Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
Mediating Progress in the Provinces: State-Building versus
Citizen-Making in the Agrarian Societies of
18th Century Bohemia
Rita Krueger
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Mediating Progress in the Provinces:
State-Building versus Citizen-Making in the Agrarian Societies
of 18th Century Bohemia
“All which was local, autonomous, or determined by a particular
popular entity appeared suspicious and antipathetic... as a sign or
danger of feudal rebellions.”1
Oscar Jaszi
One of the enduring issues of Central European history has been the question of
Habsburg longevity, namely explaining the Habsburg monarchy’s ability to endure
though confronted with powerful changes in social relations, economic organization,
and national allegiances. Certainly there have been many arguments about which
factors are most salient in assessing the Habsburg monarchy’s disintegration, some
scholars favoring an analysis of “inevitable” long term decline, others pointing to
the stresses and strains of unsuccessful war. The issue of nationalism is common to
most explanations and is legitimately attached to the monarchy’s ultimate demise,
in that in addition to being challenged by pressures associated with economic and
political modernization, imperial longevity and its breakdown were linked to the
degree to which the Habsburgs were successful in extending the control of Vienna
(the Center) over the provinces, both German and non-German (the periphery). The
fractured nature of the Habsburg lands, a characteristic well illustrated in the long
list of titles and crowns worn by the Habsburgs, served both to undermine the
cohesiveness of central authority as well as to provide a basis for national
movements themselves. This fractured political arrangement and the hierarchy of
local power and administration that was at its base were underwritten by the
interests of local elites and the nature of landowning and labor. Any attempts on the
part of the Habsburgs to reform, modernize, or centralize the structure of the state
immediately confronted the interests of local elites and provincial authority, with
varying degrees of success. The efforts of Habsburg monarchs to undo the power
of local elites, particularly noble landlords, and to challenge the dominance of
nobles in local administration and the Estates gave the ambivalent relationship
between Habsburg (central) authority and local (peripheral) power its contours in
the eighteenth century. The concerted effort on the part of the imperial
administration against entrenched local power had many motives, including fiscal
and administrative needs, the changing conception of political legitimacy and
authority, and the rhetoric of enlightenment and progress. Whatever the genesis of
reform, one of its prominent foci involved the question of land - its prosperity, the
1. Oscar Jászi, The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy (Chicago and London: University of
Chicago Press, 1929), 136.
rights derived from it, and the community sustained by it. This paper will examine
one institutional location for this debate about land - the agricultural society.
Agrarian and economic societies were a ubiquitous institutional feature across
the continent, and included societies founded in different regions of the Habsburg
empire. Issues about prosperity and reform were at the center of public discourse in
new scientific and agrarian institutions in the eighteenth century. Agrarian and
economic societies emerged from the interaction between reform-minded monarchs
and local elites over the question of promoting rural prosperity. This paper will
argue that, whatever their expectations and intent, the ultimate impact of agricultural
societies in the Czech lands was not agricultural, but social and political. While they
did help to professionalize agriculture and science, the true impact of agrarian
societies in the Czech lands was to contribute to a “citizen building” project. The
education of the rural population, combined with socially mixed experts in the
agrarian society and open discussion of the national good, encouraged new social
norms and ultimately (and unintentionally) advanced both national and peasant
politics. The discussion begins with an overview of the prevalent attitudes on the
part of reformers towards the need for change in the countryside and then turns to
the intent and activities of two agrarian societies, the Patriotic-Economic Society in
Bohemia and the Moravian-Silesian Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, that
were created out of this recognition of the need for reform.
The question of rural prosperity is an important aspect of the center-periphery
relationship in that questions of rural prosperity were tied to the power of landed
elites and thus by extension to the matter of bureaucratic or administrative control.
Both sides, namely both local elites and central administration, participated in a
discourse about the future of the Habsburg polity and its underlying wealth and
well-being. Both sides also had vested interests in the degree to which Bohemia was
integrated into the economic, political, and social life of the German Austrian lands.
As will be seen below, one of the primary grievances of the Habsburgs against local
power was the splintering of royal sovereignty - the perception that entrenched local
power was the source of Habsburg weakness at home and abroad. From this
perspective, inherited political fault lines between different Habsburg provinces had
been aggravated by the abuses of position of local elites and had contributed to the
financial, military, and political woes of the Habsburg dominions. Indeed, this
interpretation was not entirely off the mark in that it was precisely local, and
ultimately nationalist particularity that challenged Habsburg power most effectively.
2
Historians examining Habsburg “decline” have often pointed to policies that
were “too little, too late” in terms of political and economic modernization and the
evisceration of independent local power. However, the relationship between local
elites and central authority has too easily been characterized as simply oppositional,
assuming that a conservative not to say reactionary local elite stood intractably in
the way of reform both in land holding and local administration. As will become
clear, the position of local elites toward both central authority and their own rural
populations was highly ambivalent. Agrarian societies are a useful case to examine
in this regard. These societies were part of an overall attempt on the part of the
central government to reform agricultural practices, and were as such intended by
Maria Theresa to be part and parcel of a rejuvenation of Habsburg power and
authority that would make the monarchy fiscally sound and resilient to the
incursions of enemies inside and out. Intent, however, did not equal outcome. It was
an unforseen consequence that these societies, like other new scientific and
intellectual institutions, would be far more successful in promoting local
particularity and ultimately regional/national identity than in encouraging
measurable prosperity in the countryside. Whatever the intended outcome, the
cumulative work of the agrarian societies served to reinforce provincial (peripheral)
particularity, to the ultimate detriment of the center - the Habsburg state.
HABSBURG POWER AND THE PROBLEM OF THE PERIPHERY
The defeats suffered by the Habsburgs in the War of the Austrian Succession
brought home to Maria Theresa that a poor financial situation, an inefficient
administration, and an ill-equipped and poorly trained army had nearly cost the
monarchy its existence.2 As she wrote later in her Political Testament, having no
choice but to settle with the Prussians, she turned her concentrated gaze on domestic
politics to ensure that her successors would never face the dissolution of the
monarchy because of domestic weakness. Reform of the army and the creation of
a suitably large standing force were her primary concerns, but it was clear that any
attempt at reform of the military required a different fiscal regime as well.
Convinced as she was that the disastrous (and hopefully temporary) loss in the war
of Silesia, a rich province and nearly half of the territory of the Bohemian crown,
was to be blamed on the poor state of the Monarchy’s finances and armed forces,
Maria Theresa turned her attention to these areas immediately. Beginning in the late
1740s, she accordingly embarked on a series of reforms that derived from her desire
to strengthen the state and to reverse the losses of the war. These reforms addressed
2. Maria Theresa lost Silesia but retained Opava, Krnov, and Lisa. The Czech ethnic core of the
Bohemian lands was retained, despite the large territorial loss, with the remaining lands
corresponding roughly to the territory held under the PÍemyslids.
3
a number of interrelated policy areas: taxes and economic unity, communications
and transport, administrative reform, and the promotion of industry and agriculture.
Under the guidance of Count Friedrich Wilhelm Haugwitz, the Empress enacted a
series of constitutional and legal reforms designed to streamline Austrian
administration and make tax collection as efficient (and extensive) as possible.3 The
effort to increase the power of the central government, and its hold on local
administration had begun.
In the case of Bohemia, a comparatively rich region that already contributed
a disproportionately high share of the tax burden, Maria Theresa had the additional
impetus of revenge for what she perceived as the nobility’s attempt to ally Bohemia
with the Bavarian Elector after 1740.4 This “treason” on the part of the nobility was
one of the most egregious examples of what had come, in the Empress’ opinion, to
characterize Austrian politics, namely the fracturing of central authority by local
elites. Indeed, as Hassenpflug-Elzholz’s important work has shown, there was a
distinct correlation between central versus provincial office-holding in the
breakdown of nobles voting patterns, with those in the latter group essentially
“against” Maria Theresa. As Maria Theresa and Haugwitz recognized, the tax and
administrative inefficiencies that Maria Theresa inherited were related to the more
significant and intractable problem of residual power bases in the provinces. In
reviewing the first nine years of her reign, Maria Theresa weighed the different
causes for the monarchy’s vulnerable predicament in 1740. In addition to the
obvious problems of bankrupt Kamera and a poorly organized military, she placed
much of the blame on the Ministers of the court and what she termed their
provincial interests.5 At the heart of the monarchy’s weakness was a constitution
3. Haugwitz was himself a student of Austrian cameralism, and shared Emperor Joseph’s hostility
towards the provincial Estates. See H.M. Scott, “Reform in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1740-1790"
in Enlightened Absolutism: Reform and Reformers in Later Eighteenth-Century Europe, ed. H.M.
Scott (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1990), 152.
4. A large number of the Bohemian nobility of the Estates had sworn allegiance to the Bavarian
Elector Charles Albert, who was seen by Maria Theresa as the usurper of her husband’s rightful
place on the imperial throne. This episode, in contrast to the loyalty and support sworn by the
Hungarian nobility, did little to encourage Maria Theresa to avoid any incursions into the local
power of the landed nobility in Bohemia. See Eila Hassenpflug-Elzholz, Böhmen und die
böhmischen Stände in der Zeit des beginnenden Zentralismus: Eine Strukturanalyse der
böhmischen Adelsnation um die Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1982).
5. In fact in this opinion she was not entirely correct. There were certainly ministers and nobles
at court who were more interested in their own wealth and privileges, and did much to maintain
both, regardless of the problems facing the empire. There were, however, men like Kaunitz and
Haugwitz, who were committed to both the Empress and to reform, regardless of their Bohemian
or “provincial” background. The division was thus less between Bohemians or Hungarians and
others, but rather is better explained by a combination of personal preferences and beliefs on the
4
that had enabled if not encouraged ministers to place the welfare of their provinces
ahead of the “general welfare”. Maria Theresa emphasized that Ministers, pursuing
their own wealth and power and protecting the interests of their own provinces, had
ceased to have any concern for “the general good” or the burdens placed on the
“common man.” The empress viewed this concentration of power in the hands of
a coterie of entrenched nobles both as a direct challenge to her own authority and
as seriously detrimental to the prosperity and strength of her possessions in their
entirety. The “Old Constitution,” as she termed it, had given ministers “such
authority that they flattered themselves that they were to be regarded not as mere
“Ministers,” as at other Courts, but as co-regents or at least as pares curiae.”6
Whereas Maria Theresa seemed at times perfectly willing to recognize and
respect the weight of political traditions in the provinces, tradition was for her a
moveable feast in the sense that customs were worthy of upholding if they were
manifestly beneficial in her view, namely did not interfere in the change she felt to
be necessary. Maintaining the “honorable, ancient customs” attached to the
provinces and to the elites who dominated local politics could be supported where
this applied “to those ancient customs which are good, not...bad.”7 Ministerial
competition for money and prestige under the old system had set not just minister
against minister, but province against province, and Maria Theresa admitted that in
the case of Austria and Bohemia, these conditions led to “a deep-rooted and
unremitting hatred between the two nations.”8 In effect, populations on the
periphery no longer felt themselves to be “subjects of the same lord.”9 This
splintering of the population and division of loyalties was in her opinion a serious
problem that needed to be overcome by significant constitutional and administrative
change.
