Creating Differences for Integration: Enlightened Reforms and Civilizing Missions in the Eastern European Possessions of the Habsburg Monarchy (1750–1815)

Abstract

The geopolitical expansion of the Habsburg Monarchy in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries led to a reshuffling of its internal political composition. Imperial elites aimed at introducing a higher degree of centralization. Within this process of empire-building, cameralism played a fundamental role because it aimed at strengthening the Monarchy’s fiscal and military strength. Cameralism relied on a taxonomy that classified regions and its peoples according to their productive potential and social norms conducive for social and economic change. This laid the base for the construction of Habsburg Eastern Europe. The imperial elites endeavored to civilize the population of this region and transform socio-economic lifestyles. While up to the Josephinist reform period orientalizing classifications and descriptions were linked to a reformist aim, after 1790 they increasingly turned into essentialist ethnic stereotypes.