Political Economy in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1750–1774: The Contribution of Ludwig Zinzendorf by Simon Adler
本书论证了路德维希·钦岑多夫在18世纪政治经济学发展中的关键作用，他兼具理论洞察与政策实践，推动了英法思想在德语区的传播，并尝试改革哈布斯堡帝国的财政与货币体系。
Simon Adler has writ ten an impres sive mono graph for those inter ested in the his tory of pre-Smithian eigh teenth-cen tury polit i cal econ omy or the gen eral evo lu tion of Central Euro pean polit i cal econ omy in the eigh teenth and nineteenth cen tu ries.Adler makes a truly con vinc ing case that the econ o mist at the core of the book, Count Ludwig Zinzendorf (1721-80), deserves the atten tion that-unlike sev eral of his illus tri ous sib lings-he has not received so far.Zinzendorf con trib uted sub stan tially to the new image of polit i cal econ omy as a respect ful sci ence, both rig or ous and rel evant, and that for the fate of ruler and cit i zen alike.There are sev eral rea sons why Zinzendorf's life and work mat ter.First and foremost, he represented a rare com bi na tion of the o ret i cal acu men in polit i cal econ omy and prac ti cal rel e vance as one of the highest-rank ing pub lic ser vants dur ing the reign of Empress Maria Theresa (1740-80).Second, he pro vided a most intrigu ing con duit through which French and English polit i cal econ omy entered the Ger man-lan guage domain, both by his own con tri bu tions and by his trans la tions, most nota bly of John Law's Money and Trade.Third, he attempted sev eral insti tu tional reforms in the Habs burg Empire in an age of mul ti ple wars, an oppor tu nity that he used to mod ernize the fis cal capac ity of the state and to add resilience to the tra di tional sys tem of money and credit.Many cur sory treat ments of Austrian eco nomic pol icy and thought in the eighteenth cen tury empha size the reforms of Maria Theresa's son, Joseph II (1780-90), and the the o ret i cal dom i nance of cameralism, espe cially as embod ied in the works of Joseph von Sonnenfels (1732-1817).Adler's con tri bu tion is pre cisely to show that this ste reo typ i cal per spec tive misses cru cial the o ret i cal and insti tu tional pro cesses in the pre ced ing decades.Zinzendorf's life story is weaved around the key real i za tion of the times: that the sys tem of money and credit was deci sive both for the sus tain able