Joseph II and Bavaria: Two Eighteenth Century Attempts at German Unification

In his great 1848 historical drama,Ein Bruderzwist im Hause Habsburg, the Austrian playwright Franz Grillparzer has Emperor Matthias utter the words that have often been applied to understanding the whole history of the Habsburg monarchy:Das ist der Fluch von unserm edeln Haus:Auf halben Wegen und zu halber TatMit halben Mitteln zauderhaft zu streben.[That is the curse of our noble house:Striving hesitatingly on half waysto half action with half means.]True as those sentiments may be of many periods in the history of the monarchy, the one period of which it cannotbe said is the second half of eighteenth century. The age of Maria Theresa, Joseph II, and Leopold II was perhaps the greatest era of consistent and committed reform in the four-hundred-year history of the monarchy. What I want to address in this article are some aspects of the dynamic of this reform era, and this falls into two categories. On the one hand, there is the broad energizing or motive force behind the larger development, and on the other, there are the ideas or assumptions that lay behind the policies adopted. As might be evident from the subtitle of my article, I propose to look primarily at the second of these categories. I do so because I think while Habsburg historiography has reached considerable consensus on the first, it has not looked enough on the second as an explanatory hermeneutic.

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The Root of all Evil? Money and the Scottish Catholic Mission in the Eighteenth Century

Studies in Church History ◽

10.1017/s042420840000838x ◽

1987 ◽

Vol 24 ◽

pp. 267-282 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

J. F. McMillan

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

International Finance ◽

Ancien Regime ◽

Material Resources ◽

The World ◽

Catholic Mission ◽

Ancien Régime ◽

Joseph Ii ◽

The Church

We are all familiar with the idea that the Church is in the world but not of it, and that too great a preoccupation with earthly things may compromise the Church’s other-worldly objectives. One thinks of the extravagance of a Renaissance pope such as Leo X, reputed to have said, ‘Let us enjoy the papacy, since God has given it to us’: or of an ancien régime prelate like the Archbishop of Mainz, who arrived for the coronation of the Emperor Joseph II with a retinue of fourteen sumptuous carriages: or, in our own time, the Vatican’s reported links with some of the shadier elements in the world of international finance. Yet, it is equally obvious that lack of adequate material resources can act as a serious impediment to the Church’s mission to go forth and teach all nations. Excessive poverty, like excessive wealth, brings its own problems. As the adage has it, not money itself but the desire for money is the root of all evil. Excessive poverty and the desire for money are the themes which I wish to pursue in this paper, in the context of the Scottish Catholic Mission in the eighteenth century, and more specifically as they relate to the so-called Jansenist quarrels which divided the Mission in the 1730s and 1740s.

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Enlightened Despotism and State Building: The Case of Austrian Lombardy

Austrian History Yearbook ◽

10.1017/s0067237800002502 ◽

1984 ◽

Vol 19 (2) ◽

pp. 43-72

Author(s):

Alexander Grab

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

Economic Value ◽

State Building ◽

Rich Source ◽

Reform Policy ◽

Italian Peninsula ◽

Reform Program ◽

Joseph Ii

It was said that Count Kaunitz, the Austrian chancellor under the enlightened despots Maria Theresa and Joseph II, settled Belgian and Italian affairs every morning while putting on his stockings. The thick volume of correspondence between Vienna and Milan in the second half of the eighteenth century and the wide reform program which the Austrian rulers launched in Lombardy during those years demonstrate, however, that this Italian dominion was much more important to the Habsburgs than the ironic anecdote implied. Indeed, research over the last fifteen years on the reform policy of the enlightened despots in Lombardy has shown that this province was highly significant for the Viennese rulers, who made considerable efforts to integrate it into their empire. Lombardy had both strategic and economic value for the Viennese authorities; strategically, it served as the northern gateway to Italy, thus helping the Habsburgs to maintain their influence in the Italian peninsula. Economically, Lombardy possessed a highly developed agriculture, which provided Vienna with a rich source of revenues.

