term trend toward increasing market access and dependence. The spread of agricultural specialization, “proto-industrial” production, wage labor, and commercial services was tied to generally, even if slowly, rising levels of local, regional, and long-distance exchange that were indispensible parts of the history of the German lands between 1648 and 1789.Footnote ¹²

Finally, economists might remind us that everything we know about the “Smithian growth” demonstrated by the Third Germany in the early modern period points clearly to the geographical expansion of markets. It appears highly unlikely that growth could have continued as it did over the long period from 1648 to 1789 (albeit unevenly across both time and space) if the economy had been split into disconnected local markets as Walker implied. For this reason, Peter Kreidte used I. B. Kravis's concept of “trade as the handmaiden of growth” when he described the German economy in this period.Footnote ¹³

On the empirical level, my own research has shown that many home towns in the Rhine basin were in fact deeply involved in long-distance trade, suggesting that the assumption about insulated hometown economies should be substantially modified. Dozens of towns were market centers for specialty crops, wines, timber, iron, stone, textiles (especially linen cloth), and other items exported in large volumes from the Rhine basin to Flanders, the Netherlands, Bremen, Hamburg, and beyond. A few examples illustrate this.

On the lower Rhine, the town of Wesel had a population of 7,100 in 1792, just about in the middle of the population range Walker established for his home towns (i.e., between 750 persons and 10,000–15,000).Footnote ¹⁴ Wesel served as an important transshipment point for timber moving down the 250 kilometers of the Lippe River to the insatiable timber markets in the Netherlands. The long-distance timber business was the lifeblood of the town's economy, and firmly in the control of native “Weselcher Bürger” since the mid-seventeenth century. In 1699 the town had twenty-eight families active as timber merchants and “at least” twenty-five families that acted as long-distance commercial shippers (owner-operators) of other commodities on the Lippe and Rhine rivers.Footnote ¹⁵ In the Black Forest, 500 kilometers upriver from Wesel, timber exports were the chief economic activity for the towns and villages situated on the half-dozen smaller streams that flowed into the Rhine River from the right-bank territory upstream from Mannheim: the Kinzig, the Rench, the Murg, the Alb, the Pfinz, and the Kriegbach. In the eighteenth century the small town of Gernsbach on the lower Murg River was a typical center of the timber export business, which brought together landowners, sawmill operators, merchants, and shippers in the complex process of moving oak and pine from the forest to distant markets.Footnote ¹⁶

In the textile trade, Osnabrück (population 6,000 in 1780) stood at the center of the Westphalian linen industry, which depended heavily on exports throughout the early modern period. “Westphalia linen” was a well-known variety of that material in Russia at the end of the seventeenth century.Footnote ¹⁷ The Westphalian linen trade peaked in the 1830s, when annual linen yarn exports reached two to three million thalers in value and provided employment to 100,000 spinners in the territory between the Rhine and the Weser rivers.Footnote ¹⁸

The very small town of Hitdorf (Hettorf), located on the right bank of the Rhine River eighteen kilometers downstream from Cologne, serves as a good example of a small home town that extensively engaged in “great commerce” during the first decades of the nineteenth century.Footnote ¹⁹ Hitdorf served as an assembly and distribution point for river traffic and as a link to outgoing shipments of hay, wood, fruit, and cattle from the agricultural lands in the interior of Berg, as well as silks from Elberfeld and Berg's other industrial products from Solingen. Hitdorf emerged as a local shipping hub with two functions. First, the town served as the area's primary port for trade, just one portion of which—imports from upriver—equaled 51,888 Zentner (roughly 2,600 metric tons) in 1809. Second, Hitdorf developed a considerable business in assembling goods for reshipment in larger loads moving on to the lower Rhine River and the Netherlands, dispatching about 20,000 Zentner of such freight. Roger Dufraisse mentioned Hitdorf (“Hittorf”) also as one of “les principaux ports d'embarquement” for timber exports on the lower Rhine River.Footnote ²⁰

