ENLIGHTENED ABSOLUTISM

The term 'Enlightenment', which originated in the mid-eighteenth century, is associated with the spread of a more rational, 'scientific' approach to the world as opposed to the presumed ignorance and superstition of preceding ages.

Building on the genuine advances in scientific understanding since the seventeenth century, this concept of rational, empirical enquiry came to be applied to the analysis of society and systems of government as well as the physical universe. With this went a heightened interest in the collection of verifiable knowledge, typified by the famous Encyclopedie of the French scholar Diderot, a hostility to religion coupled with a commitment to religious toleration and freedom of thought, and the advocacy of a more rational organisation of social and political institutions. In this last respect the Enlightenment in Western Europe gave a powerful impetus to political liberalism, in that it encouraged demands for more accountable and representative government, such as those voiced in the American and French revolutions.

In considering the phenomenon of the Enlightenment in Eastern Europe, we are immediately confronted with the twin problems of sequence and instrumentality. First of all, many of the government-led changes, or attempts at change, in the region preceded by a long chalk any sign of enlightened thinking penetrating the countries in question. In other words, the need for reform had practical, local inspiration, which has to be accounted for with reference to local conditions. Secondly, the intentions of those most closely associated with change were not necessarily enlightened in the sense accepted by those who later consciously promoted enlightenment. Rather, the East European rulers who first undertook reform were motivated by basic needs such as survival against foreign aggression, maximisation of revenue and control over their subjects. Only later did theory catch up with practice.

The name given to this rational approach to government in most of eighteenth-century Europe, however, and which in Eastern Europe we associate with the process of modernisation, is ‘enlightened absolutism'. This is because the changes being attempted were on the whole ordained by rulers, without reference to any popular, representative institutions. At the same time the underlying assumption behind such changes was that they were in fact rational, that they would benefit not only the ruler but also his subjects. The overriding aim, in all cases, was nevertheless to enhance the efficiency of government and hence the viability of the state itself.

Part of the difficulty in linking the Enlightenment to what was going on in Eastern Europe in this period, as well as in determining whether East European rulers were enlightened absolutists, is that there were different types of Enlightenment. The French variant was more explicitly based on the cult of rationality, on scientific empiricism and on the belief in rational, and hence more liberal, government. The more moderate or conservative thinkers of the German Enlightenment showed less interest in empiricism and the physical sciences, and a greater reliance on metaphysical philosophy and intuition. Most importantly, it was German philosophers like Samuel von Pufendorf and Christian Wolff who evolved the concept of natural law. According to these thinkers, there was a ‘natural' contract in societies between rulers and ruled: in return for physical protection and just government, a monarch's subjects implicitly accepted his absolute title to govern. Widely disseminated among the educated elite in the German states by the mid-eighteenth century (Frederick II was an outstanding advocate), natural law theory constituted 'an important source of enlightened absolutism throughout Germany'.2 As a consequence it had more of an impact on Eastern Europe, especially Russia, than did the writings of the French Enlightenment, even if the latter were well enough known to East European rulers by the mid-century.

In addition to the question of which strand of the Enlightenment was most influential, there is the problem of explaining practical reforms in Eastern Europe which preceded the very concept of Enlightenment. Many of these, in several parts of the region, were inspired by the body of economic thought referred to as 'cameralism', which had its origins in the seventeenth century. Cameralists, several of whom were influential in the Habsburg Monarchy of Leopold I (1657—1705), taught that the strength and security of the state stood in direct relation to the well-being and prosperity of its subjects. The greater the population and the more wealth they produced, the greater would be the tax revenue available to the monarch and hence his ability to maintain a standing army. It was thus in the self-interest of rulers, as well as their duty, to promote economic development. They could do this, according to the cameralists, by lifting economic restrictions such as the labour service obligations of the peasantry, the monopoly rights of artisans' guilds and the commercial privileges of the nobility. They could free their subjects from social restrictions and attract immigrants from other realms by proclaiming religious toleration, maintaining domestic order and furthering education. They could encourage industry and trade by paying for the training of artisans and the founding of merchant companies.

