Siegmund Feilbogen’s journal article examines proposed customs unions between Germany and the Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland as responses to an increasingly protectionist international economy. Moving from the vulnerability of small trading states through their distinct national interests to Germany’s economic and constitutional obstacles, it argues that comprehensive unions are unlikely in the immediate future. Yet the negotiations could encourage more liberal commercial treaties and prepare a Central European customs bloc.
The argument begins with an asymmetry of economic power. Large states can retaliate against foreign tariffs; smaller economies depend on imported goods, transit commerce, and a limited range of specialized exports. Protectionism therefore threatens more than a reduction in their trading profits:
Der Kleinstaat muss von vorneherein auf das Ideal eines sich selbst genügenden Wirtschaftsgebietes verzichten.
English translation: The small state must from the outset renounce the ideal of a self-sufficient economic territory.
Customs union emerges as a defensive strategy, not simply an abstract commitment to free trade. Feilbogen’s country comparisons show why the same external pressure produces different calculations. The Netherlands sends approximately half its exports to Prussia, while less than a fifth of its imports originate there. German commerce could largely bypass Dutch ports, whereas Dutch exporters would struggle to replace their German market. With exports concentrated in foodstuffs and raw materials, and industry already lightly protected, the Netherlands has relatively little economically to lose from union.
Political dependence nevertheless unsettles that calculation. Dutch responses to a newspaper survey reject the proposal chiefly because it threatens national independence; some even anticipate European war. Feilbogen places these fears beside the possible need for German protection of Dutch colonial possessions and the possibility that conflict in the Transvaal might weaken resistance to closer alignment. Commercial advantage and imperial insecurity thus pull against the preservation of sovereignty.
Belgium’s dependence on Germany is less pronounced, but French unpredictability makes German alignment attractive:
Eine Zollunion mit Deutschland würde mindestens eine Rückendeckung gegen Frankreich bedeuten.
English translation: A customs union with Germany would at least provide backing against France.
The proposal has a strategic as well as a commercial rationale. Yet rivalry between Rotterdam and Antwerp already obstructs the more modest prospect of a Belgian–Dutch customs association. Switzerland presents another balance of interests: its export losses after the French tariff war, American restrictions, and prospective British measures encourage closer German ties. Union would strengthen Swiss transit trade but sacrifice relatively cheap food imports, an important advantage for tourism. Feilbogen reports comparatively little Swiss anxiety about annexation, attributing this confidence to the country’s multinational population and defensible terrain.
Turning to Germany, the article contrasts aggregate national gains with organized resistance. Combining German trade with that of the three smaller states would, by Feilbogen’s calculation, represent roughly a quarter of world commerce and greatly strengthen Germany’s negotiating position. But German landowners, textile producers, and metallurgical interests would resist Dutch agriculture, Swiss manufactures, and Belgian industrial competition. German ports might welcome bringing rival ports under the German tariff, while higher tariffs in the joining states would generate opposition there. The central conceptual distinction is between collective commercial power and the sectoral interests capable of blocking it.
The constitutional problem is equally serious. The smaller states could scarcely accept tariffs dictated from Berlin, while Germany would resist a common customs parliament in which foreign representatives held more than a fifth of the votes. By contrast, France’s most-favoured-nation rights under the Frankfurt peace treaty are a lesser obstacle, since customs-union arrangements are expressly exempt.
Immerhin sind die Schwierigkeiten, welche dem Abschluss deutscher Zollunionen mit den westlichen Kleinstaaten im Wege stehen, derzeit so gross, dass ein Erfolg dieser Bestrebungen, wenn auch nicht absolut unmöglich, doch jedenfalls sehr unwahrscheinlich ist.
English translation: Nevertheless, the difficulties currently standing in the way of concluding German customs unions with the small western states are so great that the success of these endeavours, though not absolutely impossible, is in any event very unlikely.
Feilbogen’s conclusion distinguishes immediate feasibility from historical direction. The movement’s achievable result is to make 1904 an occasion for easing rather than tightening commercial relations. More liberal treaties could become stages toward a Central European customs union, drawing neighbouring economies into Germany’s economic sphere. The article’s enduring analytical interest lies in this tension: integration promises protection against exclusion, but its realization depends on reconciling unequal power, sovereignty, and competing domestic interests.
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