Even a more remote town such as Mayen (fewer than 3,500 residents in 1792) in the Eiffel region participated heavily in long-distance trade by exporting high-quality basalt millstones and sending volcanic tuff (trass) to the Netherlands for its unique qualities as hydraulic mortar. Throughout the early modern period, Wetzlar (6,000 residents in 1792) marketed and exported the locally smelted iron ore from the Lahn River valley. By the early nineteenth century, home towns in the productive and populous areas of the middle Neckar River valley located between Stuttgart and Heilbron sent grapes, tobacco, hops, and orchard fruits to consumer markets on the lower Rhine River, while wood, gypsum, potash, and tan-bark were exported for use in manufacture. A large volume of goods was moving out of the Neckar River valley into the upper Rhine River as well, including shipments to Strasbourg of 386,074 Zentner (19,000 metric tons) in 1808 and 342,846 Zentner in 1809.Footnote ²¹ The city of Worms (6,000 residents in 1792) had long been a commercial outlet for the important Rheinhesen wine-producing area located south of the Nahe River in the left Rhine River triangle situated between Worms, Mainz, and Bingen, created by the great westward curve of the Rhine River just below Mainz.

In sum, the territories of the Third Germany had dozens or even hundreds of other home towns such as Hitdorf that were small but dynamic local and regional centers of trade at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Included among them were many home towns that marketed their products far beyond the local area that Walker explicitly mentioned: for example, Osnabrück (linen), Würzburg (wine), and Aachen (textiles).Footnote ²²

Recent work on the dramatic growth of consumption as an essential characteristic of early modern Europe has also brought to light the increasing levels of trade that tied parts of the Third Germany to colonial products and global markets in Antwerp, Amsterdam, and London. By the late eighteenth century nearly every home town in western Germany was eagerly absorbing the tobacco, sugar, coffee, whale oil, tea, and chocolate that came upriver in exchange for food and raw materials. Data from a variety of sources indicate that in the mid-eighteenth century, tens of thousands of tons of colonial merchandise were already arriving in western Germany.

In the eighteenth century the upriver (import) trade at Cologne was dominated by just three commodities coming upriver from the Netherlands: coffee, sugar, and tobacco.Footnote ²³ In 1717 Elector Joseph Clemens of Cologne stated that during a recent four-month period, 6,600 wagons, each with a load of thirty Zentner of Dutch merchandise, had entered the Reich by land routes from the Netherlands.Footnote ²⁴ That pattern would mean annual imports of nearly 600,000 Zentner (30,000 tons) of transshipped Dutch goods, not counting the river traffic, which was certainly larger. We can estimate that in 1789 coffee, sugar, and tobacco made up at least one third of Cologne's annual river trade, or about 550,000 Zentner (27,500 metric tons), the vast bulk of which was being reshipped and distributed to the home towns of the middle and upper Rhine River basin.Footnote ²⁵ By the eighteenth century these colonial commodities had long ceased to be luxuries of the elite, but were in fact the addictive necessities of the middle and even lower classes. Roman Sandgruber's work emphasizing the relatively late spread of these consumer habits in the Austrian lands points out indirectly that these new commodities had already taken hold of northern and western Germany in the eighteenth century.Footnote ²⁶ The ubiquity of large-scale smuggling in northern and western Germany during the period of Napoleon's Continental Blockade is explained only by a broadly based, inelastic demand for these items.Footnote ²⁷

In both sales (exports) and consumption (imports), home towns participated regularly in the kind of trade that Walker denied had existed in the world of the home towns: the “exchange of some specialized native product for goods and services from the outside.” Walker's claim that home towns were disconnected from “export goods” and “textiles” is not accurate. His statement that “luxury goods” had “little relation with home town economies” would require a very restricted definition of “luxury goods” to be accurate.Footnote ²⁸