A critical element of reforming the “corrupt” old constitution was to establish
a new hierarchy that would set up a different pattern of governance over the various
provinces, and reorder the relationship of the sovereign to the local population, in
both fiscal and political terms. This constitutional reform would “grasp the evil by
part of the nobles and connection of families to the power and privileges of the court versus those
who remained at home in the country and felt a more explicit division from the Viennese court
and its officials.
6. “Maria Theresa’s Testament” in C.A. Macartney, ed. The Habsburg and Hohenzollern
Dynasties in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (New York: Walker and Company,
1970),108.
7. Maria Theresa’s Testament, 109.
8. Maria Theresa’s Testament, 112.
9. Maria Theresa’s Testament, 110.
5
the root.”10 In the course of evaluating the fiscal reforms necessary for both the
military and the administration, it became clear to Maria Theresa that the “common
man” did exist in dire straits. As she wrote later, while justice demanded help be
given to the “poor, oppressed classes,” the Estates as a rule had rejected this basic
tenet.11 As a consequence, the empress “determined to alter completely the whole
rotten Constitution, central and Provincial,” and to set up new institutions to put the
system on a firm footing. To root out the old system of patronage and provincial
particularity and replace it with a new system of relatively rational hierarchy and
administration would, in her opinion,
give a Monarch the opportunity of acquiring personal knowledge of the nature of
his dominions, discussing and examining their grievances and withal promoting
a just relationship, such as is pleasing to God, between lords and their subjects,
but especially of watching closely that the poor, and particularly unfree
population, be not oppressed by the rich and by their masters.12
While her notions of rural landholding and labor changed in the course of her
experience on the throne, particularly after 1765, Maria Theresa did not initiate
reforms in tax structure and administration due to any profound doubt in the nobility
as a ruling class or in the seigniorial system as the proper management of land.13
However, if money was part of the key to the monarchy’s resurgence, she saw its
lack as attributable to two related factors: the corrupt and over-powerful elites who
lined their pockets without reference to the needs of the state or the plight of the
rural population, and the poor state of agricultural production itself. These two
factors were, of course, not unrelated. Reform and regulation (not abolition) of the
system of agrarian production, labor, and tax collection was inspired by the desire
for a prosperous and peaceful peasantry who could finance the government’s
military agenda. As Maria Theresa herself said, “The sheep should be well-fed in
order to make it yield more wool and more milk.”14 She went on further, “The
10. Maria Theresa’s Testament, 114.
11. Maria Theresa’s Testament, 123.
12. Maria Theresa’s Testament,130.
13. Derek Beales, in his biography of Joseph II has pointed out the degree to which Maria Theresa
revised her opinions on rural matters, seeking towards the latter half of her reign to act more
radically in the restructuring of rural life and labor. In this regard, Joseph was not the cutting edge
of reform. See Derek Beales, Joseph II: In the Shadow of Maria Theresa 1741-1780 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 343-358. Others have also noted that the adversarial
relationship between Estates and monarch has been over-emphasized, as both worked together
in terms of taxation as well as reform. As H.M. Scott notes, “Crown and Estates were partners
rather than opponents.” See Scott, “Reform,” 157.
14. Quoted in Jerome Blum, The End of the Old Order in Rural Europe (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1978), 221.
6
peasantry, who are the most numerous class of the citizenry and who are the
foundation and greatest strength of the state, should be maintained in such a
condition that they can support themselves and their families and in addition be able
to pay their taxes in times of both war and peace.”15 As in the rest of the monarchy,
it became a matter of some concern to guarantee that the population of Bohemia was
in such a state that it could in fact pay the necessary taxes while maintaining a
standard of living that would ensure the continued growth of the rural population.
This conclusion echoed several views that would return in the deliberations of
agrarian societies, most notably the belief that prosperity was tied directly to the
sheer size of the state’s population, and that the strength of the state depended on the
size of the rural population.16
The reform period under Maria Theresa had both concrete and more nebulous
aspects. Haugwitz’s administrative and fiscal reforms began the drive towards
bureaucratic professionalization and centralization. The intent of the reforms in
Bohemia was both to blur the lines of Land particularity and to replace what was in
the court’s view the capricious noble administration of the local districts (Kreis/kraj)
with trained, royal officials. The office of district captain (Hejtmann), once
dominated by the nobility, became increasingly subordinated to royal administrators
in political, economic, and military affairs, and in 1751 district officials, including
the captains, were made salaried state servants. Members of the royal bureaucracy,
another great noble enclave, were required to have legal training. The government
put curbs on the Diet’s control of the assessment and collection of taxes, and of its
recruitment of soldiers. In 1748, Maria Theresa put through a system of ten-year
Kontributions in place of the yearly negotiations, removing the last real prerogative
of the provincial Diets.17 In 1749, the Bohemian Court Chancellory, the highest
administrative and judicial body in the Bohemian lands, was dissolved and replaced
15. Quoted in Blum, The End of the Old Order, 221.
16. In the case of the government, which was interested in increasing the size of the standing
army, population increases and the physical well-being of subjects had additional military
implications.
17. This system of ten-year recesses was a death knell for the vitality of political action in the
Diet. As the institution seemed increasingly superfluous, the aristocracy deserted it. There were
obviously a number of avenues taken by elites no longer interested in using solely the estates as
a means of opposition to the central government. Hans Freudenberger’s work on aristocratic
entrepreneurs suggests that not only were these noble entrepreneurs a critical motor for industrial
development of estates in Bohemia, but the land itself became a new location for their opposition
to the government. See H.L. Freudenberger, “Progressive Bohemian and Moravian Aristocracy”
in Intellectual and Social Developments in the Habsburg Empire From Maria Theresa to World
War I, eds. Stanley Winters and Joseph Held (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975); and
Herman Freudenberger, “Industrialization in Bohemia and Moravia” in Journal of Central
European Affairs, vol. XIX, no. 4, January, 1960.
7
with a joint Directorium for Austria and Bohemia. This was a further attempt to
create one administration for the “hereditary lands” and represented the first time
that a unified chancellory would administer Bohemia as part of the hereditary
lands.18 Maria Theresa’s intent was clear - to improve the crown’s administrative
hold over the provinces and their elites, and to set up links to the “people” directly.19
While some administrative reforms were in later decades rolled back under
the pressure of war, the Empress and her ministers continued to explore ways to
interject central authority into the periphery, particularly over the question of local
administration. Maria Theresa ordered new cadastres (Kataster), or land registers,
to bring current the tax status of rustical and dominical lands, and to assess the area
and yields of cultivated and uncultivated land. This effort to register land, which
Joseph II continued, was not merely to complete the tax rolls with current and more
accurate information. More specifically it was an attempt to turn back the tide ¾ to
challenge noble landlords who had absorbed rustical land into larger estates to the
detriment of both the central authorities’ coffers and the peasants who worked the
land.
With the death of Maria Theresa in 1780, her son Joseph was left to
implement his own ambitious reform programs, and to promote the state’s interests
against those of the old elite. His decade of furiously active self-rule is well known
and need not be discussed in depth here. He possessed a well developed belief in the
dangers of leaving the entrenched elites unchallenged, and had been frustrated by
what he saw as the Empress’ too cautionary approach on a variety of issues. In
18. Wolfgang Menzel, Die nationale Entwicklung in Böhmen, Mähren und Schlesien: von der
Aufklärung bis zur Revolution 1848 (Nürnberg: Helmut Preußler Verlag,1985) 25. This
development was begun even earlier with the Pragmatic Sanction, a document that fundamentally
altered the imperial principle, making the monarchy indivisible and unified.
19. One should not underestimate the impact of these changes on the Bohemians, who submitted
to it, it has been suggested, out of a sense of guilt for the episode of 1740. One old, yet standard
account is provided by Robert J. Kerner, Bohemia in the Eighteenth Century (New York: AMS
Press, 1932), 36. While Haugwitz’ plans for a complete reform of local administration were not
entirely successful, the reforms did seem to the nobility to be a “revolution in government,” as
Prince Joseph Khevenhüller-Metsch remarked. H.M. Scott makes a convincing argument that the
Seven Years War was the real undoing of the reform program, as it left the finances of the
monarchy in ruins, which defacto returned some political power back to the provincial Estates
by virtue of their right to approve taxes. P.G.M. Dickson also provides evidence that the financial
weakness of the monarchy, exacerbated by the Seven Years War, allowed the nobility to regain
its footing in the bureaucracy somewhat as well. See P.G.M. Dickson, Finance and Government
under Maria Theresia, 1740-1780, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987). See also Franz Szabo,
“Reevaluating the Habsburg Monarchy from Counter-Reformation to Enlightened Absolutism”
in Dalhousie Review vol. 68, no. 3 (1989).
