Politics and industrialization

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Dunlavy examines the rich political context of a seeming paradox: authoritarian, centralized Prussia adopted a largely hands-off policy toward the railroads, but the more liberal, fragmented American government sought vigorously both to promote and to regulate the new industry. By also fragmenting interests and technological choices, the American structure impeded the emergence of the railroad as a system, while the centralized Prussian structure facilitated it.