Felix Somary · 1915
Felix Somary’s review examines Sieghart’s archival history of the Austro-Hungarian internal customs frontier as an intervention in contemporary commercial policy. It moves from the constitutional and economic arrangements of the Dual Monarchy through the history of customs separation to an assessment of Hungarian protectionism and the broader significance of customs unions. Somary endorses the book’s historical argument against restoring internal tariffs while identifying a further analytical question: how much institutional uniformity does a durable customs union require?
The opening corrects misconceptions circulating in German discussions of economic rapprochement with Austria-Hungary. Somary distinguishes the monarchy’s shared dynasty, army, and foreign affairs from economic arrangements negotiated between two otherwise independent states. Their decennial settlement maintained free trade and a common bank, but Hungarian demands for internal tariffs persisted even after demands for banking separation had receded. With the settlement approaching expiry, the issue directly affected the monarchy’s external commercial policy.
Sieghart’s historical account connects customs barriers to fiscal privileges, rather than treating them simply as expressions of national antagonism. The Austrian tobacco monopoly and the Hungarian nobility’s tax exemption helped sustain separation. Projects for customs integration encountered resistance over taxation; later, Hungarian demands for removing the frontier met governmental reluctance to confront noble privilege. Somary emphasizes the consequences of this missed opportunity:
Siegharts Darstellung zeigt mit außerordentlicher Klarheit die Wirkungen dieses verhängnisvollen Versäumnisses der Regierung, namentlich auch die dadurch verursachte Unfähigkeit Österreichs zum Anschluß an den deutschen Zollverband.
English translation: Sieghart's account shows with extraordinary clarity the effects of this fateful omission on the part of the government, and in particular also the incapacity of Austria, caused thereby, to join the German customs union.
The review then traces a reversal in Hungarian commercial thought: Smithian liberalism gave way in the 1840s to List-inspired protectionism. Kossuth’s programme linked industrial development, agricultural export independence, and national autonomy to a separate tariff system. Somary regards its estimate of protection’s nation-building power as excessive, though historically understandable. The same conception of tariffs as instruments of political consolidation led Vienna toward the opposite objective—abolishing the internal frontier. The removal of noble tax immunity and extension of the tobacco monopoly to Hungary supplied the fiscal prerequisites for customs unification in 1850.
The review’s central evaluative move is to test inherited political demands against changed economic conditions:
Es sucht seine Überzeugungskraft für die Gegenwartsprobleme aus der Vergangenheit zu gewinnen.
English translation: It seeks to gain its persuasive force for the problems of the present from the past.
Somary finds Sieghart especially persuasive in showing that Kossuth’s original justifications no longer hold. Hungarian industry had developed within the common customs territory; Austrian consumption absorbed most of Hungary’s agricultural surplus at prices substantially above world-market levels; and customs unity had not obstructed Hungarian state development. Restoring internal tariffs would also weaken both states in international negotiations and expose their commercial relationship to pressures from two parliaments. Historical reconstruction thus becomes a critique of a party programme whose premises have outlived their evidential basis.
Das Sieghardtsche Buch hat das große Verdienst, eine bisher rein parteimäßig behandelte Frage wissenschaftlich untersucht zu haben.
English translation: Sieghart's book has the great merit of having investigated scientifically a question hitherto treated in a purely partisan manner.
Somary’s praise rests on the conversion of partisan controversy into a historically grounded inquiry. His conclusion extends that inquiry beyond the immediate Austrian-Hungarian dispute. The two states combined common consumption taxes and monopolies with divergent direct taxes, railway tariffs, and economic law. Their citizens could still be treated as foreigners across the internal boundary, and public procurement could exclude the other state’s industry. Customs unity therefore did not entail comprehensive economic or legal integration.
Dieses so ziemlich einzige Beispiel langdauernder Zollunion zwischen zwei selbständigen Staaten zeigt deutlich, welcher Komplex wirtschaftlicher Gesetze identisch sein muß, welcher andere Komplex aber auch bei Zollgemeinschaft verschieden bleiben kann.
English translation: This more or less unique example of a long-lasting customs union between two independent states shows clearly which complex of economic laws must be identical, but also which other complex can remain different even under a customs community.
This distinction gives the review its wider relevance to German commercial-policy research. Somary presents the monarchy as evidence that sustained customs integration can coexist with substantial state autonomy. He leaves the precise boundary between necessary harmonization and permissible institutional difference open, marking it as a research problem beyond the review’s scope rather than claiming that Sieghart has fully resolved it.
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