Of course long-distance trade did indeed draw the attention of territorial princes, who made innumerable efforts to tax and regulate imports, exports, and transit goods in accord with mercantilist, cameralist, and other forms of economic thinking in early modern Germany.Footnote ²⁹ Rulers in the German lands actively tried to shape trade and trade practices within their states. Both older and more recent work reveals how rulers of very different stripes across the entire spectrum of states and cities energetically pursued the regulation of commerce. Hohenzollern efforts in these areas were painstakingly reviewed by Hugo Rachel in his monumental multivolume study, Die Handels-, Zoll- und Akzisepolitik Brandenburg-Preußens, from the earliest times to 1786.Footnote ³⁰ There we can see just how carefully the kings of Prussia monitored, regulated, and taxed foreign trade. For example, in 1767 Frederick the Great suspected that salt smuggling from the Netherlands to Cleves was on the rise and personally “commanded” that incoming ships be inspected, tolls collected, and import fees demanded “auf das aller-genaueste.”Footnote ³¹ More recently the series Repertorium der Policeyverordnungen der Frühen Neuzeit (ten volumes to date) allows readers to glimpse the scale and scope of regulatory efforts that emerged from aspiring state governments.Footnote ³² For example, between 1648 and 1801 the electors of Mainz issued 283 Verordnungen that governed “Handelsbedingungen.” Many of these applied only to local trade and retail practices, but hundreds of these directives aimed at portions of the long-distance trade by seeking to regulate export practices, tolls and duties, foreign merchants, as well as specific export and import commodities.Footnote ³³ Hundreds of other orders affected related areas such as markets, fairs, weights and measures, coinage, the use of roadways, and river navigation. Elector Anselm Franz von Ingelheim's order of October 26, 1685, for example, was a lengthy document designed to bring some order to the unruly shipping practices of the Rhine-Main River area by regulating loads, tolls, prices for goods and passengers, landing points, departure times, and the even the manners and demeanor of shippers, who should stop acting so “scornful” (höhnisch) of their own customers.Footnote ³⁴

Surprisingly perhaps, one of the most revealing results of these regulatory efforts was the remarkable extent to which home towns were able to frustrate, redirect, or obtain a participating voice in the rising waves of commercial regulation that swept through the German states. Hometown merchant elites vigorously defended communal interests, with the result that local advantages, practices, and privileges often survived external attempts to control and tax long-distance commerce. Towns retained an unexpected capacity to blunt, negate, or even reverse princely plans for economic reform that threatened the hometown economy with truly negative commercial consequences. Once again, a few examples of successful exercises by home towns that protected their own economic interests suggest that, in the economic sphere, the home towns were more resilient and resistant to external authoritarian intrusions than Walker had supposed.

One particularly illustrative example arises from Wesel, the lower Rhine River market center for timber, situated in the Duchy of Cleves and subject to Hohenzollern rule since the early seventeenth century. Beginning in 1695 the Hohenzollern rulers sought to increase the revenues from Cleves by raising toll rates along the Rhine River and reducing toll exemptions. At the duchy's five toll stations along the Rhine River, transit tolls, loading tolls, and import duties (“licenses”) were increased by one-third to two-thirds.Footnote ³⁵ In 1699 a Prussian “Reglement” reduced traditional exemptions from Rhine River tolls within the duchy for local shippers from sixteen cities and towns in Cleves.Footnote ³⁶ The city of Wesel petitioned vigorously to preserve this “old freedom,” but in vain.Footnote ³⁷ Twenty years later, Prussian rulers sought to abolish more surviving toll exemptions and again raise overall toll rates. In 1719 Frederick William I moved to reduce the two-thirds toll exemption enjoyed by shippers from Wesel at the toll station in Lobith near the Dutch border—an exemption that had been in place since 1482. In March 1721 the Prussian administration ordered a new round of toll increases and intensified inspection, assessment, and collection procedures.Footnote ³⁸ These new impositions sparked a far more determined resistance from Wesel's merchants and shippers. In addition to the expected stream of written protests from timber merchants to the Prussian administration, the shippers organized what amounted to a commercial strike against the duchy. In cooperation with Dutch shippers and other shippers from upriver, they brought the shipping traffic on the lower Rhine River to a complete standstill in late June 1721 by refusing to enter Cleves and by keeping their ships at rest either downriver in the Netherlands or upriver in Cologne.Footnote ³⁹ By August the king and his agents in Cleves began to backtrack to an “Interimsmoderation” of the toll increases and inspection practices; the most demanding assessment procedures were abandoned altogether. In effect about half of the new instructions were withdrawn and the tolls were reduced. Immediately thereafter shipping traffic resumed on the lower Rhine River.Footnote ⁴⁰

Wesel reveals a hometown economy substantially different from that proposed by Walker forty years ago. This medium-sized home town was deeply integrated into very old patterns of “great commerce” and was subject to substantial interference from state authorities. But merchants and shippers in Wesel also demonstrated a surprising ability to ward off at least some of the most onerous external burdens that emanated from the state administration.

