Enlightened Despotism
Der Aufgeklärte Absolutismus by K. O. Freiherr von Aretin; Reform and Revolution in Mainz
1743-1803 by T. C. W. Blanning
Review by: Betty Behrens
The Historical Journal, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Jun., 1975), pp. 401-408
Published by: Cambridge University Press
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The HistoricalJournal,XVIII, 2
(I975), pp. 401-408.
40I
Printed in GreatBritain
REVIEW ARTICLES
ENLIGHTENED
DESPOTISM
VONARETIN.
Der A ufgekldrte A bsolutismus. Edited by K. 0. FREIHERR
Neue Wissenschaftliche Bibliotek, I974. 67 Geschichte. Pp. 390.
Reform and Revolution in Mainz 1743-I803.
Studies in Early Modern History. C.U.P.,
By T. C. W. BLANNING.
Pp. 355. f7-00
Cologne:
Cambridge
I974.
The term despotisme e'claire',or enlightened despotism, is said to have been coined
by Quesnay's disciple, Mercier de la Riviere, in his L'Ordre naturel et essentiel des
socie'tes politiques, first published in I767. In this work Mercier de la Riviere
denounced the unenlightened form of despotism which Montesquieu had classified
as one of the three possible types of government and, like Montesquieu, he wrote
eloquently about the personally degrading and socially disastrous consequences of
arbitrary power unrestrained by law, convention or religious belief. It was customary
in eighteenth-century France to see Turkey as an illustration of this form of
government and to point to it as an object lesson. Mercier de la Riviere contrasted it
with his model of a despotisme e'claire'or le'gal, in which the monarch would rule in
accordance with natural laws discoverable by reason.
Mercier de la Riviere's purpose, however, was not so much to advocate a particular
form of government as to popularize a particular economic doctrine, which he
assumed to be an expression of natural law, and which (after the fashion of
eighteenth-century philosophes who continually found themselves forced to invoke
some deus ex machina to carry out their nostrums) he invented his enlightened despot
to enforce. He set himself to provide the public with an exposition in simple language
of Quesnay's theories, which the master himself had expounded, often in highly
complicated terms, in a variety of different works; and it was this exposition which
attracted the attention of contemporaries, including that of Adam Smith, and was
responsible for the sale of 3,000 copies of L'Ordre naturel et essentiel des socie'te's
politiques within a few months of its publication.
In the present century, on the other hand, it is the political parts of Mercier de la
Riviere's argument that have excited interest, though not, as might perhaps have
been expected, because his description of tyranny is very well done and remarkably
relevant to many twentieth-century experiences, but because his work can be used (as
it is, for example, by Heinz Holldack in an article in Freiherr von Aretin's collection)
to show the fundamental incompatibility between eighteenth-century autocracy and
the freedom of enterprise and sanctity of property on which the Physiocrats pinned
their hopes.
On the other hand the term aufgeklirter Absolutismus (also usually translated into
English as enlightened despotism) was invented towards the end of the nineteenth
century by the German historian Roscher who did not discuss, and was no doubt
unaware of, Mercier de la Riviere's work. Roscher saw absolutism as having passed
through three phases. The first phase, he thought, could be epitomized by the words
cujus regio ejus religio, and was one in which the monarchs were concerned with
establishing unity of faith within their territories. He saw the second phase, which
he called the court phase, as epitomized by the words l'etat c'est moi and as having
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reachedits apogee in the reign of Louis XIV. His third phase was one in which the
monarchsenjoyed a greatly increaseddegree of power as a result of having emancipatedthemselvesfrom clericaldominationand the tyrannyof courtetiquette.This
was the phase of enlightened absolutism(or despotism),epitomized by the phrase
that the monarchwas ' the firstservantof the state '.
Roscher expounded this thesis in his Geschichte der National-Oekonomik,
publishedin I874. Over half a centurylater, in I928, a Frenchhistorian,L'He'ritier,
at an internationalhistoricalcongressin Oslo, drew attentionto the inadequacyof
Roscher'sclassificationand said that the subject of enlightened despotismwas in
need of further study. Apparentlyat his suggestion it was billed for discussionat
the next congress,held in Zurich in I938. There severalpaperswere devoted to it.
