Creating Space: Capitalism, Mining, and the Evolution of Central European Economic Thought

Abstract

There were a number of economists in early modern Germany who, as their works indicate, faced regular criticism and personal attacks. Again and again, they had to defend and legitimize their work. Such apologetic formulas appear for the first time in the work of the Saxon councilor and writer Melchior von Osse (1506–57). This was no coincidence. Starting from the large and dynamic mining districts of the region, a new variant of economic thinking emerged at the end of the fifteenth century, characterized in particular by the fact that it extended the princely household over the entire territory. Ideas of this kind violated centuries-old scholarly traditions. This concerned both the question of occupations suitable for people of high status as well as the scope of what could legitimately be called a household or economy. The reason for this break with convention was the increasingly capitalist organization of mining, which fostered new forms of spatial imagination and governmental practice. However, irrespective of how important the idea of a territorial economy would become, it also placed a burden on economic scholars who were involved in its early dissemination. The legacy of disrupting the medieval politico-economic order will accompany them for centuries to come.