Abstract
By reconsidering Frederick’s economic thought on a larger, European scale, this chapter aims to shed light on his attempts at transforming Prussia into a ‘trading nation’ in the period between the Austrian War of Succession and the Seven Years War. The 1753 trade agreement between France and Prussia provides a fruitful case study both for describing the Prussian economic situation and for understanding the diplomatic strategies employed by European nations in the post-Utrecht politics. On a macro-level, the argument concentrates on the role played by neutrality and commercial treaties in the Franco-Prussian relationships of mid-eighteenth century and, in the micro-context of the Prussian society, it reconstructs the political debate about economic issues during Frederick’s kingdom.
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Notes
- 1.
Wolfgang Neugebauer, ‘Preußen in der Historiographie. Epochen und Forschungsprobleme der Preußischen Geschichte’, in: Handbuch der Preußischen Geschichte, ed. Otto Büsch and Wolfgang Neugebauer (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009), I: 3–109.
- 2.
First of all, Christopher Clark, Iron Kingdom. The Rise and Downfall of Prussia 1600–1947 (London: Allen Lane, 2006).
- 3.
On ‘universal monarchy’, see John Robertson, ‘Empire and Union: Two Concepts of the Early Modern Political Order’, in: A Union for Empire. Political Thought and the British Union of 1707, ed. John Robertson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 3–36; on ‘jealousy of trade’, Istvan Hont, Jealousy of Trade. International Competition and the Nation-State in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005); and, more generally, on the debate about these categories, with a perceptive definition of ‘balance of power’, see, most recently, Isaac Nakhimovsky, ‘Envisioning Europe after Utrecht. Voltaire and the Historiography of the Balance of Power’, in: The 1713 Peace of Utrecht and Its Enduring Effects, ed. A.H.A. Soons (Leiden: Brill, 2017).
- 4.
On the Anti-Machiavel, see, in particular, Hont, Jealousy of Trade, 22–36, and Isaac Nakhimovsky, ‘The Peaceful Prince and the Future of Europe: Frederick and Voltaire’s Anti-Machiavel of 1740’, in: Commerce and Peace in the Enlightenment, ed. Bela Kapossy, Isaac Nakhimovsky and Richard Whatmore (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 44–77.
- 5.
Frederick II of Prussia and Voltaire, Anti-Machiavel (The Complete Works of Voltaire, vol. 19), ed. Werner Bahner and Helga Bergmann (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1996), 252–253.
- 6.
Antonella Alimento, ed., War, Trade, and Neutrality. Europe and the Mediterranean in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2011).
- 7.
Frederick II and Voltaire, Anti-Machiavel, chs. V, XVI and XXI.
- 8.
Frederick II and Voltaire, Anti-Machiavel, 192–193.
- 9.
Frederick II and Voltaire, Anti-Machiavel, 227 (on the role played by industries); the translation is that provided by Frederick of Prussia, The Refutation of Machiavelli’s Prince or Anti-Machiavel (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1981), 134. On the image of the prince as heaven, see Frederick of Prussia, Refutation, 195. On Frederick’s support for Prussian manufacturing, see Florian Schui, Early Debates about Industry. Voltaire and His Contemporaries (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 35–78.
- 10.
Frederick II and Voltaire, Anti-Machiavel, 226–227.
- 11.
Cf. Die politischen Testamente der Hohenzollern, ed. Georg Küntzel (Berlin: Hobbing, 1920), II: 1–109; for a comparison between the 1752 testament and the subsequent one, drafted in 1768, see Bernd Sösemann, ‘Lo spirito dell’Illuminismo e la politica. Contorni e confini del progetto politico di Federico II’, in Stato e cultura in Prussia sotto Federico II, ed. Edoardo Tortarolo (Naples: Edizioni scientifiche italiane, 2013), 1–22.
- 12.
Die politischen Testamente, ed. Küntzel, 24.
- 13.
Die politischen Testamente, ed. Küntzel, 24–25.
- 14.