According to the German constitutionalhistorian,Fritz Hartung, however, these
papers,which were publishedin volumes5 and 9 of the Bulletin of the International
Committeeof HistoricalSciences,only made confusion worse confounded.
Hartung set himself to clearthe confusionup in an articlewhich he wrote for the
HistorischeZeitung in I955. This appearedtwo years later, translatedinto English
and with a forewordby ProfessorBarraclough,as a HistoricalAssociationpamphlet.
Freiherrvon Aretin has now publishedit for the third time in a collectionof fifteen
articles, of which seven discuss the nature of enlightened despotism, while the
remainder,though sometimes also concernedwith this question, deal principally
with the policiesand achievementsof the enlighteneddespotsin a varietyof different
states.
Freiherrvon Aretin's contributorsare of many differentnationalities- it would
seem that he has felt obliged as far as possibleto allow every nation to have its say.
The result of his exercise,however, as he himself disarminglyadmits, is that the
conceptof enlighteneddespotismis still reichlichunklar- a state of affairsthat will
not surpriseanyonewho is familiarwith debatesaboutthe meaningof politicalterms.
As some of Freiherrvon Aretin'scontributorspoint out: if Frederickthe Greatis
describedas an enlighteneddespot,on what groundsis the title refusedto Frederick
William I, the principalfounding father of Prussianabsolutism,whose social and
political ideas and methods of governmentwere acceptedby Frederickthe Great in
most essentials?Similarly,if Catherinethe Great is includedamong the enlightened
despots,should not Peter the Great be includedalso? Was not Napoleon the last of
the enlighteneddespots,or should this title be accordedto Napoleon III? One writer
even goes so far as to wonder whether it should not be accordedto Bismarck.
If the term can be applied as widely as this it plainly has no value as a historical
category,and admittedlymost of the contributorsto Freiherrvon Aretin's volume
agree that enlightened despotismshould be seen as a phenomenonconfined to the
second half of the eighteenth century. Even so, however, the difficultyof defining
it remains,for obviouslyno definitionof it is possibleunlessit can firstbe established
what the essential principles of the Enlightenment were and which of them a
governmenthad to acceptbefore it could qualify for the title of enlightened.Since,
however, no governmentcan fully translateany political philosophyinto practice,
and all governmentsare forced to compromisebetween what is desirableand what
is practicable,the second of these questions, even if an answer could be found to
the first,would still be the questionof how many stonesmake a heap.
In fact, however,there is no agreementabout which were the essentialchangesin
governmentand societythat enlightenedthinking demanded;for the body of thought
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403
that goes by the name of Enlightenmentcontained,particularlyin France,a number
of ideas (notablylibertyand equalityhowever defined)that were mutuallyexclusive
in the circumstancesof the eighteenthcentury,and have indeed commonlyprovedto
be so in latercenturies.
This is not to deny that there were certainattitudesto life and governmentwhich
were fundamentalto all enlightened thinking and were adopted by everyonewho
claimed to be enlightenedor has been judged by posterityto have been so. All such
peoplemay be said to have believedin intellectualprogressand to have thought that
it should be allowed to proceedunhamperedby religious dogma. (In the eighteenth
century,particularlyin centralEurope,it was not the state so much as the churches,
and primarilythe Catholic Church, which seemed to menace intellectualfreedom.)
All believedin materialprogressand were concernedto increasewealth, althoughby
differentmeans(the autocratsand A ufkldrerin centralEuropebelievedin statecontrol
of the economy, which the Physiocratsrepudiated).All believed that the object of
government should be the greatest happinessof the greatest number, though the
conflictingclaimsof differentgroupswere given differentweight by differentpeople.
All proclaimedtheir faith in reasonwhich, howeverdifferentlyit was interpreted,and
however various the conclusionsto which it might seem to lead, always involved
hostilityto ' superstition' and traditionalism- that is, to belief in the miraculous,and
in custom as a sufficientjustificationfor social and politicalpractices.Becauseof its
secularand rationalapproachto the problemsof life and government,the thinking
of the age of Enlightenmentseemed to Groethuysen,who in his Entstehung der
buirgerlichenLebens-und Weltanschauungtracedits evolution in France, to represent the greatestrevolutionin human values hitherto known to history.
