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A HABSBURG EMPEROR FOR THE NEXT CENTURY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2010

HAMISH SCOTT
HAMISH SCOTT
Affiliation:
UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS
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Review Articles
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The Historical Journal , Volume 53 , Issue 1 , March 2010 , pp. 197 - 216
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

1 Beales, Joseph II, ii, p. 365.

2 Derek Beales, Joseph II, i: In the shadow of Maria Theresa, 1741–1780 (Cambridge, 1987): see the review article by Klingenstein, Grete, ‘Revisions of enlightened absolutism: “the Austrian monarchy is like no other”’, ante, 33 (1990), pp. 155–67Google Scholar.

3 Paul von Mitrofanov, Joseph II., seine politische und kulturelle Tätigkeit (2 vols., Vienna, 1910). It had originally been published in Russian three years earlier, in 1907. There is an admirable brief introduction to Mitrofanov (1873–1917) by T. C. W. Blanning, ‘An old but new biography of Leopold II’, in T. C. W. Blanning and David Cannadine, eds., History and biography: essays in honour of Derek Beales (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 53–72.

4 Blanning, ‘An old but new biography’, passim.

5 See especially the important catalogue of an exhibition held at the great monastery of Melk in 1980, which was preceded by a series of short articles on the emperor's life and reign: Österreich zur Zeit Kaiser Josephs II.: Mitregent Kaiserin Maria Theresias, Kaiser und Landesfürst (Vienna, 1980). Two of the most interesting recent monographs have been studies of government: Waltraud Heindl, Gehorsame Rebellen: Bürokratie und Beamte in Österreich, 1780–1848 (Vienna, 1991), and Renate Zedinger, Die Verwaltung der Österreichischen Niederlände in Wien (1714–1795) (Vienna, 2000).

6 Antal Szántay, Regionalpolitik im alten Europa (Budapest, 2005); Michael Hochedlinger, Krise und Wiederherstellung: Österreichische Grossmachtpolitik zwischen Türkenkrieg und ‘Zweiter Diplomatischer Revolution’, 1787–1791 (Berlin, 2000); Dickson, P. G. M., ‘Joseph II's Hungarian land survey’, English Historical Review, 106 (1991), pp. 611–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘Joseph II's reshaping of the Austrian church’, ante, 36 (1993), pp. 89–114; idem, ‘Monarchy and bureaucracy in late eighteenth-century Austria’, English Historical Review, 110 (1995), pp. 323–67; idem, ‘Count Karl von Zinzendorf's “New accountancy”: the structure of Austrian government finance in peace and war, 1781–1791’, International History Review, 29 (2007), pp. 22–56; idem, Finance and government under Maria Theresia (2 vols., Oxford, 1987); J. Karniel, Die Toleranzpolitik Kaiser Josephs II. (Gerlingen, 1986); T. C. W. Blanning, Joseph II. (London, 1994).

7 See especially Thomas Winkelbauer, Österreichische Geschichte, 1522–1699: Ständefreiheit und Fürstenmacht – Länder und Untertanen des Hauses Habsburg im Konfessionellen Zeitalter (2 vols., Vienna, 2003); cf. R. J. W. Evans, Austria, Hungary, and the Habsburgs: essays on Central Europe, c. 1683–1867 (Oxford, 2006).

8 See the judicious account of these reforms, and the debates surrounding them, in Beales, Joseph II, i, ch. 14. The major contributions to this debate were: E. Winter, Der Josefinismus: Die Geschichte des österreichischen Reformkatholizismus, 1740–1848 (1943; 2nd edn, Berlin, 1962); F. Valjavec, Josephinismus: zur geistigen Entwicklung österreichs im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (2nd edn, Munich, 1945); F. Maass, Der Josephinismus: Quellen zu seiner Geschichte in Österreich, 1760–1850 (5 vols., Vienna, 1951–61); G. Klingenstein, Staatsverwaltung und kirkliche Autorität im 18. Jahrhundert (Vienna, 1970); P. Hersche, Der Spätjansenismus in Österreich (Vienna, 1977); E. Kovács, ed., Katholische Aufklärung und Josephinismus (Vienna, 1979); and H. Klueting, Der Josephinismus (Darmstadt, 1995).

9 Richard Georg Plaschka and Grete Klingenstein, eds., Österreich im Europa der Aufklärung: Kontinuität und Zäsur zur Zeit Maria Theresias und Josephs II. (2 vols., Vienna, 1985).

