This volume provides a comparative history of the development of social welfare policies in England and Germany from the mid-nineteenth century up to the First World War. The book is divided into four parts covering public poor relief; government policies regarding industrial injury; policies dealing with sickness, invalidity, and old age; and the relief of unemployment. Individual chapters are devoted to policies in Germany or England, with comparisons between the two countries made throughout the text.

One of the major themes of the book is the relationship between Poor Law reform and the adoption of national social policies. Social insurance, which involved contributions from workers and employers, and often from the state, reduced the demand for local poor relief and therefore reduced local taxes. The priorities of the German state changed over time, and it came to view compulsory insurance less as a means to reduce poor relief costs and more as a way to commend the new Reich “to the loyalty of the industrial working class” (p. 332). Throughout the period, German policy was committed to national insurance (in which workers contributed to the cost of benefits), whereas British policy remained more committed to tax-provided benefits. E. P. Hennock concludes that many of the differences in post-World War II welfare policies in Britain and Germany can be traced back to differences in social polices adopted before 1914.

Part 1 (chapters 1 and 2) examines the changing role of the Poor Law in England and Prussia over the nineteenth century, focusing largely on legislation regarding the right to relief (settlement) and on the increased role of deterrence. According to Hennock, poor relief legislation in both countries “was designed to break down existing obstacles to the creation of a labour market responsive to entrepreneurial initiatives” (p. 30). Factory legislation and accident insurance are examined in Part 2 (chapters 3–6). Hennock presents a detailed discussion of the significant differences between German accident insurance, which dates from 1884, and British workers' compensation, adopted in 1897. German legislation was initiated by Bismarck as a means of avoiding factory legislation and inspection; British legislation “was a response to pressure from organised labour” (p. 101). On the eve of the First World War, workers' compensation covered a larger share of workers than did German accident insurance, but German workers who were disabled received more generous benefits and medical treatment, which British legislation did not provide.

Part 3 (chapters 7–15), the heart of the book, covers the development of social policies regarding temporary sickness, invalidity, and old age. Hennock begins by contrasting the voluntarism associated with English friendly societies with the compulsion associated with German mutual insurance. Prussian legislation of 1845 and 1849 empowered local authorities to compel artisans and factory workers to join provident funds, and to compel factory owners to contribute to the funds. Both the British and Prussian governments hoped to reduce Poor Law taxes—Prussian workers eligible for benefits from provident societies would not need to turn to the Poor Law for assistance when sick, and neither would British workers belonging to friendly societies. Despite German compulsion, the share of working-age persons making insurance contributions was higher in England and Wales than in Germany until the 1890s. Germany established invalidity and old age insurance in 1889, two decades before the adoption of old age (1908) and sickness (1911) insurance in Britain. German insurance was geared more to providing invalidity pensions for those unable to earn a living than old age pensions, and was financed by compulsory contributory insurance. British pensions were noncontributory (financed out of general taxation) and were provided to those reaching a fixed qualifying age. Hennock concludes that the German pension policy was adopted from above “to enhance the role of the recently established Empire in the provision of benefits to the population,” and the British pension policy was adopted from below and was “the expression of popular grievances over the working of the Poor Law” (p. 235). Britain introduced compulsory contributory sickness insurance in 1911, based to some extent on German precedents. However, there were significant differences between the British and German systems. The German system included graduated contributions and graduated benefits, differentiated by income levels. The British system set uniform contributions and (minimum) benefits. Those who wanted additional benefits could acquire them through voluntary provision.

Part 4 (chapters 16–17) examines unemployment policies in Britain and Germany, from local public work relief through the adoption of locally subsidized voluntary unemployment insurance in Germany and national compulsory unemployment insurance in Britain. Hennock contends that the differences in unemployment policies between the two countries largely was due to “their different political priorities” rather than to differences in the state of the economy (p. 330).

Overall, the book does a good job at laying out the major issues that guided the development of social policies in the two countries, although the analysis of German policy is stronger than the material on Britain. Hennock states in the book's Introduction that he presented a more detailed discussion of German policy on purpose, because “German concepts and context will be less familiar to most . . . readers, [and] . . . detailed studies in English are more readily available even in German libraries” (p. 13). The book's intention to be “a synthesis of the existing literature” fails somewhat for Britain because much recent scholarship is not considered. For example, the discussion of the English Poor Laws is rather dated and ignores important work published in the past two decades by Lynn Lees, Mary MacKinnon, and others. Given Hennock's interest in Poor Law reform and its effects on local taxation, I would have expected a more detailed discussion of the Crusade Against Outrelief in Britain in the 1870s. In sum, while Hennock's decision to focus more on Germany is understandable, anyone who assigns the book in a course on the development of social policy will need to supplement the material on Britain.

That said, English-speaking scholars who already are familiar with British social policy and want to put its development before 1914 in an international perspective will benefit from reading this book. Hennock does an excellent job of showing how the evolution of social policy followed different paths in the two major European industrial powers of the nineteenth century and how policy decisions made before 1914 still influence the form taken by social policies in the twenty-first century.