Cores and Peripheries Reconsidered:
Economic Development, Trade and Cultural Images
in the Eighteenth-Century Habsburg Monarchy

Klemens Kaps
University of Linz
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

This article explores the relationship between economic development and the trans-regional division of labor in the eighteenth-century Habsburg Monarchy. Using world-systemic models and postcolonial approaches, I offer a critical revision of traditional narratives on the economic history of the Habsburg dominions as a point of departure for a reconsideration of regional disparities in the Habsburg dominions. I examine the relationship between the geopolitical power position of the Monarchy and the socioeconomic transformations towards proto-industries and commercial agriculture in the course of the eighteenth century, with a focus on trade as a major factor which affected the way in which domestic market formation and economic interregional entanglement influenced the emergence of a split between cores and peripheries in the Habsburg dominions. In the last part of the article, I examine the discourses and cultural images which shaped the political-institutional framework regulating these exchange relations. I observe that orientalist metaphors about the Eastern peripheries were a symptom of the way in which some policy instruments were designed in favor of the core areas over the peripheral regions.

Keywords: economic history, Habsburg Monarchy, trade, cameralism, cultural images

Introduction: Theoretical Considerations

The term internal periphery is usually associated with concepts such as uneven regional development, spatial disparities, social inequalities, and development policies. In contrast with neoclassical approaches to regional disparities, the internal peripheries approach assumes a causal link between economic conditions in developed core areas and underdeveloped peripheral regions. The emergence of a trans-regional division of labor according to which peripheries provide the raw materials which are turned into consumable finished commodities in the core areas leads to increasing levels of income, wealth, and productivity, rendering peripheries dependent on the cores. Starting from this basic assumption of world-system analysis and by adopting its key notions and concepts (such as ceaseless capital accumulation, unequal division of labor, and the commodification of social spheres), the internal peripheries’ approach has been characterized by a greater flexibility to include political, social, and cultural factors.1

Classical world-system analysis conceives the political predominantly in relation to the structural rhythms of the whole system, and it seems that the economic sphere in particular dominates political decisions. The internal peripheries approach, for its part, as it was developed by the followers of Hans-Heinrich Nolte,2 takes into account the political sphere as an autonomous though not completely independent variable. While the systemic character of economic development within the center-periphery framework is maintained, the state is an actor which can pursue modernization policies and learn from the core regions. Thus, transfers of ideas, knowledge, and technology from core areas to peripheral zones can, to a certain extent, balance out the unequal flows of capital, commodities, and labor that generally characterize this relationship. Competence accumulation (one of the four elements of Nolte’s world-system, alongside hierarchy, expansion, and competition) is a key variable for the change in the developmental conditions of interconnected political spheres.3

Alongside the political, the cultural sphere is also defined in an innovative way by the internal peripheries approach. A particularly interesting phenomenon is that of stereotypes and images of the other, understood as a condensed form of identity perception between different regions, states, and world regions. While one can read and interpret these cultural artefacts from a spatial perspective and decode the different hierarchies between cores and peripheries inherent in them, there is also potential for a social reading of such constellations. Referring to postcolonial categories of dominants and subalterns, Dipesh Chakrabarty stresses the relevance that these images have for the researcher interested in social differences between various societies.4

Edward Said’s orientalist paradigm is a prime example of how the spatial and the social approach can go hand in hand in an attempt to decode a “Western style of domination restructuring and having authority over the Orient” from the late eighteenth century to the early twenty-first.5 Said clearly underlined that stereotypes and pejorative images of the other acted not only as representations of core-periphery dichotomies, but could shape this chasm between different world regions and states. It is important to point out that orientalist or differently coined pejorative descriptions and ascriptions can also be found within empires and states or between different regions, as Larry Wolff’s classic work Inventing Eastern Europe has amply demonstrated, where the categories of East and West are used to put forth a discourse about the alleged backwardness of Eastern Europe.6 Based on these considerations, this article explores the connections between economic regional disparities and the trans-regional division of labor, with a focus mainly on trade relations and their political regulations, which were influenced by cultural images and stereotypes in eighteenth-century Habsburg Central Europe.

The Position of the Habsburg Monarchy in the World-System in the Eighteenth Century: A Critical Revision

The economy of the Habsburg Monarchy in the early eighteenth century was defined by Immanuel Wallerstein as a rising semi-periphery, albeit his definition rested on geopolitical rather than economic factors. At the end of the War of the Spanish Succession, the Vienna-based Habsburg Emperor Charles VI acquired all the Spanish European dominions except for the Iberian Peninsula, including the Austrian Netherlands, Naples, Sardinia (which in 1720 was replaced by Sicily), and the Duchy of Milan in Northern Italy (which was attached to the Duchy of Mantua, acquired in 1707, and together formed Austrian Lombardy). This notable territorial expansion in northwestern and southern Europe, i.e. in both the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, was endorsed by the Treaty of Rastatt in 1714 and was understood as compensation for the withdrawal of the Habsburg claims to the Spanish throne. The geopolitical gains made by the Habsburg Monarchy are even more remarkable if set against the context of their successful wars against the Ottoman Empire, waged in coalition with other European states between 1682 and 1699 and again between 1716 and 1718. The peace treaties of Karlowitz/Sremski Karlovci (1699) and Passarowitz/Požarevac (1718) brought yet more territories to the Habsburgs, with the incorporation of central Hungary, Transylvania, the Banat of Temesvar/Timişoara, Little Wallachia, and Northern Serbia as far as Belgrade.7

While Wallerstein’s narrative avoids considering the economic development of the Habsburg regions, he interprets its geopolitical expansion as precarious and short-lived. Lost wars with Spain and France and then with the Ottoman Empire and Prussia between 1733 and 1763 brought about major territorial losses and hampered the rise of the Habsburg Monarchy to the status of a great world power. Using classical arguments, Wallerstein sees the loss to Prussia of most of Silesia, the wealthiest province in the Habsburg Monarchy (first in 1742 and then confirmed by peace treaties in 1748 and 1763), as the reason why the Habsburg Monarchy lost the struggle for hegemony between the two semi-peripheral states and remained a second-rate regional power until its disintegration at the end of World War I.8

One could raise several questions concerning this narrative. While it is an undeniable fact that, in terms of territorial growth, the Habsburg Monarchy had peaked in 1718, the shrinking size of the Habsburg dominions was neither linear nor irreversible, as the acquisitions of Galicia (1772), Bukovina (1775), and Venice (including Dalmatia, 1797/1815) eloquently show. Even the loss of Silesia was not the end of Habsburg power aspirations in Central Europe. Silesia had a diversified proto-industrial economy, especially engaged in the production of iron and linen, and it was perfectly connected with world markets as remote as the British and Spanish Atlantic dominions, where slaves were dressed in Silesian linen cloths.9 The political impact of the cession of Silesia to Prussia was immediate, as the substantial (and growing) Silesian tax revenues were now redirected to Berlin.10 But apart from this kind of fiscal shift, the economic consequences of the loss of Silesia were quite limited. Trade relations, including the transit trade that created access to world markets through Hamburg, and the interregional division of labor continued largely unabated throughout the second half of the eighteenth century. 11

Furthermore, the loss of Silesia posed no obstacle to the economic development or administrative and economic reform of the Habsburg dominions. On the contrary, this event triggered political and economic reforms in the Habsburg Monarchy, which was gradually turned into an integrated internal market, for which the custom reform of 1775 was an important step. This reform abolished all internal custom tariffs between Austrian and Bohemia, with the exception only of those areas heavily involved in international transit trade, such as Tyrol and the Austrian Littoral around Trieste.12 In conclusion, Wallerstein’s interpretation of the Habsburg Monarchy as a declining or, at best, stagnating semi-periphery after 1748 has to be challenged on various grounds, both geopolitical and economic. The analysis must take a closer look at economic development in the Habsburg dominions, paying particular attention to how the status of the Habsburg Monarchy as a rising semi-periphery coexisted with persisting and reinforced regional differences within its dominions.