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Cameralism in the Habsburg Monarchy and Hungary

History of Political Economy ◽

10.1215/00182702-8993400 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 551-569

Author(s):

Antal Szántay

Keyword(s):

Higher Education ◽

Eighteenth Century ◽

Seventeenth Century ◽

System Integration ◽

The State ◽

Habsburg Monarchy ◽

Administrative Reforms ◽

State Economy ◽

A Priority ◽

Joseph Ii

The article argues that Cameralism and the Habsburg Monarchy were in strong mutual interchange during the eighteenth century. After the Great Turkish War and the War of the Spanish Succession, the Habsburg Monarchy had to incorporate vast territories into the monarchy’s governmental system. Integration, unification, and centralization were on the agenda. Viennese government circles relied on Cameralism as the leading theory of state, economy, and society, while Cameralism rose, broadened, and became institutionalized in administration and higher education. The most important works of late-seventeenth-century Cameralism were formulated in the service of Emperor Leopold I. Cameralism with different branches of knowledge serviceable for the state became fully institutionalized in the higher education in the Habsburg Monarchy—including Hungary. Cameralism, specifically the ideas of Johann Heinrich Gottlob von Justi, can be linked to the fundamental administrative reforms of Count Friedrich Wilhelm von Haugwitz under Maria Theresa in the 1740s and of Emperor Joseph II in the 1780s. Justi developed an idea of government characterized by centralization, uniformity, and bureaucracy, which became a priority goal of Joseph II’s reforms. Finally, Cameralism was the backbone of policies in finances, taxation, and trade regulations though more openminded toward rising economic ideas.

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Limits to Despotism: Idealizations of Chinese Governance and Legitimizations of Absolutist Europe

Journal of Early Modern History ◽

10.1163/15700658-12342370 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 17 (4) ◽

pp. 347-389 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Stefan Gaarsmand Jacobsen

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

Early Modern ◽

The Political ◽

History Of Political Thought ◽

Fiscal Reforms ◽

History Of ◽

Jesuit Missionaries ◽

New Perspective ◽

In The Beginning ◽

Joseph Ii

Abstract The term “oriental despotism” was used to describe all larger Asian empires in eighteenth century Europe. It was meaningful to use about the Ottoman, Mughal and Chinese empires. However, this did not mean that all Europeans writing on Asian empires implied that they were all tyrannies with no political qualities. The Chinese system of government received great interest among early modern political thinkers in Europe ever since it was described in the reports that Jesuit missionaries had sent back from China in the beginning of the seventeenth century. The descriptions of an ethical and political bond between emperor and administrators in China and of specific administrative organs in which age-old principles were managed made a great impression on many European readers of these reports. Although it did not remain an undisputed belief in Europe, many intellectuals held China to be a model of how the power of a sovereign could be limited or curbed within an absolutist system of government. This article investigates three cases of how the models of China were conceived by theorists reading Jesuit reports and how they subsequently strategically communicated this model to the courts of Prussia, Austria, and Russia. These three ambitious European monarchies have been regarded to give rise to a form of “enlightened absolutism” that formed a tradition different from those of England and France, the states whose administrative systems formed the most powerful models in this period. Rather than describing the early modern theories about China’s despotism as a narrative parallel, but unrelated to the development of policy programs of the respective states, this article documents how certain elements of the model of China were integrated in the political writings of Frederick II of Prussia, Joseph II of Austria, and Catherine II of Russia. Thus, in addition to the history of political thought on China, the article adds a new perspective to how these monarchs argued for fiscal reforms and a centralization and professionalization of their administrations.

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The False Joseph II

The Historical Journal ◽

10.1017/s0018246x00008414 ◽

1975 ◽

Vol 18 (3) ◽

pp. 467-495 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Derek Beales

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

Habsburg Monarchy ◽

The World ◽

Revolution Francaise ◽

Recent Monograph ◽

Joseph Ii

‘Since I have ascended the throne, and wear the first diadem in the world, I have made philosophy the legislator of my empire.’ Of all the sayings attributed to the Emperor Joseph II, this is easily the most hackneyed. It figures in many surveys of eighteenth-century history, whether old like W. O. Hassall's and A. H. Johnson's or new like those by Stuart Andrews, Maurice Ashley, R. W. Harris and E. N. Williams; in what is regarded as the best biography of Joseph in German, by Viktor Bibl; in the most extended and best known Life in English, Saul K. Padover'sThe Revolutionary Emperor; in Herbert H. Rowen's collection of documents,From Absolutism to Revolution; in Albert Sorel'sL'Europe et la Révolution française; in Victor-L. Tapié'sThe Rise and Fall of the Habsburg Monarchy; and in the recent monograph by Walter W. Davis,Joseph II: An Imperial Reformer for the Austrian Netherlands. The remark is the first sentence of a letter which the emperor is supposed to have written to Cardinal Herzan, his minister in Rome, in October 1781, and which goes on:

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