Rulers could do all this, but they did not necessarily succeed, even where they made the attempt. The record of cameralism in the Habsburg Monarchy down to 1740 was one of failure: recurrent wars, the limited scope of the reforms attempted and the sheer strength of vested interests ensured that little in the way of fundamental change occurred. In Russia, where the modernising energy of Peter the Great owed much to that ruler's perception of the nexus between prosperity and the strength of the state, the impetus behind modernisation fell away after his death in 1725. The Saxon kings of Poland—Lithuania held their throne on the specific condition that they did not interfere with the 'golden liberties' of the Polish nobility. The furthest the Ottoman sultans got to remedying their increasingly obvious disadvantage vis-a-vis the Christian powers was to appoint a French military adviser, the Comte de Bonneval, in 1729. Only Prussia, under Frederick William I (1713—40), can be said to have successfully implemented cameralist policies. Through strict economy, the reform of the tax system, a tightly controlled bureaucracy, the subordination of both landowners and peasantry to the needs of the army, and the encouragement of industry, much of it state-run, this single-minded monarch transformed his kingdom into the most formidable military power in Europe.

Events in Eastern Europe from 1740 increasingly showed the necessity of modernisation. The Habsburg Monarchy's loss of Silesia, Poland—Lithuania's powerlessness to resist Russian domination and the Ottoman Empire's erosion at the hands of Russian armies suggested that all three might cease to exist if they failed to adapt. And by mid-century the thinking of the Enlightenment was beginning to reinforce this purely practical impetus, in that individual rulers, ministers and other influential figures were appearing who were clearly inspired by its ideals.

Frederick the Great, for example, famously considered himself 'the first servant of the [Prussian] state'.3 Not only did he see himself, in accordance with natural law theory, as contractually bound to govern justly and rationally, not only did he pour large sums of money into the promotion of industry, on good cameralist lines, but he also described himself at the age of 16 as 'Frederic le philosophe' (Frederick the philosopher) and cultivated personal ties with the great intellectuals of the Enlightenment, such as Voltaire, whom Frederick invited to stay in Berlin, and Christian Wolff, whose teaching he prized. True, Frederick's practice as a ruler did not live up to his professions as a philosopher, but there can be no doubt that throughout his life the ultimate touchstone for his actions, whether in foreign policy or in domestic policies like religious toleration, legal reform and economic development, was whether they were rational. In this he was a genuinely enlightened monarch.

In similar ways we can see the effect of the Enlightenment on other rulers in Eastern Europe. Catherine II of Russia was an omnivorous reader of Enlightenment thinkers, such as Montesquieu, on principles of government; Beccaria, on penal reform; and the English jurist Blackstone. She corresponded with Voltaire and, in 1773, invited Diderot to St Petersburg and offered him a pension. In the Habsburg Monarchy Maria Theresa, though less well read than Catherine, surrounded herself with advisers steeped in Enlightenment thinking; the rationalist and hence reform-minded strand of Catholicism known as Jansenism was especially well represented at the Viennese court. Senior ministers were freethinkers, and both Joseph II and Leopold II were literally products of Enlightenment teaching, educated by such luminaries as the jurist Karl Anton von Martini. In Poland—Lithuania, Stanislaw August was a consciously enlightened king, determined to reform the Commonwealth in order to forestall its further decline.

All these rulers, in their different ways, pursued a more rational, efficient administration, based on clearly codified legal systems. They strove for economic rationalisation and development as the basis for this, as well as the indispensable precondition for financing a strong standing army. They saw education and cultural advance as essential for training the bureaucracy required for this more complicated state and society. They uniformly saw some measure of land reform as desirable, in the interests of productivity and social stability if not natural justice. Their overall aim, it should be stressed, was not a liberal society but a strong state.

Between the aspiration of enlightened absolutism and its implementation, however, there was a wide gap. None of the rulers of Eastern Europe ever attained literally absolute rule, either because of the entrenched opposition of historic classes and interests or because of the sheer scale of the problems facing them. However sweeping the changes attempted, in the end genuine modernisation proved beyond all of Eastern Europe's rulers. The consequences of this failure, particularly the inability to abolish serfdom, were to be profound.