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This book discusses the impact of cameralism on the practices of governance, early modern state-building and economy in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe. It argues that the cameralist conception of state and economy - a form of 'science' of government dedicated to reforming society while promoting economic development, and often associated mainly with Prussia - had significant impact far beyond Germany and Austria. In fact, its influence spread into Denmark, Sweden, Russia, Portugal, Northern Italy and other parts of Europe. In this volume, an international set of experts discusses administrative practices and policies in relation to population, forestry, proto-industry, trade, mining affairs, education, police regulation, and insurance. The book will appeal to early modernists, economic historians and historians of economic thought. MARTEN SEPPEL is Associate Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Tartu, Estonia. He holds an MPhil from the University of Cambridge. KEITH TRIBE has a PhD from the University of Cambridge and taught at the University of Keele (UK) from 1976 to 2002, retiring as Reader in Economics. He is now working as a highly regarded professional translator and independent scholar. Forthcoming work includes a new translation of Max Weber, Economy and Society Part One (Harvard University Press, 2018). His publications include Strategies of Economic Order (CUP, 1995/2007); The Economy of the Word. Language, History, and Economics (OUP, 2015); and (edited with Pat Hudson) The Contradictions of Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Agenda, 2016). Contributors: ROGER BARTLETT, ALEXANDRE MENDES CUNHA, HANS FRAMBACH, GUILLAUME GARNER, LARS MAGNUSSON, INGRID MARKUSSEN, FRANK OBERHOLZNER, GÖRAN RYDÉN, MARTEN SEPPEL, KEITH TRIBE, PAUL WARDE
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.
The primary aim of this book is to clarify the impact of cameralism in early modern Europe, and to make a tighter connection between cameralist teaching on the one hand, and administrative and economic practices on the other. It was the latter that came first: officials working in the seventeenth-century Kammer of the German territorial states were known as Kameralisten. ‘Cameralism’ later became the name by which both teaching and practice were known, although more closely associated with the teaching than the practice. Cameralist teaching was directed to the state's interest in its resources, in better administration and in the common good, the purpose being in order to increase the prince's incomes, establish a sustainable development of economy, and create a well-ordered state.
The essays collected here explore the practices and spheres in which cameralist teaching left its mark in early modern Europe. It is exactly this linking of cameralist ideas to contemporary politics and practice which offers an important historical dimension for understanding cameralist literature. For too long the approach to cameralism has treated it as a body of thought, analysing one or another cameralist author's standpoints and works. Another approach has been to study cameralist literature through the prism of a certain issue (e.g. cameralist perceptions of the role of the court, of the functioning of the grain trade, of population policy, the role of guilds, the importance of mining, policy doctrines and the state, the centrality of happiness, of work, or of gender). The focus has been directed not so much to the application of cameralist ideas, but rather to the alleged ‘theoretical foundations’ of cameralism.
Of course, the question of whether economic ideas were reflected in any real practice is not new, and is a widely discussed topic. Research on cameralist teaching has in fact for some time taken an interest in the actual practice of cameralist principles in the early modern state. The subtitle of Andre Wakefield's book of 2009 is ‘German Cameralism as Science and Practice’. He suggests that cameralism, qua Kameralwissenschaft, was a kind of fantasy fiction and utopian theory, rather than any plan that could be put to use in administrative practice. He argues that ‘Cameralists liked to publish “practical” treatises about how to brew beer or raise cattle, for example, and they often made it sound easy.