Reforms, 1763–80

Maria Theresa’s second period of reform was more important than the first, because it carried with it elements of centralization and change that were portents of the kind of government, society, and economy that would emerge in the 19th century and mature in the 20th. As modern as some of these elements were, the government that introduced them was not thinking of long-range goals but was dealing with immediate problems, the most important being recovery from the Seven Years’ War. The area requiring urgent attention was finance. The cost of the Seven Years’ War had added so much debt to the treasury that, for the remainder of Maria Theresa’s reign, servicing that debt while providing for the costs of defense and governmental operations became the obsession of many of her advisers.

Financial need led Maria Theresa and her statesmen into other fields. All realized that financial recovery to a great extent depended on an improved economy, and they introduced a number of measures to make it better. Foreign workers and artisans with skills in the manufacture of various articles were recruited from the Low Countries, the Italian lands, and Germany and settled throughout the monarchy. Farmers came from western Europe for settlement in some of the more remote lands of the monarchy that had been badly depopulated, mainly in southern and eastern Hungary. Some important sectors of the economy, such as textiles and iron making, were freed from guild restrictions. And in 1775 the government created a customs union out of most of the crown lands of the monarchy, excluding some of the peripheral lands and the kingdom of Hungary, which was not joined to Austria in a customs union until 1851.

The basically mercantilist policy of Charles VI’s reign and earlier was revised in line with the influence of physiocratic and so-called populationist theories (see physiocrat). Thenceforward human labour, and not precious metal, was gradually to become the yardstick of national wealth. This led, on the one hand, to restrictions on emigration and, on the other, to an easing of some imports that were not considered competitive with domestic industries.

Financial and economic reforms also had an impact upon society. Maria Theresa’s government was fully aware that most taxes came from society’s lower elements, and so it was eager to make certain that those lower elements had the wherewithal to bear their burden. In 1767 she imposed a law on Hungary regulating the rights and duties of the serfs and their lords with the intent of bettering the condition of the peasants, which was not good at all. This law suffered somewhat because the lords themselves were responsible for implementing it, but it was later codified into the Hungarian statutes in 1790–91 and remained the basic law regarding the status of the serfs until their final emancipation in 1848. In response to a serf revolt in 1774 protesting not only oppression but also hunger, Maria Theresa issued a law in Bohemia in 1775 that restricted the aristocratic practice of exploiting the work obligations of the peasantry. She also had plans drawn up to change the dues of the peasantry from various forms of service to a strictly rent-paying system. Such a system was introduced on lands owned by the crown, but she did not enforce its extension to privately held lands. (See also serfdom.)

Maria Theresa also introduced a system of public education. The motivation for this reform came from concern both that the Roman Catholic Church in Austria was no longer maintaining public morality properly and that certain changes in the 18th-century economy required that Austria provide a better-educated work force. It is often assumed that the great mass of the people in Austria at this time were serfs working on the lords’ lands, owing various work and money dues, and thus—while suffering oppression—at least forming a fairly stable society. In fact, by the late 18th century the vast majority of the rural population was made up of cottars, gardeners, and lodgers who owed minimal feudal duties and who depended on nonagricultural occupations for their survival. These people represented a proto-industrial work force, but they also represented an ignorant and potentially ill-disciplined rural population. Compulsory education was a method of instilling a good work ethic and a sense of morality in them. In 1774 Maria Theresa issued the General School Regulation for the Austrian lands, establishing a system of elementary schools, secondary schools, and normal schools to train teachers. The implementation of this regulation was difficult owing to a lack of teachers, resistance on the part of lords and peasants alike, and a shortage of funds. Despite these obstacles, however, 500 such schools had opened by 1780.

Foreign affairs, 1763–80

The great change in Maria Theresa’s foreign policy after 1763 was her reconciliation to the loss of Silesia. Although as a result Maria Theresa and her advisers focused their attention for the most part on domestic affairs, a few foreign matters offered the monarchy opportunities for territorial gain and in two cases carried the threat of renewed warfare. In 1768 the old matter of the fate of the Ottoman Empire appeared again, this time in the form of a Russo-Turkish war and the possibility that Russia would not simply defeat the now-decaying Ottoman state but would replace it as the Habsburg neighbour in the southeast, a condition the Habsburgs wanted to prevent even at great cost. By 1771 Kaunitz was so fearful that this possibility was becoming a probability that he recommended that Austria form an alliance with the Turks to fight the Russians, an idea resisted by Maria Theresa, who still regarded the Turks as infidel predators in Europe. (See also Russo-Turkish wars.)

The threat of war diminished, however, owing to the intervention of Frederick II, who suggested as a solution to the crisis the annexation of Polish territory by the three great eastern European powers and the maintenance of the Ottoman Empire in its entirety in Europe. Austria agreed to this suggestion, although Maria Theresa herself did so most reluctantly. She believed that the difficulties she had had at the beginning of her reign had been brought on by the refusal of the European powers to respect the territorial integrity of their fellows and that, by agreeing to the partition of Poland, she was in fact endorsing the same kind of cynical, parasitical policy that had caused her such grief and that she had regarded as so heinous in 1741. However, as Kaunitz warned her, refusal to take part would not only continue the threat of war but also weaken the monarchy relative to its two powerful neighbours, who had no compunction about adding land and taxpayers to their rolls while Austria received nothing. Consequently, in 1772, Austria, Prussia, and Russia participated in the First Partition of Poland, which added the Polish province of Galicia to the monarchy. (See also Poland, Partitions of.)

In 1775, following the initiative of Joseph II, Maria Theresa’s son, who had joined her as coruler after the death of her husband, the monarchy wrested the province of Bukovina from the Turks. The province served as a convenient connection between Galicia and Transylvania.

In 1778 one of Kaunitz’s initiatives, to trade the distant Austrian Netherlands for nearby Bavaria, led to a third war with Prussia. This War of the Bavarian Succession, however, featured virtually no military contact between the two powers, because Maria Theresa, who for a time had left most of the policy making to her chancellor and her son, intervened directly with her old enemy Frederick II and concluded with him the Treaty of Teschen. The treaty resulted in a few minor territorial adjustments—especially the addition of Bavarian territories east of the Inn River to Upper Austria—but above all in the canceling of the proposed swap of the Austrian Netherlands for Bavaria.