Metternich

Metternich, appointed foreign minister by Emperor Francis in 1809, helped sustain a Habsburg order built on sovereign authority, political repression, serfdom, and restrictions on markets. His influence outlasted Francis and illustrates how concentrated political power could deny ordinary people participation while preserving extractive economic institutions.

Office and the Consolidation of Absolutism

Maria Theresa had used the State Council as a forum for consultation with her ministers. Francis dissolved it, ending consultation and public discussion of the Crown’s decisions. The book presents this not as a merely administrative change but as part of a political order in which the monarch faced few constraints and the population had no recognized share in sovereign authority.

Francis created a police state and ruthlessly censored material that could be considered even mildly radical. Count Hartig described the governing philosophy as the unabated maintenance of sovereign authority and the denial of any claim by the people to participate in it. Appointed foreign minister in 1809, Metternich assisted Francis in this project. His own power and influence lasted almost forty years, outliving the ruler whose government he served.

Serfdom, Labor, and Restricted Markets

The economic order Metternich helped uphold rested on feudalism and serfdom. Serfdom blocked the emergence of a labor market and deprived much of the rural population of economic incentives and initiative. Labor mobility was tightly restricted, and emigration was illegal. Feudalism became more intense farther east within the empire, reflecting a broader institutional gradient across Europe.

The book gives the regime’s attitude toward popular independence a stark expression through Friedrich von Gentz, one of Metternich’s assistants. When the English philanthropist Robert Owen urged the Austrian government to adopt reforms to improve conditions for poor people, Gentz replied that the government did not want the masses to become prosperous and independent, because that would make them harder to rule. The remark links economic subordination directly to political control.

Restrictions extended beyond the countryside. Guilds dominated urban economic life and limited entry into professions; internal tariffs remained in place within Austria until 1775 and within Hungary until 1784. High tariffs on imported goods and explicit prohibitions on imports and exports further constrained commerce. In the book’s account, this was not simply a failure to encourage innovation: the suppression of markets was part of an extractive system maintained by absolutist power.

Legal Power and the Book’s Wider Argument

Metternich’s long tenure makes him a figure in the book’s account of how political institutions endure. The chapter contrasts an absolutist order, where power is concentrated and public participation denied, with pluralist institutions that constrain rulers through the rule of law. In the Habsburg example, the dissolution of the State Council and censorship narrowed the channels through which people might contest decisions; serfdom and trade restrictions reinforced that political exclusion in economic life.

The book also compares the use of legal institutions under very different political conditions. In Mexico, the resource known as the amparo, originally intended to protect individual rights and freedoms, became a means by which Telmex and other monopolies could challenge regulation and entrench their market power. By contrast, the discussion of early eighteenth-century Britain emphasizes that the rule of law could constrain elites as well as ordinary people. These comparisons sharpen the institutional distinction: legal forms alone do not ensure equal constraints, especially where political power is concentrated.

That distinction also informs the account of Argentina. The book describes a political system in which governments could override property rights and expropriate citizens with little restraint, despite elections. Set against these examples, Metternich’s role belongs to a broader argument about the consequences of institutions that concentrate authority: political control and economic restriction can reinforce one another, while durable limits on power depend on pluralism.