Petr Kadlec’s prodigiously researched book makes a unique and significant contribution to the history of education in imperial Austria during the late nineteenth century and in modern Europe in general. Hitherto, scholars in this field have devoted much of their writing to the development of primary education, academic secondary schools, and universities. Few have given much attention to the growth of vocational education before the twentieth century. To his credit, the Austrian historian Helmut Engelbrecht discussed vocational schooling in his monumental synthesis, Geschichte des österreichischen Bildungswesens: Erziehung und Unterricht auf dem Boden Österreichs (5 vols., Vienna, 1982–88), but he had limited literature upon which to draw and offered only brief treatment of vocational schools. Kadlec’s richly detailed study opens new vistas on the growth of this educational sector in the Austrian crown lands.

Based on extensive critical reading of the scholarship on schooling and government educational policies in nineteenth-century Austria and the Atlantic world more generally, the first two sections of this book provide a conceptual and methodological introduction to understand the development of vocational education. The third section then presents an overview of the structures of vocational schooling as they developed in the Austrian crown lands up to World War I, viewed in the context of political change and economic and social development. Kadlec offers an analytic treatment, supported by lucid descriptions of specific initiatives to depict what circumstances encouraged or limited the advance of vocational education. He bolsters the account with copious references to scholarly literature, contemporary periodicals, and printed primary sources. The findings show how the development of vocational schooling in imperial Austria lagged behind advances in France and many German states up through the 1850s but then after 1860, like so much in Austrian education, began to accelerate and generally reached West European standards by the end of the nineteenth century. Economic and social development in the various Austrian crown lands impelled this process, but Kadlec demonstrates that the growing interest of state authorities in the Austrian ministries of agriculture, commerce, and religion and instruction after the 1860s was a crucial enabling factor even when the ministerial authorities often offered only limited funds.

The fourth section of the book, running to some 200 pages, presents a detailed description of how vocational schooling developed in various Silesian localities. This discussion draws on remarkably extensive research conducted in the Silesian Territorial Archive (Zemský archiv, Opava) and the district state archives for Bruntál, Frýdek-Místek, Karviná, and Opava, as well as collections of local newspapers and other contemporary printed materials. Kadlec discusses numerous local schools in various sectors of vocational education, their institutional histories, curricula, instructors, and the composition of their students. The Silesian experience shows vividly how local economic and social needs, the initiatives of local educators and industrial and commercial entrepreneurs, and action—or inaction—by political figures and government officials contributed to shaping vocational education over the nineteenth century. Typically, though, the local interests looked to state support to sustain the more ambitious efforts, and ultimately the work of ministerial authorities to provide encouragement and set standards for vocational schools was crucial to their development. Where the state authorities were slow to start up or aid local vocational schools, communal councils and local economic interests, the official Chambers of Commerce and Manufacture in Opava, and occasionally the Silesian Diet provided support for establishing individual schools and instructional programs. The contention of national interests comes up here since the Opava Chambers of Commerce strongly favored German-language vocational instruction over that in Czech and Polish, a preference that sparked sharp reactions.

Kadlec’s remarkable, in-depth research on the development of local vocational schools in Austrian Silesia casts important new light on a long neglected but significant sector of popular education in imperial Austria. In the process, this book also makes a valuable contribution to understanding how Austrian governmental authorities at various levels interacted with local economic interests and civil society in a critical era of change. The value of Kadlec’s research findings makes one wish that they would be accessible to a wider audience than those who can read Czech, but interested readers who lack command of that language will welcome the thoughtful analytic summaries of the findings in English and German included at the end of the book.