The Emergence of an Internal Economic Core: The Expansion of Proto-industry in the West

The status of the Habsburg Monarchy as a rising semi-periphery can be even more clearly detected in economic than in geopolitical terms. Over the course of the eighteenth century, the quantitative growth and qualitative expansion13 of proto-industrial enterprises turned Bohemia and substantial regions of Austria into producers of semi-finished and manufactured commodities. This created the foundation for the mechanized industrialization of these regions in the nineteenth century, the first wave of which set in after 1825.14 Proto-industry, often labeled “industrialization before industrialization,”15 is defined as the production of manufactured goods for trans-regional markets in a production process that is characterized by a comparatively high degree of division of labor. Conversely, these industries did not use steam-powered machinery, and they relied heavily on the part-time, in particular seasonal labor of the rural population.16

The two models which largely shaped proto-industrial economies were manufactories and domestic industries, organized either as putting-out systems (Verlag) or as small commodity production (Kaufsystem), juxtaposing a central production site including clear organizational hierarchies and differentiated salaries with decentralized workshops, chiefly located in peasant households. Both forms could operate separately but often were combined for the organization of the production process of one commodity. Raw materials provided by middlemen to peasant-workers were turned into semi-finished products in household-based workshops before they were further transformed into consumable commodities in manufactories. This pattern meant that a substantial part of the production process shifted from urban centers to rural areas due to the abundant rural workforce, lower wages, and the lack of guild regulations.17 However, it has been argued that a general uniform pattern of proto-industrialization cannot be detected, and that differences existed in the roles of markets and corporate institutions such as guilds and manors (Grundherrschaft).18

To be sure, the establishment of proto-industries in the Habsburg dominions did not begin in the eighteenth century, but far earlier. Clear examples of this include the production of linen textiles in Vorarlberg, Bohemia, and Upper Austria, iron production in Bohemia, Carinthia, Upper Styria, and Southern Upper Austria (including the production of pig iron in the region between Vordernberg and Innerberg in Northern Styria and the production of scythes, knives, and sickles in Upper Austria), glass manufacturing in Bohemia, and the weaving of woolen cloth in Bohemia and Silesia.19 The second half of the seventeenth century bore witness to the foundation of new enterprises, such as the silk spinning mill at Count Sinzendorf’s Walpersdorf manor (1666), the highly successful and long-lived wool manufactory in Linz (1672), the tobacco manufacture in Enns (1676), and the mirror manufactory in Neuhaus (1701). Some of these factories, however, did not survive long.20

In the eighteenth century, proto-industry expanded dynamically and structurally, leading to the growth of production but also to a diversification of industrial activities in the Habsburg dominions. As early as the 1720s, an economic boom led to the foundation of a range of new textile manufactories in Lower Austria. The Second Oriental Company, using its monopolistic privileges, established cotton manufactories in Gross-Siegharts in 1720 and in Schwechat, near Vienna, in 1724.21 In Bohemia, the foundation of new enterprises had started even earlier, for instance with the establishment of a wool manufactory at the manor of Ossek in 1697, the foundation of a cloth manufactory in Plánice in 1710, and the starting of a linen weaving firm by the English merchant Robert Allason in Rumburk in 1713. The Rumburk plant was also equipped with bleaching facilities, and by 1724 it had produced 157,124 pieces of linen measuring 84–110 ells each.22 In 1715, Johann Joseph Count Waldstein founded a wool mill on his estate of Dux-Oberleutensdorf/Duchcov-Horní Litvínov.23 The establishment of new textile enterprises resulted in a rise in the the overall production. Output of woolen cloth manufactured in Bohemia grew from 6,715 to 39,000 pieces (valued at 700,000 florins) between 1717 and 1731, more than a five-fold increase.24 At the same time, this period of growth also involved the qualitative upgrade of the Bohemian economy. Regional raw materials were being turned into consumable commodities in-house, as prescribed by the prevailing mercantilist doctrines, which tried to avoid the outflow of money towards foreign producers.25

Textile production, which would become the leading industrial sector in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, grew in terms of gross production and variety. Linen and woolen cloth manufacturing, which had a long tradition in the Habsburg dominions, were joined by new activities such as cotton processing in the first half of the eighteenth century and, later, by silk production. Other traditional industries grew as well. In 1730, the Habsburg Alpine provinces produced as much iron as Great Britain.26 The proto-industrial growth of Bohemia, Upper and Lower Austria, and Styria relied chiefly on the mobilization of aristocratic capital, while capital imports by foreign merchants and investments by the state, including the imperial family, played an additional role.27

While wars such as the War of the Polish Succession (1733–36), the Austro-Ottoman War (1736–39), and the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48) not only led to geopolitical setbacks for the Monarchy, but also affected its economic development in a negative way, these were only brief interruptions in an overall tendency towards growth initiated in the 1720s and early 1730s. This is clearly underlined by the foundation of new firms after these wars came to an end. For example, the wool mill in Kladubry in Bohemia was set up in 1749 with the financial support of Emperor Francis Stephen and Queen Maria Theresia. In 1755, a linen manufactory was set up in Potštejn in Bohemia, again with the support of the imperial-royal couple.28 In the 1750s and 1760s, new manufactories for woolen cloth, linen, and silk were founded in Carinthia. While the woolen factory in Linz had to be financially supported by the state in 1754, the growth in textile production was further boosted when the state started cancelling the concession of industrial privileges between 1761 and 1764.29

Early statistics on industrial activity can be used to estimate the industrial development of the Habsburg dominions in the late eighteenth century. Cotton production, which was liberalized in 1763, grew with the foundation of a number of factories in Lower Austria. While the production value of cotton had amounted to 1.2 million florins for the entire Monarchy in 1766, by 1781 this value had soared to 3.5 million florins in Lower Austria alone.30 While the cotton manufactory in Schwechat had processed 30 tons of cotton in 1730 and 50 tons in the 1750s, in 1781 the cotton manufactories in Lower Austria processed an aggregate total of 420 tons of cotton. Employment rose five-fold between the middle of the century, when the Schwechat manufactory employed 20,000 spinners and weavers in a putting-out system, and 1781, when the workforce employed in cotton production amounted to 100,000 workers in all of Lower Austria. While cotton import restrictions imposed in 1784 hindered the growth of the sector, expansion surged again after 1797, and production remained high until the deep recession in the Habsburg economy after the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the lifting of the continental blockade.31

Growth can be detected in other industrial sectors. Wool production in Bohemian rose dramatically in the second half of the eighteenth century, as the increasing employment figures demonstrate. Between 1731 and 1775, the number of workers employed in Bohemia’s wool industry doubled, while between 1775 and 1788 this labor force increased by a further 80 percent. After that date, employment numbers shrank slightly due to technological improvements that reduced the number of workers needed per loom. In Bohemia and Moravia, the workforce employed by the wool sector more than doubled between 1775 and 1788 (increasing from 80,000 to 152,000, spinners excluded), while the overall demographic growth amounted to barely 20 percent. This expansion of the workforce went hand in hand with the rising number of manufactories that organized putting-out systems. In the Brno district, for instance, in 1775 there was one cloth factory, while in 1789 the number had risen to four, all which were located in the Moravian capital city of Brno itself. The growth in output was significant. In 1797, the overall production of woolen goods in Bohemia amounted to 5.5 million florins, which represented 20 percent of manufacture production value in the province. These figures represent a nearly eight-fold increase in current terms compared to 1731 figures and roughly four-fold in real terms.32 The production of woolen goods, mainly cloth, also grew in other provinces, such as Carinthia and Upper Austria, where only one manufactory (in Linz) was allowed to operate. In terms of workforce, this factory peaked in 1790 with 2,289 factory employees and 47,947 putting-out workers.33