8
addition, contrary to the Empress, Joseph based his reform agenda on his notions of
“first principles.” Joseph believed that the constitution of the state needed to be
based on the principles of natural and social justice firmly convinced that
“Providence and nature have made all men equal and have given them a sense of
what is wrong... and what is right.”20 In his writings Joseph II described the world
view that Oscar Jaszi later echoed - a modern centralized state could not have
separate and distinct loci of power. As Joseph wrote in his Pastoral Letter,
As the good of the state is always indivisible, namely that which affects the
population at large and the greatest number, and as in similar fashion all the
provinces of the Monarchy make up one single whole with one common
objective, from now on there must be an end to all that jealousy and prejudice
which hitherto has so often affected relations between provinces and between
national groups....21
Joseph’s political writings underlined the conclusion that the good, read here the
strength, of the state was directly linked to the good of the people. Joseph was
widely traveled and had a keen sense of the true conditions under which the
peasantry labored, and his experiences in Bohemia during the famine in the early
1770s were formative. Joseph clearly prided himself on his knowledge of both the
circumstances of life in the country, as well as of the experience of farming and
husbandry. One of the telling examples that Derek Beales so effectively describes
was the episode of Joseph taking his hand to the plow on his Bohemian journey in
1769.22 However, his attitudes towards land-holding and robot were more variable
than this would suggest.23 While the sources of Joseph’s reforming instincts have
20. Quoted in T.C.W. Blanning, Joseph II (London: Longman, 1994), 58.
21. Quoted in Blanning, Joseph II, 59.
22. Beales, Joseph II, 338. As Beales describes, this was one of the most celebrated moments of
Joseph’s reign, an episode that highlighted his practical interest in agriculture and social relations
in the countryside. Not only did Joseph receive much publicity from this, but the plough itself
was preserved as a relic of the emperor’s and a monument erected on the site. Beales also
provides anecdotes for the mild distaste with which local nobles viewed the veneration of this
historical event. Others have suggested the episode did serve to “ennoble” rural life.
23. Beales suggests that Maria Theresa came to view the peasant question as a moral one, in part
because of the famine and revolt in 1775. In her view, the current system of labor and landholding was unacceptable, and robot an unmitigated evil. However, in her attempts to abolish
serfdom and robot, she was stymied by Joseph. There are various explanations for his positions,
which seem so contrary to the more radical stance that he generally occupied. Beales posits that
Joseph, despite being usually supportive of the notion of impoverishing the nobility, attempted
to focus on the larger picture and on the rural economy as a purely fiscal matter, and felt that any
radical restructuring in the countryside would de-stablize the situation given the recent unrest. If
chaos resulted in Bohemia, the entire monarchy would suffer for it. Beales, Joseph II, 355-358.
As Joseph himself wrote to Leopold, “...the empress would like to overturn the whole Urbarium,
9
been much debated, his attitudes and policies did reflect considerable adherence to
a number of arguments associated later with both physiocrats and populationists,
including his belief in the preferable productivity of smaller, individually held and
worked manors. Contrary to this, Bohemia was dominated by large holdings and
latifundia, and unfortunately for the longevity of Joseph’s reforms, much of his
agenda ran counter to the perceived well-being of local elites, both in cultural and
practical terms.24 Joseph was not the only one concerned with the plight of the rural
population. One of the critical changes that took place in the course of Maria
Theresa’s reign was the significant increase in critical public discussion about
agricultural problems and the possibilities for improving rural conditions as well as
agricultural productivity. As the Staatsrat Gebler reported in 1769, “With
astonishment, yes with truly horrible and painful inner emotion, one sees the
extreme misery in which the poor subject languishes under the burdens of his
landlord.”25
Beyond the actions taken by Maria Theresa and by the administration in the
period of the co-regency, Joseph continued to interject the central government into
matters of local administration and land-holding. In 1781, Joseph attempted to
redress the imbalance in rights between noble and serf. In the Serfdom Patent of that
year he abolished the elements of personal bondage, so that serfs could move, learn
a trade, and marry freely. Commoners were to become eligible for the office of
district captain, and the managers of noble estates were required to submit reports
to district offices. In 1783, the Diet’s political control of the Gubernium, the highest
political institution in Bohemia, was limited to electing two deputies from
candidates put forward by the government, and the Diet lost the administration of
the domestic fund. The Estates were restricted further to hearing royal propositions
and expressing their views only at the request of the king. In 1788, seigneurs were
published a year ago with all possible solemnity....change the entire rural economy of the
propertied; finally give relief to the subject in respect of all his dues and obligations without
paying the slightest regard to the lord, and so put [the lord] in the position of losing at least half
the revenue he enjoys, thus lowering all land values and making as many bankrupts as there are
lords who have debts or liabilities, which are numerous.” Beales, Joseph II, 355.
24. Ralph Melville’s recent work gives an excellent overview of the comparative size and wealth
of Bohemian holdings vis-a-vis other regions in the Habsburg lands, and ties the strength of local
landlords to not just the size of latifundia, but to the administrative and judicial rights that local
landlords had managed to maintain. See Ralph Melville, Adel und Revolution in Bohmen:
Strukturwandel von Herrschaft und Gesellschaft in Österreich um die Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts
(Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern),1998.
25. Quoted in Christian d’Elvert, Geschichte des k.k. mährischen-schlesischen Gesellschaft zur
Beforderung des Ackerbaues, des Natur- und Landeskunde, mit Rücksicht auf die bezüglichen
Cultur-Verhältnisse Mährens (Brno, 1870), 20.
10
required to appoint and pay legally-trained justices to staff manorial courts. In 1789,
Joseph fixed the permanent tax rate of all land at 12 % and ordered a new cadastre.26
That same year he attempted his masterstroke: to abolish all labor dues and free the
peasants entirely from their onerous responsibilities, converting all dues and
services to money rent. All of these efforts attempted to strengthen central authority
and encourage prosperity by reducing local control over land, labor, and judiciary.
Yet Joseph also recognized the need for regional expertise, and in 1789 he
established a lectureship in economics at the university in Prague, which would
work with the agrarian society and offer open lectures completely free of charge.
AGRARIAN SOCIETIES
With the understanding that the strength of the state was critical, and that the
strength of the state was contingent on the growth and prosperity of the rural
population, reformers around Maria Theresa targeted an array of economic activities
designed not only to re-orient the finances of the monarchy, but to foster rural
prosperity and the agriculture on which it was based, as described above. The
reforms briefly outlined in the preceding paragraphs were the institutional or
governmental side of reform in the eighteenth century. However, there was another,
more nebulous, but no less important aspect to this reform period. If reform was
truly to recast the constitution of the monarchy - to reorder the relationships among
central authority, local elites, and the local population - it had to effect a more
wholesale transformation than was implied by straightforward administrative or
judicial reform. Any reform that served to recast the peasant’s rights vis-a-vis his
landlord and what came of his labor on the land contributed to this extrainstitutional transformation. Importantly, the targets of reform, which included
education, censorship, and customs, helped to alter expectations in terms of the
responsibility of the ruler to the ruled. In other words, the desire on the part of
reformers to create citizens out of subjects was critical to any social transformation,
and agrarian societies were an integral part of this effort. While agrarian societies
were part of the quasi-institutional aspect of reform, their effect was more
significant in changing concepts of community. In the emphasis on education, on
developing the abilities of the population in the country, and on sustaining a
dialogue between learned men and practitioners, agrarian societies contributed to
changing social norms. This alteration in social norms, which included
professionalization of expertise, greater social interaction between learned and
landed individuals, and public dialogue about progress and community well being,
was an important facet of modernization. Indeed, the debates within agrarian
26.David F. Good, The Economic Rise of the Habsburg Empire, 1750-1914 (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1984), 34.
11
societies spoke directly to the problem of modernization or “what it would take” to
bring the countryside and by extension Bohemia in this case up to the level of the
most prosperous regions of Western and Central Europe.
In his biography of Count Wenzel Anton Kaunitz, Franz Szabo argues that
at the “enlightened heart” of enlightened absolutism were powerful members of the
elite who were willing to take part in and encourage a fundamental social
transformation. This transformation went beyond the questions of altering the legal
status of rural population or the structure of land-holding to the “metamorphosis”
of “tightly controlled subjects into dynamic autonomous citizens.”27 While
Haugwitz concentrated on tax and large administrative reforms that were intended
to put the military on firmer financial footing, Count Kaunitz had this more
wholesale reform in mind.28 From Kaunitz’ perspective, true fiscal prosperity could
not be achieved with the mere reassignment of fiscal responsibilities, or tax
rectification, among the Estates and the provinces. The expansion of the economy
root and branch was the only way to achieve a better economic position. To this end
attention needed to be focused on reforms that affected the work of the rural
population, or more importantly, their willingness to work and ability to take part
in rural markets.
Some reforms reflected this concern. Robot and other compulsory labor
services and fees, varying in amount and degree literally from one estate to the next,
were regulated, and royal agencies set up to protect peasants and handle peasant
complaints. The number of religious days, hindering industry, was reduced.29 In
1769, patrimonial jurisdiction was more closely regulated, and cases of extreme
punishment, incarceration, and land confiscation were to be reviewed by district
officials. Reforms also regulated some seigneurial rights like monopolies, allowed
a greater freedom of movement for the peasantry, began to replace the lord’s justice
with that of the state, and allowed the peasant farmer to market his own produce.30
27. Franz A.J. Szabo, Kaunitz & Enlightened Absolutism, 1753-1780 (Cambridge University
Press, 1994), 155.
28. For this discussion I am relying on the excellent biography of Kaunitz by Franz Szabo, who
discusses Kaunitz’ views on agrarian and administrative reform. Franz Szabo, Kaunitz 155-180.
29. The reduction of feast days agreed to in 1751 was supported by a reforming papacy until the
death of Benedict XIV in 1758. His successor Clement XIII, was less inclined to support these
“innovations”. Ernst Wangermann, “Reform Catholicism and Political Radicalism in the Austrian
Enlightenment” in The Enlightenment in National Context, ed. Roy Porter and Mikulaš Teich
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 129.
30. James Van Horn Melton, “The Nobility in the Bohemian and Austrian Lands, 1620-1780” in
The European Nobilities in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, vol II, ed. H.M. Scott
(London and New York: Longman, 1995), 143.
12
The central administration also began to actively intercede in practical matters of
land use. Even before the creation of the agrarian societies, the government made
plans to encourage a number of agricultural initiatives to expand and diversify
agriculture in Bohemia and Moravia. This included the planting of a commercial
plantation near Brno to make mulberry trees and dye plants available free of charge
in order to encourage sericulture. The government saw great potential in the
combination of industry and agriculture that the growth of textiles represented, and
they found in this willing associates in noble landowners who stood to grow rich
from the growth of the textile industry.31 This goes part of the way to explaining the
explosion in textiles that set the stage for Bohemian industrial development, which
was unique in Eastern Europe.
