The Land Register of Francis I - Edition Unit 3: Silesia

The cadastral land register was an essential element of economic modernization. The seemingly dry procedure and material of historical cadastral work hides a highly political and surprisingly topical issue. The structure of the modern European world of states follows the paradigm of the nation state and history as a discipline, but historical memory even more so, sees Europe even now in terms of sovereign individual states. In contrast, the land register of Francis I was the successful attempt to gather the countries of Central Europe, which around the year 1800 were in the process of changing from an estates-based society to a nation-based society, into one space with unified legislation on soil evaluation and the tax system. It represents one of the most significant and persistent achievements of the Habsburg monarchy for a large part of Central Europe and is still visible today. The modernization horizon envisaged by the cadastral system included the entire complex of the Central European territories of the Habsburg monarchy in all its heterogeneity. The land registration of Francis I, in combination with cadastral map and tax assessment, is an essential element in the evolvement of a more or less homogenous, large economic zone and an alternative to the Hegelian model of a modern state. It documents the effort of recreating a large region in the sense of a centralised unum totum in economic, administrative and legal terms. Recent comparative European research is agreed on seeing the land register as a significant step towards the modern state. The current project aims towards a continuation of a long-term project which started as a pilot project on Bukovina and Carinthia in 2008. The edition of Austrian-Silesia (as a part of Moravia) as a next step combined with an initial analysis will provide a fundamental and undoubtedly significant complex source for future research. Only a combined edition of the maps, the relevant sources and their scientific presentation could secure a central cultural document whose continued existence is under threat. On the basis of the land register of Francis I and using a proven analytic method, this project will come up with the first systematic edition of comprehensive sources of social, economic and societal history for an entire region of historical Silesia.

Since 1742 Austrian Silesia was the remaining part of an originally much larger area of enormous economic importance to Vienna. With just a bit less than 5,200 km, Silesia was one of the smaller crown lands of Austria, but one of the economically most important areas of the entire Habsburg Monarchy. When we initiated the idea of this long-term edition project in 2008, the following assumption was at the centre of our research interest: the Franciscan Cadastre as an attempt to unite the Habsburg lands into a uniform legal space through land valuation and taxation. The modern state had already announced itself in the Habsburg territories in the course of reforms during the 18th century. The monarchy entered a process of gradually replacing the traditional society of estates. From a today's perspective, it is quite clear that the effectiveness of this project, the nationwide creation of a uniform and consistent land tax cadastre, went far beyond the intended medium-term consolidation of the state coffers, which were unsurprisingly empty after the Napoleonic Wars. The land tax, based on an income-dependent valuation, was not only intended to ensure a continuous flow of money to finance the state, its institutions and its infrastructure. On the one hand, the traditional estates gradually lost their political power and influence. The basis for the creation of a centralised, economically and administratively largely uniform greater space had therewith been created. On the other hand, the idea of a 'fair' tax, equally valid for all, pushed a surge in the development of society as a whole. The territorialisation of the state, which had been progressing since the 18th century, was now being complemented by a gradual homogenisation in various areas of society and economy. For researchers, the source complex of the Franciscean Cadastre opens up a field beyond purely economic-historical questions that raises differently directed questions about space and identity or a sense of belonging. Both are dynamized by the cadastre. In the socio-economic network of relationships around the cadastre, not only a largely uniform legal space began to establish itself in the Habsburg Monarchy during the course of the 19th century, but a certain legal certainty was established as well and with it a direct relationship between its subjects, the later citizens, based on trust and the credibility of the institutions. The results have proven the assumptions totally. The edition of Austrian-Silesia with its basic analysis of certain and well-chosen aspects provides for the first time a fundamental and complex source for future research on a broad field of socio-economical questions in history, which reaches far behind Silesia itself.