ABSTRACT
The countries of Continental Europe underwent the Industrial Revolution later than Britain, but experienced economic development during the nineteenth century. In each country, France, Germany, and Italy, strong State participation in the market during the eighteenth century carried over into the nineteenth century, and indeed well into the twentieth century. By the eighteenth century, Italy had become peripheral and stayed that way through the better part of the nineteenth century. During the eighteenth and most of the nineteenth century, Germany consisted of a multitude of mini-states and a few larger states such as Austria, Baden, Bavaria, Prussia, Saxony and Württemberg. While Britain and France had been unitary states for centuries, Germany and Italy only consolidated the multiple independent entities into national states during the nineteenth century. At the end of the nineteenth century, France remained far behind Britain and the unified Germany and Italy in implementing social legislation.