The desire to expand the economy from its most basic source, namely the
land, clearly inspired agrarian reform, but the avenue that reform might take was
debatable and potentially problematic. Certainly if part of the agenda of reform in
the countryside entailed interjecting central authority into a host of local issues, the
traditional avenues of delegating administration would not be terribly useful if
reform was opposed by local officials and/or landlords. In the course of developing
a myriad program of agricultural renewal and development, the government
understood that all the goals of rural advancement would be unattainable without the
creation of institutions that would see the plans implemented. More to the point,
none of the programs would find fertile ground and thrive without the cooperation
of local populations. But how to reach them? Maria Theresa’s advisors set out to
create a network of quasi-official institutions to promote the government’s
agricultural agenda. Thus, in addition to targeting labor abuses and addressing the
legal status of the peasantry directly, the Empress and her advisors encouraged a
more “voluntary” form of agrarian improvement through the medium of the agrarian
society. The hope was that agrarian societies would serve to improve agricultural
production, and by extension improve the lot of the peasant and the tax intake of the
state.32
Agrarian societies were meant to move beyond legal and administrative
matters to serve as mediators, “inspiring” prosperity by prudent scientific inquiry
and useful example. With this intention, the dialogue began between agrarian
31. d’Elvert, Geschichte, 23-24.
32. František Špatný, Stru…ný djepis c.k. vlastenecko-hospodáÍské spole…nosti v „echách
(Prague: Greger, 1863), 3. In the course of her reign Maria Theresa became much more interested
in a full scale abandonment of the robot system, and supported the efforts of Raab in Bohemia
to prove the point. Both Joseph and Kaunitz feared the fiscal repercussions from this, as Szabo
makes clear. See Szabo, Kaunitz, 176.
13
societies and the central administration on the nature of progress vis-à-vis rural life.
“Progress” for Theresian and Josephine reformers was tied to the ultimate goal of
strengthening the state. For them, reform meant pursuing improved production and
living standards on the land, dissolving provincial particularity, and eviscerating the
power of those who pursued loyalty to the provinces and their own coffers with such
disastrous consequences for the monarchy. The idea of progress that coalesced
within the agrarian societies was decidedly different from this vision. Due to the
influence within the Bohemian societies of both landowners and intellectuals (or
individuals who were both of these), “progress” was increasingly tied to a different
equation - expropriating all that their land had to offer with the assistance of new
technological innovations, plus encouraging the proper development of the region’s
competitive assets. Both of these approaches subscribed to the notion of economic
autarky and competitiveness. Economic autarky was the stated goal of both the
regime and the agrarian societies, and an aim that could also enrich the local elites.
However, the notion of competition for state reformers was indelibly linked to a
conception of the rural economy as being entirely in the service of military and state
power, and autarky desirable for its ability to reduce the vulnerability of the state
vis-a-vis other states. For reformers who gathered in agricultural societies, economic
competition was an end in itself and success was measured in terms of specifically
regional assets and comparative economic strength.
Given these differing intentions, it is clear that if these institutions were to
fulfill the agenda of either the government or independent reformers, they could
only be peopled by a select group who were educated, well-versed in agricultural
issues and methods based on practical experience, scientifically inclined, and
politically moderate. Such “requirements” set them immediately apart from the
majority of the rural population. These institutions de facto excluded uneducated
peasants, who were hindered not so much by social norms as by their inability to
communicate ideas effectively in written form. In the opinion of reformers, peasants
were also too likely to be excessively cautious in the implementation of new crops
and farming methods, and were therefore inappropriate as members of a society
whose intent included scientific inquiry into new technology, crops, and methods.
Moreover, there was little recognition on the part of the agrarian society’s founders
that farmers had insufficient leisure time and resources to be conducting
experiments and writing regular reports (if they could write), let alone journeying
to the city to converse with other members.33 Agrarian societies were also not
supported by manorial lords opposed to any critical perusal of rural landholding or
33. The Carinthian society had attempted to offset this problem by writing in their charter that
those wishing to journey to Klagenfurt for meetings could do so from time to time without cost
to themselves. From a copy of the rules of the Agrarian Society in Kärnten SUA/VHS/carton 1.
14
those who were not interested in promoting the reform of agrarian life and the
improvement of agricultural productivity for the good of the state or the region. That
there was a difficulty in “attracting” members was recognized by the administration
and the planners.34
The establishment of agrarian societies in the Bohemian crownlands took
place in the climate of political reform described above, but these societies were not
unique to the Monarchy.35 New agrarian societies established across the continent
were part of a broader dialogue within European society about the efficacy of
different types of agrarian reform, and similar institutions devoted to the agrarian
economy and its condition emerged as a pan-European trend from the middle of the
eighteenth century. Though the purpose and agenda of these societies in Bohemia
and elsewhere could be quite far-reaching, most emphasized practical concerns and
with good reason. The problems of agriculture and the individual's relationship to
the land occupied the energies of agrarian society adherents in part because dearth
and even periods of famine were not distant historical memory but within the realm
of the probable.36 The early years of the 1770s, the war years at the turn of the
century, and the period immediately after the Congress of Vienna were just such
periods of extreme scarcity in Bohemia.
Beyond their concern about the immediate painful effects of famine, agrarian
societies were interested in the deeper social causes and consequences of scarcity.
Thus the interests of these societies incorporated far more than just the obvious
interest in increased agricultural production, and agrarian societies often delved into
intellectual areas beyond their initial charters. Agrarian societies in the Habsburg
lands were engaged by any issue that could arguably contribute to the well-being of
the state, whether this was defined as distinctly Bohemian or the Habsburg lands
more broadly. As Rudolph Chotek, the president of the Ministerial Banco
Hofdeputation phrased it, the welfare of the state was based on “the enhancement
of domestic cultivation and industry, the increase of trade and the expansion and
improvement of transport by water and land.”37 Another publication by Leopold
Heinrich of the Tabor district presented the argument that “the edifice of the state”
rested on the following cornerstones: adequate production of food and clothing and
the security that one’s possessions are protected. Whether these cornerstones existed
34. SUA/VHS/carton 1/5/July1769. Concern also appears in a recopied extract from 1767 Decret,
SUA/VHS/carton 1/August 1767.
35. Just to give a representative sample of the list provided by d’Elvert: Scotland (1723), England
(1757), Leipzig (1763), Klagenfurt (1764), Laibach (1767), Petersburg (1765). D’Elvert,
Geschichte, 32-33.
36. In 1817, Bohemian travelers in the mountains warned Bohemian officials that conditions in
the mountains suggested imminent famine.
37. Quoted in d’Elvert, Geschichte, 17.
15
would determine the “well-being or woe of the state and its inhabitants.”38 Those
engaged in questions of agricultural reform, and the profound injustices faced by the
peasantry, were aware of the very real possibility of rural unrest, as indeed erupted
in Bohemia in the 1770s. However, the focus in most of these societies on
“prosperity” vaguely defined was ultimately an inadequate answer to social and
economic problems that required far more radical solutions. In this respect the
agrarian society in Bohemia was also hampered in its activities by its inability and
unwillingness to engage in overtly “political” issues, as will be described below.
The Patriotic-Economic Society (PES) in Bohemia was established with the
goal of institutionalizing and centralizing efforts to improve agricultural methods
and rural life.39 In an extract from the decree issued by the government in 1769, it
was determined that the plan to establish an agricultural society in Bohemia would
move forward on the model of similar societies in Carinthia and Styria, with the
integration of “professional” agrarian practitioners and experienced economic
administrators.40 The PES was composed of a core group of sitting members, who
attended meetings, set the society’s agenda, and elected new members.41 The
institutional structure of the Society included an elected protector (not uncommonly
a patron or figurehead with relatively little impact on the society’s activities), a
director, the sitting or attending members, and the local or regional members.42 The
Society solicited reports from these correspondent members and affiliates in order
to monitor the condition of various sectors of agricultural and economic life. Most
of these inquiries and reports were oriented towards the collection of practical
information: records on weather, seed production, the growth of apiary culture, the
state of cow farming, the quality of forests and pastures, and so forth. The Society
then compiled statistics and distributed almanacs, calendars, and pamphlets on
farming techniques. In addition, the Society decided on the value of new technology
and machine investments, and published opinions on the management of population,
38. SUA/VHS/carton 39/1791.
39. Mikuláš Teich, “The Royal Bohemian Society of Science and the First Phase of Organized
Scientific Advance in Bohemia” in Historica, vol. II (1960), 161. Teich takes issue with the
conclusion of “bourgeois” authors that the impulse behind the establishment of this and other
societies was imported from Western philosophical and scientific ideas. According to Teich, the
social and economic conditions favorable to the introduction of these ideas had to exist.
40. SUA/VHS/carton 1/5/July 1769.
41. New members in August 1789 included Count Buquoy, Count Francis Kolowrat, Count
Spork, and Count Salm.
42. Schnabel listed the members as 13 honorary, 41 actual, and 86 correspondent members. G.N.
Schnabel, Statistische Darstellung von Böhmen (Prague: Borosch, 1826), 29. Schnabel mentions
that despite the best effort of the “enlightened Bohemian farmers” in the PES, there seemed little
hope of improving the agricultural production of the land. Schnabel, Darstellung, 28.
16
governmental policies, and statistics. In the material disseminated by the PES
intended for public consumption, particularly calendars and almanacs, the “citizenizing” efforts of the institution are clearly evident.43
Since the proposed society was to undertake the “general improvement of
agriculture”, the society underscored in its minutes the need to convert others to
improvements by good example, a method that was seen to “surpass even the finest
words and writings” in convincing others of potential benefits.44 The founding
members of the PES in Bohemia, including Count Francis Joseph Pachta as
Director, Count Adam Sternberg, Herr von Wanzura, Herr von Scotti, Herr von
Steinberg, Herr Stepling, and Professor Matheseo, had more at heart than a
dilettantish interest in weather and cereal yields. What was meant by "agrarian" and
"agriculture" encompassed an entire world view of the relationship of the individual,
and by extension the state, to the land. The acculturation of the land, what the land
could or should sustain, and out of this, the shape that society would take - its
potential for growth, failure, sustenance - were within the defined interests of the
society. Social concerns were certainly relevant as the members of the society
pondered the “happiness” and condition of those living in the country, and assessed
what would bring long term benefits, most notably education. Many of the members
of agrarian societies like the PES had absorbed different intellectual strains,
particularly from the French physiocrats. Their activities were conditioned by the
notion that the real strength of the state was based on those who worked the fields,
and that, pace Quesnai, the earth was the sole source of all riches. Fields, forests,
water sources, lowlands - the shape of the landscape and all that it held - were
assessed for potential reform, growth, and reclamation. Similarly, taxes, constraints
on the development of land and machine, wood shortages and their solutions, all fell
within the realm of agrarian concerns.
