Administrative Theory and Mercantilist Practice

Karl-Theodor von Inama-Sternegg’s 1886 joint review examines Gustav Marchet’s history of German administrative thought from the later seventeenth to the end of the eighteenth century, followed by Hans J. Hatschek’s archival study of Vienna’s Manufacturhaus on the Tabor. Its connecting concern is the relationship between administrative doctrines and institutions: practice may disclose ideas more clearly than theoretical writing, while an institution’s historical significance may exceed its practical achievements.

Inama-Sternegg praises Marchet for finding an internal unity in heterogeneous cameralist and police-science literature through the development of the administrative idea. Equally valuable are his attention to French and English influences and his placement of administrative thought within broader philosophical and economic convictions. Yet the reviewer sharply distinguishes the intellectual appeal of institutions from that of their doctrines:

Ungleich dankbarer wäre es, die Geschichte der deutschen Verwaltung, als die ihrer Lehre zu schreiben.

English translation: It would be incomparably more rewarding to write the history of German administration than that of its doctrine.

Administrative history reveals territorial authority gradually bringing diverse social and economic arrangements under the principle of public welfare. Its literature, by contrast, frequently offers oppressive detail and empty theoretical formulas. Inama-Sternegg links its weaknesses partly to the devastation of the Thirty Years’ War and judges German political science inferior to contemporary French, English, and much Italian work. Marchet therefore rightly consults practical institutions as well as books; but this method also undermines his claim that administrative theory is a specifically German science.

Die Verwaltung im grossen Style haben wir vielmehr entschieden von unsern westlichen Nachbarn, zum Theile auch von England und Italien gelernt; und die deutsche „Verwaltungslehre“ im 17. und in der ersten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts ist mehr nur im Kleinen, um nicht zu sagen im Kleinlichen, selbständig.

English translation: Administration in the grand style we have rather decidedly learned from our western neighbours, in part also from England and Italy; and the German "science of administration" in the 17th century and in the first half of the 18th is independent only in small matters, not to say in petty ones.

The reviewer nevertheless identifies areas of independent German achievement: offices, subjects’ rights and duties, domains, and taxation, all closely connected to the estate-based social constitution. His qualification is thus substantive rather than merely dismissive: intellectual originality must be located in particular administrative problems, not attributed indiscriminately to a national tradition.

Following Marchet’s chronological structure, Inama-Sternegg accepts Seckendorff’s leading position and distinguishes the Austrian mercantilists’ enlargement of economic policy from their limited direct contribution to administrative theory. Wolff closes the older welfare-state tradition through its philosophical grounding, while Justi inaugurates a new period by systematizing administrative tasks:

Aber auch bei Wolff ist die Verwaltung mehr principiell postulirt, als dass die Summe ihrer Aufgaben in ein System gebracht wäre.

English translation: But in Wolff too administration is postulated more in principle than that the sum of its tasks has been brought into a system.

The reviewer’s principal corrective here concerns Sonnenfels. A fuller comparison would reveal his broader conception of state responsibilities and superior legal training, not merely his refinements of disciplinary divisions and the welfare principle. Inama-Sternegg also asks for a clearer separation between cameralists increasingly concerned with practical economic management and writers of police science developing a general theory of government. Comparing their definitions without distinguishing their purposes obscures the emergence of modern administrative thought. These criticisms qualify an ultimately favorable judgment of Marchet’s selective studies.

Hatschek’s shorter monograph supplies the institutional counterpart. Drawing on previously unknown Viennese archival material, it reconstructs Becher’s Manufacturhaus as a state-sponsored model establishment for major export industries. Its importance begins with establishing that the enterprise actually operated:

Indem H. diese Zweifel beseitigt und sowohl die ganzen Pläne des Manufacturhauses wie seine Leistungen vorführt, zeigt er, dass es sich hier in der That um ein ganz ernsthaft angefasstes und wenigstens seinen Grundgedanken nach hochwichtiges Institut zur Beförderung nationaler Betriebsamkeit gehandelt hat.

English translation: In dispelling these doubts and presenting both the entire plans of the Manufacture House and its achievements, H. shows that what was at issue here was indeed an institution taken in hand in all seriousness and, at least in its fundamental conception, of the highest importance for the promotion of national industry.

Schröder continued supporting the undertaking after Becher’s departure, but adverse circumstances prevented further success; it ceased definitively with Schröder’s death in 1689. Inama-Sternegg locates its lasting significance less in achieved results than in its organizing conception. Hatschek’s publication of two previously unknown memoranda by each mercantilist further enlarges knowledge of their economic thought. Together, the two reviews advance a discriminating history of administration in which doctrinal system, institutional experiment, and practical success remain distinct but mutually illuminating objects of inquiry.