Introduction

In the preface to The History and Archaeology of Ports, Gordon Jackson deplored the fact that “despite the importance of trade to the British economy, relatively little has been written about the development of ports through which it passes, either in general or in particular.” His book attempted to “redress the balance a little” and in the process sparked a new scholarly interest in port history. In the intervening years, Jackson has continued to make important contributions. In addition, Adrian Jarvis has produced a remarkable run of excellent publications on the Liverpool docks and their engineers. Recently David Williams of Leicester University organized a session on port cities at the Fourth International Conference of Urban History in Venice.

What Gordon Jackson said of the state of port history in Britain in the early 1980s could also be said with some justification about Germany at the end of the 1990s. For this reason I want to concentrate on the foundation of a single port - Bremerhaven - with a special focus on the relationship between trade, the port and town development from the pre-industrial period through the decades when the industrial revolution transformed Germany in the second half of the nineteenth century.

One striking feature of industrialization was the steady movement of people from rural areas into the rapidly-expanding towns. Regardless of time or region, this phenomenon has been characteristic of eighteenth-century England, nineteenth-century Europe and North America, and twentieth-century East Asia. There were many reasons for leaving the countryside and foregoing the security of a tightly-knit social network. But the most important incentive was the expectation of participating in the new economic opportunities that were being created in industrial towns. Hoping to improve their lot, many people were prepared to suffer hardship in towns that lacked the infrastructure to cope with the influx seeking employment in factories, trades or transport industries.

Towns have always been central points for the production of goods and for trade. Over the centuries, they have served as entrepots and have provided banking facilities; they have been centres of religious activity around churches and cathedrals; and rulers have located civil administration and military forces within their walls.