Kaunitz and Enlightened Absolutism: 1753-1780.

Melton, James Van Horn

"The domestic condition of a Monarch," wrote Wenzel Anton Kaunitz in 1749, "is . . . the first and most important consideration which must be introduced and assessed in all diplomatic policy deliberations." This precept (cited in Szabo, p. 350) seems incongruous in light of Kaunitz's subsequent reputation. The Kaunitz to whom I was first introduced as an undergraduate was a man obsessed with armies and diplomacy, the wily architect of the "diplomatic revolution" that ended the monarchy's traditional enmity toward France in the hopes of destroying an upstart Prussian rival.

Franz Szabo's excellent biography of the Austrian statesman shows just how distorted this conventional portrait is. Already in the 1740s, argues Szabo, Kaunitz's chief interest was domestic policy. Austria's subsequent failure to achieve its goals in the Seven Years War only reinforced his conviction that the roots of the monarchy's weakness lay within its borders. Kaunitz was convinced that the survival of the monarchy depended neither on diplomatic somersaults in peace, nor on troop strength in war, but on far-reaching reforms in agriculture, commerce, education, finance, and the church.

Szabo focuses on the reign of Maria Theresa (1740-80), when Kaunitz exercised his greatest influence over Habsburg policy. A second volume is planned, which will trace the further trajectory of Kaunitz's career under Joseph II (1780-90) and Leopold II (1790-2). This study in effect picks up where Grete Klingenstein's brilliant and still indispensable book on the young Kaunitz (Der Aufstieg des Hauses Kaunitz: Studien zur Herkunft und Bildung des Staatskanzlers Wenzel Anton [Gottingen, 1974]) leaves off, with his appointment as state chancellor in 1753. It is very much a political biography, and touches only briefly on the man's well-known eccentricities (some of which, such as teeth-brushing and abstinence from red meat, seem more sensible today than they did to contemporaries). There is also relatively little on war and diplomacy, although Szabo's concise analysis of Austria's military performance in the Seven Years War is to my mind the best summary to be found anywhere.

But in accordance with Szabo's emphasis on the Primat der Innenpolitik, the overwhelming focus of his book is domestic policy. Out of a total of nine chapters, six examine Kaunitz's reform efforts in the fields of administration, finances, commerce, agriculture, education, the Church, and conscription policy. The narrative can be dense, much of it detailing the internecine rivalries and administrative chaos that often impeded Kaunitz's efforts to formulate and implement his reformist agenda. Yet Szabo's account of Kaunitz's bureaucratic battles and infighting serves an important purpose. It highlights above all the fact that absolutism was not a monolithic machine but an administrative patchwork of personal rivalries and disparate visions of the proper relationship between state and society. Ideologically, argues Szabo, the Habsburg bureaucracy was split into three ideological camps: 1) the traditionalists, who opposed any fundamental changes in the social and political structure of the monarchy; 2) the cameralists (after cameralism, the central European variant of mercantilism), who believed that the strength of a state ultimately hinged on how effectively it could tax its subjects; and 3) the party of "enlightened absolutism," led by Kaunitz.

Like the cameralists, who looked to Prussia for their model, Kaunitz and the Enlightenment party believed in the efficacy of state action. But their goals were less narrowly fiscal, and they lacked the cameralist faith in the ability of the state to achieve its goals through coercive means. Kaunitz was convinced by the 1750s that further increases in the level of taxation would be economically ruinous. He believed that the financial well-being of the State would be best secured not through the fiscal exactions of the state, but through more positive measures that unleashed the productive energies of the population. Here Kaunitz's position pointed toward a broader social and moral agenda that Szabo views as the hallmark of enlightened absolutism in the Habsburg lands. The intellectual sources of this program were eclectic and included seventeenth-century neostoic philosophy, the reform Catholicism of Ludovico Antonio Muratori, and protoliberal strains in the British and continental Enlightenments. But informing them was a common assumption: government was most powerful and efficacious when it secured compliance through internal assent rather than external coercion.

This premise found concrete expression in the domestic reforms Kaunitz championed. He was a strong supporter of the public credit schemes advanced by Ludwig Zinzendorf, believing that the monarchy could best liquidate its debts through the confidence of investors rather than the imposition of new taxes. In the commercial arena he favoured protoliberal policies that restricted monopolies and reduced internal tariffs. He was a staunch proponent of agrarian reform, and advocated abolishing serfdom, commuting peasant labour services into cash payments, and parcelling large estates into peasant freeholds. He backed the abolition of torture, the liberalization of censorship, and universal schooling to create disciplined and productive subjects. He was an advocate of religious toleration, opposing (unsuccessfully) Maria Theresa's persecution of Moravian Protestants.

But if Kaunitz embodied the ideals of enlightened absolutism, where then does this leave Joseph II? It is ironic that many of Kaunitz's most bitter policy struggles, above all on military issues, were with the man whose subsequent reign come to epitomize enlightened absolutist rule. Szabo never fully explains this paradox, and one could dismiss the question as semantic except that he relies so heavily on enlightened absolutism as an analytical category. Szabo does not, at any rate, appear to like Joseph any more than Kaunitz did, and he draws rather invidious comparisons between Joseph's impetuous militarism and Kaunitz's domestic focus. Derek Beales, Joseph's most recent and sympathetic biographer, would doubtless take issue with this portrait. Like Szabo, Professor Beales is at work on a sequel, and it will be interesting to see how Joseph and Kaunitz fare in each.

In the meantime Szabo has produced the best study to date on the political career of a man who was arguably the most important statesman of the eighteenth century. On this side of the Atlantic, at least, Szabo's command of the published and archival sources for the Theresian period is unrivalled. The result is a labour of love, long in the making but well worth the wait.

James Van Horn Melton Emory University