Družstevnictví v českých zemích do první světové války

The study analyzes selected aspects of cooperative development in Bohemian lands between the 1850s and World War One. Based on methods of modern economic and social history, the paper focuses on four important topics: 1. It deals with the four key laws that regulated the cooperatives and concludes that they created a solid basis for cooperative development. 2. It analyzes the development of cooperatives between the late 1840s and late 1880s, pointing out the different development of credit and consumer cooperatives during this period which was primarily caused by very different social groups being members of these two types of cooperatives. 3. It analyses the rapid growth of cooperatives since the 1890s, during which thousands of cooperatives and dozens of new cooperative types emerged. The study proves that the most important reason for such explosive growth was the general modernization as a part of the industrial revolution. 4. It compares the statistics of the 1890s and 1910 and demonstrates that cooperatives became a respected and strong part of the society and economy.