The reign of Joseph II is often hailed as ‘revolutionary’ by historians, which indeed it was to a large extent. Joseph radically altered the relationship between the Austrian people, the church and the nobility, whilst also changing domestic policy and government. Yet it was, at times, fraught with reactionary politics and traditional rule. Despite certain elements of archaic rule under Joseph II, his radical reforms reduced the power of the church and nobility, and changed peasant, agricultural and governmental rule sufficiently to grant him the status of a revolutionary emperor. When Joseph ascended the throne, despite Maria-Theresa’s previous reforms, the nobility and church still maintained vast power. During his reign, however, Joseph assailed these institutions, robbing the nobility of their benefits via emancipating the serfs, and hamstringing the church through his anti-ecclesiastical policies. Aligning with the revolutionary Enlightenment ideas of the time, Joseph II radically altered the status quo of the Habsburg Empire and hereditary lands. Rejection of traditional Ancien Regime rule on this scale had scarcely been seen from a Habsburg ruler before. Though Joseph’s rule did not assume the identity of a violent, revolution or entirely change the empire, the governmental, cultural and social paradigms that Joseph undid through reform revolutionised the Habsburg Empire. Despite Joseph’s reform on the nobility and peasantry not being as extreme, his government and religious reforms made him a ‘revolutionary’ emperor to a large extent.
Joseph’s revolutionary status can be evidenced by his restructuring of government in the Habsburg Empire. Joseph changed personnel appointed, but also centralised power that had previously belonged to the various diets, under his chancellery. Previous to Joseph’s rule, positions in government were a certainty for nobles. Yet the emperor chose to depart from this and instead chose his civil servants based on qualification. He aligned with the newly hypothesised principles of cameralism, that the state should be managed by broadly educated bureaucrats. Thus, Joseph dismissed many nobles from government, stating that he did ‘not conceive that a monarch is [was] bound to give any of his subjects an appointment merely because he is a nobleman’. These cameralist principles focused primarily on ensuring that Joseph’s civil servants had well-rounded education and expertise in multiple areas, for example having a knowledge of both agriculture and industry. The shift from noble politicians to those that were qualified ushered in a new system of government, more focused on the improvement of the lot of the people than the maintenance of hierarchy. Thus, those politicians with education and popular interests at heart rose through the ranks. The principal chancellor during the Habsburg period of enlightened despotism, Prince Wenzel von Kaunitz, was a prime example of this. A proponent of liberalism, the arts and Jansenism, Kaunitz heavily emphasised educating the masses. Kaunitz implemented this by assisting Joseph in making elementary education compulsory across the empire. In 1789 in Bohemia alone, 79 new schools were established and 198 new teachers engaged. The number of children attending primary schools in the countryside increased by 16,000 from the previous year, iterating the swift progress that came with Joseph’s newly-minded government.
Hence, the direction of government was revolutionised by Joseph’s new criteria for civil servants. So too was the government changed by Joseph’s new method of ruling. Radically departing from previous Habsburg rulers, Joseph decided to rule by edict, not by taking consultation from the various diets. Joseph employed Kaunitz to reach satiating agreements with the various diets in exchange for implementation of his policies. Consequently, Joseph had far more power to implement liberal policies than any ruler had before, not calling a diet from 1865 until the end of his reign. Though this was indeed anti-democratic, Joseph revolutionised the way in which the Habsburg monarchs could rule. This decrease of democracy, rather than worsening popular life, bettered it. The diets that Joseph bypassed were often controlled by nobility of their respective kingdoms, and were often less forward-thinking than he. Therefore he could project his policies across the empire, not just on Austria. Hence, what some could argue to be reactionary, autocratic rule was in reality something to the opposite effect. Joseph removed power from those archaic governments in order to push through policies on the Catholic church, nobility, and peasantry that were radically liberal and truly revolutionary.
The primary area of Joseph’s rule that revolutionised his empire was his reduction of church power. During his reign, the emperor brought to heel the previously indomitable power of the Catholic Church. Joseph’s motivation was to remove what he viewed to be a dogmatic constraint upon his people. Joseph produced a series of laws, both angled towards limiting the power of Catholicism, but also towards promoting religious egality in his dominion. Among the most unpopular with the church was Joseph’s removal of the tithe, depriving the Papacy any income from taxing Joseph’s subjects. Joseph heavily reduced the influence of Catholicism in his lands with through this, but did not stop there. Joseph issued the Edict of Tolerance in 1781 that granted Protestants and Jews equal status with Catholics, a move that was seen as heretical by the Papacy. He simultaneously handicapped the clergy by demanding oaths of loyalty from bishops, giving him partial command over church members. On one occasion, Pope Pius VI travelled to Vienna to confront Joseph about his laws, and the emperor flatly refused to change course. Due to Joseph’s rule there was no longer any Catholic privilege. Equal status of other religions ridiculed the Papacy, and the power of the Pope himself was shown to be useless in the face of a strong monarch.
Hence, Joseph iterated to his subjects that religion was no longer chief. The practicalities that his policies included, for example limiting sermon lengths to make more time for work, made sense. Consequently, Joseph stripped away the idea of religious invulnerability, effectively refuting the age-old hierarchical authority of the church. In acting in their interest rather than that of the church, Joseph demonstrated to his citizens that his rule was to be about practicality rather than tradition. He was aiming to ‘convert the monk of mere show into a useful citizen’, conveying his preference for practicality. Yet Joseph did not just strike at the Papacy’s policy and clergy: he struck at its foundations too. He leaned towards a more secular method of education, undoing the church’s permeation into teaching. Placing focus on more modern education in turn set Joseph up for more qualified, cameralist, civil servants in the future. Succeeding this, he severed the spread of church dogma through schooling, displaying how he used revolutionary policy changes on religion to reinforce his other ambitions.