Linen production also underwent considerable growth in the second half of the eighteenth century in traditional regions such as Bohemia, the Mühlviertel (in the north of Upper Austria), the Waldviertel (in the north of Lower Austria), and Vorarlberg, all of which benefitted from the disappearance of Silesian competition after 1742. Only with the growing production in cotton textiles and shrinking production costs per fabricated unit caused by mechanization in the early nineteenth century did the expansion of linen production come under pressure.34 Overall textile production in Bohemia grew by an annual average of 3.7 percent in the late eighteenth century.35 Glass production expanded as well, and as many as 52 glassworks existed in Bohemia in 1752.36 Iron production also grew in the second half of the eighteenth century. Towards the end of the century, production was expanding at an average growth rate of 2 percent per year, and growth accelerated further between 1796 and 1803, when the rate hiked to 4.5 percent, not far from that of Great Britain (6.9 percent annual growth between 1796 and 1806).37 Despite this, the Habsburg iron industry lost its leading position on European markets. While in 1767 Styria turned out as much pig iron as the whole of England, by 1780 all the Habsburg Alpine provinces, where 80 percent of all iron production under the Habsburgs was located, were only producing as much as one-third of the British iron output. First and foremost, however, this reflects the dramatic growth of the British economy due to rapid industrialization since the 1760s.38

In sum, over the course of the eighteenth century, most of the western provinces of the Habsburg Monarchy bore witness to steady and dynamic growth in the proto-industrial sector, which crystallized in both the increasing output of existing industries and the emergence of new industrial sectors. Although the leading export products, namely glass, linen, and iron, had lost ground on the Western European markets by the end of the Napoleonic Wars,39 the Habsburg economy was able to increase the share of manufactured goods among its exports between 1800 and 1807 (from 44 percent to 61 percent), which indicates the international competitiveness of Habsburg proto-industry.40

The examples of enterprises and scattered quantitative evidence thus demonstrates that proto-industry gained a stronghold in the western regions of the Habsburg Monarchy over the course of the eighteenth century. However, this does not mean that there were no hierarchies or disparities between the Austrian and Bohemian lands. By 1790, of 280 manufactories in the western Hereditary Lands, half were located in Lower Austria alone and a further 30 percent were found in Bohemia. This clearly indicates that growth and economic transformation also led to spatial stratification within the core areas of the Monarchy.41 To be sure, the hierarchies between western core areas were smoother than those separating cores and peripheries, as we shall see below. Also, agricultural activities were far from absent in the regions undergoing proto-industrialization: The workforce employed in agriculture amounted to 78 percent in Bohemia in 1756 and 75 percent in the Austrian provinces in 1790.42

Apart from the availability of capital, the factors that determined the success of the process of proto-industrialization and the emergence of core areas was the presence of ecological resources, such as wood and water, and a plentiful rural workforce. While skilled workers were often recruited abroad from the Austrian Netherlands, France, and England, strategies to lower wages included employing women and children and a bound work force of beggars, orphans, and prisoners, who were sent by the government to work in sweathouses beginning in the late seventeenth century.43 Economic policies were also of crucial importance. The legal division between local crafts (Polizeigewerbe) and the production of manufactured goods for the trans-regional trade (Kommerzialgewerbe), defined in 1754, created ways around guild restrictions and thus facilitated the establishment of manufactories in urban areas.44 After the international economic crisis of the early 1770s, the abolition of internal custom duties in 1775 lowered transaction costs in the western provinces, triggering a new boom the effects of which were finally consolidated with the protectionist trade policy implemented in 1784 and 1788. This led to a sweeping expansion of proto-industrial production during the 1780s and 1790s.45 Finally, the limitation of serfdom in 1781/82 enhanced the mobility of the rural workforce, which had a particularly deep impact in Bohemia, where demesne lordship (Gutswirtschaft) was especially significant.46

The Emergence of a Core-periphery Dynamic between the West and the East in the Habsburg Monarchy: Trans-regional Division of Labor Embodied by Trade Relations

In contrast with the western core regions, the eastern territories of the Monarchy did not participate to an equal degree in the process of dynamic proto-industrialization over the course of the eighteenth century. This is clearly visible in the dominant position of agricultural activities in these territories. On average, in Hungary, Transylvania, the Banat, Galicia, and Bukovina, around 90 percent of the population worked in agriculture as late as 1790.47 In the aforementioned statistics no manufactories feature in Hungary or Galicia in 1790. However, administrative sources reveal the existence of some factories in both territorial complexes. 34 such factories, dedicated to the production of textiles, glass, and porcelain, existed in Galicia in 1773 and 11 in 1808.48 In addition to this, an extensive linen-processing sector, based mostly on the putting-out system, existed in the barren Carpathian Mountains in the south of Galicia. Although the goods produced were rather crude in quality, in the region around Andrychów in the western district, this rural population also produced linen commodities for foreign markets in Western Europe and the American colonies overseas, while a small fraction of their output also was sold on markets in Bohemia and Austria in the 1780s.49 The data suggest that the number of manufactories in these regions contracted between the 1770s and the early nineteenth century, which is confirmed by other sources documenting the increasing competitive pressure posed by Bohemian and Austrian proto-industrial goods on the Galician market. The tendency, therefore, is the exact opposite of the one that unfolded in the core regions of the Monarchy.50

Similarly, Hungary was not limited exclusively to agricultural activities, as the mining plants (especially copper), iron, and linen production in Upper Hungary underline. And proto-industrial activities stretched far beyond what today is Slovakia, so that in three phases (between the 1710s and the 1730s, during the 1760s, and again between 1784 and 1789), manufactories were founded in a vast range of branches (including textile production, chemical and paper fabrication, and ironworks) in the Hungarian territories. However, the number of these companies was smaller, the quality of their products lower, and their production means less advanced than in the Bohemian and Austrian core areas.51 Thus, by 1770, in Hungary (not including Transylvania) there were 19 manufactories compared with 58 in the Bohemian and Austrian provinces.52 Most of these plants, which had been chiefly founded between 1765 and 1770, were gone by 1784 because of the arrival of Bohemian and Austrian proto-industrial goods. At a later stage, new textile manufactories were founded in Hungary, but the quality of their products never reached the standards of those being produced in the western core areas.53 In any case, proto-industrial production in Hungary covered a rather tiny fraction of the regional demand, as the rising export figures of the western regions to Hungary and Transylvania demonstrate. Thus, in 1784 86.9 percent of Austro-Bohemian exports to the Hungarian territories consisted of manufactures, while this value amounted to 89.1 percent in the case of Galicia. Among the most relevant commodities sold in Hungary and Transylvania, woolen products ranked first (2.2 million florins), followed in importance by linen (1.3 million), silk (1.2 million), and processed mining products (618,702 florins). Conversely, imports to Austria and Bohemia essentially consisted of foodstuffs and raw materials (61.6 percent in the case of Hungary and 92.3 percent in the case of Galicia).54 This clearly underlines the status of Hungary and Galicia as internal peripheries within Habsburg Central Europe, as they provided consumer markets for finished commodities and raw materials and foodstuffs necessary to the core areas, which these areas needed for the creation of these products, both in terms of direct means of production and as nourishment for workers.

