Limits to Despotism: Idealizations of Chinese Governance and Legitimizations of Absolutist Europe
In: Journal of Early Modern HistoryAbstract
The term “oriental despotism” was used to describe all larger Asian empires in eighteenth century Europe. It was meaningful to use about the Ottoman, Mughal and Chinese empires. However, this did not mean that all Europeans writing on Asian empires implied that they were all tyrannies with no political qualities. The Chinese system of government received great interest among early modern political thinkers in Europe ever since it was described in the reports that Jesuit missionaries had sent back from China in the beginning of the seventeenth century. The descriptions of an ethical and political bond between emperor and administrators in China and of specific administrative organs in which age-old principles were managed made a great impression on many European readers of these reports. Although it did not remain an undisputed belief in Europe, many intellectuals held China to be a model of how the power of a sovereign could be limited or curbed within an absolutist system of government.
This article investigates three cases of how the models of China were conceived by theorists reading Jesuit reports and how they subsequently strategically communicated this model to the courts of Prussia, Austria, and Russia. These three ambitious European monarchies have been regarded to give rise to a form of “enlightened absolutism” that formed a tradition different from those of England and France, the states whose administrative systems formed the most powerful models in this period. Rather than describing the early modern theories about China’s despotism as a narrative parallel, but unrelated to the development of policy programs of the respective states, this article documents how certain elements of the model of China were integrated in the political writings of Frederick II of Prussia, Joseph II of Austria, and Catherine II of Russia. Thus, in addition to the history of political thought on China, the article adds a new perspective to how these monarchs argued for fiscal reforms and a centralization and professionalization of their administrations.
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12
Joan-Pau Rubiés, “Oriental Despotism and European Orientalism: Botero to Montesquieu,” Journal of Early Modern History 9 (2005): 109-80.
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13
See Franco Venturi, “Oriental Despotism,” Journal of the History of Ideas 24 (1963): 133-142.
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14
Rubiés, “Oriental Despotism and European Orientalism: Botero to Montesquieu,” 124.
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15
Q. Skinner, “A Genealogy of the Modern State,” in Proceedings of the British Academy. Vol. 162, 2008 Lectures, ed. British Academy (Oxford, 2009), 333.
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20
Lach and Van Kley, Asia in the Making of Europe: Volume III, 1579.
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22
Lach and Van Kley, Asia in the Making of Europe: Volume III, 1587.
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24
Athanasius Kircher, “China Illustrata,” in China Illustrata, English Translation Of: China Monumentis Qua Sacris Qua Profanis . . . From Original 1667, ed. Charles D. Van Tuyl, (Muskogee, 1987 [1667]), 110.
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28
Donald F. Lach and E.J.V. Kley, Asia in the Making of Europe: A Century of Advance. East Asia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 1582.
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32
Samuel Pufendorf, “De Jure Naturae Et Gentium Libri Octo,” in De Jure Naturae Et Gentium Libri Octo, V. 2. The Translation of the Edition of 1688, ed. Charles Henry Oldfather and William Abbott Oldfather, (Oxford, 1934 [1672]), 1270.
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35
Lach and Van Kley, Asia in the Making of Europe: Volume III, 1585.
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38
Christian Wolff, “Discourse on the Practical Philosophy of the Chinese,” in Moral Enlightenment: Leibniz and Wolff on China, eds. Julia Ching and Willard Gurdon Oxtoby, (Nettetal, 1992 [1721]), 149-150.
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40
Christian Wolff, “On the Philosopher King and the Ruling Philosopher,” in Moral Enlightenment: Leibniz and Wolff on China, ed. Julia Ching and Willard Gurdon Oxtoby, (Nettetal, 1992 [1730]), 187.
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48
See Jürgen Backhaus, “Christian Wolff on Subsidiarity, the Division of Labor, and Social Welfare,” European Journal of Law and Economics 4 (1997): 129; Peter Senn, “What Is the Place of Christian Wolff in the History of the Social Sciences?” European Journal of Law and Economics 4 (1997): 147.
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51
Basil Guy, “The Chinese Examination System and France: 1569-1847,” in Transactions of the First International Congress on the Enlightenment, ed. Theodore Besterman, (Geneve, 1963), 106; Adolf Reichwein, China and Europe: Intellectual and Artistic Contacts in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1968), 747.
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52
See Laura Hostetler, “A Mirror for the Monarch? A Literary Portrait of China in Eighteenth-Century France,” Asia Major, 3rd Series, 19, no. 1-2 (2006): 349-76.
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59
See Demel, “China in the Political Thought of Western and Central Europe,” 47.
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66
See e.g. Hilary Bok, “Baron De Montesquieu, Charles-Louis De Secondat,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2010 Edition) http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2010/entries/montesquieu/.
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Justi, Vergleichungen, 53. Justi excludes France, Denmark, Spain, and Portugal and is probably referring mainly to Prussia and Austria, whose systems he was well acquainted with. On Justi’s approach to the vested interests of noblemen see Adam, Political economy of J.H.G. Justi, 176.