Thus agricultural inquiry in the late eighteenth century involved an
investigation into the needs of the “economy” broadly conceived. This is partly
reflected in the various names adopted by what ended up as the PES: the Imperial
Royal Agricultural Society in the Kingdom of Bohemia, the Society for the
Promotion of Agriculture and the Liberal Arts in Bohemia, the Patriotic Agricultural
Society (1780s), and then the Patriotic Economic Society (in the 1790's). Ensuring
prosperity was the focus of the PES’ interests and activities, and the society was
43. As will be more clear in the discussion below, the almanacs and other writings for public
consumption put out by the PES had many of the same characteristics as the traditional
“Hausvaterliteratur”, including the reliance on paternalistic chastising and moralizing, and the
emphasis on the sharing of experience.
44. SUA/VHS/Kniha 1.
17
involved in promoting the reclamation of unfertile land. This is not to suggest that
the PES and similar institutions were focused solely on land or were uninterested
in machinery. New technology, constantly examined (and accepted or rejected) by
the society's members, represented not just curious tinkering, but instead offered a
real possibility for economic change and by extension social change. Less than for
its own sake, however, technology was scrutinized more often in its relationship to
agricultural problems and as a possible tool with which the potential of land
holdings could be maximized. For instance, the PES was very interested in how
technology that incorporated hydraulics and irrigation might allow individuals to
reclaim unused land, develop marshland, and otherwise put more land under
cultivation. This in turn had implications for the growth of animal husbandry and
other rural production.
Debates about agrarian reform were of course not limited to Bohemia proper
alone. Similar dialogues about agricultural change and the nature of land-holding
took place in other regions. Despite the damage of the war and the loss of Silesia,
within the Bohemian crownlands Moravia like Bohemia proper saw an increase,
despite problems in other sectors, in production of alcohol, fisheries, and sheep
herding after mid century. The Moravian-Silesian Society for the Promotion of
Agriculture, Natural History, and Regional Studies (MSS) was established in 1768
under similar circumstances as the PES, and was attached to the Landesstelle in
1769. The Moravian-Silesian Society had a particular mission in attempting to
overcome the disastrous loss of Silesia resulting from the War of the Austrian
Succession. The Moravian-Silesian Society consciously promoted the diversity of
the Moravian economy, attempting to find ways to further variegate an agricultural
base that included brewing and viticulture, as well as mining, textiles and other
nascent industries. The MSS acted as an agent for the extension or continuation of
policies that had already improved the security of peasant land-holding, re-shifted
the tax burden, lightened and regularized labor obligations, and encouraged major
growth in sericulture, apiculture, sheep herding, and textiles.45 These activities were
closely connected to earlier attempts by the government to diversify the Moravian
agricultural base.
As grand and as comprehensive as the intent of the PES and MoravianSilesian Society might have been, in practice their activities were hampered and
45.Or as d’Elvert reports, the standard quip for Bohemia was “Schaferei, Brauhaus und Teich
machen die böhmischen Herren reich.” D’Elvert, Geschichte, 8. As d’Elvert describes, these
changes were built on the important improvements introduced earlier, particularly the
standardization of weights and measures, the slow improvement and construction of roads,
improvement of the postal system, and the removal of internal tolls.
18
limited by a number of inter-related factors. The PES existed in a quasi-official
relationship with the Bohemian government, responding to government inquiries on
issues pertaining to the land.46 The PES also urged the government to act directly
as a force for improvement by setting a good example as a model landowner. For
instance, the society urged the state to set up model public tree farms - “for the good
of the Bohemian farmer” - which could serve as the source and inspiration to
improve the cultivation of fruit trees in particular.47 And, not least, these farms
would provide seedlings and samples to encourage the cultivation of new crops. At
the same time, in cases where the PES attempted to evaluate government practices,
the society ran into problems. Whereas a general consensus was emerging about the
need to alter the structure of labor and feudal obligations, the path and speed of the
reform was still debated. In addition, some members of the society were clearly
opposed to broader administrative changes that affected the jurisdiction and power
of local officials. This kind of opposition served to reinforce regional patriotism, as
the Society’s members retrenched to their knowledge of the province and its
countryside - deciding what would or would not work in the Bohemian context.
Thus the ability of the PES to act as an institutional guide in the quest for progress
was inevitably hampered by being an institution “in between.” It was neither wholly
government controlled, nor entirely independent. The issue of intellectual and social
independence of the agrarian societies was also further muddied by financial
matters, particularly where the society was subsidized out of cameral funds, as was
particularly common at a society’s creation.
The discussions between the Viennese government, its representatives in the
Prague Gubernium, and the PES illuminate the extent to which this institution
functioned as an intermediary between central authority and local populations. The
PES was neither fish nor fowl: it was in a limited sense a representative of
officialdom in its tasks of validating agronomists’ claims of expertise and collecting
the appropriate government fees for these validations, while at the same time it
sought to represent objective knowledge in the dissemination of information about
crops and livestock. The PES’ agenda was set as much by the Gubernium, as by the
internal interests of its members, a relationship very different from other more
broadly conceived agro-economic or scientific societies that had been established
across the continent. However, the PES refused to act as a clearinghouse for local
bureaucrats - insisting that any potential society adherent would need to prove his
economic and agricultural knowledge and practical credentials before being allowed
into the society. The PES’ members also attempted whenever possible to preserve
46. See Franz Fuss, Geschichte der k.k. ekonomisch-patriotischen Gesellschaft in Koenigreich
Boehmen von ihrer Entstehung bis auf das Jahr 1795 (Prague, 1797).
47. SUA/VHS/Kniha 1/163.
19
their independence of action.48
The problem of field usage is illustrative of the bizarre position of the PES.
The government’s push to introduce proper crop rotation was not terribly successful,
and the PES was enlisted to improve their chances of reaching the population on the
need to alter the field system. The three-field system still dominated in the
Bohemian crownlands, and the PES found it difficult to introduce the issue of land
use without directly confronting the problem of landholding, enclosures, and
peasant labor and financial obligations. Moreover, popular misconceptions about the
deleterious effects of stall-feeding of clover versus “natural” field feeding hampered
efforts to convert field usage. The PES avoided direct confrontations with local
elites on this issue, preferring to take refuge in yet another publication. In April
1789, the Gubernium requested that the PES produce a short, comprehensible
instruction for successful harvesting and storage of clover for livestock feeding, and
the PES complied in the hopes that spreading the word would be sufficient. The
society also served as an intermediary in the struggle over common lands and
pasture rights, but again with not much success. The Society received multiple
reports from different quarters about the illegal pasturing of sheep at night, “carried
out with the greatest cunning,” but with no means to rectify the situation.49 The PES
regularly reported to both the Gubernium and to Vienna on the struggles taking
place between common rights and the “progress” of land enclosure and cultivation.
As clearly as the members of the society saw the needs for land reform, those
steeped in the principles of stabling of livestock and crop rotation found it hard to
bring the message to peasants deeply distrustful of the Society’s motivations. Field
usage, however, was at the heart of many discussions within the Moravian and
Bohemian agricultural societies. The new emphasis on textiles gave an additional
impetus to the growth of sheep herding and the development of new crops for stall
fodder and pasturage. Moreover, common pasture lands (like large-scale demesne
farming) were seen early as ineffective, but, as illustrated above, the conversion of
these fields for crops or other uses was problematic vis-à-vis traditional expectations
and common usage.
The unwillingness of the PES to engage in any overtly political discussion is
readily apparent, even when politics referred to peasants’ rights or land use. In one
discussion of the rights of estate servants, the Society’s minutes stated bluntly that
“political observations were out of order” though the society would not allow
complaints to pass in total silence.50 Again in this instance the imperfect position of
48. SUA/VHS/Kniha 1/107-108.
49. SUA/VHS/Kniha 3/4 May 1789 (113).
50. SUA/VHS/Kniha 1/122.
20
the PES betwixt and between was readily apparent. The Society urged the
government to re-publish and adequately publicize the regulations governing rural
labor dues and household labor, and to punish those exceeding established limits.
On the other hand, the Society avoided any overt public pronouncement on the
problem, preferring to leave the matter in the hands of the Gubernium and avoiding
any semblance of public support for the agenda of the laboring populace in the
region. In other words the PES sought to avoid giving additional political weight to
grievances in the countryside that might serve to de-stabilize an already tense
situation. The lack of engagement on the part of the Society in response to the crisis
of the 1770s is another case that illustrates the limits of this kind of institution. In
the Society’s protocols from January 1775, discussion of the agrarian situation
focused on the lack of money in the countryside, a fact that was squeezing the rural
population, and on the question of the monopoly of state granaries. In these debates
the issue was, however, far less focused on the root of rural problems in terms of
labor and land-holding than on the immediate fiscal consequences of policies
concluded in times of crisis. In other words, the members debated peasant unrest
and money constraints in terms of national wealth - measured in part by the wealth
and economic activities of the “private man” - rather than addressing the reality of
individual ruin, impoverishment, and starvation among peasants.
Despite these obvious limits, the agrarian societies did have an important role
to play. Although the PES has been criticized as being an institution controlled by
nobles seeking to contain agricultural changes, the rosters of PES members reflect
a varied membership that included nobles, local bureaucrats, and non-noble
agronomists and scientists, though few proper peasants.51 As the Society wrote to
Kaspar Sternberg after his election to the PES in February 1815, “The Society is
convinced that their endeavor to promote agriculture of every kind in their
Fatherland is best accomplished when men of practical knowledge, fruitful activity,
and proven love of the Fatherland are united in the Society.”52 This attempt to unite
the efforts of a number of individuals from different social backgrounds was
characteristic of agrarian societies, as well as other intellectual and cultural
institutions founded in this period. The rules of the Agricultural Society in Carinthia
stated that “no rank or distinction would be recognized in meetings,” and went on
to insist that a round table was necessary to ensure better (and equal) conversation.53
51. Miloslav Volf, Významní „lenové a spolupracovníci vlastenecko-hospodáÍské spole…nosti v
království …eském (Prague, 1967). The PES’ protocol books always list attending members at the
start of meeting’s minutes, as well as descriptions of new members and their expertise.