This position of Hungary and Galicia as export markets for the Bohemian and Austrian proto-industries was not a new phenomenon emerging in the 1770s and 1780s. According to commercial statistics for 1735, Bohemia exported woolen cloth for a value of 1 million florins, which constituted one sixth of the total exports, to a range of countries and regions, which included Poland, Hungary, and Transylvania.55 With the increasing woolen production and the diversification of proto-industrial activities in the Austrian and Bohemian provinces, these export figures rose significantly. According to the Hungarian trade statistic, 56.6 percent of overall imports in 1748 were composed of semi-finished and finished commodities, a value that grew slightly to 61.5 percent by 1782.56 These structural changes were intrinsically linked to a massive quantitative expansion of commodity exchange. While the exports of the western Hereditary Lands grew modestly between 1733–39/41 and 1743/52 from 2.1 million florins by annual average to 2.5 million florins, afterwards they increased rapidly to 6.6 million florins between 1767 and 1780.57

This growth tendency continued in the following decades, so that exports of the western regions to the Hungarian territories reached an annual average of 9.8 million florins between 1783 and 1785 according to the statistics of the Austro-Bohemian customs union (and a much lower 7.2 million florins according to the Hungarian statistics in 1783/84).58 By the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1814, this value had more than doubled. While the increase over this rather long period was clearly more modest than it had been in the previous decades, downward effects of the wars have to be taken into account. A dynamic growth of the western regions’ exports to the Hungarian territories, nevertheless, set in precisely in the immediate post-Napoleonic years, reaching 25.1 million florins in 1815 and 34.7 million florins in 1816, but this value could not be exceeded in the following years, as 31.3 million florins was the top export value in 1822.59

Apart from Hungary, the exports from the western regions also expanded to the Galician market, the annexation of which in the first partition of Poland-Lithuania in 1772 led to a politically-induced competitive edge for the Habsburg proto-industry on a formerly external market. This institutionally supported advantage translated into an overwhelmingly rapid expansion of exports, as the fivefold increase of the western regions’ exports to Galicia in only four years (between 1779 and 1783) from 343,043 to 1,706,197.21 florins demonstrates.60

In any case, foreign export markets were still more relevant to the western Habsburg proto-industry, claims and narratives on Habsburg protectionism notwithstanding. While in 1783, 17.2 million florins of foreign exports clearly exceeded the 11 million florins of commodities sold on domestic markets, in 1818, 31.3 million florins of foreign exports took the lead over 28.1 million florins of domestic exports, and in 1822 the corresponding figures were 42.2 million against 31.4 million florins, pointing to a growing ratio in favor of foreign export markets after the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Domestic markets were only more important temporarily in 1816 and 1817 (with margins of 5.5. and 4.8 million florins respectively).61 However, domestic markets are statistically underestimated, as all market transaction within the western regions forming part of the customs union were not registered anymore due to the prevailing custom regimes.

Nevertheless, these figures underline a steady growth in foreign exports at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This growth was strong in the 1780s, when the exports of commodities produced in the Hereditary lands to international markets rose from 17.2 million to 19.1 million florins between 1783 and 1787 (thus by a rate of 2.6 percent as an annual average). This expansion was exceeded between 1816 and 1822 (with a 6.3 percent annual average growth rate), despite the postwar depression and the often-noted effects of increasing competition from British manufacture imports on the European continent.62 Only during the war and the continental blockade did foreign exports grow far less dynamical (by 1.5 percent as an annual average between 1787 and 1814), although there were strong oscillations during the long war, with some years already exceeding the value of 1814.63

Apart from distortions these data may hide because of the irregular adaption of prices,64 the export figures suggest that the western regions of the Habsburg Monarchy enlarged the exports of their commodities at quite a substantial rate, which only for the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century meant an overall increase of exports both on domestic and international markets by a factor of 2.6 (from 28.3 million florins in 1783 to 73.6 million florins in 1822).65 This enlargement of sales was thus an important factor explaining the industrial transformation of the western regions of the Habsburg Monarchy, even if not all of them participated equally in this developmental process.

Still, while this expansion of Bohemian and Austrian proto-industrial exports to the eastern peripheries was an undeniably important element of these regions’ growth and their economic transformation, this does not necessarily mean that the imbalance of trade structures led automatically to a quantitative imbalance in trade. Quite the opposite took place, at least concerning the Hungarian territories. While the surplus for the Hungarian lands in trade with the custom unions between the Bohemian and Austrian lands had amounted to 1.6 million florins in 1743 and 1752, it rose dynamically to 2.9 million florins between 1767 and 178066 before reaching spectacular values of 7.2 and 6.7 million florins in 1783 and 1784 respectively.67 Only after the turn of the century did this tendency reverse, so that after the Hungarian trade balance surplus with the western provinces (which by then included Galicia) hit a record value of 13.6 million florins in 1814, the deficit for the western regions shrank rapidly (to 5.8 million florins in 1815) before turning into substantial surplus values between 1816 and 1818 (13.1 million florins in sum). But already in 1822, the trade balance tilted again in favor of the Hungarian part.68 The trade balance between the Hereditary Lands and Galicia, in turn, showed a clear albeit not spectacular advantage for the western regions (here including Tyrol and the Littoral) of 169,806 florins in 1779, which rose dynamically to 797,729.63 florins four years later.69

Thus, the direct and imminently measurable advantage that the western core areas of the Habsburg Monarchy reaped from the structurally unequal trade with the Eastern peripheries differed according to time and space and was quite relative regarding the Hungarian territories in the eighteenth century. However, although the Hungarian territories seemed to earn a lot more money from their commodity exchange with the western provinces, this may simply have been a form of necessary compensation for Hungary’s heavily negative balance of payment.70 In addition, negative trade accounts meant neither that Hungarian consumer markets were not beneficial for the western proto-industry nor that this relationship did not hamper Hungary’s chances for proto-industrial development in the period.

Microeconomic data reveals the significance of domestic consumer markets for the expanding proto-industrial enterprises in the Bohemian and Austrian lands. In 1773, the manager of the estate of Buchlau/Buchlov in Moravia, Prosper Count Berchtold, directed a petition to the Court Chamber in Vienna requiring an import ban or at least a high import duty for Prussian glass to newly acquired Galicia. Berchtold sought to recover an export market for the glass manufactory on his estate which he had lost in part to a newly established glass mill in Prussian Silesia.71 A similar petition sent the Bohemian nobleman Prince Auersperg through the Galician governor to Maria Theresia in February 1774. Auersperg was lobbying to lower the Galician import duty for the fustian produced on his estate of Tuppadl/Tupadly in Bohemia. Auersperg argued that this measure was compensation for the high transport costs he had to incur when exporting his textile products to the Galician markets, on which, he quickly added, the success of his entire fustian manufactory depended.72

These examples testify to the significance of the eastern peripheries’ consumer markets for the business success of the Bohemian and Austrian proto-industry precisely in its phase of expansion in the second half of the eighteenth century. And these cases also indicate clearly the role of political measures supporting this division of labor. Here again, the 1770s did not represent a new turning point. The Viennese Court had used one of his few central policy instruments, that is custom policy, to support the emergence of regionally differing and specialized economies. In 1754, the Hungarian import tariff for finished commodities from Bohemia and Austria was reduced from 30 percent to 3 percent, while duties had to be paid on Hungarian products, both industrial and agrarian, of up to 30 percent when these products were exported to the west.73 This tariff remained in force even after internal custom duties were abolished between the Bohemian and Austrian provinces in 1775, largely due to the persistent refusal of the Hungarian nobility to accept the modes of property taxation implemented in 1749 in the Bohemian and Austrian provinces.74 But still within this fiscal logic, the Court institutions pursued a very clear economic policy favoring western proto-industry to the detriment of the Hungarian periphery.

In addition to providing consumer markets, the peripheries also offered important raw materials for proto-industry, such as wool, hemp, flax, gall oak, and potash, as well as foodstuffs, mainly grain and meat. In order to guarantee provisions for the western producers and work force with these commodities, the Court institutions imposed sound high tariffs and even bans on the export of these goods abroad. This led to the increased sale of these commodities on the Habsburg domestic markets in the west, and it may also have lowered prices and led to a loss of income and profits from export abroad. This was even more severe, as the domestic market in the western provinces could not absorb the whole export production of the Hungarian territories, for example in the case of grain.75 Although not quantifiable, this loss severely damaged the development of the economy of the Hungarian territories, even in a purely peripheral framework.

