The German Chemical Industry in the Twentieth Century PDF Download

Author: John E. Lesch
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401593779
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 474

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Book Description
In the twentieth century, dyes, pharmaceuticals, photographic products, explosives, insecticides, fertilizers, synthetic rubber, fuels, and fibers, plastics, and other products have flowed out of the chemical industry and into the consumer economies, war machines, farms, and medical practices of industrial societies. The German chemical industry has been a major site for the development and application of the science-based technologies that gave rise to these products, and has had an important role as exemplar, stimulus, and competitor in the international chemical industry. This volume explores the German chemical industry's scientific and technological dimension, its international connections, and its development after 1945. The authors relate scientific and technological change in the industry to evolving German political and economic circumstances, including two world wars, the rise and fall of National Socialism, the post-war division of Germany, and the emergence of a global economy. This book will be of interest to historians of modern Germany, to historians of science and technology, and to business and economic historians.

Author: Kathryn Steen
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469612917
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
Prior to 1914, Germany dominated the worldwide production of synthetic organic dyes and pharmaceuticals like aspirin. When World War I disrupted the supply of German chemicals to the United States, American entrepreneurs responded to the shortages and high prices by trying to manufacture chemicals domestically. Learning the complex science and industry, however, posed a serious challenge. This book explains how the United States built a synthetic organic chemicals industry in World War I and the 1920s. Kathryn Steen argues that Americans' intense anti-German sentiment in World War I helped to forge a concentrated effort among firms, the federal government, and universities to make the United States independent of "foreign chemicals." Besides mobilization efforts to make high explosives and war gases, federal policies included protective tariffs, gathering and publishing market information, and, most dramatically, confiscation of German-owned chemical subsidiaries and patents. Meanwhile, firms and universities worked hard to develop scientific and manufacturing expertise. Against a backdrop of hostilities and intrigue, Steen shows how chemicals were deeply entwined with national and international politics and policy during the war and subsequent isolationism of the turbulent early twentieth century.

Author: Anthony S. Travis
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401712336
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
The editors wish to thank the European Science Foundation for its support of the programme on the Evolution of Chemistry in Europe, 1789-1939, as well as for sponsoring the publication of this volume. Through the subdivision of this initiative that deals specifically with chemical industry it has been possible for historians of science, technology, business and economics to share often widely differing viewpoints and develop consensus across disciplinary and cultural boundaries. The contents of this volume are based on the third of three workshops that have considered the emergence of the modern European chemical industry prior to 1939, the first held in Liege (1994), the second in Maastricht (1995), and the third in Strasbourg (1996). All contributors and participants are thanked for their participation in often lively and informative debates. The generous hospitality of the European Science Foundation and its staff in Strasbourg is gratefully acknowledged. Introduction Emerging chemical knowledge and the development of chemical industry, and particularly the interaction between them, offer rich fields of study for the historian. This is reflected in the contents of the three workshops dealing with the emergence of chemical industry held under the aegis of the European Science Foundation's Evolution of Chemistry in Europe, 1789-1939, programme. The first workshop focused mainly on science for industry, 1789- 1850, and the second on the two-way traffic between science and industry, 1850-1914. The third workshop, dealing with the period 1900-1939, covers similar issues, but within different, and wider, contexts.

Author: Lion Hirth
Publisher:
ISBN: 9783638832397
Category :
Languages : de
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Research Paper (postgraduate) from the year 2007 in the subject Business economics - Economic and Social History, grade: 1,0, University of Massachusetts - Amherst (Department of Economics), course: European Economic History, 64 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: This paper provides an analysis of the German chemical industry during the "Second Industrial Revolution" of the late 19th and the early 20th century. It is modeled after Steven Webb's (1980) article on the iron and steel industry. Here it is argued that the exceptional growth and success of the industry - chemicals were the fastest growing industry in Germany and by 1890 German firms held 85% world market share in dyestuff production - was supported by a high degree of market con-centration and cartelization. This enabled the firms to gain large economies of scale and scope through backward integra-tion and product diversification. Dynamic efficiency gains were mainly achieved by relaxing credit constraints, reducing uncertainty, and allocate investment more efficiently. It is further argued that state action played a crucial role in setting up and stabilizing cartels. This analysis is in line with a Schumpeterian view of welfare-enhancing effects of imperfect competi-tion. While these findings obviously do not question anti-trust policy per se, they do question a mechanical view on market structure that is common in much mainstream economic thinking.

