4 - Cameralist Population Policy and the Problem of Serfdom, 1680–1720

Summary

Cameralist historiography has provided us with an overview of the ideas advanced by the leading cameralist writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. However, cameralist ideas, proposals and solutions are not only to be found in contemporary published literature; they are also contained in the administrative documents of the same period. This latter perspective on cameralist reasoning, although much more closely related to governmental actions, has hitherto been largely neglected in the historiography. The omission can be traced back to the positions originally taken by Albion Small and Kurt Zielenziger, who were of the opinion that the officials of the Kammer could be counted as cameralists only if they expressed their thoughts in writings which distinguished them from other officeholders. Small called cameralist theorists ‘cameralists of the books’, and stressed that his ‘investigation does not go into the evidence about the cameralists of the bureaus’, i.e. the everyday administrative employees of governments who, according to Small, were ‘men of affairs rather than of theory’. Zielenziger labelled the latter ‘fiscalists, the pure practitioners’.

It can be questioned whether approaching cameralism in such a restricted sense remains justified, especially when studying the impact of cameralism on governmental policy and practice. Early modern governments conducted different kinds of projects, and constantly received proposals from below (often outside the administration) that reflected the understandings of the economic ideas of the time. If an officeholder was affected by ‘cameralist’ ideas then he could design ‘cameralist’ solutions for the government, which might be quite independent of the theoretical literature of the time.

Population was a central issue that preoccupied early modern governments, and cameralism here had a strong influence on state policy and action. From the second half of the seventeenth century cameralists devoted a great deal of attention to what was termed Peuplierung in German (borrowing from the French), and which we can translate as ‘peopling’. Cameralist Peuplierungspolitik presupposed that larger populations produced greater wealth (‘ubi populus, ibi obulus’). This idea was not, of course, original to cameralist teaching; we can find it in the Proverbs of Solomon, ‘A large population is a king's glory, but without subjects a prince is ruined’ (Proverbs 14:28). Since the Middle Ages efforts had been directed to attracting new settlers and seeking to populate the land.