Die politischen Testamente, ed. Küntzel, 16–17, and, in general, the overview by Friedrich-Wilhelm Henning, ‘Die Entwicklung der Verkehrsinfrastruktur in Brandenburg/Preußen als Teil der Staatsbaukunst von 1648 bis 1850’, Forschungen zur brandenburgischen und preußischen Geschichte 7 (1997), 211–232.
- 15.
Cf. Reinhold Koser, Geschichte des Friedrich des Grossen (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1921–1925), II: 158; Karl Heinrich Born, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft im Denken Friedrichs des Großen (Mainz: Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, 1979), 15; Ingrid Mittenzwei, Friedrich II von Preußen: eine Biographie (Cologne: Pahl-Rugenstein, 1983), 159–164.
- 16.
For the catalogue of Frederick’s library, see Bogdan Krieger, Friedrich der Große und seine Bücher (Berlin: Giesecke und Devrient, 1914), for the economic texts see 174–176. Frederick’s readings are analysed in Friedrich der Große als Leser, ed. Brunhilde Wehinger and Günther Lottes (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2012), where no attention is given to economic books.
- 17.
On this circle, see Le cercle de Vincent de Gournay. Savoirs économiques et pratiques administratives en France au milieu du XVIII e siècle, ed. Loïc Charles, Frédéric Lefebvre and Christine Théré (Paris: Institut National d’études démographiques, 2011).
- 18.
See the comments of the British media in the 1750s: Manfred Schlenke, England und das Friderizianische Preußen. 1740–1763. Ein Beitrag zum Verhältnis von Politik und öffentlicher Meinung im England des 18. Jahrhunderts (Munich: Alber, 1963), 303–315.
- 19.
Frederick II of Prussia, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de Brandenbourg (s.l., 1750), 85. The same opinion was expressed in a memorandum that Frederick wrote to the director of the Fifth Department Faesch in 1749: see Reinhold Koser, ‘Ein handelspolitisches Programm Friedrichs des Großen’, Hohenzollern-Jahrbuch 5 (1901), 270–271. In general, on the importance of trade in Frederick’s foreign policy, see Ulrike Müller-Weil, Absolutismus und Aussenpolitik in Preussen. Ein Beitrag zur Strukturgeschichte des preussischen Absolutismus (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1992), 100–108 and 282–294.
- 20.
Ere Nokkala, ‘Just and Unjust Neutrality. J. H. G. von Justis Defence of Prussian Maritime Neutrality (1740–1763)’, in: Trade and War. The Neutrality of War in the Inter-State System, ed. Koen Stapelbroek (Helsinki: Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, 2011), 42–60.
- 21.
On these works, see Ulrich Adam, The Political Economy of J. H. Justi (Bern: Peter Lang, 2006), 70–92.
- 22.
The first attempts made by the French diplomats to reach a trade agreement date back to the end of September 1747, when Puyzieulx sent clear instructions on this matter to the French ambassador at the Prussian court, the Marquis de Valori: see Paris, Archives du Ministère des Affaires Étrangères [MAE], Correspondance Politique Prusse 149, fos. 149v–150r.
- 23.
This first draft of a treaty of commerce, issued on 17 March 1743, is preserved in MAE, Mémoires et Documents Prusse 4, fos. 275r–298v. Other documentation can be found in Die Handels-, Zoll- und Akzisepolitik Preußens, ed. Hugo Rachel (Berlin: Parey, 1928), III/2: 571–572.
- 24.
MAE, Mémoires et Documents Prusse 4, fos. 301r–304v.
- 25.
On Silesian linens, see William Henderson, Studies in the Economic Policy of Frederick the Great (London: Cass, 1963), 136–152.
- 26.
Friedrich Lenz and Otto Unholtz, Die Geschichte des Bankhauses Gebrüder Schickler. Festschrift zum 200 jährigen Bestehen (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1912), 76–80.
- 27.
On this first phase, see Eric Schnakenbourg, La France, le Nord et l’Europe au début du XVIII e siècle (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2008).
- 28.
Cf. the unpublished doctoral dissertation by Frank Fox ‘French–Russian Commercial Relations in the Eighteenth Century and the French–Russian Commercial Treaty of 1787’, presented at the University of Delaware in 1966; on the period 1726–1761 and on the 1745 and 1761 projects of treaty of commerce, see esp. 46–104.
