1st Edition

Cameralism and the Enlightenment Happiness, Governance and Reform in Transnational Perspective

Edited By Ere Nokkala, Nicholas B. Miller Copyright 2020
    336 Pages
    by Routledge

    368 Pages
    by Routledge

    Cameralism and the Enlightenment reassesses the relationship between two key phenomena of European history often disconnected from each other. It builds on recent insights from global history, transnational history and Enlightenment studies to reflect on the dynamic interactions of cameralism, an early modern set of practices and discourses of statecraft prominent in central Europe, with the broader political, intellectual and cultural developments of the Enlightenment world. Through contributions from prominent scholars across the field of Enlightenment studies, the volume analyzes eighteenth-century cameralist authors’ engagements with commerce, colonialism and natural law. Challenging the caricature of cameralism as a German, land-locked version of mercantilism, the volume reframes its importance for scholars of the Enlightenment broadly conceived.

    This volume goes beyond the typical focus on Britain and France in studies of political economy, widening perspectives about the dissemination of ideas of governance, happiness and reform to focus on multidirectional exchanges across continental Europe and beyond during the eighteenth century. Emphasizing the practice of theory, it proposes the study of the porosity of ideas in their exchange, transmission and mediation between spaces and discourses as a key dimension of cultural and intellectual history.

    1. Introduction

    Ere Nokkala and Nicholas B. Miller

    Part I: Interactions

    2. On Happiness: Welfare in Cameralist Discourse in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

    Lars Magnusson

    3. Reconciling Private Interests and the Common Good: An Essay on Cameralist Discourse

    Hans-Erich Bödeker

    4. A Transnational German: JHG von Justi on International Trade

    Ere Nokkala

    5. The International Politics of Cameralism: The Balance of Power and Dutch Translations of Justi

    Koen Stapelbroek

    Part II: Widening Perspectives

    6. Cameralism and the Politics of Populationism: Comparative Perspectives

    Nicholas B. Miller

    7. Towards Ecological Statehood?: Cameralism and the Human-Nature Interface in the Eighteenth Century

    Richard Hölzl

    Part III: Dissemination and Local Mediation

    8. Cesare Beccaria as Functionary, Lecturer, Cameralist?: Interpreting Cameralism in Habsburg Lombardy

    Alexandra Ortolja-Baird

    9. Cameralist Ideas in Portuguese Enlightened Reformism: The Diplomat Rodrigo de Souza Coutinho and His Circuits of Intellectual Exchange

    Alexandre Mendes Cunha

    10. Immanuel Kant and the Enlightenment of the Cameral Sciences

    Jonas Gerlings

    11. Cameralism in Spain: Polizeywissenschaft and the Bourbon Reforms

    Adriana Luna-Fabritius

    12. What is Cameralism?

    Keith Tribe

    13. Cameralism in Eighteenth-Century Russia: Reform, Translations and Academic Mobility

    Danila E. Raskov

    14. Epilogue

    Anthony J. La Vopa

    Biography

    Ere Nokkala is University Researcher at the University of Helsinki, Department of Philosophy, History and Art Studies.

    Nicholas B. Miller is Research Fellow at the University of Lisbon, Institute of Social Sciences.