A second example of hometown institutions that defended their economic rights against larger governmental authorities can be found in a different setting: in the Electorate and Archbishopric of Cologne. Although Electoral Cologne lacked administrative dynamism and innovation, its successive electors carefully preserved their traditional rights and powers, including their Stromregal, i.e., the right to regulate riparian shipping and navigation.Footnote ⁴¹ Within the electorate, Bonn (population 9,600 in 1792), Neuss (4,400), and Andernach (fewer than 3,500) were active centers of local and regional trade. The electorate maintained at least five tolls on the Rhine River (at Andernach, Linz, Bonn, Kaiserswerth, and Uerdingen). In addition the electors, in conjunction with their principal administrative organ, the Hofrat, negotiated the terms of their subjects' commercial shipping interaction with the most important neighboring states up and down the Rhine River: the Electorate of Mainz and the Netherlands.

Within this framework of regional trade and electoral prerogative, the administrative organs of some home towns were able to raise their voices in defense of their local interests and were capable of substantially influencing the terms of their trade in the agreements negotiated by the electors with other cities and towns.Footnote ⁴² The local shippers' guild and the Bonner Stadtrat, sometimes as allies and sometimes as competitors, wrestled with the elector and his administration for control over the reciprocal commercial shipping agreements between cities and towns that set the terms of regional commercial trade on the lower and middle Rhine River. In this ongoing contestation, the Stadtrat and the guild suffered some significant defeats: for example, they were effectively excluded from the discussions over the important Bonn-Cologne route when the powerful Elector Joseph Clemens negotiated a new “Ordnung” for that river traffic in 1700. But they also secured some substantial victories, such as control over the routes to Düsseldorf (22,100 residents in 1792) and Mülheim (3,700). These agreements set the vitally important terms of how Bonn's shippers would participate in the regional carrying trade: the number of shippers allowed, for example, the charges for goods and passengers, loading and unloading locations, and fees for services (harbors, anchorages, cranes, labor). These practical questions determined the city's sources of supply, merchants' access to the larger regional market, and shippers' ability to earn a living. In the course of the eighteenth century the city council also managed to obtain from the electors a wide-ranging supervisory autonomy over the internal affairs of the guild.

On the lower and middle Rhine River, the home towns in the Electorate of Cologne were deeply embedded in very old patterns of regional commerce that unfolded along the river. The electors were determined to maintain exclusive control over interstate commercial agreements when these involved questions of “high politics” (i.e., relations with other important polities, such as the Netherlands and the city of Cologne). Yet in many other cases, the agents of hometown interests—city councils and shippers' guilds—were able to play active or even leading roles in the important task of shaping the town's commercial interaction with the larger economy and in supervising their own internal business.

A brief summary of the foregoing discussion yields the following. First, Walker described the hometown economy as a largely autarkic unit; since that time we have come to see the cities and towns of the Third Germany as participating in extensive commercial networks. Second, Walker supposed that because of their autarky, the home towns' locally based economies had escaped attention from above; I suggest that many towns were engaged in political struggles with territorial authorities over control of regional and long-distance commerce. Third, home towns were often capable of defending their own commercial interests in the face of these substantial regulatory and fiscal pressures from above. Taken together, these three points imply a definite revision of Walker's views on the hometown economy and its economic and political relations with the outside world. Yet they also offer a strong confirmation of his insights regarding the spirited strength of home towns' bodies, such as city councils, guilds, and merchant associations, and their ability to defend their unique social communities.