People could, however, accept these new values, as did grands seigneurs like
Kaunitz or Choiseulon the one hand, and petits bourgeoislike the Rolandson the
other, while holding the most diverseviews about the social and politicalchangesit
was desirableto introduce.Though speakingvery generallyit could perhapsbe said
that the thinking of the Enlightenmentwas everywheremore or less hostile to the
corporativesociety based on inequality before the law, the degree of this hostility
varied enormouslyfrom one state to another, and in Russia, indeed, was absent
altogether. As N. M. Druzinin points out in an article in Freiherr von Aretin's
collection, Catherinethe Great, so far from wishing to do away with this form of
society,gave it legal sanctionfor the firsttime.
At the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth the
Enlightenmentbecamewidely discreditedin Europebecauseit was thought by conservativesto have been the causeof the FrenchRevolution.In the presentcenturythe
Nazis denouncedit as the sourceof contemporarydecadence.To the historiansin the
Communistworld the term now seemsto be a neutralone signifying the ideology of
bourgeoiscivilization from which they pride themselveson having escaped.To the
productsof that civilization,on the other hand, the Enlightenmenthas increasingly
in recentyearscome to seem what it seemedto Voltairewhen he said of Pascal: ' Je
prendsle partide l'humanitecontrece misanthropesublime.'In the West we naturally
think of the Enlightenmentas something good. When in English we describea
policy as enlightened we mean that it is a progressivepolicy that benefitsthose to
whom it is applied. Western historianswho hold these sentimentshave in consequencebeen temptedto pick and chooseamongthe socialand politicalideasprofessed
by the variousphilosophesand Aufklirer, and to label those which accordwith their
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own views of what is progressive as the ideas for which the Enlightenment essentially
stood. This naturalhuman propensityhas given rise to remarkablydifferentjudgements about the essentialnatureof the Enlightenmentseen as a movementfor social
and politicalchange, and about which autocratsconventionallylabelled enlightened
can be said to deservethe title.
To some historians- for exampleProfessorLutge - the Enlightenmenthas seemed
essentiallya movementconcernedwith the rationalpursuitof wealth;to others,as to
ProfessorR. R. Palmer,it has seemedessentiallydemocratic;to ProfessorGay, whose
first volume of The Enlightenment,an Interpretationwas acclaimedby some critics
as likely to becomea classic,it was essentiallyliberal.ProfessorGay in consequence
could find no enlightenmentin the Habsburgdominionsin the eighteenthcentury,
and no enlightened thinker in the rest of Germanybefore Lessing. This approach
made it possiblefor him to overlookthe long Germantraditionaccordingto which
the Enlightenmentbegan with Thomasius,and with ChristianWolff who was seen
by his compatriotsthroughout most of the eighteenth century as the principal
Auufklirerin Germany,but whose way of thinking was anathemato Voltaire.
Voltairehimself has been at differenttimes both the beneficiaryand the victim of
comparableprejudicies.For long he was acclaimedthe chief representativeof the
French Enlightenment.He was, however, an elitist who liked the companyof the
rich and the great. As ProfessorMauzi said of him: ' De tous les philosophesdu
siecle, il est celui qui acceptele plus aisementl'evidencedu bonheurpar la richesse.
I1 est riche avec spontaneite, facilite, bonne conscience.' Since this attitude no longer
seems respectable, Voltaire has been labelled a superficial thinker and has had to yield
pride of place to Diderot.
The reputations of many of the so-called enlightened despots have experienced
similar vicissitudes. The unanimous verdict of the German academic establishment up
to the end of the First World War, for example, was that Frederick the Great was the
enlightened despot par excellence. This judgement seemed in need of no defence but
was accepted as self-evident, and is so accepted by Fritz Hartung in the article referred
to earlier. When he wrote this article, however, Hartung was already an old man out
of touch with current fashions. In I952 Stephan Skalweit produced in his Frankreich
und Friedrich der Grosse an analysis of the philosophes' reaction to eighteenth-century
Prussia. Pace Lefebvre who (in an article which also appears in Freiherr von Aretin's
collection) denounced the philosophes for their servility to the enlightened despots,
Stephan Skalweit shows that many were anything but servile in their attitude to
Frederick the Great. Diderot, D'Alembert and Rousseau were all highly critical of his
regime which, like Mirabeau, they saw as an intolerable tyranny. That it should have
occurred to a German to chronicle these opinions is only one illustration among many
that could be adduced to show how strongly the tide in West Germany is now turning
against Frederick's claim to be called enlightened.
