The Disordered Police State

“Andre Wakefield has produced a brilliant, skeptical study of the German political economists of the eighteenth century. His Cameralists are flesh-and-blood figures in hot pursuit of personal gain and preferment. Consequently, their treatises and programs take on new meaning in Wakefield’s hands. His book is as pathbreaking as Robert Darnton’s work on Mesmerism and the world of Enlightened science.”

“In a persuasive and highly original argument that turns much of the historiography on its head, Wakefield reveals that cameralism as an economic and scientific experiment was primarily a matter of self-promotion. By situating the cameral sciences within their historical context he breaks the shackles of two centuries of Whigish disciplinary boundaries, which have literally sought to mould cameralism to fit a politicised Western intellectual genealogy. Thanks to Wakefield’s close archival-based scrutiny, we see that the traditional picture of well-ordered German states was in fact quite the reverse.”

“German cameralism seems the most protean and promethean of the new, early modern sciences, cross-cutting social, natural, and technical disciplines, to fashion a sort of deus ex machina of the modern bureaucratic state. Pursuing the elusive ‘Kammer,’ the very heart of cameralism, Wakefield’s The Disordered Police State shows us that the elusive entity was no Wunder-Kammer, but rather a ghost in the machinery of early modern science and society. And Wakefield teaches us not to trust old stories about ghosts.”

“Wakefield writes history with a vengeance, drumming out the echoes of the present from our understanding of the past. Gone from his analysis of cameralism and the early modern state are the distorting specters of progress and theory-driven history. In their place stands a beautifully entertaining anatomy of German administrators and academics who variously contributed to and papered over the mundane disorder and corruption that plagued the states they served.  This book is a must-read for anyone who likes history that makes them think twice.”

“This masterly study probes deeply into eighteenth-century German Cameralism, defined as the ‘science of fiscal propaganda.’ For all its efforts to engineer the state, Cameralism fostered inscrutability, dishonesty, and hollow rhetoric. The upshot is to show how deeply rooted is the German propensity for autarky and the procurement of wealth and power by subterfuge.”

“In this provocative book, Wakefield revises the history of cameralism, he challenges the Enlightenment link between science and material progress, and he indicates the limits of the written record for historical enquiry. His conclusions have important implications for economic history, for the history of science and technology, and for the writing of history in general.”