Austria Supreme (if it so Wishes) (1684): 'A Strategy for European Economic Supremacy

Philipp Von Hörnigk, Keith Tribe

Description

A scholarly introduction to the Austrian-German mercantilist classic ‘Oesterreich über Alles Wann es Nur Will’ (1684) by Philipp Wilhelm von Hörnigk

Between its first date of publication in 1684 and 1784 classic ‘Oesterreich über Alles Wann es Nur Will’ went through more than twenty known editions which makes it, arguably, Europe’s most successful ‘economics textbook’ prior to Adam Smith’s ‘Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations’ (1776). Philipp Wilhelm von Hörnigk laid in this book the foundations of what has become known as the ‘mercantilist’ political economy – a strategy for achieving national wealth and political strength simultaneously by building up a competitive domestic manufacturing industry with the help of the state. Hörnigk advocated standard recipes known from modern development economics, such as import substitution, protective tariffs on select goods as well as bounties and other financial as also logistic support by a proactive interventionist state in order to safeguard and nurture domestic industries that were in a state of infancy but which would be promising candidates for future growth and economies of scale. As new work by Erik Reinert and Lars Magnusson has shown, contrary to a sort of mainstream view in modern economics and economic history, it was such policies that tended to make European countries rich in the pre-industrial age, also laying the basic foundations for subsequent industrialization – even the ‘Great Divergence’ between Europe and Asia post 1800. Most European states were interventionist during the nineteenth century. They obviously drew upon a menu of recipes and political economy schedules that had circulated widely in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe and which would subsequently also influence the major works by Friedrich List, Daniel Raymond and other nineteenth-century development theorists.

Based on Hörnigk’s popularity and the publication pattern for the book, the ‘Hörnigk’ strategy stood at the core of many a treatise and book written on economic matters in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe; in fact Hörnigk may be called the forefather of modern development economics. He certainly was a towering figure in the ‘Germanic’ economic discourses of the early modern period. ‘Austria Supreme, if It So Wishes (1684)’ will be the first-ever English translation of a work the importance of which for European economic development and the ‘European Miracle’ cannot be overestimated.

1. Philipp Wilhelm Von Hörnigk – Life and Times ; 2. An Age of Reason? Enlightenment and Economics; 3. Cameralism – Baroque-O-Nomics; 4. Extremis Morbis Extrema Veniant Remedia – Analytical Summary of Hörnigk’s ‘Oesterreich Über Alles’ (1684); 5. How Europe Got Rich – The Austrian Example; Austria Supreme (if it so wishes) (1684); Index.

Sujets

• Economic development
• Economic growth
• Economic history
• Development

Informations

• Publié par: Anthem Press
• Date de parution: 25 juin 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783088225
• Langue: English

Extrait

Austria Supreme (if it so wishes) (1684) A Strategy for European Economic Supremacy
ECONOMIC IDEAS THAT BUILT EUROPE
Economic Ideas That Built Europe reconstructs the development of European political economy as seen through the eyes of its principal architects and interpreters, working to overcome the ideological nature of recent historiography. The volumes in the series – contextualized through analytical introductions and enriched with explanatory footnotes, bibliographies and indices – offer a wide selection of texts inspired by very different economic visions and stress their complex consequences and interactions in the rich but often simplified history of European economic thought.
SERIES EDITOR
Sophus A. Reinert – Harvard Business School, USA
EDITORIAL BOARD
David Armitage – Harvard University, USA
Steven L. Kaplan – Cornell University, USA
Emma Rothschild – Harvard University, USA
Jacob Soll – University of Southern California, USA
Bertram Schefold – Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany
Austria Supreme (if it so wishes) (1684) A Strategy for European Economic Supremacy
Philipp Wilhelm von Hörnigk
Edited with an introduction by Philipp Robinson Rössner
Translated by Keith Tribe
Anthem Press
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company
www.anthempress.com

This edition first published in UK and USA 2018
by ANTHEM PRESS
75–76 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8HA, UK
or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK
and
244 Madison Ave #116, New York, NY 10016, USA

Part of The Anthem Other Canon Series
Series Editor Erik S. Reinert

© 2018 The Other Canon Foundation; and Philipp Robinson Rössner chapters 1–5

The moral right of the authors has been asserted.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above,
no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means
(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise),
without the prior written permission of both the copyright
owner and the above publisher of this book.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN-13: 978-1-78308-820-1 (Hbk)
ISBN-10: 1-78308-820-6 (Hbk)

This title is also available as an e-book.
Wir sind doch nunmehr gantz, ja mehr denn gantz verheeret!
Der frechen Völcker Schar, die rasende Posaun
Das vom Blutt fette Schwerdt, die donnernde Carthaun
Hat aller Schweiß und Fleiß und Vorrath auffgezehret.
Die Türme stehn in Glutt, die Kirch ist umgekehret.
Das Rathhauß ligt im Grauß, die Starcken sind zerhaun,
Die Jungfern sind geschänd’t, und wo wir hin nur schaun,
Ist Feuer, Pest, und Tod, der Hertz und Geist durchfähret.
Hir durch die Schantz und Stadt rinnt allzeit frisches Blutt.
Dreymal sind schon sechs Jahr, als unser Ströme Flutt,
Von Leichen fast verstopfft, sich langsam fort gedrungen,
Doch schweig ich noch von dem, was ärger als der Tod,
Was grimmer denn die Pest und Glutt und Hungersnoth,
Dass auch der Seelen Schatz so vielen abgezwungen.
– Andreas Gryphius, Tränen des Vaterlandes (1636)