The attitude to the more famous of the other so-called enlightened despots has undergone similar transformations. To Klyuchevsky, for example, Catherine the Great's
enlightenment was nothing but a sham which did not touch the realities of Russian
life. N. M. Druzinin on the other hand has no difficulty in classifying her among the
enlightened for various reasons, but particularly because her reversal of Peter the
Great's mercantilist policies, and her liberation of trade and industry from the
shackles she had imposed on them, proved the most effective of her reforms. Joseph
II has seemed enlightened to many generations because he gave the serfs their per-
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405
sonal freedom,removedthe civil disabilitiesof Jews and hereticsand attemptedto
introduceequalitybefore the law in mattersof taxation.Many people, however,in
his own day and later,have found that theseenlightenedmeasureswere outweighed
by the tyrannicalactions to which he resortedin order to enforce them and other
items in his programmeof reform. This, for example, was the view of Svarez, the
principalauthorof the AllegemeinesLandrecht.In his famous VortrdgeuiberRecht
und Staat,which he deliveredin the winterof I79I-2 to FrederickWilliam III when
he -wascrown prince, Svarez held up Frederickthe Great as a model becauseof his
respectfor the rule of law (an essentialfeatureof the Enlightenmentas then understood in Prussia)and launcheda diatribeagainst JosephII becauseof his contempt
for it.
There seems, in fact, to be no limit to the numberof times one can classifyand
reclassifythe rulersof eighteenth-century
Europein accordancewith their attitudeto
an intellectualmovementwhich embracedmany mutuallyincompatibleopinionsand
aboutwhose essentialcharacteristics
there is wide disagreement.
The only point on which everyoneappearsto be agreed is that, whicheverautocraciesmay or may not deservethe title of enlightened,the Frenchautocracyat least
has no claim to it. On reflexionthis seemsa strangejudgement.Freiherrvon Aretin
in his introduction(the most interesting of the articles in the first section of his
book, althoughfor the greaterpart relevantonly to the Habsburgand Hohenzollern
dominions)defends it on the groundsthat the Frenchkings believedthat they ruled
by divine right whereas the autocratsof CentralEurope justifiedtheir authorityin
terms of a social contract. One would be hard put to it, however, to show what
practicaldifferencethis made. The judgementthat autocracywas unenlightenedin
Francein the second half of the eighteenthcenturyseemsto be basedentirelyon the
attitudesof the French kings. These attitudes,it is true, were often retrograde.They
neverthelessdid not preventLouis XV and Louis XVI from giving frequentif intermittent supportto their progressiveministers.As Tocquevillepointed out: the preambles to the royal edicts in the last decadesof the ancien re'gimewere filled with
typically enlightened denunciationsof the existing order. If one were to judge
governmentsby their intentionsas distinctfrom their achievements,and the so-called
enlightened despots are in fact commonly judged on this basis, then the French
Government, which in the half century before the Revolution was continually
struggling to increaseproductionand to reform its administration,could hardly be
called less enlightenedthan the Governmentsof Russia,Prussiaand the other states
with which Freiherrvon Aretin'scontributorsare concerned.
The truth of the matter would seem to be that though in the second half of the
eighteenth century the enlightenedassumptionsabout life and government,which
were discussedearlier,were fashionableamong the ruling classesin most European
countries,not only the strengthof the desirefor change,but the particularenlightened
principleson which attentionwas focussedvariedvery greatlyfrom one state or area
to another.
There was, for example,a Germanversionof the Enlightenment,which is referred
to but nowhereexplicitlydiscussedin Freiherrvon Aretin'svolume, many of whose
contributorsstill appearto believe that all the Europeanintellectualsspoke the same
language.In his Reformand Revoltetionin Mainz Mr Blanningshowsthat he is under
no such delusion. In an excellentfirstchapter,entitled 'The GermanProblemin the
EighteenthCentury', he startswith a quotationfrom Hajo Holbornwho emphasized
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the differencein outlook between Germanyand Western Europe and believed that
this 'led not only to the politicalcollapseof Germanyas a greatpowerbut also to the
end of Europe'shegemonyin the world'.
