The port Jews of Habsburg Trieste : absolutist politics and enlightenment culture / Lois C. Dubin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dubin, Lois C., 1952-

Contributor:

Class of 1924 Book Fund.

Classes of 1883 and 1884 Fund.

Series:

Stanford studies in Jewish history and culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Jews--Italy--Trieste--History--18th century.

Jews.

Jews--Legal status, laws, etc--Italy--Trieste--History--18th century.

Haskalah--Italy--Trieste.

Haskalah.

Jews--Legal status, laws, etc.

History.

Trieste (Italy)--Ethnic relations.

Trieste (Italy).

Italy--Trieste.

Physical Description:

ix, 335 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press, 1999.

Summary:

This book offers an important new perspective on the process of Jewish integration in modern Europe. Heretofore, discussions of Jewish culture and politics in the eighteenth century have emphasized enlightenment in Berlin and emancipation in Paris. In this study, the author addresses the Habsburg Monarchy, which contained the largest Jewish population in Europe outside Russia, by focusing on the free port of Trieste, at the crossroads of Central Europe, Italy, and the Levant. In this dynamic port city, mercantilist state-building, enlightenment absolutism, multicultural diversity, and Italian Jewish traditions produced a path toward integration that is generally ignored in modern Jewish history: that of acculturated merchants in commercial centers.

The book provides an in-depth study of enlightened absolutism in action -- of the way rulers, officials, and subjects negotiated and implemented policies. It shows both Maria Theresa and Joseph II as pragmatic state-builders who developed new policies of toleration for Jews and other religious minorities. The book also emphasizes the commitment by Trieste Jews to the new norms of acculturation, enlightenment, and civil inclusion -- in contrast to the wariness expressed by other European Jews to enlightened absolutist programs of societal transformation.

The author seeks to counter the usual teleological reading of eighteenth-century Jewish history that sees civil-political improvement only in terms of the French Revolution's granting of legal emancipation. The example of Habsburg Trieste demonstrates the possibility and parameters of change within an Old Regime corporate-estates society and state, under which most Jews lived through theeighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Class of 1924 Book Fund.

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Classes of 1883 and 1884 Fund.

ISBN:

0804733201

OCLC:

39961648