While this commercial pattern between the Austro-Bohemian lands and Hungary and Galicia could be interpreted as reflecting regional specialization, in fact, it was an expression of the imbalances and spatial inequalities produced by this specific form of interregional division of labor. The impact of the unequal trade relations can be illustrated by the regional differences in income level. In 1785, a rough estimate shows that average per capita income in Austria (28 florins) and Bohemia (24 florins) was well above that in Galicia (11 florins), while the difference with Hungary (20 florins) was less strong.76 This reflects widening interregional disparities after 1750.77

It is important to underline that the dichotomy between cores and peripheries does not solely depend on the importance of agricultural and proto-industrial activities, as this would be a problematic oversimplification of production processes and relations. In fact, as Maxine Berg has pointed out, no successful proto-industrialization process could take place in the absence of a highly productive and commercialized agricultural sector.78 It is thus rather the inefficient agricultural sector of the eastern Habsburg internal peripheries (which relied on extensively managed large estates, harsh conditions of serfdom, and a traditional three-field cultivation system) that hampered its progress. In contrast, the agricultural modernization of the western regions was well underway by the end of the eighteenth century.79

Cameralism and the Creation of the Other: Images, Stereotypes, and the Civilization Discourse

The perception of these internal disparities and dependencies followed various currents of economic doctrines of the Enlightenment, among which cameralism was the most important.80 Originating in the second half of the seventeenth century in the states of the Holy Roman Empire and often described as the Central European version of mercantilism, cameralism was initially mainly concerned with fiscal arguments concerning how to increase the prince’s revenue. However, cameralist thinkers gradually developed a sophisticated theoretical system on economic development between the late seventeenth century and late eighteenth century. In their thinking, the more intense effort of the work- force occupied as central a role as trade, both domestic and international. While cameralists advocated a protectionist trade policy to spur the proto-industrial development of the domestic economy, they were strong supporters of internal market integration through the abolition of monopolies and internal custom duties and the construction of roads and canals. This stance was linked to a particular concern with space in the writings of later cameralists such as Johann Heinrich Gottlob von Justi or Josef von Sonnenfels, who claimed that market integration should lead to diminishing regional disparities as production factors could move freely over the state territory. Nevertheless, this should not be confounded with a free market space, as cameralists defined economic relations always within state territories and, subsequently, ascribed a major role to the state in shaping processes of economic development.81

In the Habsburg Monarchy cameralist thinking was present from the late seventeenth century, embodied mainly in the idea of “universal commerce” (Universalkommerz), understood as domestic market integration, represented by thinkers such as Wilhelm Schröder, Johann Joachim Becher, and his brother-in-law Philipp Wilhelm von Hörnigk, who at the same time was also the secretary of another influential cameralist, Cristobal Rojas y Spínola.82 In the course of the eighteenth century, Justi and Sonnenfels delivered a remodeled influence on the economic policies of the court and its institutions.83

Based on these arguments, I will examine here the degree to which cameralist thinkers shaped the institutional prerequisites of the internal division of labor differentiating between cores and peripheries. In particular, I consider whether this regionalization and spacialization of economic processes were linked to cultural images and stereotypes in the sense of Said’s and Chakabarty’s orientalist and postcolonial theories.

In order to trace back these images and discourses, I examine descriptive statistics, so characteristic of political discourse (Polizeiwissenschaft) in German-speaking states, and official documents. Austria over all, if she only will, a key cameralist treatise written by the above-mentioned Philipp Wilhelm von Hörnigk in 1684, presented a picture of the relative economic subordination of the Habsburg Monarchy to the core areas of Western Europe, such as the Netherlands and France. Although in von Hörnigk’s famous work no internal disequilibrium is detected in the Habsburg economy, it nonetheless contains the first hints at the regional imbalances. Thus, von Hörnigk points to the production of woolen and linen textiles in Silesia and Upper and Inner Austria, praising the “diligence” of Silesian weavers, while Hungary is labeled a “true bread, lard, and meat pit.”84

These early differences between a proto-industrial West and an agrarian East became progressively more acute and were more directly linked with economic factors over the course of the eighteenth century. In 1770/71, the Council of War ordered a series of reports in order to assess the military capacity of the Monarchy’s population. The political comments in the reports concerning Bohemia and Austria pointed out differences in the degree of development and occasionally linked these differences to the ethnic identities of Slavs (Czechs, Slovenes) and Germans. While work ethos, social discipline concerning housekeeping and alcohol consumption, and health conditions were scrutinized, in the western regions of the Habsburg Monarchy these differences were not mapped according to orientalist models.85 In other words, these differences in the degree of development did not lead to the construction of stereotypes, which suggests that the imbalances between internal cores and peripheries within the western half of the Monarchy were not as severe as between the West and the East.

The disparities between western cores and eastern peripheries were, in turn, visible in the discourse. Between the 1780s and early 1820s, several statistical works were published that constructed a pejorative image of eastern territories such as Hungary, Transylvania, the Banat, Croatia, and Galicia. In particular, the native populations (Magyars, Slovaks, Romanians, Serbs, Croats, Poles, Ruthenians, and Jews) were accused of laziness, drunkenness, leading a dirty lifestyle, bad housekeeping, irresponsible use of money, and, as follows, indebtedness.86 In contrast, German settlers were praised for their well-built houses and their diligence. These descriptions were brimming with openly pejorative adjectives. Serbian peasants settling in the military frontier in Croatia were compared to “wild animals” by the statistician Andreas Demián in 1804.87 Serbs, Croats, and Vlachs (Romanians) were labeled “natural men” (by Demian and Martin Schwartner), who needed “civilizing” before they could partake of economic progress.88 Also, Galicia was targeted by the civilizing discourse after its annexation in 1772. In the 1780s and up to the end of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, Poles, Jews and Ruthenians were repeatedly labeled backward, “dirty,” and “lazy.” Their low cultural status required that they be civilized before they could become part of enlightened mankind and participate in the Monarchy’s wealth-generating projects. The invention of a new province, as pointed out by Larry Wolff,89 went hand in hand with the portrayal of a backward space which “had not yet become as advanced as its neighbours”90 and which, it follows, had to be “lifted up” and “civilized” by the Habsburg authorities.91 At the peak of this discourse, Galicia was compared to “El Dorado,” Peru, India, and Siberia, i.e. it was symbolically identified with non-European colonies.92

Cultural Images and the Interregional Division of Labor

As these examples clearly illustrate, the core-periphery-dichotomy in Habsburg Central Europe was translated into a definition of the peripheral “other” in pejorative cultural terms. This “other” was dirty, did not work assiduously, was prone to drinking too much, spent too much, and in general had only a low cultural status. This orientalizing discourse explained regional development differences according to a culturalist agenda: it is the culture inherent to peripheral societies which makes them poorer than core regions. Consequently, the dominant narrative claimed that these obstacles had to be removed before any successful catch-up with core regions could occur.

However, a critical analysis of these discourses and their relation to expressions of economic interests and self-representation of the core areas exposes them as a mercantilist agenda expressed in orientalist terms. One prime example is trade. A government report dated March 1, 1762 stated, “The true commercial relationship between Hungary and the German Hereditary lands seems to respond to the principle ceteribus paribus; Hungarians, as favored subjects, should not become too rich in terms of money, but should remain prosperous in terms of natural products, so that these can be the food of Austria, which, desirably, should increase its population, industry, and manufactories.”93 Only a few years later, the Commercial Council claimed that proto-industrial production in Hungary was to be limited to the absolute bare minimum in order to maintain the “natural trade so profitable for the state.” Hungary should be confined to the proto-industrial activities that posed no competition to the western core areas, but should, above all, deliver the materials necessary for proto-industrial production in Austria and Bohemia.94

This is a restatement of the mercantilist principle according to which money should not cross the borders of the state, so it can add to the wealth of the prince and his subjects. Interestingly, however, in this, case the principle is applied to territories that were part of the Habsburg state, although they had been left out of the administrative and fiscal reforms implemented after the end of the War of the Austrian Succession in 1748. While this was one of the reasons why Hungary had been excluded from the abolition of custom tariffs between Austria and Bohemia in 1775, custom policy had farther-reaching goals, such as maintaining the structural differences between a proto-industrial west and an agrarian east, which contradicted cameralist concepts, which in theory envisaged equilibrated regional development.95 A practical institutional consequence of this discourse was the already mentioned unequal custom duties that were levied on western against Hungarian products after 1754.

