ABSTRACT
After 1850 French industrial development, with the aid of British capital, began and lasted through the era of railway construction. While the Englishman, Thomas Brassey, was building her railways, the French peasants were accumulating the savings of their husbandry. This national investment fund, which had begun during the reign of the “Citizen King” in the thirties, grew, till by 1850 France was lending capital abroad at the same time as she was importing it for industrial construction from England. The German Government found outlets for the activities of its teeming urban population and for the accumulation of public savings, more by the construction of railways in the Near East than by lending money to decadent Governments with a view to acquiring political influence, as the French did. Capital accumulation was going on purely national lines and under the influence of a Government which had semi-feudal characteristics.
