Prussia’s reward for its part in France's defeat had come at the Congress of Vienna, where Prussia had been granted most of its lost territories and considerably more, including forty percent of the Kingdom of Saxony and much of the Rhineland.

Much of the territory annexed in the Third Partition of Poland had been granted to Congress Poland under Russian rule.

With these gains in territory, the Prussian kingdom had been reorganized into ten provinces.

Most of the kingdom, aside from the Provinces of East Prussia, West Prussia, and Posen, had become part of the new German Confederation, the association of Central European states created by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 to serve as the successor to the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, which had been abolished in 1806.

Prussia had in 1818 established an internal customs union throughout their state.

Anhalt had joined in 1821; Mecklenburg-Schwerin, in 1826.

Over the objections of Austria’s Metternich, Prussia extends its customs union to include the neighboring Grand Duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt and the Rhine, thereby laying the foundation for economic power based in free trade.

A majority of states of the loose, ineffectual German Confederation, which had been established primarily for defensive purposes and has been plagued by rivalries between Prussia and Austria, form the commercially powerful Zollverein, the German Customs Union established on January 1, 1834.

The member states, initially eighteen, enjoy such advantages as access to the sea, aid in building transportation infrastructures, their own customs administrations, and veto over economic decisions.

The Zollverein removes internal customs barriers, although upholding a protectionist tariff system with foreign trade partners.

The main ideological contributor behind the customs union is Friedrich List, an economist holding mercantilist and protectionist views.

At first including only the close neighbors of Prussia, it will gradually expand to include most of the German states outside of Austria.

The Zollverein totally excludes Austria because of its highly protected industry; this economic exclusion will later exacerbate the Austro-Prussian rivalry for dominance in central Europe during the late ninteenth century.

The Zollverein institutes the first regular census in Germany on December 3, 1834.

The population is 23,478,120.

The Zollverein, or German Customs Union, includes all the German states by 1854 save five small northern states and Austria, which the Zollverein totally excludes because of its highly protected industry.