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Rh and Neuhall near Hanover, and at Lüneburg; and petroleum may be obtained south of Celle. In the cold regions of the northern lowlands peat occurs in beds of immense thickness.

Manufactures.—Works for the manufacture of iron, copper, silver, lead, vitriol and sulphur are carried on to a large extent. The iron works are very important: smelting is carried on in the Harz and near Osnabrück; there are extensive foundries and machine factories at Hanover, Linden, Osnabrück, Hameln, Geestemünde, Harburg, Osterode, &c., and manufactories of arms at Herzberg, and of cutlery in the towns of the Harz and in the Sollinger Forest. The textile industries are prosecuted chiefly in the towns. Linen yarn and cloth are largely manufactured, especially in the south about Osnabrück and Hildesheim, and bleaching is engaged in extensively; woollen cloths are made to a considerable extent in the south about Einbeck, Göttingen and Hameln; cotton-spinning and weaving have their principal seats at Hanover and Linden. Glass houses, paper-mills, potteries, tile works and tobacco-pipe works are numerous. Wax is bleached to a considerable extent, and there are numerous tobacco factories, tanneries, breweries, vinegar works and brandy distilleries. Shipbuilding is an important industry, especially at Wilhelmshaven, Papenburg, Leer, Stade and Harburg; and at Münden river-barges are built.

Commerce.—Although the carrying trade of Hanover is to a great extent absorbed by Hamburg and Bremen, the shipping of the province counted, in 1903, 750 sailing vessels and 86 steamers of, together, 55,498 registered tons. The natural port is Bremen-Geestemünde and to it is directed the river traffic down the Weser, which practically forms the chief commercial artery of the province.

Communications.—The roads throughout are, on the whole, well laid, and those connecting the principal towns macadamized. Hanover is intersected by important trunk lines of railway; notably the lines from Berlin to Cologne, from Hamburg to Frankfort-on-Main, from Hamburg to Bremen and Cologne, and from Berlin to Amsterdam.

History.—The name Hanover (Hohenufer = high bank), originally confined to the town which became the capital of the duchy of Lüneburg-Calenberg, came gradually into use to designate, first, the duchy itself, and secondly, the electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg; and it was officially recognized as the name of the state when in 1814 the electorate was raised to the rank of a kingdom.

