Careers in the Kingdom of Hungary in Enlightened Abolutism

In the eighteenth century the Kingdom of Hungary was a state whose legal and political system preserved a broad autonomy within the Austrian Monarchy. The Habsburg dynasty was the initiator of the kingdom`s adjustment to modernity, and was at the same time considered ethnically and politically alien factor, which introduced reforms "from above". The dynasty`s new conception of politics, culture, society and economy were to make their way through the old institutions, traditions and practices, which in Hungary were considered an inherent part of the "nation`s" legacy. The project deales with the social background, the education, the recruitment and the careers of members of the central bureaucracy of the Kingdom of Hungary during the long reign of Maria Theresa (1740-1780) and the early years of Joseph II (1780-1790). In other words, the social group under scrutiny is the royal servants, who were active agents and at the same time objects of the reforms whose success depended on well-orchestrated cooperation between the crown and its executive branches in the kingdom. The project`s goal, therefore, is to examine the transformation of the personnel of the three highest institutions of the Hungarian government, namely the Hungarian Court Chancellery (the advisory board to the monarch), the Lieutenancy Council (the government) and the Hungarian Chamber (financial administration). It will ascertain how far new professional requirements were introduced, which standards of higher efficiency of administration and of improved professional qualifications were set, and in what way these developments necessitated uniform professional training and educational practices. It will be crucial to determine the extent to which impersonal and formal standards of admissions and promotions made headway against or continued to exist with older social structures and practices, such as corporate nepotism, patronage and clientele networks. Thus the project intends to conduct a series of exemplary case-studies of careers and career-makers in order to create a collective portrait of the civil servants as a social group. Social biographies as they are reflected in petitions for posts, private letters, particularly those of recommendation, and in the minutes of the Councils and Chambers will be developed. For this purpose, the project deals with archival and printed sources, which had not been considered yet to describe the problems in question. The project deals mainly with the Hungarian bureaucracy. Yet policies of enlightened absolutism, which aimed at an assimilation of Hungarian bureaucratic procedures to those elsewhere in the Monarchy, will allow to extrapolate conclusions to the central bureaucracy of other lands in general.