52. ANM/ŠM/181/Diplomy.
53. SUA/VHS/carton 1. In the PES review of the Carinthian society’s rules in the process of
establishing its own, the commentator noted that this particular section was self-explanatory, and
needed no further comment or elaboration.
21
Both the PES and the Moravian-Silesian Society made knowledge paramount and
explicitly stated in their charters that title and ceremony had no role to play in their
agrarian societies. In correspondence, they would notice only “works, experiences,
and observations,” and “in meetings will no rank be recognized.” 54 In the case of
agrarian societies generally, this social mixing within the institution served in part
to fill a social gap necessary to modernization in the region. As P.G.M. Dickson has
pointed out, Austria lacked the urban middle class that could resist encroachment
from centralizing monarchs and “provide capital and enterprise for trade and
industry.”55 However, transitional institutions that included middle class
practitioners as well as entrepreneurial landlords provided part of that expertise.
There is considerable evidence to suggest that nobles who invested in industrial
development in textiles, manufacturing, and mining were a critical developmental
precursor to industrial growth. Given the location of entrepreneurial industrial
growth on latifundia in the Bohemian Kingdom, it is not so surprising that many of
these landowners were also involved in agrarian issues.56
While the PES maintained its relationship with the government, it also
assumed the huge task of educating the rural population about agricultural methods
and new farming implements and techniques. In fact, education even more than
research was the agrarian society’s primary agenda. While members did not
necessarily agree on the needs of agriculture overall, they did generally recognize
that “young, weak, and inexperienced” farmers faced likely “deprivation and
poverty.”57 The task of the agrarian society was to help them avoid this, to act as an
agent of knowledge. One commentator went so far as to suggest that the agrarian
society recommend the creation of a group of inspectors, a sort of agricultural
intendents, who could instruct farmers about farming methods, debt, and other
agrarian issues.58 By supporting the new educational policies of the government, and
engaging in their own educational endeavors, the members of the agrarian societies
hoped to break the cycle of ignorance and poverty that they saw in the country. This
meant targeting not just farmers, but more critically, farmers’ children. As one
report to the Bohemian PES described, the youth in the villages were left to their
own devices and in their “tender years are entrusted to adults who, even in advanced
age, are rough and undeveloped”. The author went on to urge his compatriots to take
54. D’Elvert, Geschichte, 40.
55. Dickson, Finance and Government, vol I, 51.
56. Freudenberger, “Progressive Bohemian and Moravian Aristocracy”(1975).
57. SUA/VHS/carton 1/ 18 November 1770.
58. SUA/VHS/carton 1/18 November 1770. This proposal echoed that of the Austrian provincial
chancellor Wilhelm Ernst von Felsenberg, who also recommended a network of “economic
inspectors” for both regulatory and prescriptive purposes. See Szabo, Kaunitz, 162.
22
“particular notice” of the raising of children, since this would have the biggest
influence on the improvement of rural life.59 In this view, education would bring not
merely useful knowledge, but would have a powerful socializing effect. Education
would broaden both “understanding and heart” and engender in rural folk a love of
duty and work.
The agronomists involved in the society saw the dissemination of new ideas
about farming and the introduction of different crops and methods as the key to
progress and a unique form of enlightenment. In this the agrarian society had its
most important, if unintended, social effect. As Norbert Schindler and Wolfgang
Bonß have remarked in the case of agrarian societies in the German lands, “The
historical achievement of the societies...resides less in the introduction of new crops,
in the application of technical aid, or in the promotion of trade and manufactures,
but rather far more in the education, practice, and consolidation of new models of
acting and interacting.”60 The consequences of this were not quite what the central
authority or its representatives in the local governments had envisioned in that “new
models of acting and interacting” in this case meant both a new type of sociability
and a new impetus for the growth of initially regional ¾ and subsequently national
¾ identity. In their emphasis on education, agronomists attempted to erase negative
attitudes toward the rural population and to integrate that population into the body
politic. Thus any commentator who suggested that the “national character” of the
Bohemians was responsible for rural problems could legitimately be condemned as
an “enemy of the Bohemian Nation.”61 Christian d’Elvert, the historian of the
Moravian-Silesian Agricultural Society, also made this link explicit in the
nineteenth century. In reviewing the purpose and goals of the MSS, d’Elvert
remarked that those engaged in the agrarian society were interested in far more than
institutional recommendations and programs. National wealth could be increased
and the state of the nation improved only by getting at the heart of national
rejuvenation and wealth – namely worrying about national “happiness” and
engaging in individual social interaction geared toward personal and professional
improvement.62 It was with this view in mind that the society in Moravia desired
that any patriot, whether a member or not, should send in news, ideas, suggestions
and so forth. The society was to act as a clearing house and as the institutional
manifestation of critical public dialogue ¾ the “face to face” contact ¾ that would
59. SUA/VHS/carton 1/28 January 1775.
60. Norbert Schindler and Wolfgang Bonß, “Praktische Aufklärung-Ökonomische Sozietäten in
Süddeutschland und Österreich im 18. Jahrhundert” in Deutsche patriotische und gemeinnützige
Gesellschaften, ed. Rudolf Vierhaus (Munich: Kraus International, 1980), 256.
61. SUA/VHS/carton 1/ 28 January 1775.
62. d’Elvert, Geschichte, 33.
23
improve the state of the nation. Or, as a correspondent wrote to the PES in 1775,
providing opportunities for educating the countryman were “the surest proof of
patriotism.”63
But what was the connection between agriculture and national allegiance?
The interpretation of the monarchy’s needs that Maria Theresa advanced in her
Political Testament suggested that administrative reform would not merely break
down provincial political solidarity, but would serve to reorient the affections of her
subjects away from estate or local matters to the monarch at its heart. In this view,
reform would provide a two-fold attack on the provinces to whittle away anything
resembling provincial particularity: dissolving administrative barriers and creating
cultural ties. The agrarian societies were part of the attempt to win the affection of
the rural population and to interject the monarchy into the lives of its subjects
directly, hopefully for the good. However, because agrarian issues, policies, and
problems tended to be local, agrarian societies were locked into the local, and were
easily converted to overt patriotic activities.64 Patriotic rhetoric was the norm from
the earliest stages of the agrarian society’s growth and development. Patriotism was
in fact the public justification for the agrarian society’s efforts. Thus, while the PES
was concerned with every aspect of the land's prosperity ¾ from honey to crops to
the succor of widows ¾ its members insisted on improving conditions on the land
“out of love for the next person, as true patriots.”65 As the founding members stated
in their initial meetings, they were ready for “patriotic participation” and prepared
to show “their desire to serve in all occurrences.”66 In the protocols of the Society’s
meetings, in which the PES’ secretary recorded their deliberations, the members
made clear their wish that, freely, independently, and “out of patriotic love”, they
would serve “the public, the state, and the lord on high”.67 “Patriotic zeal,” which
would embolden individuals to write in with their ideas, was what made
correspondents “worthy” of membership in the society.68 It was assumed by the
founders that consensus in the PES would follow from the collection and assessment
of all suggestions from correspondents. Agricultural methods, experimentation, and
economic experience were to be utilized for “the benefit of the fatherland” and “out
63. SUA/VHS/carton 1/January 28, 1775. This was an anonymous report sent to the society.
64. Franz Szabo makes this point about the local nature of agrarian policies for the earlier period
as well. See Szabo, Kaunitz, 155.
65. SUA/VHS/Kniha 3/1787.
66. SUA/VHS/Kniha 1/1770.
67. SUA/VHS/Kniha 3/1787/61.
68. SUA/VHS/Kniha1/3/5 January 1770
24
of love for the fatherland.”69 Furthermore, if new ideas and improved methods were
not implemented in the homeland, they would remain “useless and fruitless.”70
Agronomists, despite their stated reliance on science and rationality, were also not
above a romantic notion of regional history. Commentary on progress was often
laced with the belief that Bohemia, above other nations or regions, had a glorious
and prosperous past that needed to be recaptured (rather than created new). In this
vision of a proverbial golden age, Bohemia had such natural bounty that it had made
its inhabitants rich and “the envy of their neighbors.”71
It is difficult to assess much of this rhetoric as nationalist in that it did not
have a defined political or cultural agenda of opposition. Nonetheless, the
cumulative impact of this and other rhetoric that allowed for increasingly vibrant
publishing in Czech, and that worked for the improvement of the Bohemian farmer
in both personal and agricultural terms was an important stepping stone to mature
national identity. Furthermore, the PES was a locus for those who wished to submit
diatribes against the reputation of Bohemians abroad, or against the negative
preconceptions about Bohemians harbored by those who spent their lives in the
relative ease of the Viennese bureaucracy. The PES cultivated notions of homeland
that would be further developed in the national movements of the nineteenth
century. The notion of homeland also took root in discussions about competition and
economic policy, which directly assumed the language of “us versus them.” The
PES sought to target agricultural sectors that were manifestly unproductive and that
represented vulnerable economic areas in terms of economic autarky. In their essay
contests, regionally specific essay questions were open to public deliberation. As
regards the deliberations of the PES, the economic independence of the monarchy
as a whole or even of the Austrian-Bohemian side was only partially the issue, and
tended to be referenced primarily for the benefit of government officials. Clearly
more salient for the Society’s members was the state of the Bohemian economy
specifically, as well as its ability to compete. Moreover, the dominant attitude
towards competition included the belief in a “fixed pie,” namely that one nation’s
loss was another’s gain. Competition in this respect did not refer to open market
competition, but a more abstract notion of Bohemia’s place in a constellation of
nations. In one and the same debate, members supported the value of competition,
while also remarking on the need for control of grain supply and prices.72 This, as
with so many other issues, also cut to the heart of the relationship between
landowner and peasant and the relationship between the country and the city,
69. SUA/VHS/Kniha 1/5-6/10 January 1770.
70. d’Elvert, Geschichte, 40.
71. SUA/VHS/carton 11/ 28 January 1775. Anonymous.
72. SUA/VHS/Kniha 2/1775.
25
dominated by the central authority.
