Industrial Revolution in the Czech lands

The Industrial Revolution in the Czech lands began in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries. The basis for its development was the rich local textile and glassmaking craft production, as well as sufficient quantities of mineral resources, especially high-quality coal. The textile industry played a pioneering role in the transition from craft to industrial production.

The first steam engines were delivered to craft workshops in Varnsdorf and Stráž nad Nisou as early as 1804. However, the general introduction of new industrial technologies in the Czech lands was a slow and financially demanding process. For this reason, it was often led by wealthy foreigners from England and German countries, or by entrepreneurs from the Czech aristocracy. Wealthy citizens, especially Bohemian Germans, gradually joined in as well. Industrialisation was further stimulated by the development of new financial institutions (savings banks, insurance companies) in the 1830s, as well as the roaring development of railway transportation in the 1840s. One of its results is the Czech railway network, whose density is unique in Europe. Apart from the textile industry, a strong food industry also developed (manufacture of beet sugar), as well as the glassmaking industry and porcelain manufacture.

From the 1840s, the ongoing industrialisation and the development of transportation had a heavy impact on the social life in the Czech lands. Not everybody regarded the changes positively; sometimes workers destroyed machines which made them redundant. Industrial production at the time, however, still affected the lives of only a minority of the population, while in the late 1860s a full scale industrialisation took place. From that time, owing to the development of coal mining, mechanical engineering and other traditional industrial branches, the Czech lands became the most significant industrial region of Austria-Hungary, with its industrial productivity exceeding the monarchy’s average by more than twofold. In the last third of the 19^th century, a Czech entrepreneurial middle class was successfully established, whose companies and products could effectively compete with their German counterparts. The General Land Centennial Exhibition, held in 1891 in Prague, became a representative exhibition of the successes of Czech industry and entrepreneurship.