EN
The article analyzes the position and the positioning strategy of East Central Europe in the so-called “first globalization (1850-1914)”. The focus is on foreign trade and the transfer of the two most important production factors, i.e. capital and labor. East Central Europe included in this period the territories of the Habsburg Monarchy, the Kingdom of Poland as a part of the Russian Empire, and the eastern provinces of the Kingdom of Prussia which were from 1871 onwards part of the German Reich. The article combines the theories and methods of economic history and transnational history. It sees itself as a contribution to a trans-regional history of East Central Europe by analyzing first the main “flows” and then the influence of “controls”.