Author: Fred Aftalion
Publisher: Chemical Heritage Foundation
ISBN: 9780941901291
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 468

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Book Description
Fred Aftalion's international perspective of the history of chemistry integrates the story of chemical science with that of chemical industry. This new edition includes events from 1990 to 2000, when major companies began selling off their divisions, seeking to specialize in a particular business. Aftalion explores the pitfalls these companies encountered as well as the successes of "contrarians"--those companies that remained broad and diversified. He uses BASF, Dow, and Bayer as examples of true contrarians.

Author: Fred Aftalion
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 9780812282078
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 450

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Book Description
Unlike conventional histories written about the field of chemistry, this study presents an international perspective, integrating the story of chemical science with that of the chemical industry, and emphasizing the developments of the twentieth century.

Author: Werner Abelshauser
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139438751
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 733

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Book Description
The corporate history of BASF spans an era of German and international economic history that began with the rise of the 'new industries' as of the late nineteenth century and continues today in their confrontation with the new economy. This book examines BASF's corporate governance, financial system, industrial relations, system of qualification and relation to other companies. A corporate history of BASF promises more than an insight into the functioning of an industrial organisation. It also reveals the reasons for the extraordinary economic dynamics of the German empire and the enormous expansion of the world economy before World War I. BASF's history stands at the centre of Germany's wartime economy during two world wars and highlights both its strengths and weaknesses. Just as the IG Farben trust helped support Germany's course of politicoeconomic autarky after 1933, so it was that BASF helped facilitate West Germany's startlingly quick return to the world market. BASF has since been among the transnational companies whose efforts at the leading edge of economic and technological progress are paradigmatic for Germany's entry into the new economy of the twenty-first century.

Author: Ernst Homburg
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9780792348894
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
Europe is the cradle of the modem international chemical industry. From the middle of the nineteenth century until the outbreak of World War I, the European chemical industry influenced not only the production and control of science and technology, but also made significant contributions towards economic development, as well as bringing about profound changes in working and living enviromnents. It is a highly complex heritage, both rich and threatening, that calls for close scrutinity. Fortunately, a unique opportunity to explore the historical development of the European chemical industry from a variety of novel standpoints, was made possible during 1993 as part of the European Science Foundation (ESF) programme called 'The Evolution of Chemistry in Europe, 1789-1939.' This process of exploration has taken place through three workshops, each dealing with different time periods. The workshop concerned with the period 1850-1914, which corresponds roughly to the so-called Second Industrial Revolution, was held in Maastricht, The Netherlands, on 23-25 March 1995. This volume is the outcome of that workshop. The other workshops dealing with European chemical industry were held in Liege in 1994, covering the First Industrial Revolution period, 1789-1850, and Strasbourg in 1996, covering the period between the two World Wars.

Author: Alfred D. Chandler Jr.
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674029372
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 379

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Book Description
The dean of business historians continues his masterful chronicle of the transforming revolutions of the twentieth century begun in Inventing the Electronic Century. Alfred Chandler argues that only with consistent attention to research and development and an emphasis on long-term corporate strategies could firms remain successful over time. He details these processes for nearly every major chemical and pharmaceutical firm, demonstrating why some companies forged ahead while others failed. By the end of World War II, the chemical and pharmaceutical industries were transformed by the commercializing of new learning, the petrochemical and the antibiotic revolutions. But by the 1970s, chemical science was no longer providing the new learning necessary to commercialize more products, although new directions flourished in the pharmaceutical industries. In the 1980s, major drug companies, including Eli Lilly, Merck, and Schering Plough, commercialized the first biotechnology products, and as the twenty-first century began, the infrastructure of this biotechnology revolution was comparable to that of the second industrial revolution just before World War I and the information revolution of the 1960s. Shaping the Industrial Century is a major contribution to our understanding of the most dynamic industries of the modern era.

Author: Agustí Nieto-Galan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108482430
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
Nieto-Galan examines the political role of chemistry in twentieth-century Spain, enriching understandings of the relationship between science and power.