- 29.
These expectations were made clear in the memoranda prepared at that time by different consultants of the French Foreign Office: see MAE, Mémoires et Documents Prusse 3, fos. 151–163.
- 30.
In September 1748, the French ambassador in Berlin was summoned in order to receive a formal riposte to the Prussian proposal of a treaty of commerce. Attempts to reach a trade agreement of any kind were equally unsuccessful: see Berlin, Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz [GStA], I. HA, Rep. 11, Geheimer Rat, Auswärtige Beziehungen, Akten Nr. 2763, fos. 133–164. In March 1750, the Prussians proposed, to their French allies, that Stettin, a city-member of the Hansa in the thirteenth century, should be treated like the other Hanseatic cities with which France had already signed a treaty. The idea encountered opposition from the French side: cf. GStA, I. HA, Rep. 11, Geheimer Rat, Auswärtige Beziehungen, Akten Nr. 2777, fos. 10–17.
- 31.
The Prussian reactions to the French proposal were expressed in different memoranda, now preserved in GStA, I. HA, Rep. 11, Geheimer Rat, Auswärtige Beziehungen, Akten. Nr. 2763, fos. 5r–v, 8–9. See also Frederick’s letters, published in Politische Correspondenz Friedrichs des Grossen (Berlin: Verlag von Alexander Duncker, 1879–1939), V: 514–515, 518–521, 547–548.
- 32.
The accounts on these confiscations rely on Georg Friedrich von Martens, Causes celèbres du droit des gens (Leipzig and Paris: Brockhaus-Ponthieu, 1827), 1–88, and on Reinhold Koser, Preußische Staatsschriften aus der Regierungszeit König Friedrichs II. (Berlin: Dunckler, 1885), II: 433–498. See also Ernest Satow, The Silesian Loan and Frederick the Great (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1915). On the British policy of neutral trade, see Richard Pares, Colonial Blockade and Neutral Rights, 1739–1763 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1938), 148–225.
- 33.
On the Dutch policy of the time, compare the chapter by Koen Stapelbroek in this volume.
- 34.
See the letter of Frederick to the Prussian envoy in Paris D’Ammon on 13 February 1751 and the letter from D’Ammon on 28 November 1751: GStA, I. HA, Rep. 11, Geheimer Rat, Auswärtige Beziehungen, Akten Nr. 2778, fos. 59 and 367ff. (a copy of the letter sent on 28 November is also held GStA, I HA, Rep. 11, Geheimer Rat, Auswärtige Beziehungen, Akten Nr. 2789, fos. 23–25).
- 35.
On their mission, see Johannes Hovy, Het Voorstel van 1751 tot instelling vane en beperkt vrijhavenstelsel in de Republiek (propositie tot een gelimiteerd porto-franco) (Groningen: Wolters, 1966), 316–332. In August 1750, some months after the Dutch envoys had left Paris, the French court accepted the Prussian proposal of a treaty and asked to send to France an envoy in order to write the trade treaty: see GStA, I. HA, Rep. 11, Geheimer Rat, Auswärtige Beziehungen, Akten Nr. 2777, fos. 24–26, and see below.
- 36.
Koen Stapelbroek, ‘Dutch Commercial Decline Revisited: The Future of International Trade and the 1750s Debate about a Limited Free Port,’ in: Governare il mondo. L’economia come linguaggio della politica nell’Europa del Settecento, ed. Manuela Albertone (Milan: Feltrinelli, 2009), 227–255.
- 37.
See the translation and the letter which accompanies it in GStA, I.HA Rep. 96, Geh. Zivilkabinett, ältere Periode (bis 1797), Nr. 76.B, fos. not numbered. The document has already been quoted in Schui, Early Debates, 59. The document prepared by the Zeeland Admiralty Board was published a year later, in the 1752 issue of the Nederlansche Jaerboeken: see Stapelbroek, Dutch Commercial Decline Revisited, 245 n.83.
- 38.
