Political Reason and the Language of Change: Reform and Improvement in Early Modern Europe

This collection of essays re-examines ideas of change and movements for change in early modern Europe without presuming that "progressive" change was the outcome of "reforms".

"Reform" today implies rational, incremental change to public institutions and procedures. "Improvement" has a more general application, emphasising the positive outcome to which "reform" is oriented. But the language of reform is today used of historical personalities and movements that did not themselves use the term, and who in many cases were not necessarily seeking the progressive change that we would understand today. The activities of "reform" were embedded in contemporary politics, and while "improvement" was part of a contemporary vocabulary, its real presence has been obscured by the range of natural languages in which it was expressed. Contributors to this volume seek to establish what was meant by contemporary usage. Bringing together scholars of Russia, Southern, Western, Central and Northern Europe, this collection sheds new light on both common and divergent features of a political process too often treated as a uniform movement towards modernity.

This volume is a useful resource for students and scholars interested in Enlightenment studies, intellectual history, and conceptual history in early modern Europe.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Adriana Luna-Fabritius is the President of the European Society for the History of Political Thought and University Researcher at the University of Helsinki. She studies early-modern languages of republicanism, natural law and political economy in the Spanish monarchy: Naples, Catalonia and New Spain. Her research is grounded on the transformation of imperialism through scientific, legal and political practices of its communicating networks.

Ere Nokkala is a University Researcher at the University of Helsinki. His main research interests are in eighteenth-century German and Swedish intellectual history. He is the author of From Natural Law to Political Economy. J.H.G. von Justi on State, Commerce and International Order (2019).

Marten Seppel is Associate Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Tartu. His main interests of research include: the spread of German cameralist teaching, Eastern Europe serfdom, and hunger relief policies in early modern Europe. He is the editor (with Keith Tribe) Cameralism in Practice: State Administration and Economy in Early Modern Europe (2017).

Keith Tribe is Associate Professor of History at the University of Tartu. He is an economic historian and translator who has published widely in the history of economic discourse. His most recent book is Constructing Economic Science. The Invention of a Discipline 1850-1950 (2021).