Mr Blanning shows that the German Aufkldrungwas far from being a mere
reflexionof French lumieres,as has often been supposed.In its social and political
ideasthe FrenchEnlightenmentwas a movementof protestagainstthe existingorder,
includingthe existing form of government.Although in the end its major prophets
were acceptedby the establishmentthey remaineda disruptiveinfluencewhich helped
to divide the ruling classesagainstthemselves.The GermanEnlightenmentby contrastwas nursedup by the governmentsof the variousstatesas a means of moulding
societyto the patterndesired by the rulers. Unlike the Enlightenmentin France,
which grew up outside the establishedsystem of education,the Enlightenmentin
Germanywas the productof the universities,which were subjectto strictstatecontrol
and which exercisedan influencewithout parallelin the West. It was common for
administratorsand professorsto exchangeroles, professorsbeing from time to time
given high administrativepostsand administratorsuniversitychairs.Justi,Sonnenfels
and Cocceji,for example,all provideinstancesof this interchange.
Therewas thus in the Germanstatesa close and continuousconnexionbetweenthe
intellectualsand the governments,with the resultthat whereasthe FrenchEnlightenment was essentiallyindividualist,critcialand rebellious,the GermanEnlightenment
providedthe autocratswith their ideology - an ideologythat was authoritarian,and
rationalistin a crudesenseto which therewas little parallelin the sophisticatedthinking of the great French philosophes.Justi gave a typical expressionof enlightened
Germanpoliticalthoughtwhen he said (the passageis quoted by GeraintParryin an
articlethat first appearedin this Journalin I963 and is now re-publishedby Freiherr
von Aretin in a Germantranslation): ' A properlyconstitutedstate must be exactly
analogousto a machine,in which all the wheelsand gearsarepreciselyadjustedto one
another,and the ruler must be the foreman,the mainspringor the soul - if one may
use the expression- which sets everythingin motion.'
Notwithstanding, however, a common ideology, and the ease with which the
Attklarer could move from one Germanstate to another,the policies and practices
of the so-calledenlighteneddespotsof centralEuropevariedverygreatly.Mr Blanning
is concernedwith them in Mainz- a smallecclesiasticalprincipalitywith a population
of 350,ooo and a capitalcity in which 25 per cent of the inhabitantswere nobles,clerics
or governmentemployees.The electorsand their ministers,supportedby a group of
nobles, gave expressionto their enlightened principles by attacks on ecclesiastical
wealth;by attemptsto promoteeducation- particularlyuniversityeducationwith the
aid of funds confiscatedfrom the Jesuits;by endeavoursto fostertradeand industryin
accordancewith mercantilist principles, and by the steps they took to increase
agriculturalproductionthrough the introductionof new crops,the popularizationof
new techniquesand the abolitionof the mild form of serfdomwhich prevailedin the
Rhineland.
These measuresappearto have had only a limitedsuccess,for all of them (exceptthe
last, for reasonswhich Mr Blanning does not explain) ran into oppositionfrom an
intenselyconservativepopulation,and particularlyfrom the guilds, which objected
to the rightsgrantedto Jews and Protestantsand, in general,to the interferencewith
their restrictivepractices.As Mr Blanningobserves: ' the governmentwas more progressivethan its subjects.'
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Mr Blanning finds that, contraryto what has often been asserted,there was no
revolutionary sentiment in Mainz. There was no economic discontent because
throughout the period covered by his account the populationwas prosperous.The
nobility and the electorslived extravagantlyafter the fashionof the times, but no-one
bore them any grudge on this account.On the contrary,the nobles,whose estateslay
for the greaterpart outsidethe principality,spent theirmoney in Mainz to the benefit
of the tradingcommunity.The Frenchtroopswho invadedMainz at the beginningof
the revolutionarywars were not in consequencereceivedas liberators.As one Frenchman put it in December I792: the mass of the people were ' reactionary and superstitious [and] regard those who govern them as privileged beings. They seem to like
the yoke which degrades their spirit '.
