Rebellious Prussians : urban political culture under Frederick the Great and his successors / Florian Schui.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Schui, Florian, 1973-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Political culture--Germany--Prussia--History--18th century.

Political culture.

History.

Prussia (Germany)--History--Frederick II, 1740-1786.

Prussia (Germany).

Prussia (Germany)--History--1740-1815.

Germany--Prussia.

Physical Description:

x, 221 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2013.

Summary:

Prussian discipline is legendary. Central to debates about modern German history is the view that an oppressive Prussian state cast a shadow on the development of civil society. In particular, historians have often seen the absence of a revolution in the eighteenth century as a symptom of a delayed and incomplete emancipation of the Prussian bourgeoisie. Prussia's urban dwellers have often been portrayed as poor relations of the self-reliant and assertive bourgeois of Western Europe and the Atlantic world. Economically backward and politically oppressed, they were-allegedly-in no position to challenge the iron grip of the state and question the authority of the Hohenzollern dynasty. Drawing from extensive and original research, Florian Schui challenges the accepted view about the relation between state and urban society in eighteenth-century Prussia. Schui explores several instances where urban Prussians successfully resisted government policies and forced Frederick the Great and his successors to give in to their demands. Rebellious Prussians thus sheds light on a little-known historical reality in which weak Hohenzollern monarchs-and a still weaker Prussian bureaucracy-were confronted with prosperous, fearless, argumentative, and occasionally violent Prussian burghers. Such conflicts between state and citizens were by no means unique to Prussia. Rather the events in Prussia were, on many levels, connected to similar contemporary developments in other parts of Europe and North America. Schui systematically explores these links and thus develops a new European and Atlantic perspective on Prussian history in the eighteenth century. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 The Paradoxes of State Building 16

The father of the Prussian state 17

The growing financial appetite of the state 19

Town vs. country 21

The making of Prussian burghers 24

The military-fiscal state as seen from the towns 25

The economics of the excise 29

Soldiers in the town 32

Religion and state building 34

Sex and the Prussian town 40

The 'state-free' schools of Prussia's towns 45

'Where individual life carries its own centre of gravity within itself' 47

2 Urban Navel-Gazing 48

Urban growth 50

The causes of urban growth 54

The wealth of towns 57

Epicurean Prussians 58

'Wealth is a mother of poverty' 60

The perils of wealth 61

The perils of poverty 64

The dangers of religious individualism 66

Recalibrating relations with the state 68

3 Official Perspectives on the Towns 75

Knowing the towns 76

For whose benefit? 81

Tranquillity 82

Prosperity 83

The visible hand of the Prussian state 85

Guided consumers 90

The utility of specie 91

An English bank for Prussia 93

The long shadow of Colbert 95

Start-up industry protection 95

4 Taxation and its Discontents 101

Membranes made of stone 102

Making an administration one official at a time 104

The creation of the Régie 107

Taxpayer opposition 111

The power of the written word 118

The fall of the Régie 126

After the end 133

Reaping the benefits 134

Long-term outcomes 138

A soft landing for the Prussian state 139

5 Religion and the State 144

A new hymnal for Prussia 145

Forms of resistance 147

Frederick the Great flees from a flock of burghers 148

The causes of rebellion 151

Religious Realpolitik 153

Woellner's machinations 155

The intellectual origins of the edicts 157

The dangers of 'self-thinking' 160

Opposition to the edicts 165

A people of 'self-thinkers' 172

Woellner, Voltaire, and subversiveness 174

6 A Prussian on Liberty 176

On religion 178

On education 182

On scarcity and abundance 184

On change 189

On the limits of state action 191.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [199]-215) and index.

ISBN:

9780199593965

0199593965

OCLC:

818450012