page_title: Zollverein
section_title: 1820s and 1830s
hierarchical_section_title: Zollverein / 1820s and 1830s
context_page_description: The Zollverein, or German Customs Union, was a coalition of German states formed to manage tariffs and economic policies within their territories. Organized by the 1833 Zollverein treaties, it formally started on 1 January 1834. However, its foundations had been in development from 1818 with the creation of a variety of custom unions among the German states. By 1866, the Zollverein included most of the German states. The foundation of the Zollverein was the first instance in history in which independent states consummated a full economic union without the simultaneous creation of a political federation or union.
  Prussia was the primary driver behind the creation of the customs union. Austria was excluded from the Zollverein because of its highly protected industry and also because Prince von Metternich was against the idea. By the founding of the North German Confederation in 1867, the Zollverein covered states of approximately 425,000 square kilometres, and had produced economic agreements with several non-German states, including Sweden-Norway. After the founding of the German Empire in 1871, the Empire assumed the control of the customs union.
context_section_description: At the close of the Napoleonic Wars, Germany was made up of 39 states, among them four city-states. Having abolished its own internal tariffs in 1818, Prussia began inviting individual states to eliminate tariffs, with the agreements setting the foundation for Zollverein cementing strong economic ties between the various Prussian and Hohenzollern territories, and ensuring economic contact between non-contiguous holdings of the Hohenzollern family, also the ruling family of Prussia. It was formed to remove the various obstacles (such as different weights and measures in German states) to economic exchange and growth by the new commercial classes, creating a national unity in economic matter at a time when Germany was divided.
  Surmounting the domestic customs, and the individual states' dependence on those customs as their primary source of income, proved to be a difficult problem. The myriad of customs barriers restricted trade and hampered the industrial development, but the rulers of the states were reluctant to forgo their income from the customs. The impasse was overcome through external forces. With the repeal of the Continental System, the German tradesmen stood in direct conflict with the English industry. A united German Trade and Tradesmens Union demanded protection from English exports. Their spokesman, the economist Friedrich List, feared that the German people would end up as "drawers of water and hewers of wood for Britain". Similarly, Karl Friedrich Nebenius, later president of the Ducal Ministry in the Grand Duchy of Baden and the author of Baden's 1819 proposed customs initiative with the German Confederation, offered a widely publicized description about the difficulties of surmounting such protections:
  The 38 toll barriers in Germany cripple domestic traffic and bring more or less the same results: how if every limb of the human body were bound together, so that blood could not flow from one limb to the other? In order to trade from Hamburg to Austria, from Berlin to the Swiss Cantons, one must cut through the statutes of ten states, study ten tolls and toll barriers, ten times go through the toll barriers, and ten times pay the tolls. Who but the unfortunate has to negotiate such borders? To live with such borders? Where three or four states collide, there one must live his whole life under evil, senseless tolls and toll restrictions. That is no Fatherland!
  In 1820, Württemberg planned to start a customs union among the so-called Third Germany: the middle-sized German states, including itself, Baden, Bavaria, and the two Hessian states (Hesse-Darmstadt and Hesse-Kassel). This customs union excluded both Austria and Prussia, primarily because the two major German powers were considered too overbearing. Plans foundered on the differing interests of the affected states. While the economic development in Baden proceeded relatively well, with its long borders and well entrenched infrastructure for trade, economic development in Bavaria lagged well behind it, and the Bavarian regime enacted a protective tariff on goods produced outside its border. The result was a short lived trade agreement between Baden and Hesse-Darmstadt. Nevertheless, a second agreement, reached in Stuttgart in 1825, established rapport between Württemberg and Bavaria, with the foundation of the South German Customs Union. In opposition to the Prussian activities, Hanover, Saxony, Hesse, and other states (Austria, France, Great Britain, and the Netherlands), developed their own economic agreements. While they promised one another not to join the Prussian union, they did develop trade agreements of their own. The Union remained unsuccessful, because it only sought to maintain the status quo, not to fix the problems created by toll barriers. In 1834, Baden and Württemberg joined the Prussian union, which was renamed the German Customs Union. The Tax Union or Steuerverein was formed in 1834 as a customs union first of the Duchy of Brunswick and the Kingdom of Hanover, then with the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg in 1836.
  By 1835, the German Custo
caption: 1803s lithograph of Johann F. Cotta.
  Cotta played an important role in the development of the south German customs agreement and also negotiated the Prussian Hessian Customs agreements.
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