Academic reforms and knowledge transfer in Hungary, late 18th - early 19th century - practice and institutionalization of statistics
Final Report Abstract
The project aimed to study the communication of scientific ideas and disciplines across the social and geographical space. The focus was on the introduction of descriptive statistics (Universitätsstatistik) into Hungarian higher education and with the larger scholarly public, as an illustrative case for cultural transfer in East-Central Europe. The project proposed to analyze knowledge transfer in two ways. First, the survey of the higher education investigated the institutional channels of transfer, initiated by the Habsburg government that, to increase its political and economic efficiency, looked for models of administrative knowledge to Halle and Göttingen. Second, a collective biography of the practitioners of statistics investigated the social dimensions of the appropriation of the discipline in Hungary. This involved the academic peregrination to German and Austrian universities. Connecting the two analytical threads, the project investigated how Staatenkunde served centralizing policies, but also local agendas of state reform and nation building. The social diversity and political-administrative dependency of contemporary Hungary in the Habsburg imperial polity created the framework of knowledge transfer in the East-Central 'peripheries' of Europe at the beginning of the modern age. The analysis confirmed that the circulation of practitioners and their knowledge within the central, territorial and local administration, but also in colleges, academies, universities and the learned milieus, fostered the social diffusion of the same type of "thought style" about the state and its components, irrespective of political and social background. That is, Staatenkunde transported a shared concept of the state (as a legal space, an administrative unit and an empirical construct), involving a standardized nomenclature and an empirically based classificatory scheme, and was thus an active tool in the process of territorialization. This theoretical grid was then filled with diverse empirical and political content, depending on the status of the practitioners within the imperial and local /provincial levels. Also, the disciplinary boundaries were fluid, not least thanks to the parallel "import" of the sciences of state to Hungary. This was particularly true in the case of economic statistics, which merged with cameralist writings. As the exploration of economic (political) dimension of Staatenkunde confirmed, state descriptions functioned as switchboards for political debates about Hungary as an autonomous state and an integrated economic space within the Monarchy and beyond. Eventually Staatenkunde fostered the internal homogenization of Hungary (and the other Länder). However, the homogenization documented (and pursued) by Staatenkunde was incomplete. Statenkunde witnessed the emergence of economic micro-regions in the country and problematized the status of the kingdom within the Monarchy. The composite Habsburg empire did not merge into a single modern state.
Publications
- „Az orszagismerettol a modern statisztikaig: modszertani vazlat a felvilagosodaskori tudastranszfer vizsgalatahoz" (From state description to modern statistics: a methodological outline for the study of knowledge transfer during the Enlightenment). In: Istvan Berszan, A valtozas kulturaja - regiok es mozgasterek. (Cluj: Egyetemi Muhely Kiado, Bolyai Tarsasag, 2013), 215-231
Borbala Zsuzsanna Török
- "Introduction," in: Laszlo Kontler, Antonella Romano, Silvia Sebastiani and Borbala Zsuzsanna Török eds. Negotiating Knowledge in Early-Modern Empires: a Decentered View. Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History, New York: Palgrave Publishers, 2014, 1-22
Borbala Zsuzsanna Török with Laszlo Kontler, Antonella Romano and Silvia Sebastiani
- Negotiating Knowledge in Early-Modern Empires: a Decentered View. Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History, New York: Palgrave Publishers, 2014
Borbala Zsuzsanna Török with Laszlo Kontler, Antonella Romano and Silvia Sebastiani eds.
- „Measuring the Strength of a State: Staatenkunde in Hungary around 1800." In: Laszlo Kontier, Antonella Romano, Silvia Sebastiani and Borbala Zsuzsanna Török eds. Negotiating Knowledge in Early-Modern Empires: a Decentered View. Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History, New York: Palgrave Publishers, 2014, 235-261
Borbala Zsuzsanna Török
- Berechnen/Beschreiben. Praktiken statistischen (Nicht-)Wissens 1750-1850. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2015
Borbala Zsuzsanna Török with Gunhild Berg and Marcus Twellmann eds.
- „Einleitung." In: I.d. eds. Berechnen/Beschreiben. Praktiken statistischen (Nicht-)Wissens 1750-1850. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2015, 7-20
Borbala Zsuzsanna Török with Gunhild Berg and Marcus Twellmann
- „Grundlage des modernen Regierens. Wissensaggregierung und Wissenslücken der ökonomischen statistischen Werke in Ungarn, 1770-1848." In: Gunhild Berg, Marcus Twellmann and Borbala Zsuzsanna Török Eds., Berechnen/Beschreiben. Praktiken statistischen (Nicht-)Wissens 1750-1850. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2015, 97-120
Borbala Zsuzsanna Török with Maria Hidvegi:
- "The Intellectual Resources of Modern Governance." In: Protestantism, Knowledge and the World of Science = Protestantismus, Wissen und die Welt der Wissenschaften. Kurucz, György, ed. (2017). L'Harmattan Hongrie Collection Károli . Károli Gáspár Református Egyetem; L'Harmattan Kiadó, Budapest. ISBN 978-2-343-11864-2
Borbala Zsuzsanna Török