Viktor Ring, Asiatische Handlungscompagnien Friedrichs des Grossen. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des preussischen Seehandels und Aktienwesens (Berlin: Heymann, 1890), 40–48.
- 39.
Florian Schui, ‘Prussia’s “Trans-Oceanic Moment”: The Creation of the Prussian Asiatic Trade Company in 1750’, The Historical Journal 49 (2006), 143–160.
- 40.
See Valori’s letter of 17 February 1748 to Puyzieulx in MAE, Correspondance politique Prusse 149, fos. 227v–229r. About Valori, see Mémoires des négociations du Marquis de Valori (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1820); his correspondence from Berlin is partially edited in Reinhold Koser, ‘Aus der Korrespondenz der französischen Gesandschaft zu Berlin 1746–1756’, Forschungen zur brandenburgischen und preußischen Geschichte 6 (1893), 451–481, and 7 (1894), 71–96. In these works, however, economic issues are neglected.
- 41.
On D’Ammon, see Rolf Straubel, Biographisches Handbuch der preußischen Verwaltungs- und Justizbeamten (Munich: Saur, 2009), I: 9.
- 42.
D’Ammon’s memorandum dated 28 November 1747 (GStA, I. HA, Rep. 11, Geheimer Rat, Auswärtige Beziehungen, Akten Nr. 2763, fos. 42–46); the projected treaty sent to Paris is held in MAE, Mémoires et documents Prusse 3, fos. 175ff.
- 43.
See the briefings prepared as a riposte to the Prussian project, MAE, Mémoires et documents Prusse 3, fos. 189–195.
- 44.
The French were informed about the new treaty of commerce a month before the Company of Emden was founded. See MAE, Correspondance politique 158, fol. 422, letter of M. de Tyrconnell dated 27 June 1750 (a copy of the same letter is also MAE, Mémoires et documents Prusse 3, int. 45, fos. 222ff.). Tyrconnell was the successor of M. de Valori as French ambassador in Prussia; on his mission in Berlin, see Marc Serge Rivière, ‘The Earl of Tyrconnell’s Impact on Franco-Prussian Relations (1750–2)’, Eighteenth Century Ireland 15 (2000), 120–138.
- 45.
Frederick II underlines this point in his correspondence with D’Ammon several times: see Politische Correspondenz Friedrichs des Grossen, VIII: 381–382, 398–399, 405–406.
- 46.
On the issue of Hungarian wines, see GStA, I. HA, Rep. 11, Geheimer Rat, Auswärtige Beziehungen, Akten Nr. 2777, fos. 78–79 and 118–121; the question was very important for the French too: see the letter of M. Tyrconnell quoted in n. 50 and the letter of 25 August 1750 in MAE, Correspondance politique Prusse 159, fos. 164v–165v. The problems of customs tariff in Silesia finally gave rise to a commercial war between Austria and Prussia in 1753: Koser, Geschichte, II: 182–185.
- 47.
See Frederick’s letter to his envoy in Paris, dated 18 April 1752, in Politische Correspondenz Friedrichs des Grossen, IX: 90–91.
- 48.
The correspondence between Frederick and D’Ammon dating back to 1752–1753 reveals their strong disagreements: see GStA, I HA, Rep. 96, Geh. Zivilkabinett, ältere Periode (bis 1797), Nr. 25 E and F.
- 49.
Different drafts of the convention are preserved in MAE, Correspondance politique Prusse 167, fos. 257–258 and Correspondance politique Prusse 168, fos. 65r–69v, while the signed convention du commerce has been published in Friedrich August Wilhelm Wenck, Codex iuris gentium (Lipsiae: Weidmann, 1781–1795), II: 722–725.
- 50.
Berlinische Nachrichten von Staats- und gelehrten Sachen, n. 117, 29 September 1750. The journal comes back to the Emden trade activities in n. 130, 29 October 1750.
- 51.
Rolf Straubel, Kaufleute und Manufakturunternehmer. Eine empirische Untersuchung über die sozialen Träger von Handel und Großgewerbe in den mittleren preußischen Provinzen (1763 bis 1815) (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1995).
- 52.