This stance of leading court institutions was eventually also shared by the monarch. Queen Maria Theresia, who in 1765 had stressed the “usefulness” of the foundation of manufactories in Hungary and had even issued a decree that liberated state subsidies and permitted privileges to be granted to newly founded manufactories in Hungary,96 changed her position dramatically in 1767, after failing to persuade the Hungarian nobility to accept property taxation in exchange for easing custom duties. In 1771, she stated that as long as the Hungarian nobility did not accept taxation, no support or official recognition was to be granted to manufactories in Hungary that potentially would threaten the sales of Bohemian and Austrian proto-industrial plants. Here, the unequal custom duties were reaffirmed.97

Although during Joseph II’s reign between 1780 and 1790, the Viennese Court declared its willingness to support the development of proto-industry in Hungary, the measures imposed earlier where not derogated. The abolition of the Hungarian import custom duties on western industrial products between 1786 and 1793 strengthened the position of the core areas’ proto-industrial enterprises on the Hungarian markets even further. The court, however, now supported the immigration of skilled workers to Hungary, granted subsidies to selected manufactories, and eliminated the internal customs barrier between Hungary and Transylvania in 1784. This policy, however, was abandoned after Joseph’s death. At the same time, the protectionist foreign custom regime introduced in 1784 and reinforced four years later also strengthened the position of Bohemian and Austrian proto-industrial enterprise in Hungary against foreign competitors. Despite the (in any case limited) measures for fostering proto-industrial activity in Hungary, as late as the early nineteenth century, Hungary was still an agriculturally-dominated economy, which confirms its status as an internal periphery.98

Galicia, which was incorporated into the Bohemian and Austrian customs regime in 1785, was given a similar role in the internal division of labor.99 Even before the First Partition of Poland-Lithuania, the local Commercial Council in Austrian Silesia defined the neighboring territory as “a second America” and hoped to “attract Cracow, L’viv and Kamieniec-Podolski’s trade to Austria.”100 Colonial imaginary, therefore, provided a readymade pretext for an argument in support of the application of mercantilist policies in a territory over which political control should be established. After imperial troops had occupied the new province in summer 1772, the merchant guild of Inner Austria addressed the Court Chamber to express its interest in “being among the first to draw benefits from this new successful acquisition” and expand trade with the northeastern province, as the provincial governor reported to the Court Chamber in Vienna.101 In fact, single entrepreneurs and proto-industrial activities were granted custom privileges in the first years after the annexation of Galicia, while the import of foreign competitors was forbidden, as mentioned above.102

However, while the Court Chamber was eager to promote the export of Bohemian and Austrian manufactures to Galicia, it handled Galicia’s custom policy carefully. Already in 1774, export tariffs were lowered to only 5/12 percent, and in 1776 import duties for Galician commodities to the western regions were cut from 20 to 4 percent.103 After attempts to persuade Prussia to sign a trade agreement that would have guaranteed Galicia’s exports on the Vistula River to Gdańsk failed, the new province was incorporated into the Austro-Bohemian customs union in 1785.104 While no institutional barriers prevented Galicia from integrating economically with the western regions from that moment, Galicia’s trade structure was further peripheralized.105

This was clearly in line with the perception of the bureaucracy, which by and large considered Galicia “destined to agriculture by nature,” as the provincial councilor Ernest Traugott Kortum stated in 1786.106 In addition, custom policy was only one instrument with which to regulate regional economic development and supra-regional competition. As in the case of Hungary, in Galicia crafts and industrial policy was another one. Thus, while granting loans, subsidies, and privileges to single proto-industrial businessmen in Galicia between the 1770s and the early 1790s, the bureaucracy up to the monarchs carefully ensured that these new plants not create additional competition for the Austrian and Bohemian firms on the Galician market so that support was only granted after assuring that these initiatives put forward were complementary to, and did not pose a competitive risk to, existing manufactories in the Bohemian and Austrian core regions.107 In some cases, the impact of pejorative cultural images on the arguments backing the rejection of funding applications is visible, for example when Emperor Joseph II turned down a funding petition for support for a silk manufactory with this claim that “Galicia is not a country where silk manufactories can be a successful business.”108 In the 1790s, the state withdrew its support entirely owing to financial shortages.109

In sum, while both custom and industrial policies were not at all designed to harm the eastern peripheries, they persistently were characterized by a prevalence of the interests of the Austrian and Bohemian core regions and their proto-industry, both in terms of maintaining consumer markets in the periphery as well as by obtaining resources, in particular raw materials, for their production. The state policy was thereby influenced by a pejorative perception of the peripheries’ economy and society, which started as a description of poverty and underdevelopment but all too easily ended up in a justification of the imbalances and an explanation and at the same time dismissal of them as the result of cultural or ethnic factors. From this, it was only one step to the instrumentalization and operationalization of this discourse in order to reinforce the institutional arrangement that supported the core regions’ economic dominance over the eastern peripheries.

Conclusions

Habsburg Central Europe was characterized by profound dichotomies between core and peripheral areas after the middle of the eighteenth century. While proto-industrial regions in the west managed to expand their economic profile in terms of both quantitative growth and qualitative development, extensive agrarian production in eastern peripheries did not undergo a comparable transformation. While the East-West-dichotomy is an oversimplification obscuring the presence of peripheral spaces in the west, such as raw material extraction and low-productive agriculture, and core areas in the east, such as craft production sites, it is, to some extent, justified by the fact that peripheral spaces in the west could expect to fare a good deal better than core areas in the east as far as future development was concerned. The East–West split is attested to not only by the productive profiles of each region, but also by their mutual exchange relations. Western regions largely exported manufactured products to the Hungarian and Galician territories in the east, while mainly importing foodstuffs and raw materials. Even if this exchange relation did not bring the western core regions imminently measurable gains in terms of commercial balance surplus, the core regions benefitted by these enlarged consumer markets and the relatively cheap acquisition of raw materials and foodstuffs. This relationship was heavily supported by the court institutions and their customs, trade, and industrial policies. Cultural perception is the other face of this coin and does nothing but confirm the analysis. First, the perception of spatial differences intensified over the course of the eighteenth century, as economic factors were translated into a culturalist narrative defining the eastern peripheries’ status. These stereotypes covered a wide range of clichés: a low work ethos, high alcohol consumption, a tendency to spend more than means would warrant, widespread social poverty, all condensed into narratives surrounding the idea of the “natural man” and the “wild animal.” Subsequently, a civilizing mission was advocated, a mission the alleged goal of which was to create the conditions necessary for these regions and their populations to participate effectively in economic progress. This discourse clearly demonstrates an orientalist logic, as spatial disparities are blamed on the attitude of the peripheral population, rather than on structural economic factors, including power relations. The official and statistical discourse of the government, for its part, assumed and displayed these power relations in policies concerning trade and proto-industry, where the interests of core areas prevailed over those of peripheries. The pejorative cultural images of the eastern peripheries not only expressed the hegemony of the core areas, but effectively contributed to maintaining the peripheral status of some regions within the Habsburg economy in the late eighteenth century.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv (HHStA)

Kabinettsarchiv (KA): Nachlass Zinzendorf, Handschriften, vols. 118, 119.

Österreichisches Staatsarchiv (ÖStA)

Finanz- und Hofkammerarchiv (FHKA), Neue Hofkammer (NHK):

Kommerz OÖ und NÖ Akten Nr. 144; Kommerz U Akten Nr. 1556, 1558; Kommerzakten Nr. 1723–1726.