The case of apiaries and bee-keeping illustrates this point. In his attempt to
convince the society, and by extension the Gubernium, that a beekeeping instructor
was critical to apiculture in Bohemia, one member remarked on the fact that it was
“unfortunately a too well known truth that Bohemian beekeeping had as yet made
no advances in improving apiculture overall, and the “precious honey and wax,
which one is forced to purchase from abroad” at a loss of money, ought to be a
primary concern for the government.73 The society’s members urged the government
to appoint a “practical bee teacher” who could instruct all those with apiaries on the
proper handling of bees, the plants necessary for their survival and propagation, and
the seasonal tasks required of bee tenders in order to have flourishing apiaries. In
the society’s petition to the Gubernium, they requested the placement of Joseph
Munzberg as a public bee teacher, or at the very least that Munzberg be given a
position on the government’s estates, that the care of the plants and forests necessary
to the bees be protected. From the PES’ perspective, their educational mandate was
clear: Munzberg could be retained in order to write a practical manual on
beekeeping to describe clearly to others the most advantageous and profitable means
of keeping bees, and thus contribute to the gradual growth and improvement of a
critical segment of agricultural production in Bohemia.74 This was true not just of
bee-keeping, but was reflected in a range of discussions about the cultivation of oilbearing seeds, domestic animal breeding lines, and so forth.75
It was not solely for the good of agriculture that the Society focused on
employing and retaining expertise. Part of the nature of national progress for
Bohemia defined by the Society had to be cultivating not just the land, but the
talents of those who worked and were familiar with the land and its profitable uses.
It was untenable to PES members that individuals like Munzberg, who had
experience and talents that ought to be applied in the Fatherland, should be tempted
or forced to go abroad because they could not “live as honest men” in the country
of their birth. Society members also articulated the need to create salaried positions
for individuals in possession of agricultural knowledge gained by years of
73. SUA/VHS/Kniha 3/5 December 1787.
74. According to Christian d’Elvert, schools to promote “rational” bee-keeping were established
in Vienna in 1770 and in Moravia in 1775. See d’Elvert, Geschichte, 28.
75. The discussions about domestic versus imported sheep stock are an interesting study in terms
of building domestic industry. Here the emphasis was not on relying solely on domestic animals,
but on creating economic autarky by importing certain breeds from abroad to integrate them and
certain characteristics of their superior wool into the domestic herd. This would improve domestic
production and have beneficial consequences for the textile industry and the quality of its finished
goods, which would in turn have benefits for the economic vitality of Bohemia.
26
experience, and concluded that “it would be a shame to let such a man...go to
ruin.”76 Ruin in this sense also implied emigration. In the discussions on regional
expertise, the society’s reports made clear that if these individuals left Bohemia for
lack of opportunity, the Fatherland would sustain a double wound: loss of
agricultural expertise for Bohemia, and a relative gain for Bohemia’s competitors
abroad. Even in publications intended for farmers, the message about the potential
for Bohemian produce in competitive terms was conspicuous. Farmers needed to
improve their methods not merely for their own welfare, but to prevent money from
fleeing the country, and to prove that Bohemia’s seeds, or other products, were
better than those of others.77
This concern was echoed in discussions on a variety of topics, including the
education of children, what education could bring to future Bohemian development,
and debates on practical matters such as remuneration for educators and others with
professional expertise. In this way the forum of the agrarian society served to aid in
professionalizing agro-economic knowledge, much the way scientific societies were
doing for scientists. More importantly, that knowledge was to be cultivated in and
invested in the fatherland. Even if the agrarian society had no direct participation in
agricultural production, the society attempted to bring science “to the land” and to
use knowledge in the natural sciences to banish inappropriate customs and myths.78
The link between education (and the educational mission of the society) and the
good of Bohemia was explicit, and national success tied to the development of a
diverse, native, and self-sufficient group of agricultural experts. Moreover, the
almanac or calendar written for the edification of the Bohemian husbandman made
arguments for personal as well as agricultural improvement that were based on the
personal and societal (namely Bohemian) gains to be had from following the
society’s recommendations.
Lest this picture of the PES and other agrarian societies seem too rosy, it must
be asked whether the reforms intended by the society were a type of “smoke screen”
that masked the conservative tendencies of aristocratic landowners. While the
apolitical stance, paternalism, and above all wariness toward industrial technology
of the agrarian societies could have a conservative appearance, it is also possible to
see the apparent conservatism of the agrarian societies as a quasi-official means of
76. SUA/VHS/Kniha 3/5 December 1787.
77. SUA/VHS/carton 39/Almanach für Landwirthe im Königreich Böhmen/1792. The circulation
on this type of publication is difficult to ascertain. The society expected to print at least 20,000
copies. Even knowing the number of copies does not uncover the number of copies that were
shared or passed around.
78. D’Elvert, Geschichte, 33.
27
arresting the concentration of land, labor, and resources in the hands of noble
landowners. As such, this would be part of the general discouragement of noble
industrialists on the part of the government that P.G.M. Dickson notes.79 Criticisms
levied on the political leanings of the PES have been based in part on the attempt of
the Habsburgs in the late 1780s to merge the PES with the Royal Bohemian Society
of Sciences. Although this move was resisted by both institutions, some have
interpreted this episode as an attempt by the PES, which had government links, and
the government, to stifle the free intellectual inquiry of the Society of Sciences.80
The “takeover” struggle between the PES and the Bohemian Society of Sciences
might better be interpreted as a chapter in the effort of the government to oversee
and control not just rural life, but intellectual inquiry over all. The government’s
request that the two societies be merged was in part an attempt to centralize and
extend government control over private societies, as well as oversee the work of
quasi public institutions like the PES. From the perspective of those engaged in the
PES, to fold the two societies into one did not represent progress for either, and
particularly not for the PES. As one member, Dr. Zauschner weighed in on the
debate, he emphasized that,
The union of these two societies ought not to take place. First, the Society of
Sciences is not practical. Second, the union cannot be viewed as beneficial since
the Society of Sciences is concerned with algebraic, theoretical- mathematical
problems, topics of life, historical antiquity and so forth, that would rob the
Agricultural Society of its time - which ought to be devoted to the actual
conditions of agronomy - without being able to contribute to its essential goals.81
He reiterated that the Society of Sciences was interested in completely different
questions, even when investigating the problems of agricultural production.
Professor Herget concurred with this opinion, insisting that the two societies would
only be able to cooperate meaningfully in the monitoring and reporting of the
weather, and the PES would be “robbed” of its time in regard to all other potential
collaborations. Other members described the necessity of each society maintaining
its own essential identity and tasks, which corresponded, but did not overlap. The
members also recognized that the Society of Sciences, as an independently
established institution, would find it difficult to work under the control of the PES,
which in turn reported to the Gubernium.82 In the final discussion and vote, the
79. Dickson, Finance and Government, vol. I, 109.
80. See Mikuláš Teich, Královská …eská spole…nost nauk a po…átky vdeckého prçzkumu pÍirody
v „echách (Prague: Academy, 1959).
81. SUA/VHS/Kniha 3/1788.
82. The discussions on this issue are in SUA/VHS/Kniha 3/1788 (88-115). There was also
passionate resistance at the Bohemian Society of Sciences.„SAV/K„SN/inv. …is.60 (1788).
28
members of the PES overwhelmingly rejected the government’s request.
Having fobbed off this union with the Society of Sciences again turned its
attention to the problem of reaching the public. In April 1789, the PES members
discussed plans for how they might publish an economic monthly or an economic
almanac, a task sitting members admitted would “fulfill the wishes of the highest
authorities.”83 The PES made clear that the most important element of any almanac
or monthly was that it contain “fundamental” and practical information that would
contribute to general knowledge of proper agrarian methods and techniques. In the
Almanach für Landwirthe im Königreich Böhmen the author made explicit that the
publication was intended to free its readers from prejudices as well as improve their
general situation. The almanac for “the cherished farmers” was a prescriptive
calendar divided by months, and the months in turn divided into four sections: “On
the preservation of your health and well-being,” “The care and maintenance of your
children,” “The care of your animals,” and lastly, “On the treatment of the whole
house, field, meadow, pond, and forest economy and all that pertains to these.” In
his introduction, the author descanted on the reasons for giving priority to health
concerns, despite writing an almanac for agrarian life: “We are convinced that health
is the greatest of all earthly goods, and that it is even more important for you
country people who must earn your keep by the labor of your hands; if the head of
the house is laid low, so is his entire household.”84 Despite the tone of scolding, and
slightly self-serving paternalism, the almanac was intended as a tool for
improvement. Its text stressed over and again how important it was for parents to
send their children to school in order to allow the children to escape the ignorance
(and by extension poverty) that dominated their parents’ lives. The almanacs
suggested that farmers would become “Bürger” by becoming educated, moderating
habits, and cultivating in themselves and more importantly in their children the
habits of diligence and usefulness.
If one can clearly see the improving efforts of the PES in these types of
publications, also present is a push toward professionalization. Within the society,
members were divided according to their area of expertise. Almanac’s
recommendations suggested that expertise in any field, whether in doctoring,
economics, account books, or forestry, needed to be monitored and controlled by
centers of learning, like the university in Prague. “Local” knowledge, like the
expertise of “untrained” local midwives, ought to be subject to tests and exams
administered be central institutions lest they be labeled as superstitious practice.
