ABSTRACT
By 1914, the spread of modern manufacturing across the independent Balkan states and the Austro-Hungarian borderlands was too limited to speak of “sustainable” development. Small industrial sectors had nonetheless appeared across the region. During the interwar period, machine-powered manufacturing advanced more quickly than foreign trade. Starting from a low base, its level fell short of transferring the majority of labor and capital into an urban industrial economy on the British or Central Europe pattern. The industrial startups and spread by 1939 in some sectors did however create a small modern base whose experience would help full-scale industrial development to proceed after the Second World War. A case in point is the textile industry, already a leading branch of manufacturing in the pre-1914 Balkans. It had not only received state support and state purchases, also a precedent for the post-1945 communist regimes. Domestic and foreign investment in joint-stock incorporation by the late 1930s was also precedent for privatization after 1989.
