Introduction

Building on recent research on the transnational dimensions of Enlightenment as well as Enlightenment in German-speaking contexts, the introduction to this volume sets out the stakes of studying cameralism against the backdrop of the Enlightenment. Setting the stage for the following contributions in the volume, it suggests an actor-focused approach to idea transfer that overcomes a reductive dichotomy between practice and theory and an untenable separation of the intellectual from the social and the cultural. It develops an approach to the study of past thinkers that takes their individual creativity and multiple commitments seriously, particularly in the process of adapting ideas to various local contexts, whether linguistic, national, political, confessional, administrative or institutional. Through a methodological reconsideration of boundaries and units of analysis in cultural and intellectual history, it encourages an approach to cameralism as a porous political-economic field rather than a set of fixed commitments. Further, it suggests how cameralists reconciled their views on commerce, colonialism and natural law in consonant ways to other varieties of enlightened political economy, lending new insights into the importance of cameralism to Enlightenment studies and the history of eighteenth-century Europe more broadly.