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Documents - Rural and Urban Economy and Labor
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1.   Introduction of the Excise Tax in the Towns of Brandenburg (April 15, 1667)
The excise or sales tax that Elector Frederick William’s government imposed on Brandenburg’s towns (and which was later extended to most of his other provinces) was the urban counterpart to the direct....
2.   Philip Wilhelm von Hörnigk, "Austria over all, if she only wills it" (1684)
The book from which the following excerpt derives gained fame in its time and thereafter as a confidence-inspiring account of state-guided, tariff-protected, population-expanding, bullion-hoarding....
3.   Edict Protecting the Brandenburg Woolens Industry (March 30, 1687)
Before the Industrial Revolution, when cotton grew in importance, sheep’s wool was the basic raw material for the clothing trade. With this edict, Frederick William’s government aimed to discourage....
4.   Prussian "Soldier King" Frederick William I Instructs his Officials on Peasant Colonization in East Prussia (July 2, 1718)
Mercantilism advocated measures to increase the human population, which the Prussian kings enthusiastically termed Peuplierung. By the time Frederick William issued these instructions on peasant....
5.   Imperial Trade Ordinance [Reichshandwerksordnung] (August 16, 1731)
This ordinance required journeymen to submit their birth certificates and Lehrbriefe (proof of having fulfilled their apprenticeships) to employers as evidence of good behavior. It attempted....
6.   Frederick II ("the Great"), Memorandum to the Administration of Electoral Brandenburg on the Landlord-Peasant Relationship (1755)
Here, Frederick addresses reports that noble landlords had been enclosing vacated village farms in their own estate lands. Such destruction of peasant fullholdings (later termed Bauernlegen)....
7.   Emperor Joseph II's Penal Patent [Strafpatent] governing Manorial Courts in the Countryside (September 1, 1781)
The reign of Maria Theresa saw the issuance of administrative rulings that improved the condition of the peasantry in the lands of the Austrian monarchy. These rulings put limits on the feudal rents....
8.   Emperor Joseph II's Patent on Serfdom [Leibeigenschaft] (November 1, 1781)
Historians have misunderstood this Imperial act as a wholesale conversion of the Austrian monarchy’s servile peasantry into freemen, but in fact, outside Galicia, personal serfdom [Leibeigenschaft]....
9.   Emperor Joseph II's "Buying-In" Patent (November 1, 1781)
This ruling aimed to improve subject farmers’ property rights in their holdings, so as to heighten their incentive to cultivate their lands more productively and to gradually dissolve the juridically....
10.   Margrave Karl Friedrich von Baden, Proclamation of the Abolition of Serfdom in Baden (July 23, 1783)
With this edict, Baden’s ruler joined the contemporary Enlightenment-driven critique of serfdom and slavery by enunciating, in principle, the end of personal serfdom, which was still not uncommon....
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