But it was in imperial Germany that Bismarck first introduced mandatory social insurances on a grand scale (Kuhnle and Sander 2010), including sickness insurance in 1883, an industrial accident scheme in 1884 and old age and invalidity insurance in 1889. The Prussian state, moreover, had already started to experiment with social insurance or health funds (see Hennock 2007) in the 1840s. Around 1850, most industrializing capitalist countries already had some version of a modern poor law and had started to introduce labour protection measures (Polanyi 1957). The welfare state is European in origin because its birth is commonly dated to late 19th century Germany. Nevertheless, the welfare state is seen as something thoroughly European in origin, in character and even in terms of identity.
Allow me to start this chapter by saying that there is no such thing as the European welfare state.
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