BOOK REVIEW:

CAMERALISM IN PRACTICE: STATE ADMINISTRATION AND ECONOMY IN EARLY

MODERN EUROPE BY MARTEN SEPPEL AND KEITH TRIBE

REVIEWED BY

CARLOS EDUARDO SUPRINYAK*

*CEDEPLAR, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Contact: [email protected]

This “preprint” is the accepted typescript of a book review that is forthcoming in revised form, after minor editorial changes, in the Journal of the History of Economic Thought (ISSN: 1053-8372), issue TBA. Copyright to the journal’s articles is held by the History of Economics Society (HES), whose exclusive licensee and publisher for the journal is Cambridge University Press (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the- history-of-economic-thought). This preprint may be used only for private research and study and is not to be distributed further.

The preprint may be cited as follows:

Suprinyak, Carlos Eduardo. Review of “Cameralism in Practice: State Administration and Economy in Early Modern Europe” by Marten Seppel and Keith Tribe. Journal of the History of Economic Thought (forthcoming). Preprint at SocArXiv, osf.io/preprints/socarxiv Book Review

SEPPEL, Marten & TRIBE, Keith (2017). Cameralism in Practice: state administration and

economy in Early Modern Europe, Woodbridge/Rochester: The Boydell Press.

By Carlos Eduardo Suprinyak, Cedeplar/UFMG

A quick internet search returns the following definition of cameralism, provided by

Oxford Living Dictionaries: “an economic theory prevalent in 18th-century Germany, which advocated a strong public administration managing a centralized economy primarily for the benefit of the state”. In the collection of essays Cameralism in Practice, editors Marten Seppel and Keith Tribe seem bent on deconstructing every single element of this definition. Cameralism was not simply an economic theory, Seppel tells us in the introduction to the volume – it was, above all, a set of “administrative and economic practices” (p. 1). Its origins lay in the 17th century, while its influence extended well into the 19th century. Moreover, cameralist teaching and practice “found echoes not only in the Germanic world, but throughout early modern

Europe” (p. 3). The goals it advocated were not restricted to financial concerns associated with modern statecraft, including also “the happiness and welfare of the population” (p. 5). Finally, cameralism was not simply a policy rulebook for political and administrative centralization, but

“first and foremost a way of thinking and a common language” (pp. 5-6) – in other words, a strategy for explaining and rationalizing state action.

The book tries to account for each of these aspects, in the words of Keith Tribe, through

“a deliberate effort to shift our attention away from the work of writers to the activities of those more directly concerned in the daily tasks of economic administration” (p. 263). In this sense, the expression ‘cameralism in practice’ works on two distinct, though related levels, both appealing to the notion of cameralism as a living entity, spreading out in historical time and space. On one hand, the volume illustrates how cameralistic knowledge was appropriated and put into use to deal with concrete problems that were frequently not part of its established canon, thus being actively transformed by practice. On the other hand, it puts into relief how cameralism routinely transcended strictly Germanic boundaries, becoming entangled with other intellectual traditions in this process. The eleven chapters comprising the volume can be roughly classified according to their emphasis on one or another of these levels, and while there is significant superposition at times, this will serve as a useful framework for presenting the contents in more detail.

The dissemination of cameralism outside of the confines of the German-speaking world provides the background for Lars Magnusson’s contribution, which compares early-18th century variants of cameralistic discourse in Prussia and Sweden, as expressed respectively in the works of Justus Christoph Dithmar and Anders Berch. Taking its methodological cue from the work of

Quentin Skinner and the Cambridge School of intellectual history, the chapter highlights how the

‘translation’ of a cameralist text might involve a redefinition of topics, emphases, and sources to suit the new context. While Berch was influenced by Dithmar, and their works shared a similar structure and language, there were also important differences, such as Berch’s emphasis on foreign trade (a Swedish, but not a Prussian concern) and their different attitudes toward social order – while Dithmar followed a neo-Aristotelian ‘household’ conception of society, where all interests were one and the same, Berch recognized the existence of conflicting interests, resorting to natural-law theorizing as a foundation for ‘social concord’.

In his own contribution to the volume, Keith Tribe discusses how meaningful it is to speak of a Baltic cameralism, distinguished by its concern with international trade. After noting how forestry was typically not treated as an export activity in cameralist literature, despite its enormous importance for contemporary Baltic and Atlantic maritime trade, Tribe questions the traditional characterization of cameralism as the ‘German version’ of mercantilism. Even if timber exports were such an essential feature of the Baltic economy, they did not make any clear impression in a literature firmly focused on domestic matters. Farming and commercial activities, at the time, seem to have belonged to different intellectual discourses, thus allowing

Tribe to reinforce a larger thesis: that early-19th century European political economy “developed not from a literature of commerce and market relationships, but instead from a literature of agrarian order” (p. 64).

