ABSTRACT
This chapter considers economic growth ramifications: the prosperity and growing consumption, the resulting changes in economic structure, and its impact on economic sectors industry, agriculture, crafts and commerce. It also considers population movements and their relationship to these large economic changes. The chapter explains the reasons for the rapid economic progress in post-1850 Europe in just one word: railways. The construction of a rail network was an important element of a major economic trend of the era, the expansion of steam-powered industrial production. More broadly, this process of market expansion and specialization provided the fundamentals for economic growth in Europe during the third quarter of the nineteenth century. The quarter-century after 1850 was generally a prosperous period for agriculture in Europe. Farm prices rose, albeit modestly, but, most importantly, the sharp fluctuations in the prices of agricultural products characteristic of the first half of the century were, after one last outburst in the early and mid-1850s, increasingly smoothed out.