The early history of Hanover is merged in that of the duchy of (q.v.), from which the duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg and its offshoots, the duchies of Lüneburg-Celle and Lüneburg-Calenberg have sprung. Ernest I. (1497–1546), duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, who introduced the reformed doctrines into Lüneburg, obtained the whole of this duchy in 1539; and in 1569 his two surviving sons made an arrangement which was afterwards responsible for the birth of the kingdom of Hanover. By this agreement the greater part of the duchy, with its capital at Celle, came to William (1535–1592), the younger of the brothers, who gave laws to his land and added to its area; and this duchy of Lüneburg-Celle was subsequently ruled in turn by four of his sons: Ernest II. (1564–1611), Christian (1566–1633), Augustus (d. 1636) and Frederick (d. 1648). In addition to these four princes Duke William left three other sons, and in 1610 the seven brothers entered into a compact that the duchy should not be divided, and that only one of them should marry and continue the family. Casting lots to determine this question, the lot fell upon the sixth brother, George (1582–1641), who was a prominent soldier during the period of the Thirty Years’ War and saw service in almost all parts of Europe, fighting successively for Christian IV. of Denmark, the emperor Ferdinand II., and for the Swedes both before and after the death of Gustavus Adolphus. In 1617 he aided his brother, Duke Christian, to add Grubenhagen to Lüneburg, and after the extinction of the family of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel in 1634, he obtained Calenberg for himself, making Hanover the capital of his small dukedom. In 1648, on Duke Frederick’s death, George’s eldest son, Christian Louis (d. 1665), became duke of Lüneburg-Celle; and at this time he handed over Calenberg, which he had ruled since his father’s death, to his second brother, George William (d. 1705). When Christian Louis died George William succeeded him in Lüneburg-Celle; but the duchy was also claimed by a younger brother, John Frederick, a cultured and enlightened prince who had forsaken the Lutheran faith of his family and had become a Roman Catholic. Soon, however, by an arrangement John Frederick received Calenberg and Grubenhagen, which he ruled in absolute fashion, creating a standing army and modelling his court after that of Louis XIV., and which came on his death in 1679 to his youngest brother, Ernest Augustus (1630–1698), the Protestant bishop of Osnabrück. During the French wars of aggression the Lüneburg princes were eagerly courted by Louis XIV. and by his opponents; and after some hesitation George William, influenced by Ernest Augustus, fought among the Imperialists, while John Frederick was ranged on the side of France. In 1689 George William was one of the claimants for the duchy of Saxe-Lauenburg, which was left without a ruler in that year; and after a struggle with John George III., elector of Saxony, and other rivals, he was invested with the duchy by the emperor Leopold I. It was, however, his more ambitious brother, Ernest Augustus, who did most for the prestige and advancement of the house. Having introduced the principle of primogeniture into Calenberg in 1682, Ernest determined to secure for himself the position of an elector, and the condition of Europe and the exigencies of the emperor favoured his pretensions. He made skilful use of Leopold’s difficulties; and in 1692, in return for lavish promises of assistance to the Empire and the Habsburgs, the emperor granted him the rank and title of elector of Brunswick-Lüneburg with the office of standard-bearer in the Holy Roman Empire. Indignant protests followed this proceeding. A league was formed to prevent any addition to the electoral college; France and Sweden were called upon for assistance; and the constitution of the Empire was reduced to a state of chaos. This agitation, however, soon died away; and in 1708 George Louis, the son and successor of Ernest Augustus, was recognized as an elector by the imperial diet. George Louis married his cousin Sophia Dorothea, the only child of George William of Lüneburg-Celle; and on his uncle’s death in 1705 he united this duchy, together with Saxe-Lauenburg, with his paternal inheritance of Calenberg or Hanover. His father, Ernest Augustus, had taken a step of great importance in the history of Hanover when he married Sophia, daughter of the elector palatine, Frederick V., and grand-daughter of James I. of England, for, through his mother, the elector George Louis became, by the terms of the Act of Settlement of 1701, king of Great Britain and Ireland in 1714.

From this time until the death of William IV. in 1837, Lüneburg or Hanover, was ruled by the same sovereign as Great Britain, and this personal union was not without important results for both countries. Under George I. Hanover joined the alliance against Charles XII. of Sweden in 1715; and by the peace of Stockholm in November 1719 the elector received the duchies of Bremen and Verden, which formed an important addition to the electorate. His son and successor, George II., who founded the university of Göttingen in 1737, was on bad terms with his brother-in-law Frederick William I. of Prussia, and his nephew Frederick the Great; and in 1729 war between Prussia and Hanover was only just avoided. In 1743 George took up arms on behalf of the empress Maria Theresa; but in August 1745 the danger in England from the Jacobites led him to sign the convention of Hanover with Frederick the Great, although the struggle with France raged around his electorate until the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748. Induced by political exigencies George allied himself with Frederick the Great when the Seven Years’ War broke out in 1756; but in September 1757 his son William Augustus, duke of Cumberland, was compelled after his defeat at Hastenbeck to sign the convention of Klosterzeven and to abandon Hanover to the French. English money, however, came to the rescue; in 1758 Ferdinand, duke of Brunswick, cleared the electorate of the invader; and Hanover suffered no loss of territory at the peace of 1763. Both George I. and George II. preferred Hanover to England as a place of residence, and it was a frequent and perhaps justifiable cause of complaint that the interests of Great Britain were sacrificed to those of the smaller country. But George III. was more British than either his grandfather or his great-grandfather, and owing to a variety of causes the foreign policies of the two countries began to diverge in the later years of his reign. Two