'Welfare for whom?' The place of poor relief in the theory and practice of the enlightened absolutist state

This chapter assesses whether the absolutist states of eighteenth-century Europe were genuinely concerned with alleviating poverty and in the process introduces several of the themes of the collection. The Marxian perspective which views enlightened absolutism as unable to modernise without endangering itself ignores the tentative signs of reform, underpinned by a new secular and scientific sense of poverty. Epitomising our need to view the topic of poverty in terms of reformers as much as thinkers, this development was led less by the intellectual luminaries of the age than by powerful civil servants. Turgot led the way in 1770s France, Johann Heinrich Gottlob von Justi (1717–1771) in 1760s Prussia and Wenzel Anton, Prince Kaunitz (1711–1794) and Joseph von Sonnenfels (1732–1817) in the Habsburg Monarchy. Across absolutist Europe in the mid-eighteenth century, perceptions of the poor were shifting towards the promotion of welfare, with Frederick II, Catherine II and Joseph II all seeking to alter policy towards the poor. Local circumstances, however, determined the rate of change: Frederick achieved little, while Catherine and Joseph achieved much, though on a smaller scale than their grandiose projects had intended. But the fact that it was Joseph II who undertook some of the most radical policies of the age indicates our hitherto narrow focus on either England or France might be wide of the mark.