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86
See Stefan Gaarsmand Jacobsen, “Physiocracy and the Chinese Model: Enlightened Lessons from China’s Political Economy?” in Thoughts on Economic Development in China, ed. Ying Ma and Hans-Michael Trautwein, (London, 2013).
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87
François Quesnay, “Despotisme of China,” in China, a Model for Europe, ed. Lewis Adams Maverick (San Antonio, 1946 [1767]), 264.
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Mark Larrimore, “Orientalism and Antivoluntarism in the History of Ethics: On Christian Wolff ’s ‘Oratio De Sinarum Philosophia Practica’,” The Journal of Religious Ethics 28, no. 2 (2000): 209; Lee, Anti-Europa, 109.
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Frederick II in Hans Rosenberg, Bureaucracy, Aristocracy, and Autocracy: The Prussian Experience, 1660-1815 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958), 81.
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107
Hubatsch, Frederick the Great of Prussia: Absolutism and Administration, 158.
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119
Beales, Enlightenment and Reform, 15; Hermann Conrad, “Einleitung,” in Recht Und Verfassung Des Reiches in Der Zeit Maria Theresias: Die Vorträge Zum Unterricht Des Erzherzogs Joseph Im Natur- Und Völkerrecht Sowie Im Deutschen Staats- Und Lehnrecht, ed. Hermann Conrad and Gerd Kleinheyer (Köln, 1964), 10ff; Walter W. Davis, Joseph II: An Imperial Reformer for the Austrian Netherlands (The Hague, 1974), 65.
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120
Christian August Von Beck, “Kern Des Natur- Und Völkerrechts,” in Recht Und Verfassung Des Reiches in Der Zeit Maria Theresias: Die Vorträge Zum Unterricht Des Erzherzogs Joseph Im Natur- Und Völkerrecht Sowie Im Deutschen Staats- Und Lehnrecht, ed. Hermann Conrad and Gerd Kleinheyer (Köln, 1964 [1754-1755]).
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128
Habsburg Emperor Joseph II, “Denkschrift Des Kaisers Joseph Über Den Zustand Der Österreichischen Monarchie,” in Maria Theresia Und Joseph II, Ihre Correspondenz Sammt Briefen Joseph’s an Seinen Bruder Leopold, ed. A. Arneth (Wien, 1868 [1765]), 360.
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133
See Günther Chaloupek, “J.H.G. Justi in Austria: His Writings in the Context of Economic and Industrial Policies of the Habsburg Empire in the 18th Century,” in The Beginnings of Political Economy: Johann Friedrich Gottlob Von Justi, ed. Jürgen G. Backhaus (New York, 2009).
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137
Empress of Russia Catherine II, “Instruction for the Commissioners for Composing a New Code of Laws,” in The Grand Instructions to the Commissioners Appointed to Frame a New Code of Laws for the Russian Empire, trans. M. Tatishchev (London, 1768 [1767]), 145.
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142
Ransel, “Catherine II’s Instruction to the Commission on Laws,” 15.
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Ransel, “Catherine II’s Instruction to the Commission on Laws,” 14.
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152
Isabel De Madariaga, “The Foundation of the Russian Educational System by Catherine II,” The Slavonic and East European Review 57, no. 3 (1979): 373.
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158
Frederick II, “Correspondence De Frédéric Avec Voltaire,” 376. “[. . .] est-il permis d’employer des mensonges officieux pour parvenir à de bonnes fins?”
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Limits to Despotism: Idealizations of Chinese Governance and Legitimizations of Absolutist Europe
In: Journal of Early Modern HistoryAbstract
The term “oriental despotism” was used to describe all larger Asian empires in eighteenth century Europe. It was meaningful to use about the Ottoman, Mughal and Chinese empires. However, this did not mean that all Europeans writing on Asian empires implied that they were all tyrannies with no political qualities. The Chinese system of government received great interest among early modern political thinkers in Europe ever since it was described in the reports that Jesuit missionaries had sent back from China in the beginning of the seventeenth century. The descriptions of an ethical and political bond between emperor and administrators in China and of specific administrative organs in which age-old principles were managed made a great impression on many European readers of these reports. Although it did not remain an undisputed belief in Europe, many intellectuals held China to be a model of how the power of a sovereign could be limited or curbed within an absolutist system of government.
This article investigates three cases of how the models of China were conceived by theorists reading Jesuit reports and how they subsequently strategically communicated this model to the courts of Prussia, Austria, and Russia. These three ambitious European monarchies have been regarded to give rise to a form of “enlightened absolutism” that formed a tradition different from those of England and France, the states whose administrative systems formed the most powerful models in this period. Rather than describing the early modern theories about China’s despotism as a narrative parallel, but unrelated to the development of policy programs of the respective states, this article documents how certain elements of the model of China were integrated in the political writings of Frederick II of Prussia, Joseph II of Austria, and Catherine II of Russia. Thus, in addition to the history of political thought on China, the article adds a new perspective to how these monarchs argued for fiscal reforms and a centralization and professionalization of their administrations.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 310 | 115 | 5 |
| Full Text Views | 170 | 15 | 2 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 95 | 35 | 1 |