The Early Reception of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations in Austria (Until 1848)

If the movement of Enlightenment had a belated start in the Austrian monarchy, there is evidence of early interest in Adam Smith’s epoch-making work in the eighteenth century. In contrast to its immediate reception in the states of the German Reich, any deeper discussion of Smith’s teachings is missing in Austria until the middle of the nineteenth century. For decades, Smithian liberalism had its home in the state bureaucracy. The progressive spirit of Emperor Joseph’s reforms was conducive to the spread of Smithian ideas among higher circles of administration. During the period of conservative reaction, named after State Chancellor Metternich, Austria’s government promoted a “Romanticist restoration” against Enlightenment and liberalism. But the backward-looking economic model of the German Smith-critic Adam Müller, who entered Austrian civil and diplomatic service, was unsuited as economic doctrine for economic policy if Austria wanted to preserve its status as major European power. An important step forward in the modernization of university teaching of economics was Joseph Kudler’s Grundlehren der Volkswirthschaft of 1846 which belatedly replaced the textbook of the Austrian cameralist Joseph von Sonnenfels. With respect to theory, Kudler stands on Smithian grounds, while he advocates gradualism in implementation of reforms.