Vienna is presented as a focal point of Emperor Francis I’s resistance to industrialization. In the book’s account, the capital was not simply a place where new factories might be built: it was also where workers concentrated by industry could become supporters of political opposition. Francis’s efforts to keep Vienna primarily agrarian show how fear of economic and social change could reinforce absolutist rule.

Industry and Political Control

Francis opposed the development of industry because factories would bring poor workers together in cities, particularly in Vienna. He feared that this concentration could create a constituency for opponents of absolutism. In 1802 he banned the creation of new factories in the city, seeking to preserve traditional elites and the political and economic status quo.

The prohibition was part of a broader policy against technological change. Francis also banned the importation and adoption of new machinery until 1811, despite its importance to industrialization. These measures were not portrayed simply as a failure to recognize the possible economic benefits of innovation: they were means of protecting the agrarian social order and limiting changes that could threaten the emperor’s authority.

Railways and the Cost of Refusal

Francis’s opposition extended to railways, another technology associated with the Industrial Revolution. When a plan for a northern railway was proposed, he rejected it, explicitly linking the prospect of a railway to the possibility of revolution entering the country.

Because the government would not grant a concession for a steam railway, the empire’s first railway used horse-drawn carriages. Its route ran from Linz on the Danube to Budweis in Bohemia, on the Moldau River. The line’s gradients and corners made conversion to steam engines impossible, so it continued to rely on horse power until the 1860s. A choice made to avoid the political risks Francis associated with steam thus also constrained the railway’s later use.

The banker Salomon Rothschild recognized the economic opportunities in railway development. His brother Nathan, impressed by George Stephenson’s Rocket in England, urged him to seek opportunities in Austria, believing the family could profit from railway finance. Nathan agreed, but the scheme came to nothing after Francis again refused.

Vienna in the Book’s Argument

Vienna’s factories and the rejected railway exemplify the book’s broader account of political resistance to economic growth. Industrialization could draw labor away from the countryside, weaken feudal arrangements, and create new groups with interests opposed to existing rulers. Francis’s policies therefore protected not only a preferred agrarian economy but also the institutions and elites on which his power rested.

The case makes Vienna a concrete example of how the distribution of political power can shape the adoption of technology. The potential benefits of factories and steam transport did not, by themselves, determine policy: the emperor’s concern about the consequences for his rule helped determine which developments were permitted. The result was to block industry and economic progress, contributing to the backwardness of the Habsburg territories described in the book.