Chapter Five - How Europe Got Rich – The Austrian Example

Summary

State Intervention and Economic Growth in Pre-industrial Europe

Only for reasons of analytical completeness, a brief sketch of Austrian economic policy and development is given here, mainly because Hornigk reiterated, passim and almost ad nauseam, that with ‘Oesterreich über alles’ wann es nur will, he had formulated a blueprint economic development model for the Austrian parts of the Holy Roman Empire, extending mainly, but not exclusively, to the ‘Hereditary Lands’ (Österreichische Erblande), that is lands held in hereditary possession by the Holy Roman Emperors, which at that time comprised most parts of Austria proper, Bohemia and Hungary. We have seen, however, that – contrary to the book's title, which is in many ways misleading, especially to the modern reader –, the work represents by no means a peculiar ‘Austrian’ strategy of development. Other states would – and should, in Hornigk's opinion – apply the ‘Hornigk’ strategy as well. As we have seen in the list of editions (Table 1), the first edition ever to be published within Austrian borders was the last known for the pre-industrial age: the much-amended and commented upon 1784 Vienna edition by Benedikt Franz Hermann. That means literally all known editions prior to the twentieth century were printed within the ‘German’ parts of the Holy Roman Empire. The ‘Hornigk Strategy’ therefore, was more akin to a general ‘German’, if not continental European model. It picked up on theories and practices that had been long established by the ‘Mercantilist’ states of early modern Europe and which have been masterfully surveyed in the old, but in this regard by no means out-dated, comparative study by Heckscher.