Be’t Kinder, bet’t
Morgen kommt der Schwed’
Morgen kommt der Oxenstern
Wird die Kinder beten lern’n
Bet’t Kinder, bet’t
Die Schweden sind gekommen,
Haben alles mitgenommen,
Haben’s Fenster eingeschlagen,
Haben’s Blei davon getragen,
Haben Kugeln daraus gegossen
Und die Bauern erschossen.
– German lullaby, Thirty Years War
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Chapter One
Philipp Wilhelm von Hörnigk – His Life, Times and Place in History
A Long-Forgotten Algorithm for Europe’s Rise to Greatness: The Hörnigk Strategy
Who Was Hörnigk?
Chapter Two
An Age of Reason? Enlightenment and Economics
Economics Enlightened
Manufacturing Matters, Useful Knowledge and the Deception of Free Markets
The Origin of Modern Economics
Chapter Three
Cameralism – Baroque-o- nomics
Cameralist Economic Theory
Configuring the Free Market: Homo imperfectabilis
Development into Underdevelopment or the Shadow of the Great War
Cameralism and Its Place in Modern Economics
Chapter Four
Extremis Morbis Extrema Remedia – Analytical Summary of Hörnigk’s Oesterreich über alles (1684)
Hörnigk’s Theoretical Achievement
‘ Oesterreich über alles’, Wann es Nur Will
Chapter Five
How Europe Got Rich – The Austrian Example
State Intervention and Economic Growth in Pre-industrial Europe
Austrian Economic Development, 1650–1850
Policy Development, 1650–1850
Did the ‘Hörnigk Strategy’ Make Austria Rich?
Appendix: The Known Publication Record of Hörnigk’s Book
Austria Supreme (if it so wishes) (1684)
Index
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The translation of Hörnigk’s 1684 volume was financed by the the Institute of New Economic Thinking (INET) as part of their grant to Sophus A. Reinert and Francesca Viano. The editor wishes to thank Erik S. Reinert and The Other Canon Foundation for assistance throughout the project, and Fernanda and Erik S. Reinert for assistance in a crucial point of the translation.
Chapter One
PHILIPP WILHELM VON HÖRNIGK – HIS LIFE, TIMES AND PLACE IN HISTORY
A Long-Forgotten Algorithm for Europe’s Rise to Greatness: The Hörnigk Strategy
How does a country grow rich? Why do some countries grow rich much faster than others? Why do some nations experience growth and prosperity, while others don’t? Why did Europe eventually overtake the rest of the world, becoming the first region to industrialize and experience a progressive economic advantage over the rest of the world? These are the big questions asked in the modern social sciences, not only in more recent times (as witnessed by the post-2000 Great Divergence debate fuelled by two books by scholars working at the University of California), 1 but also since the days of Karl Marx or Max Weber. 2 Philipp Wilhelm von Hörnigk’s 3 ‘Austria Supreme’ provides a concise and powerful answer to them. 4 People had even raised them way before. In the eighteenth-century Enlightenment discourses, these questions were at the core of the ‘rich’ country versus ‘poor’ country debates. All major epigones of the Scottish Enlightenment, including David Hume and Adam Smith, would comment on this problem. 5 But this discourse was even older than that. It had been raised in early modern European political economy discourse at least since the sixteenth century and the days of Giovanni Botero, the Italian author who wrote a major treatise on cities and economic development. 6 It is not usually acknowledged that the big rift that developed in economic fortune between Asia and the West around AD 1800 had a prehistory that predates the industrial revolution – one major element and cause of the Great Divergence – by centuries. Nor is it well understood what role ideas played in this process – that is, the intellectual history of industrialization and Europe’s eventual economic supremacy. With the present text, written by a seventeenth-century diplomat living in Habsburg, Austria, who no schoolchild and social science student of today would be expected to have heard of, we have an answer at last, however partial or incomplete. It was the ‘Hörnigk Strategy’ that made European nations rich. Perhaps, there is something to be learned from this. At least, this man should receive the fame he deserves.
During his own lifetime, Philipp Wilhelm von Hörnigk, as he is usually known, must have been formidably famous. At least his work was, as people maintained, even long after his death in 1714. The preface of the 1723 edition of ‘ Oesterreich über alles’ was the first to disclose the author’s true identity, years after his death. The original 1684 issue, as well as all other editions up to 1723, had been published anonymously. 7 When Austrian political economy professor Joseph von Sonnenfels (1732/33–1817) was appointed to the chair in Cameralist economics at the University of Vienna in 1763, he was required to draw up a list of textbooks on which his lectures were to be based, as well as indicate the textbook he would actually use in class. While academic bookshops still haunt university lecturers in a similar way by asking them to submit reading lists at the start of every academic year, ironically, the main reason this was required from Sonnenfels by his superiors in the university was that he was a self-confessed ignorant in political economy. He had prepared to lecture on Hebrew and translation. But it was not at all unusual to appoint people who were ignorant in the subject they were supposed to be lecturing on (again, this is not necessarily different today!). But what counts here is that, among a longer list of more modern authors he had (or was going to) read, Sonnenfels included Hörnigk’s Österreich über alles (as well as Schröder’s Fürstliche Rentkammer and Becher’s Politische Discurs ) on his reading list as a natural starting point (Seckendorff’s Teutscher Fürsten Stat from 1655 seems to be missing from the list). 8 On the one hand, this story seems to testify to the rather dubious qualities and obscure qualifications of some eighteenth-century university professors. On the other hand, it marks and underscores Hörnigk’s position and rank as a towering figure in the long and venerable gen