Despite its obvious focus on the land, the PES was in several respects a decidedly
83. SUA/VHS/Kniha 3/7 April 1789 (99).
84. SUA/VHS/carton 39/190-191/1792.
29
urban institution. The Society met regularly in Prague and operated in this way as
a “center” with a distinct periphery. Likewise, the Moravian-Silesian Society met
regularly in Brno. Members of the PES recognized their distance in real and social
terms from the land and those who worked it, and the Society constantly cast about
for the names of “worthy and useful farmers living in the country.”85 The PES also
worked to ensure that it had members from as many districts of Bohemia as
possible, and worried about certain areas being underrepresented. The PES was
conscious that its primary target remained the “common man,” and that there were
many obstacles in reaching this proverbial common man. In discussions on
publications like the farmers’ almanacs, the Society stressed that any work had to
be short or it would be of no practical use to the common man: “Each member must
put together those principles and truths which he deems of greatest interest to the
Bohemian husbandman in concise, short, clear language.”86
Manuals were rejected if PES members felt they were too costly for the
“common man” or if they contained too many “foreign phrases.”87 Moreover, the
language had to be appropriate. This was not a matter of Czech versus German, but
a matter of high-brow versus low, and all who contributed to manuals destined for
the country were urged to use “popular” or common language to elucidate their
theories. For instance, in almanacs it was common to dispense practical advice on
hygiene, education, and the moderation of personal habits in the form of stories or
particularly parables. This was also true of earlier publications, like Johann
Friedrich Mayer’s Katechismus des Feldbaues. Joseph II’s attempts at language
uniformity notwithstanding, in terms of language choice the PES emphasized that
communication was the intent, not Germanization. As one document made clear,
“Since the intention of the government is primarily directed at educating the
peasantry as to how clover can be protected from spoilage and rot” it was
appropriate to see that works on clover were distributed in both Czech and
German.88 In 1790 the PES specified that at least 2/3 of almanac printing was to be
done in Czech.89 If not actively nationalist, the PES did assist in efforts to make
Czech an acceptable language of learned discourse.
Conspicuously missing from the Society’s references to “the common man”
is anything resembling a glorification of those who pursued life “in the country.”
There was on display instead considerable frustration with what was perceived to
85. SUA/VHS/Kniha 1/126.
86. SUA/VHS/Kniha 3/8 June 1789/(128).
87. SUA/VHS/Kniha 3/10 August 1789 (129-132).
88. SUA/VHS/Kniha 1/110.
89. SUA/VHS/Kniha 1/167.
30
be the rigid unwillingness on the part of rural populations of different backgrounds
to embrace change of any kind. More than once the PES chose not to recommend
works for publication not because they were poor theoretically, but rather the
contrary. Works that advocated a too radical shift, even those that were the best
methodologically speaking, were unlikely to make an impression on the “country
man,” who was not amenable to changing his system. This argument surfaced in
criticisms of manuals on everything from the nature of beehives to clover storage
and pasture rights. As one member wrote, the peasant “is against every conspicuous
innovation - and is the more suspicious the more it deviates from his accustomed
way.”90 While recognizing stubbornness, the members of the agrarian society were
slower to recognize the legitimate rationale for this reluctance to experiment on the
part of Bohemian and Moravian farmers. Beyond being aggrieved by dues, for the
farmer to be on the bare edge of solvency was a luxury; much more likely indeed
was for him to face entrenched debt and the persistent possibility of famine. These
conditions made the costs of experimentation far too high, despite the availability
of seeds without cost for new crops promoted by the government and the agrarian
society. This also goes part of the way to explaining why “the farmer demands not
instruction, but example.”91
The Moravian Society, like the PES, was also marked by an ambivalent
relationship to both landowners and peasants. As one historian of the Moravian
Society wrote, “The people were entirely uneducated, rough, wild, unkempt; filled
with the darkest superstition so that they became the rich sacrifices of witches and
sorcerers, wounded and robbed by beggars...and gypsies.”92 From the perspective
of members of the PES and the Moravian Society who were “in the middle,” the
combination of greedy and/or reactionary landlords and ignorant, superstitious
peasants was a powerful obstacle to prosperity. Given this attitude, it was clear that
any educational agenda, or any work intended primarily for the peasant, had to take
into account not just current agricultural methods, but also the culture of peasant
life. In its reviews of possible publications, the PES also opined that it was
“necessary to take into account the peasant’s habit, stubbornness, and prejudice.”93
Comments on peasants and farmers reflect general attitudes toward the rural
population that admitted the degeneration and laziness of the peasants but blamed
hereditary subjection rather than Slavic ethnicity or innate nature. As P.G.M.
Dickson quotes from one observer in 1758, “The Slav peasant was ‘lazy and
stubborn, and must be held to his duties with harshness, threats and blows. If the
90. SUA/VHS/Kniha 3/10 August 1789 (133).
91. SUA/VHS/Kniha 2/140/29 December 1775.
92. d’Elvert, Geschichte, 6.
93. SUA/VHS/Kniha 3/1787.
31
harshness ceased, he would not perform his obligations either to the crown or his
lord.”94 Faced with a recalcitrant audience among both peasants and landowners,
agrarian society members stressed that acquiring an understanding of the path to
agricultural improvement could not be a matter of a flash of insight, but had to be
achieved instead by gradual enlightenment. The Society thus needed in this view to
bring peasants “to the light” by incremental revelations. These attitudes were
tempered by the recognition of some of the PES’ correspondents that “country folk”
did not need to remain ignorant. As one tract read before the Society in 1775
passionately argued, education was the key that would allow the Bohemians to
fulfill their full potential, to develop their considerable natural talents and abilities.
It was not nature that had decreed that the Bohemian husbandman should be dumb
and ignorant, but the lack of education that had allowed their moral and intellectual
gifts to die on the vine.95 This hopeful attitude was, however, undermined by other
publications that exhibited a latent belief in the congenital moral weaknesses of the
peasants, including almanacs that offered the view that keeping busy was the only
prevention of drunkenness, that farmers must keep their children in school or busy
lest they go begging, and that thievery was not an answer to poverty.
CONCLUSIONS
Attempts by the Habsburgs to consolidate administrative power and improve the
financial, military and political position of their realm led to a number of important
social and intellectual changes. One of the practical endeavors associated with this
reform period was the creation of a series of agro-economic societies across the
empire. However, agrarian societies were concerned with far more than we can term
“simply” agriculture. They arose in an intellectual climate in which notions of
economic prosperity on the land depended on the size of the population, and
agrarian societies’ members were on the whole profoundly aware that agriculture
and the economic realm implied far more than crops. Mining, industry, machinery
and the like were all critical parts of the agrarian economy, and closely connected
to the productivity of the land. Members of agrarian societies struggled to balance
a host of interests: reconciling competing uses of the land and competing claims;
acting as mediator between rural landlords and the Gubernium, and among peasants,
lords, and government; engaging in issues of obvious political import without open
political commentary; juggling the pursuit of profit and securing the social hierarchy
with the social and economic ills of the non-noble rural population. While the direct
effect of agricultural societies on improved methods and productivity is difficult to
assess, agrarian societies did contribute to the dramatic increase in the availability
94. Dickson, Finance and Government, vol. I, 119.
95. SUA/VHS/Kniha 2/142/1775.
32
of practical literature on agrarian methods, including works in Czech, and one can
see important impacts in other areas. Agrarian societies, like other scientific and
learned institutions, had a social and intellectual impact beyond their immediate
intentions. Firstly, by working to publicize agrarian issues and the solutions to
agricultural and rural problems, agrarian societies contributed to the establishment
of agronomy and animal husbandry as legitimate scientific fields worthy of
sustained, rigorous, and rational inquiry, a trend established in part by the
cameralists. This in turn helped further the professionalization and rationalization
of scientific inquiry more broadly in the region.
Secondly, the debate within the PES and similar societies about creating
“worthy citizens” out of the rural population furthered public discussion about the
rights of citizens and the nature of citizenship, the needs for modernization and the
limits of noble and landlord prerogatives, and the responsibilities of society and
community to individuals of all estates. By and large the PES and the MSS operated
on the assumption that in a society still largely illiterate the power of successful
example was worth far more than words. However, in taking part in the growing
production of publications, the agrarian society recognized that there was a public
to serve. While this public was not yet literate in large measure, the agrarian
societies could still have expectations of a consuming public. The literacy gap was
filled by publications, which were meant to be read aloud to groups or
congregations, and this too implied a public discussion of ideas.96
If one assesses the legacies of the PES and the Moravian-Silesian Society, it
is clear that the impact of these societies was ironically not by themselves
developing new methods in agriculture, however much they strove to concentrate
on the practical. Moreover, despite their apolitical stance, their impact in terms of
the solidification of national identity was decidedly political. Agrarian societies like
the PES and the MSS were important transitional institutions. Although cautious in
the approach to new technology and fearful of what agricultural change would mean
for social relations in the countryside, they were forces for modernization, albeit
slow modernization. There was for instance an inherent tension in the position of
the PES as a “way station” between society and the state. However disappointing
their results, the members of the PES hoped to improve rural life and to act
positively as a force for rural change. The agrarian societies were in part
96. James Brophy makes an excellent argument about the links between literacy or semi-literacy
and the public, namely that the habits of reading aloud connected the illiterate or semi-literate to
the public sphere. This argument certainly applies to the Bohemian case as well. See James
Brophy, “Habits of Reading, Habits of Mind: The Politicization of the Common Reader in the
Rhineland, 1770-1815" Paper delivered at the BSECS, January 2002 (cited with permission of
author).
33
institutional stopgaps in response to the former dearth of educational possibilities,
and, in urging the rural population to send their children to school, worked to
support the government’s attempt to encourage basic education and literacy. The
rhetoric of local, agrarian reform ultimately became part of the larger public
dialogue on the comparative strength of the nation. This was the key to the real
impact of these societies; in the final calculation, agrarian societies contributed far
more to reinforcing notions of homeland, than in either improving agriculture or
contributing to the extension of the reach of the state to the common man. While the
PES and similar societies certainly did participate in the “grand project” of
attempting to make a public of citizens out of a mass of farming subjects, one ought
to ask in the final assessment whether they did, in the end, make common cause with
the non-noble rural population. While this is debatable, literacy, publicity, and the
dialogue about progress and improvement ¾ all part of the agricultural society
agenda ¾ did engender an additional discourse between center and periphery about
old and new political rights, participation, and privileges. But, if these agrarian
societies took part in the attempt to create man as citizen, it was not in the final
assessment in the creation of a Austrian or Habsburg citizenry, but in the creation
of “national man,” whose concerns appeared better addressed by peasant/agrarian
and national political institutions.
Rita Krueger, European University Institute
Email: [email protected]
34
NOTES
Abbreviations:
ANM: Archiv Národního Muzea (Archive of the National Museum)
SAV: ÚstÍední archiv …eskoslovenské akademie vd (Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences)
K„SN: Královská „eská Spole…nost Nauk (Royal Bohemian Society of Sciences)
SM: Fond Šternberk-Manderscheid
SUA: Státní UstÍední Archiv (State Central Archive)
VHS: Vlastenecko-HospodáÍské Spole…nost (Patriotic Economic Society)
Kniha # = Protocol book number
inv.…is.= inventory number
35