 

Bredetzky, Samuel. Reisebemerkungen über Ungern und Galizien. Vienna: Doll, 1809.

Bredetzky, Samuel. Historisch-statistischer Beytrag zum deutschen Kolonialwesen in Europa, nebst einer kurzen Beschreibung der deutschen Ansiedlungen in Galizien in alphabetischer Ordnung. Brünn: Joseph Georg Tratzler, 1812.

Hacquet, Belsasar. Hacquets neueste physikalisch-politische Reisen in den Jahren 1788, 89 und 90, Zweyter Theil. Nürnberg: Raspesche Buchhandlung, 1791.

Hacquet, Belsasar. Hacquets neueste physikalisch-politische Reisen in den Jahren 1791, 92 und 93, Dritter Theil. Nürnberg: Raspesche Buchhandlung, 1794.

Hörnigk, Philipp Wilhelm von. Österreich über alles, wenn es nur will. Edited by Gustav Otruba. Vienna: Bergland, 1964.

Kortum, Ernest Traugott. Magna Charta von Galicien, oder Untersuchung der Beschwerden des Galicischen Adels Pohlnischer Nation über die österreichische Regierung. Jassy: n.p., 1790.

Traunpaur, Heinrich Alphons. Dreyssig Briefe über Galizien oder Beobachtungen eines unpartheyischen Mannes, der sich mehr als nur ein paar Monate in diesem Königreiche umgesehen hat. Vienna–Leipzig: G. F. Wucherer–E. Beer, 1787.

Versuch einer Darstellung der Oesterreichischen Monarchie in Statistischen Tafeln 1828. [Vienna, 1829]

 

Secondary sources

Bacon, Ewa Katherine. Austrian Economic Policy in Galicia, 1772–1790. PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1975.

Beer, Adolf. “Die Zollpolitik und die Schaffung eines einheitlichen Zollgebietes unter Maria Theresia.” Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung 14 (1893): 277–326.

Beer, Adolf. “Studien zur Geschichte der österreichischen Volkswirtschaft unter Maria Theresia. I: Die österreichische Industriepolitik.” Archiv für Österreichische Geschichte 81 (1895): 1–133.

Beer, Adolf. “Die österreichische Handelspolitik unter Maria Theresia und Joseph II.” Archiv für Österreichische Geschichte 86 (1899): 1–204.

Benedikt, Heinrich. “Der Josephinismus vor Joseph II.” In Österreich und Europa: Festgabe für Hugo Hantsch zum 70. Geburtstag, edited by Paul W. Schroeder, 183–201. Graz–Vienna–Cologne: Institut für österreichische Geschichtsforschung–Wiener Katholische Akademie, 1965.

Bernard, Paul P. “Poverty and Poor Relief in the Eighteenth Century.” In State and Society in Early Modern Austria, edited by Charles Ingrao, 238–51. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1994.

Berg, Maxine. The Age of Manufactures: Industry, Innovation and Work in Britain 1700–1820. Oxford: Blackwell, 1985.

Boldorf, Marcel. “Weltwirtschaftliche Verflechtung und lokale Existenzsicherung: Die schlesischen Kaufmannsgilden im internationalen Leinenhandel des 18. Jahrhunderts.” In Praktiken des Handels: Geschäfte und soziale Beziehungen europäischer Kaufleute im Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit, edited by Mark Häberlein and Christof Jeggle, 127–44. Konstanz: UVK Verlagsgesellschaft, 2010.

Bruckmüller, Ernst. Sozialgeschichte Österreichs. Vienna–Munich: Verlag für Geschichte und Politik–Oldenbourg, 2001.

Brusatti, Alois. Österreichische Wirtschaftspolitik vom Josephinismus bis zum Ständestaat. Vienna: Jupiter-Verlag, 1965.

Cerman, Markus, and Ogilvie, Sheilagh C. “Einleitung: Theorien der Proto-Industrialisierung.” In Protoindustrialisierung in Europa, edited by idem, 9–21. Historische Sozialkunde 5. Vienna: Verlag für Gesellschaftskritik, 1994.

Cerman, Markus. “Proto-industrielle Entwicklung in Österreich.” In Protoindustrialisierung in Europa, edited Markus Cerman and Sheilagh C. Ogilvie, 161–75. Historische Sozialkunde 5. Vienna: Verlag für Gesellschaftskritik, 1994.

Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005.

Dickson, P.G.M. Finance and Government under Maria Theresia 1740–1780. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987.

DuPlessis, Robert S. Transitions to Capitalism in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Freudenberger, Herman. “The Woolen-Goods Industry of the Habsburg Monarchy in the Eighteenth Century.” Journal of Economic History 20, no. 3 (1960): 383–406.

Freudenberger, Herman. The Industrialization of a Central European City: Brno and the Fine Woollen Industry in the 18th century. Edington–Wilshire: Pasold Research Fund, 1977.

Freudenberger, Herman. Lost Momentum: Austrian Economic Development 1750s–1830s. Studien zur Wirtschaftsgeschichte und Wirtschaftspolitik 8. Vienna–Cologne–Weimar: Böhlau, 2003.

Garner, Guillaume. “Caméralisme et territoire: Ètat, espace et économie dans le discours économique allemand au XVIIIe siècle.” Revue du Nord 85, no. 4 (2003): 729–45.

Gasser, Peter. “Karl VI., Triest und die Venezianer.” In „wir aber aus unsern vorhero sehr erschöpfften camergeföllen nicht hernemben khönnen…“ Beiträge zur österreichischen Wirtschafts- und Finanzgeschichte vom 17. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert. Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, Sonderband 3, 17–109. Vienna: Berger–Horn, 1997.

Good, David F. Der wirtschaftliche Aufstieg des Habsburgerreichs 1750–1918. Vienna–Cologne–Graz: Böhlau, 1986.

Grossmann, Henryk. “Die amtliche Statistik des galizischen Außenhandels 1772–1792.” In Statistische Monatsschrift 39 (1913): 222–33.

Grossmann, Henryk. Österreichs Handelspolitik mit Bezug auf Galizien in der Reformperiode 1772–1790. Studien zur Sozial-, Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungsgeschichte 10. Vienna: Konegen, 1914.

Hassinger, Herbert. “Der Außenhandel der Habsburgermonarchie in der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts.” In Die wirtschaftliche Situation in Deutschland und Österreich an der Wende vom 18. zum 19. Jahrhundert, edited by Friedrich Lütge, 61–98. Stuttgart: Fischer, 1964.

Häusler, Wolfgang. Von der Massenarmut zur Arbeiterbewegung: Demokratie und soziale Frage in der Wiener Revolution von 1848. Vienna: Jugend und Volk, 1979.

Heckenast, Gusztáv. “Der Zustand und die Entwicklung der Industrie in Ungarn zur Zeit Maria Theresias: Eine Skizze.” Jahrbuch für Österreichische Kulturgeschichte 10 (1984): 235–56.

Hochedlinger, Michael, and Anton Tantner, eds. ”Der größte Teil der Untertanen lebt elend und mühselig:” Die Berichte des Hofkriegsrates zur sozialen und wirtschaftlichen Lage der Habsburgermonarchie 1770–1771. Innsbruck–Vienna: Studien-Verlag, 2005.

Hopkins, Terence K., and Immanuel Wallerstein. “Grundzüge der Entwicklung des modernen Weltsystems: Entwurf für ein Forschungsvorhaben.” In Kapitalistische Weltökonomie: Kontroversen über ihren Ursprung und ihre Entwicklungsdynamik, edited by Dieter Senghaas, 151–200. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1979.