10 Klingenstein, ‘Revisions of enlightened absolutism’, p. 163.

11 Beales, Joseph II, i, ch. 14; ‘Joseph II and Josephism’, in Beales, Enlightenment and reform, pp. 287–308.

12 Beales, Joseph II, ii, pp. 5, 372. These figures all derive from Professor Dickson's careful calculations: Finance and government, i, pp. 318–19; idem, ‘Monarchy and bureaucracy’, p. 353.

13 There is a notable study by Leslie Bodi, Tauwetter in Wien: Zur Prosa der österreichischen Aufklärung, 1781–1795 (Frankfurt am Main, 1977). Censorship reform was broached for the first time within a week of Maria Theresa's death: Beales, Joseph II, ii, p. 90.

14 Beales, Joseph II, i, chs. 8, 11, and 12, and the striking map on pp. 244–5.

15 Beales, , ‘The false Joseph II’, ante, 18 (1975), pp. 467–95Google Scholar, reprinted in a revised and expanded version in Beales, Enlightenment and reform, pp. 117–54.

16 Hugh Brogan, Alexis de Tocqueville: prophet of democracy in the age of revolution – a biography (London, 2006), p. 692.

17 See his ‘Joseph II, petitions and the public sphere’, in H. Scott and B. Simms, eds., Cultures of power in Europe during the long eighteenth century (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 249–68; cf. Beales, Joseph II, ii, pp. 143–50, 681, and passim.

18 There is a lively account of developments before 1780: ‘Love and the empire: Maria Theresa and her co-regents’, in Beales, Enlightenment and reform, pp. 182–206.

19 Professor Franz A. J. Szabo, whose pioneering Kaunitz and enlightened absolutism, 1753–1780 (Cambridge, 1994) did so much to rescue the chancellor's career under Maria Theresa from obscurity, is at work on an eagerly anticipated sequel which will examine the final phase of his life.

20 See especially his notable survey of ‘Religion and culture’, in T. C. W. Blanning, ed., The eighteenth century: Europe, 1688–1815 (Oxford, 2000), pp. 131–77.

21 ‘Joseph II and the monasteries of Austria and Hungary’, in Beales, Enlightenment and reform, pp. 227–55; Derek Beales, Prosperity and plunder: European Catholic monasteries in the age of revolution, 1650–1815 (Cambridge, 2003).

22 Beales, Joseph II, i, chs. 9, 13.

23 Szántay, Regionalpolitik im Alten Europa.

24 See ‘Joseph II's Rêveries’, in Beales, Enlightenment and reform, pp. 157–82.

25 Dickson, ‘Joseph II's Hungarian land survey’, is the essential guide.

26 K. Grünberg, Die Bauernbefreiung und die Auflösung des gutsherrlich-bäuerlichen Verhältnisses in Böhmen, Mähren und Schlesien (2 vols., Leipzig, 1893–4); he has also made good use of two important studies by R. Rozdolski (sometimes ‘Rosdolsky’): Die grosse Steuer- und Agrarreform Josefs II. (Warsaw, 1961); and Untertanen und Staat in Galizien (1962; German trans., Mainz, 1992).

27 Beales, Joseph II, i, ch. 5, outlines his policy before 1780.

28 Adam Wandruszka, Leopold II. (2 vols., Vienna, 1963–5). The brief second volume of this study, covering 1790–2, is not of the same notable quality as the first, which was devoted to Leopold's upbringing and to his rule in Tuscany.

29 Hochedlinger, Krise und Wiederherstellung, especially part C, and more explicitly in the same author's ‘Who's afraid of the French Revolution?: Austrian foreign policy and the European crisis, 1787–1797’, German History, 21 (2003), pp. 293–319, especially pp. 299–300; see also Hochedlinger's Austria's Wars of Emergence, 1683–1797 (London, 2003), pp. 392–6 and 402–7, and an important article by Mayer, Matthew Z., ‘The price for Austrian security, part ii: Leopold II, the Prussian threat and the Peace of Sistova, 1790–1791’, International History Review, 26 (2004), pp. 473–514CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 See also an important essay on ‘Philosophical kingship and enlightened despotism’, first published in Beales, Enlightenment and reform, pp. 28–59.

31 See especially the ‘AHR roundtable: historians and biography’, American Historical Review, 114 (2009), pp. 573–661, and the special issue of the Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 40 (2009–10), pp. 305–435, devoted to biography; cf. Professor Beales's earlier reflections in his inaugural lecture on ‘History and biography’ (1980), reprinted in Blanning and Cannadine, eds., History and biography, pp. 266–83.