ABSTRACT
Historically the Archduchy of Lower Austria formed the core region of the Austrian territories under the Habsburgs. The lack of progressive activity on the part of the landholding nobility in the area of agriculture, especially in the heartlands of the Habsburg Empire, was repeatedly cited in the nineteenth century as the cause of economic backwardness. The risk inherent in the system of Pfandherrschaft, dependent as it was on feudal rents, classifies it a specifically entrepreneurial activity of the nobility in the Early Modern period. The intellectual roots of the modernization efforts on landed estates of the Early Modern period have not been adequately explained. The question of the movement of organizational ideas regarding estate management from the aristocratic level through to the instruction of their officials has not been sufficiently investigated for Austria, especially where the direction, mechanisms, and speed of their diffusion are concerned.