The problems, however, which faced the rulers in this pocket principality bear at
best only a superficial resemblance to those in the major autocracies of central Europe,
which in the second half of the eighteenth century, as in the first half of the nineteenth,
were the pace-setters in the area. For Mainz had no army, whereas 70 per cent or more
of the revenues of the Hohenzollerns and the Habsburgs went to meeting military
needs. This fact necessarily played a major part in determining their internal policies,
whatever enlightened notions they may have cherished. Joseph II, for example, said
on his deathbed that he regretted having made so few people happy, but then added
almost in the next breath: ' I have always considered the military profession as my
vocation, and the development of the strength, the courage and the prestige of the
army as the principal object of my life '.
These sentiments, inspired by the Prussian example, had no connexion with the
Enlightenment however that term is understood, and the same could be said of many
other ideas and practices current in eighteenth-century Europe. It is therefore arguable
that in any attempt to understand eighteenth-century societies, and the changes they
experienced, the concept of enlightened despotism is more of a hindrance than a help,
not only because of its lack of precision and the impossibility of making it precise, but
because preoccupation with it focusses attention on the rulers and their policies, and
leads if not to the neglect at least to a superficial treatment of the social, economic and
administrative problems with which they had to deal.
Freiherr von Aretin, for example, in his introductory article, attempts to explain
the absence of revolution in Germany by recourse to that old cliche, the lack of a
capitalist bourgeoisie such as existed in France. In fact, however, the French capitalist
bourgeoisie in I789 was only very small and moreover not revolutionary. The bourgeois who represented the third estate in the Constituent Assembly were mainly
lawyers, minor officials and members of the liberal professions - that is, types of people
who were very numerous in the German states. An equal unfamiliarity with the
nature of French society in the second half of the eighteenth century leads Mr Blanning
in his last chapter (in which, as in his first, though less successfully, he deals with
Germany as a whole) to make a different but hardly less implausible comparison with
France.
Presumably because he believes that the French suffered from an unenlightened
despotism, Freiherr von Aretin has not included in his volume any contribution to
illustrate the new picture of the ancien re'gime which is emerging from recent research.
(The French are represented only by a German translation of Lefebvre's article on
enlightened despotism first published in I949 and surely the worst article he ever
wrote.) More surprisingly, the recent work on Prussia is, with one exception, equally
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neglected.The exceptionis the articleby Hans Rosenberg- a translationof chapter8
of his Bureaucracy,Aristocracyand Autocracy, 'The Prussian Experience i66oI8I5 '. ProfessorRosenbergis the odd man out among Freiherrvon Aretin's contributorsbecausehe makesno mentionof enlighteneddespotismat all. The particularly
illuminatingchapterwhich Freiherrvon Aretin reproduces(entitledin English 'The
Emancipationfrom MonarchicalAutocracy' but in the German translation' Die
Oberwendungder monarchischenAutokratie') deals with the way in which, during
the last yearsof Frederickthe Great'sreign, and underhis successorsup till 8o6,the
Prussianbureaucracywas transformed,in its social compositionand its attitudes,to
the point when it would no longer toleratethe bullying, inquisitorialtreatmentto
which it had been subjectedby FrederickWilliam I and his son. ProfessorRosenberg's
analysisof the natureof Prussianautocracyand its connexionwith the socialstructure,
and other comparablemodern works - for example Otto Busch's excellentAIilitarsystemund Soziallebenim Alten Preussen- tell us farmoreaboutlife and government
in the eighteenthcenturythan a preoccupationwith enlighteneddespotismis likely
to elicit.
It does indeed seem somewhatridiculousthat in the secondhalf of the twentieth
centuryscholarsshould still be confusingthemselveswith argumentsaboutthe meaning of a political concept which was first invented by an obscure writer in the
eighteenthcentury(and even then found absurdby some of his colleagues),and which
was later re-formulated,though only inexplicitlyand incidentally,by a nineteenthcenturyeconomichistorian.Roscheradmittedlyused his conceptto make a number
of telling points.It has, however,now outlivedits usefulnessas a tool for investigating
the periodof transitionbetween' feudalism'(as that termwas usedby contemporaries,
and is still used by many present-dayFrench and German historians),and the
nineteenth-centurysocietiesthat were based on freedom of propertyand enterprise,
and on equalitybeforethe law.
CLARE
BETTY
HALL,
CAMBRIDGE
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BEIiRENS