Bildung, bureaucracy, and political economy: Karl Heinrich Rau and the development of German economics

It is generally accepted that the development of political economy involved a radical break with cameralism. In "Bildung, Bureaucracy, and Political Economy," I modify this interpretation by concentrating on the work of Karl Heinrich Rau (1792-1870) and other early nineteenth-century German political economists.;By shifting the terms of the debate, I argue that early German economists did not merely offer primitive economic theories, but also comprehensive visions of society. In this way, early German political economy has deep roots in eighteenth-century thought and culture. I employ several strategies to carry out my research. First, I examine the ways in which early German economics involved Bildung, Enlightenment conceptions of science, and late eighteenth-century historical "politics." Second, my project goes beyond the boundaries of intellectual history and examines these ideas "in action." By focussing on Rau's activity in the southwestern German state of Baden, I have been able to reconstruct the development of political economy in a local context.;My dissertation includes seven chapters. In the first, I introduce my subject and outline its historiographical dimensions. I then, in chapter two, examine visions of Bildung in early German economics. The third chapter traces how German economists used Enlightenment conceptions of biology in order to formulate and express their notions of large-scale economic activity. In the fourth chapter, I investigate the importance of late eighteenth-century historical and political methods in investigating this economic activity. The rest of my dissertation is based on extensive archival and field research in Germany. In the fifth chapter, I discuss the reconstruction of Baden's University of Heidelberg and the development of its research tradition in economics. The sixth chapter outlines the use of political economy by members of Baden's parliament to fashion reform legislation. In the final chapter, I investigate the importance of economics in the education of Baden's civil service. German economists fought to secure a place for their discipline in the education of bureaucrats; and, in Baden, they engaged in bitter conflicts with jurists who were also vying for positions of power in the territorial bureaucracy.