See the famous case of the Prussian Régie, a centralized agency of revenue that raised large opposition in the whole country: Florian Schui, Rebellious Prussians. Urban Political Culture under Frederick the Great and his Successors (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), ch. 4, and Edoardo Tortarolo, ‘Opinione pubblica e opposizione in Prussia sotto Federico II’, in Stato e cultura in Prussia, 137–165, esp. 156–165.
- 53.
Johannes-Hendrik Sonntag, Die preußische Wirtschaftspolitik in Ostfriesland (1744–1806/1813–1815) unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Stadt Emden und des Emsverkehrs (Aurich: Verlag Ostfriesische Landschaft, 1987).
- 54.
Wöchentliche Ost-friesische Anzeigen und Nachrichten von allerhand zum gemeinen Besten überhaupt, auch zur Beförderung Handels und Wandels, dienenden Sachen 1 (1747), 78, 86.
- 55.
Die Handels-, Zoll- und Akzisepolitik, III/2: 573–574.
- 56.
In March 1752, the French government conceded the exemption from the droits de fret to Prussian merchants. The decision was taken after Stettiner merchants complained about the treatment they had received in French harbours. See GStA, I. HA, Rep. 11, Geheimer Rat, Auswärtige Beziehungen, Akten Nr. 2778, fos. 437–438; other documentation GStA, I HA, Rep. 96, Geh. Zivilkabinett, ältere Periode (bis 1797), Nr. 25 F.
- 57.
Hamish M. Scott, ‘Prussia’s Royal Foreign Minister: Frederick the Great and the Administration of Prussian Diplomacy,’ in: Royal and Republican Sovereignty in Early Modern Europe. Essays in Memory of Ragnhild Hatton, ed. Robert Oresko, Graham C. Gibbs and Hamish M. Scott (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 500–526.
- 58.
See primarily Heinrich Berger, Überseeische Handelsbestrebungen und koloniale Pläne unter Friedrich dem Grossen (Leipzig: Gustav Fock, 1899); on the Prussian ‘subsidy-hunters’, see Wilhelm Treue, Preußens Wirtschaft vom Dreißigjährigen Krieg bis zum Nationalsozialismus, in: Handbuch der Preußischen Geschichte, ed. Büsch and Neugebauer, II: 449–604, esp. 479–483.
- 59.
Pauli’s Die Vortheile derer Preussischen Staaten zum einträglichen Handel, sonderlich zur See was published in Halle im Magdeburgischen in 1751 by Johann Friedrich Grunert.
- 60.
See the Schreiben eines Englischen Negotianten an einen Kaufmann in Berlin, die königliche Preußische Handlungcompagnie betreffend. Nebst der Antwort (London 1750), and Die Vorrechte der preußischen Länder zur Handlung nach China…, in: Der königliche deutschen Gesellschaft in Königsberg eigene Schriften… (Königsberg: Johann Heinrich Hartung, 1754), 160–179. The two works are almost simultaneous—the fictitious letters dated October and November 1750, while the speech was delivered on 21 November 1750; both works are anonymous, although Pauli uncovers the authorship of Die Vorrechte, whose author was a member of the Königsberg Academy named Schröder.
- 61.
GStA, I. HA, Rep. 11, Geheimer Rat, Auswärtige Beziehungen, Akten Nr. 2778, fos. 49–53.
- 62.
On the libel, see GStA, I HA, Rep. 96, Geh. Zivilkabinett, ältere Periode (bis 1797), Nr. 25 E, fol. 195, and F, fol. 3. About the Dutch opposition to the plan, see GStA, I HA, Rep. 11, Geheimer Rat, Auswärtige Beziehungen, Akten, Nr. 2789, fol. 99.
- 63.
GStA, I. HA, Rep. 11, Geheimer Rat, Auswärtige Beziehungen, Akten, Nr. 2791.
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Cavarzere, M. (2017). The Rise of a Trading Nation: Prussia and the Convention préliminaire de commerce with France (1753). In: Alimento, A., Stapelbroek, K. (eds) The Politics of Commercial Treaties in the Eighteenth Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53574-6_11
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