The nobility was also radically altered under Joseph’s rule, their status shifting from inviolability to equality with regular citizens. This was indicative of the new social order that Joseph was creating through his revolutionarily egalitarian policies. Through extensive legal and civil reform, Joseph broke down the power of the nobles and thereby countermanded the social hierarchy that had long since existed in Europe. These reforms principally affected the nobles’ right to income, and the extent to which they controlled the peasantry. Joseph’s 1781 Serfdom Patent decreed that serfs were no longer bound to land, lord or profession, meaning massive strides for the peasantry. In addition to this, Joseph caused a huge decrease in financial power for some of the most reactionary, traditional citizens in the empire. He limited the power of nobles with general laws too, decreeing that their rights were ‘not to be upheld if the monarch deemed them a danger to common well-being’. Thus, one can see that Joseph limited the social power of the nobility hugely. He cut off not only their sources of wealth and power, but also restricted any response from them. As he could easily deem it a ‘danger to common well-being’. It was through this popular legislation that Joseph started to reduce centuries of social order, indeed revolutionising Austrian society.
Though the nobles had undoubtedly been restricted, it is also beyond doubt that the social order in the empire still maintained archaic and traditional characteristics. Those peasants that remained on their lords’ lands often had to continue owe obedience, and feudal punishments were still often given out. Moreover, total revolutionary change with regard to the nobles would have meant an upturning of the social order entirely. The nobles, despite Joseph’s reforms, were still far superior to the peasantry. Yet Joseph should not be condemned for this. To do so would be reductive, as the nobility were still a crucial part of the crown’s authority that Joseph needed in order to exercise power. In this way, Joseph can still be praised as he maintained his power while dismantling the feudal rule of the nobility. They retained prestige and some of their power, but Joseph limited them to ensure that his people and policies could take root, particularly his edicts concerning the peasantry and agriculture.
Joseph was a supporter of physiocracy, the idea of producing national wealth from agriculture, and encouraged agricultural enterprise: coupled with rejection of nobles’ land rights, he improved the peasants’ economic and social lives. Joseph’s physiocratic approach to agriculture was a change from previous policy as it prioritised the common good over the good of the nobles. For the first time peasants were incentivised to work for themselves, not for others, due to reformation of the lord-serf relationship. No longer did serfs have to give arbitrary gifts and sums of money to their landlords, but instead had only to pay a fixed, monetised rent. Hence, peasants were incentivised to produce above and beyond their previous amounts, reaping for the first time a benefit from their hard work. To further liberate the peasants, Joseph introduced peasant tax and labour reforms. These were hugely popular amongst the peasantry, hailed as a truly “celebrated initiative”. This evidence is also important in terms of refuting arguments that Joseph was not revolutionary. Not only did Joseph free up the peasants financially, he ensured that their work should be regulated. These labour reforms were some of the earliest modern assurances for workers, and iterate that Joseph was truly committed to changing society in the Habsburg Empire. Though again, many would say Joseph only acted in this way in the interest of increasing economic output. Thus, they would view him as a reformer, and not as revolutionary. Yet Joseph went beyond economic reform, and placed equality of the peasantry at the forefront of his mind. He stopped the nobility's control of peasant marriage and profession choice, and banned corporal punishment on serfs. One must take reform like this into mind when assessing Joseph. Clearly, he wanted not just to change the peasants’ financial situation, but to change their social standing. Prohibition of many of the nobility’s privileges was so significant because it all but erased the image of noble inviolability. Indeed the abolition of serfdom that Joseph undertook was revolutionary in itself. It preceded abolition in Russia, much of the Holy Roman Empire, France, Prussia and Poland, evidence in itself that Joseph was an enlightened, revolutionary emperor.
Yet though Joseph undoubtedly left the peasantry more free and socially liberated than ever they had been, there was still a clear divide between the ex-serfs and those of higher status in the empire. Joseph gave ‘neither “freedom” nor “property” in the modern sense’, and granted ‘quasi-freedom and semi property’ to the peasants, not total, revolutionary change. The peasants, though having more freedom than ever, were not fully freed. Thus, the change fell short of complete revolution. It is also a view widely held that, though Joseph reformed his empire in the interest of the people, he also reformed as ‘it will have the most useful influence on the [empire’s] agriculture and industry’. One can then see that it is too reductive to think of Joseph as clearly liberal and revolutionary. His motivations were practical too, and not necessarily humanitarian or to better the lot of the people, but better his empire and rule as a whole. Thus, the motivation and effect of the reforms evidence the fact that Joseph was not totally revolutionary as a ruler, rather an extreme reformer.
Joseph II was indeed ‘revolutionary’ to a large extent. Though he did not change the Habsburg Empire to the same extent that a revolution would have, Joseph’s policies and rule are often held as a “turning point in the transformation of state and society”
Joseph’s dealing with the church was truly unprecedented. He refuted the institution that held dominant power in Europe for centuries, but he lacked as much muster when dealing with the peasants and nobility. Having radically reformed the government to allow him to rule as he pleased, Joseph’s reforms concerning the nobility and serfs were not as extreme as they could have been. Though it is difficult to envision how Joseph would have further reformed the nobility and promoted equality for the serfs, it must still be maintained that his actions in these departments fall short of revolutionary. Ultimately, the nobility were still firmly far more privileged than the peasantry, and their standard of living far superior. Hence, despite revolutionary reformation of government and church, Joseph’s less radical alterations to the classes of peasantry and nobility mean that he can not totally be described as a revolutionary emperor, and merits this title to a large extent.