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Enlightened Despotism and State Building: The Case of Austrian Lombardy1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 February 2009
Extract
It was said that Count Kaunitz, the Austrian chancellor under the enlightened despots Maria Theresa and Joseph II, settled Belgian and Italian affairs every morning while putting on his stockings. The thick volume of correspondence between Vienna and Milan in the second half of the eighteenth century and the wide reform program which the Austrian rulers launched in Lombardy during those years demonstrate, however, that this Italian dominion was much more important to the Habsburgs than the ironic anecdote implied. Indeed, research over the last fifteen years on the reform policy of the enlightened despots in Lombardy has shown that this province was highly significant for the Viennese rulers, who made considerable efforts to integrate it into their empire. Lombardy had both strategic and economic value for the Viennese authorities; strategically, it served as the northern gateway to Italy, thus helping the Habsburgs to maintain their influence in the Italian peninsula. Economically, Lombardy possessed a highly developed agriculture, which provided Vienna with a rich source of revenues.
- Type
- The Habsburg Empire: Its People, Administration, and Art
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota 1984
References
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40 In addition to the five provinces mentioned above, the authorities established the town of Casalmaggiore as a new, separate province.
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89 Capra, “Riforme finanziarie,” pp. 338–340.
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95 Ibid., p. 22.
96 Verri, Carteggio, IV, 255.
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99 Ibid., p. 24; Capra, “Il Settecento,” p. 439.
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101 Capra, “II Settecento,” p. 417; Grab, “The Politics of Subsistence,” pp. 190–191.
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115 Ibid.
116 Ibid., pp. 512–513.
117 Ibid. p. 514.
118 HHStA, Lombardei Collectanea, Fasz. 17.
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120 ACM, Dicasteri, c. 124. Cited also in Ettore Verga, I decurionati nelle città provinciali dell' antico stato di Milano. Memorie presentate alla Commissione araldica (No date or place of publication), p. 25.
121 A copy of the edict is located in the Biblioteca Communale Sormani in Milan, Atti di Govemo 1781–1787.
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123 For the location of this edict see footnote 121.
124 Capra, “Il Settecento,” pp. 517–518.
125 Ibid., p. 524.
126 Valsecchi, L'assolutismo illuminato, II, 210.
127 Capra, “Il Settecento,” p. 516.
128 In his article, “Patrizi, nobili e ricchi borghesi del Dipartimento d'Olona secondo il fisco della I Repubblica Cisalpina 1797–1799,” Archivio storico lombardo, CII (1975) 95–161,Google Scholar Franco Arese showed the vast economic resources that remained in the patricians' hands after the reform period. Analysing a list of tax payers prepared by the French after they occupied Lombardy, Arese shows that out of 286 tax payers who declared an annual income of 10,000–300,000 lire, 156 were patricians with 61.4 per cent of the revenue, in comparison with only sixty-eight non-nobles who declared a mere 14.3 percent of the total sum. The gap between the patricians and non-nobles was even wider in the income range of 45–300,000 lire: thirty patricians, with a total declared revenue of 2,762,000 lire compared with only four non-nobles with a total annual income of 235,000 lire.
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