A Comparison of Railway Nationalization Between Two Empires: Germany and Japan

This article compares the failure of nationalization in the German Empire in the 19th century with Japan’s earlier railway nationalizationRailway nationalization ; that is, the placement of the main railway lines under national governmental management. Several comparative studies by Japanese economic historians have been made on railway nationalization in Germany and Japan. These studies have focused on the historical stages of capitalism, mainly from a Marxist perspective, and were centered on the concept of the “Bismarckian nationalization”Bismarckian nationalization of Japanese railways. It may be helpful to compare the two railway nationalization programs by closely examining the negotiations between local German states and the institutions involved in German railway centralization: the Imperial Railway Bureau and the Prussian Railway Central Bureau. Our inquiry into the official documents (mainly those of the Prussian Kingdom) about railway nationalization in the German Empire shows that the particular obstacles to German railway nationalization had many facets and that the establishment of a central administrative office was technically difficult given the federal system in place. These findings indicate that (1) an accurate subject for a historical comparison with Japanese railway nationalizationRailway nationalization is not the German national railway integration by the imperial government, but rather the official Prussian purchase of railways, and (2) organizational trial and error in the centralization of the technological railway administration in Germany was identical to Japan’s due to the common reaction to the problems with the railway systems at the turn of century.