Periodic Reporting for period 4 - SpoilsofWAR (Spoils of War: The Economic Consequences of the Great War in Central Europe)
Reporting period: 2023-07-01 to 2025-06-30
SpoilsofWAR was inspired by the centennial anniversary of the end of World War I and the disintegration of the Habsburg Empire. The dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary has been described by generations of historians as the blueprint European customs union, the ‘centripetal force’ that kept the ultimate ‘ethnic tinderbox’ of nineteenth-century Europe together. The disintegration of the empire has long been considered detrimental for economic development in Central Europe after the Great War, but the economic legacies of the empire and its downfall were not subject to sufficient examination, nor were they systematically distinguished from the economic consequences of the war. SpoilsofWAR filled these knowledge gaps. We employed state-of-the-art econometric analysis to assess the economic impact of complex border changes and lasting legacies of imperial borders in Central Europe. We constructed large databases to examine different dimensions of local economic development in the Habsburg Empire before World War I. We used vast and formerly little-known primary data sources to constrict a comprehensive database of the industrial military contractors of Austria Hungary during the Great War and a more complex survey of the largest firms to trace their wartime and postwar development. We developed detailed cases studies on how some of the most successful of these enterprises adapted to changing geopolitical conditions and rising economic nationalism in interwar Central Europe. Finally, we advanced the study of cross-country and regional inequality in Central and Southeast Europe in the late 19th and 20th century.
SpoilsofWAR investigated themes that have sadly become part of our European reality yet again. The economic consequence of disintegration, displacement, and war in Eastern Europe were not confined to the history book but understanding the impact of current challenges requires more historical research. How does war mobilization affect industrial development and industrial firms? How are the spoils of war distributed among firms, regions, and society? How do border changes disrupt existing production and trade patterns? And how do firms adapt to changing geopolitical circumstances after wars end? Our research has offered valuable historical insight on these questions, transcending the boundaries between economic and business history, economic geography and historical political economy and integrated the analytical tools of these disciplines.
SpoilsofWAR investigated themes that have sadly become part of our European reality yet again. The economic consequence of disintegration, displacement, and war in Eastern Europe were not confined to the history book but understanding the impact of current challenges requires more historical research. How does war mobilization affect industrial development and industrial firms? How are the spoils of war distributed among firms, regions, and society? How do border changes disrupt existing production and trade patterns? And how do firms adapt to changing geopolitical circumstances after wars end? Our research has offered valuable historical insight on these questions, transcending the boundaries between economic and business history, economic geography and historical political economy and integrated the analytical tools of these disciplines.
Until the end of the grant period, SpoilsofWAR has achieved important scientific objectives and implemented an ambitious workplan. We have built a diverse and dynamic team of researchers with complementary language skills, regional specialisms, and analytical know-how bridging the fields of economic and business history, historical economic geography, and historical political economy. This transnational and interdisciplinary character reflected the aims of our scholarly ambition. Despite dramatic disruptions and delays suffered during the two years dominated by the global pandemic, our collective efforts yielded an impressive list of research contributions, most of them already published or accepted for publication. These include one monograph by Cambridge University Press, four articles published in Business History, Explorations in Economic History, the Economic History Review, and the Journal of Historical Political Economy, and two articles forthcoming in the Journal of Economic History. One more article is under revision at the Journal of Development Economics and two more articles are in preparation and will soon be submitted for review. As a final output of the project, we launched an edited volume with international collaborators and following a successful conference submitted the book proposal for review. Our research team also contributed chapters to important edited volumes and textbook published or in preparation outside the framework of the project.
We organized three conferences at the Host Institution: a book conference to discuss the manuscript of Imperial Borderlands: The Institutions and Legacies of the Habsburg Military Frontier i(Cambridge University Press, 2023) n 2021, an international conference on The New Economic History of Empires in Eastern Europe and a book conference for Globalizing Firms in a Deglobalizing World: Industrial Enterprise in Central Europe between the Wars (under review). We organized sessions at international congresses, incl. the European Social Science History Conference in 2021, the European Historical Economics Society Conference in 2022, the European Business History Association Congress in 2024, and the World Economic History Congress in 2025.
Our research has contributed to four main themes: (i) regional economic development in the Habsburg Empire before the Great War, (ii) economic legacies of imperial and post-imperial borders, (iii) cross-country and regional income inequality in Central and Southeast Europe, and (iv) industrial firms in the Habsburg war economy and in post-imperial Central Europe. We are committed to giving free access to the databases that we have generated in a dedicated section of our project website. We have already published a large database of economic and trade statistics for Yugoslav cities before 1929. Three additional databases on (i) regional industrialization in Austria-Hungary in 1900-1910, (ii) the industrial military contractors of Austria-Hungary in the Great War, and (iii) the development of the 200 largest war contractors until 1930, will be made available after the publication of the relevant research articles.
We organized three conferences at the Host Institution: a book conference to discuss the manuscript of Imperial Borderlands: The Institutions and Legacies of the Habsburg Military Frontier i(Cambridge University Press, 2023) n 2021, an international conference on The New Economic History of Empires in Eastern Europe and a book conference for Globalizing Firms in a Deglobalizing World: Industrial Enterprise in Central Europe between the Wars (under review). We organized sessions at international congresses, incl. the European Social Science History Conference in 2021, the European Historical Economics Society Conference in 2022, the European Business History Association Congress in 2024, and the World Economic History Congress in 2025.
Our research has contributed to four main themes: (i) regional economic development in the Habsburg Empire before the Great War, (ii) economic legacies of imperial and post-imperial borders, (iii) cross-country and regional income inequality in Central and Southeast Europe, and (iv) industrial firms in the Habsburg war economy and in post-imperial Central Europe. We are committed to giving free access to the databases that we have generated in a dedicated section of our project website. We have already published a large database of economic and trade statistics for Yugoslav cities before 1929. Three additional databases on (i) regional industrialization in Austria-Hungary in 1900-1910, (ii) the industrial military contractors of Austria-Hungary in the Great War, and (iii) the development of the 200 largest war contractors until 1930, will be made available after the publication of the relevant research articles.
Most of our publications are very recent and some critical research contributions are pending review or still in progress. Hence any potential breakthrough is yet to be determined and our contributions to advancing the state of the art must be validated. The three main potential analytical novelties of the project are the following. First, we are the first to make a serious empirical assessment of the complex border legacies left after the dissolved Habsburg Empire in Central Europe. We measure statistically persistent effects of historical borders in postwar trade integration and regional economic development and the legacies of historical institutions in the militarized southern borderlands on the former empire. Second, the existing literature on the economic history of World War I has relied predominantly on national statistics, which disguise structural and spatial transformations. We constructed original databases of industrial military contractors that will enable us and future researchers to examine the consequences of the war for industrial development at the micro and regional level. Third, our collective efforts have transcended the traditional boundaries between quantitative economic history and business history systematically integrating the analytical tools of both disciplines, and we have published our research to their top field journals.