Austria THE REFORMS OF MARIA THERESA AND JOSEPH II
Baroque Absolutism and Enlightened Despotism
Maria Theresa (r. 1740-80) reformed and united Habsburg
holdings.
Courtesy Embassy of Austria, Washington
Although her husband was emperor, Maria Theresa ruled the
Habsburg lands. However, when her son Joseph became Holy Roman
Emperor after the death of her husband in 1765, she made her son
coregent. Following Maria Theresa's death in 1780, Joseph II
reigned in his own right until his death in 1790. The
Counter-Reformation's political and religious goals had largely
been accomplished by the time Maria Theresa came to the throne,
but maintaining Austria's great-power status urgently required
broad internal reform and restructuring to strengthen the central
authority of the monarchy and curtail the power of the nobility.
Maria Theresa began administrative and economic reforms in
1749, drawing on mercantilist theory and examples provided by
Prussian and French reforms. In addition, she undertook reforms
in the social, legal, and religious spheres. During the coregency
and after Maria Theresa's death, Joseph continued the reforms
along the lines pursued by his mother. But mother and son had
sharply different motivations. Maria Theresa was a pious Catholic
empress working within the structure of a paternalistic, baroque
absolutism and was unsympathetic to the Enlightenment. Joseph, in
contrast, gave the reforms an ideological edge reflecting the
utilitarian theories of the Enlightenment. Because his reforms
were more ideologically driven and thus less flexible and
pragmatic, they frequently were also less successful and
disrupted the stability of the Habsburg Empire.
Although the statist religious policy that evolved in this
era became known as Josephism, Joseph's policy was largely an
extension of his mother's, whose piety did not exempt the church
from reforms designed to strengthen state authority and power.
Joseph's utilitarianism, however, contributed to two important
divergences from Maria Theresa's policy: greater religious
toleration and suppression of religious institutions and customs
deemed contrary to utilitarian principles. The Edict of
Tolerance, issued in 1781, granted Protestants almost equal
status with Catholics; other decrees lifted restrictions on Jews
and opened up communities, trades, and educational opportunities
previously barred to them. The utilitarian principles behind
religious toleration, however, also inspired Joseph to dissolve
Catholic monasteries that were dedicated solely to contemplative
religious life and to suppress various traditional Jewish customs
he viewed as detrimental to society and a hinderance to the
Germanization of the Jewish population.
The reforms created an administrative, fiscal, and judicial
bureaucracy directly responsible to the monarch. As the seat of
the new centralized institutions, Vienna grew from merely being
the sovereign's place of residence to a true political and
administrative capital. Hungary, however, was not included in
these centralizing administrative reforms. In appreciation for
the support Austria had received from the Hungarian nobles during
the War of the Austrian Succession, Maria Theresa never extended
her reforms to that kingdom.
Data as of December 1993
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