In the Russia of Catherine II, we are told by Roger Bartlett, cameralism inspired a host of very concrete policies – some of them quite sophisticated – that sought to stimulate population growth. In one of the most accomplished contributions to the volume, Göran Rydén investigates how cameralism penetrated the microcosm of an iron-making estate in 18th-century Sweden, where management involved emulating the principles of order prevailing in the celestial and public spheres. Through the ubiquitous concept of hushållning, philosophical ideas thus informed everyday practices. Ingrid Markussen presents a similar case in neighboring Denmark, where the enlightened landlord Johann Ludvig Reventlow tried to legitimize his cameralist- inspired modernizing agenda by an appeal to Lutheran teachings, thus reinforcing his position as a fatherly figure to his tenants. Cameralism reached as far as the Iberian Peninsula, as evidenced by Alexandre Mendes Cunha. As a diplomatic envoy with access to the Austrian court, the

Marquis of Pombal witnessed first-hand several of the policies and institutions he would later implement in his reforms of the Luso-Brazilian Empire. German expertise in the mining sciences resonated strongly with Iberian concerns in the New World, even though cameralism was only embraced there in piecemeal fashion.

Besides this significant territorial scope, cameralism also covered a wide and diverse range of topics, especially when it was put to work as a tool of public administration. Returning to population matters, Marten Seppel shows how cameralistic policies in the East Elbian territories already led, during the late-17th and early-18th centuries, to the discussion of projects for the abolition of serfdom, even though such ideas would only be incorporated in cameralist literature toward the latter half of the 18th century. Practice thus preceded theory, highlighting the relevance of policy records as historical sources for understanding cameralism. In a similar vein,

Paul Warde uses the case of forest administration to illustrate how much of cameralist literature involved the systematization of past legal ordinances and time-honored practices into a set of acceptable standards. In the realm of industrial policy, according to Guillaume Garner, a pragmatic attitude tended to weaken the links between cameralist theory and practice, thus allowing German administrators to draw on sources of inspiration from other parts of Europe.

This was mostly visible in their mixed attitude toward economic freedom, in which they struggled to find a delicate balance between competition and control.

In another thought-provoking study, Frank Oberholzner discusses how cameralism contributed to the emergence of insurance policies in 18th-century Germany. Taking their cue from Leibniz’s pioneering studies in the field, cameralist authors such as Justi and Pfeiffer advocated insurance schemes as a way of promoting individual happiness and collective welfare, while reducing the state’s fiscal burden in the event of disasters. Cameralist crop insurance schemes typically featured compulsory adhesion, as the state could thus enlighten its subjects about their own best interests. In this area, however, theory preceded practice: insurance projects only began to be hesitantly implemented during the late-18th century. The volume concludes with

Hans Frambach’s essay on the 19th-century demise of cameralism, occasioned not so much by the advent of Adam Smith and British political economy, but rather by transformations taking place within German society. These involved the progressive separation between the state and civil society, the emergence of parliamentary politics, and changes in the institutions of financial administration – all of which led cameralism to be assimilated into the sciences of the state, not of the economy.

Even though some unevenness is perhaps inevitable in collective works of this nature,

Cameralism in Practice offers plenty of original and stimulating material to be of interest not only to scholars of cameralism, but to anyone interested in early modern political economy. My quibbles have mostly to do with the broad and encompassing way in which the book portrays cameralism as a historical phenomenon. In his concluding remarks, Keith Tribe makes a compelling historiographical argument exhorting us to abandon the distinction between theory and practice, focusing instead on the existence of a cameralistic “regime of knowledge” (pp. 266-

7). To this reviewer, however, his plea raises some troublesome implications. On one hand, how singular was this regime of knowledge when compared to other early modern intellectual traditions? The neo-Aristotelian framework for interpreting society as a ‘public household’ was certainly as strong in England as it was in Germany, Sweden or Denmark. Populationism, likewise, was a pervasive concern all over Europe during most of the 17th and 18th centuries, and

I failed to discern what a distinctively ‘cameralistic’ population policy might entail. Both Seppel and Tribe believe that cameralism was unique in providing a system of economic administration

– but surely, if we leave behind polemical pamphlets and effect the same shift toward practice in our study of French or English early modern political economy, we will find similar concerns with the techniques of government. On the other hand, assuming this regime of knowledge to have thoroughly impregnated practice may lead us to conclude that no dissent was possible, and thus slip into a misconception that often plagues studies on the so-called mercantilist era: seeing any action ever undertaken by an early modern European statesman as just another instance of

‘mercantilism’. The essays comprising the volume work best when, rather than getting trapped in conceptual nuance, they focus, to paraphrase Tribe himself, on filling the substantial gaps in our understanding of the early modern world.