Ingrao, Charles. The Habsburg Monarchy 1618–1815. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Kaps, Klemens. “Gescheitertes Aufholen in Zentraleuropa: Der Abstieg der Habsburgermonarchie zu einem semiperipheren Wirtschaftsraum im Spiegel ihrer Außenhandelsstruktur 1791–1880.” Zeitschrift für Weltgeschichte 9, no. 1 (2008): 103–22.

Kaps, Klemens. “Trade Statistics in the Habsburg Monarchy, 18th century–1918.” Revue de l’OFCE 26, no. 4 (2015): 253–64.

Kaps, Klemens. Ungleiche Entwicklung in Zentraleuropa: Galizien zwischen überregionaler Arbeitsteilung und imperialer Politik (1772–1914). Sozial- und Wirtschaftshistorische Studien 37. Vienna: Böhlau, 2015.

Kaps, Klemens. “Kulturelle Vorstellungswelten der Politischen Ökonomie: Bilder des habsburgischen Ostens im kameralistischen Diskurs zwischen den Wendejahren 1683 und 1815.” In Konstruierte (Fremd-?)Bilder: Das östliche Europa im Diskurs des 18. Jahrhunderts, edited by Christoph Augustynowicz and Agnieszka Pufelska, 177–99. Berlin–Boston: De Gruyter, 2017.

Klíma, Arnošt. “English Merchant Capital in Bohemia in the 18th Century.” Economic History Review, 2nd series 12 (1959–60): 34–48.

Klíma, Arnošt. “Glassmaking Industry and Trade in Bohemia in the 17th and 18th Centuries.” Journal of European Economic History 13, no. 3 (1984): 499–520.

Klíma, Arnošt. “Über die größten Manufakturen des 18. Jahrhunderts in Böhmen.” In Mitteilungen des österreichischen Staatsarchivs 12 (1959): 143–61.

Klíma, Arnošt. “Probleme der Proto-Industrie in Böhmen zur Zeit Maria Theresias.” In idem, Economy, Industry and Society in Bohemia in the 17th–19th centuries. Prague: Charles University, 1991, 99–16.

Klingenstein, Grete. “Between Mercantilism and Physiocracy: Stages, Modes and Functions of Economic Theory in the Habsburg Monarchy 1748–63.” In State and Society in Early Modern Austria, edited by Charles Ingrao, 181–214. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1994.

Komlos, John. “Austria and European Economic Development: What Has Been Learned?” In State and Society in Early Modern Austria, edited by Charles Ingrao, 215–25. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1994.

Komlosy, Andrea. Grenze und ungleiche regionale Entwicklung: Binnenmarkt und Migration in der Habsburgermonarchie. Vienna: Promedia, 2003.

Komlosy, Andrea. “Austria and Czechoslovakia: The Habsburg Monarchy and the Successor States.” In The Ashgate Companion to the History of Textile Workers, 1650–2000, edited by Lex Herma van Voss, Els Kuperus-Hiemstra, and Elise Meerkerk van Nederveen, 43–73. Farnham–Burlington: Ashgate, 2010.

Liebel-Weckowitz, Helen. “Modernisierungsmotive in der Freihandelspolitik Maria Theresias.” In Maria Theresia und ihre Zeit: Eine Darstellung der Epoche 1740–1780 aus Anlaß der 200. Wiederkehr des Todestages der Kaiserin, edited by Walter Koschatzky, 153–58. Vienna–Salzburg: Residenz-Verlag, 1979.

Matis, Herbert. “Betriebsorganisation, Arbeitsmarkt und Arbeitsverfassung.” In Von der Glückseligkeit des Staates: Staat, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft in Österreich im Zeitalter des Aufgeklärten Absolutismus, edited by idem, 411–49. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1981.

Myška, Milan. “Proto-Industrialisierung in Böhmen, Mähren und Schlesien.” In Protoindustrialisierung in Europa, edited by Markus Cerman and Sheilagh C. Ogilvie, 177–91. Historische Sozialkunde 5. Vienna: Verlag für Gesellschaftskritik, 1994.

Nolte, Hans-Heinrich, ed. Internal Peripheries in European History. Zur Kritik der Geschichtsschreibung 6. Göttingen–Zürich: Muster-Schmidt, 1991.

Nolte, Hans-Heinrich, ed. Europäische innere Peripherien im 20. Jahrhundert. Edited by Michael Salewski and Jürgen Elvert. Historische Mitteilungen im Auftrag der Ranke-Gesellschaft, Beiheft 23. Stuttgart: Steiner, 1997.

Nolte, Hans-Heinrich, ed. Innere Peripherien in Ost und West. Compiled by Klaas Bähre. Stuttgart: Steiner, 2001.

Nolte, Hans-Heinrich. “Innere Peripherien: Das Konzept in der Forschung.” In Innere Peripherien in Ost und West, edited by idem and Klaas Bähre, 7–31. Stuttgart: Steiner, 2001.

Osterloh, Karl-Heinz. Joseph von Sonnenfels und die österreichische Reformbewegung im Zeitalter des aufgeklärten Absolutismus: Eine Studie zum Zusammenhang von Kameralwissenschaft und Verwaltungspraxis. Lübeck–Hamburg: Matthiesen, 1970.

Otruba, Gustav. Der Außenhandel Österreichs unter besonderer Berücksichtigung Niederösterreichs nach der älteren amtlichen Handelsstatistik. Der niederösterreichische Arbeiter 1. Vienna: Kammer für Arbeiter und Angestellte in Niederösterreich, 1950.

Otruba, Gustav. “Staatshaushalt und Staatsschuld unter Maria Theresia und Joseph II.” In Österreich im Europa der Aufklärung: Kontinuität und Zäsur in Europa zur Zeit Maria Theresias und Josephs II., vol. 1, edited by Grete Klingenstein and Richard Plaschka, 197–249. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akadedmie der Wissenschaften, 1985.

Otruba, Gustav. “Schlesien im System des österreichischen Merkantilismus: Die Auswirkungen des Verlusts Schlesiens auf die österreichische Wirtschaft.” In Kontinuität und Wandel: Schlesien zwischen Österreich und Preußen, edited by Peter Baumgart and Ulrich Schmilewski, 81–118. Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1990.

Said, Edward W. Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. London: Penguin, 2003.

Sandgruber, Roman. Die Anfänge der Konsumgesellschaft: Konsumgüterverbrauch, Lebensstandard und Alltagskultur in Österreich im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert. Vienna: Verlag für Geschichte und Politik, 1982.

Sandgruber, Roman. Ökonomie und Politik: Österreichische Wirtschaftsgeschichte vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart. Vienna: Ueberreuter, 1994.

Sandl, Marcus. Ökonomie des Raumes: Der kameralwissenschaftliche Entwurf der Staatswirtschaft im 18. Jahrhundert. Cologne–Weimar: Böhlau, 1999.

Špiesz, Anton. “Die Wirtschaftspolitik des Wiener Hofes gegenüber Ungarn im 18. Jahrhundert und im Vormärz.” In Ungarn-Jahrbuch 1 (1969): 60–73.

Tremel, Ferdinand. Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte Österreichs. Vienna: Deuticke, 1969.

Vári, András. “The Functions of Ethnic Stereotypes in Austria and Hungary in the Early Nineteenth Century.” In Creating the Other: Ethnic Conflict and Nationalism in Habsburg Central Europe, edited by Nancy Wingfield, 39–55. New York: Berghahn, 2003.

Wallerstein, Immanuel. The Modern World-System II: Mercantilism and the Consolidation of the European World-Economy, 1600–1750. New York: Academic Press, 1980.

Wellmann, Imre. “Maria Theresias Handelspolitik mit besonderer Rücksicht auf die Agrarproduktion.” In Jahrbuch für Österreichische Kulturgeschichte 10 (1984): 257–318.

Wolff, Larry. Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995.

Wolff, Larry. “Inventing Galicia: Messianic Josephinism and the Recasting of Partitioned Poland.” Slavic Review 63, no. 4 (2004): 818–40.