Starting in 1770, the inhabitants of several villages in Baden were the subjects of an “experiment” (Versuch), whose purpose was to arrest their descent into poverty and create conditions for unparalleled prosperity. Overseeing this operation was a councilor of finance (Kammerrat) named Johann August Schlettwein (1731–1802), a man destined to become famous for his strong advocacy of social reform based on physiocratic principles. Like his monarch, the reform-minded Margrave Karl Friedrich (r. 1738–1811), Schlettwein saw in physiocracy the promise of understanding the “Natural Order,” the divinely ordained rule of the world whose application held out the prospect of effecting material and moral welfare. After conducting careful analyses, Schlettwein reported his findings to Karl Friedrich, who then gave the go-ahead to initiate a series of reforms that were designed to bring the villages into alignment with the Natural Order. Schlettwein approached the villagers with his proposal and explained to them the nature, rationale, and expected results of the reforms. The prospect of paradise lay before them. Needless to say, they wholeheartedly agreed to the changes. With some modification, from 1770 to 1802, the villages of Dietlingen, Balingen, and Teningen became sites of a physiocratic experiment whose results were controversial. Indeed, many at the time, including those sympathetic to physiocracy, came to regard it as a disastrous failure, and this has been the prevailing interpretation ever since.Footnote 1
Setting aside this critical assessment, this article instead explores what these physiocratic trials might reveal about the vein of eighteenth-century culture that emphasized the role of experience, especially experiment, in knowledge production and its application. Scholarship in recent decades has probed the complex process whereby the sciences of nature, practiced in local settings, generated public knowledge.Footnote 2 One might wonder whether such a process, at least in an analogous way, was operative in the making and utilization of the human sciences. The physiocrats, for instance, justified their call to reshape the social order by appealing to highly abstract principles, which, they claimed, were “self-evident.” Their many opponents rejected this, arguing that the much vaunted Natural Order was instead a highly contrived vision of statecraft, impractical and even dangerous if carried out. Advocates of physiocracy therefore faced a challenge to demonstrate the truth of their proposals. Already a high-profile believer, Karl Friedrich appeared to provide just such a demonstration. He set in motion reforms in selected villages whose local experience, ostensibly carried out and communicated in conformity with physiocratic principles, validated the more wide-ranging social transformation called for by the new vision of economics. The attempt to make a public experience out of these local trials shows, as we shall see, that experimental display in the eighteenth century was not simply integral to natural philosophy, but also could be used to realize a new, scientific vision of society.
Dietlingen: Constituting a Physiocratic Community
Physiocracy, which forms the general background of the following story, had profound implications for reshaping the social order. Originally conceived in the 1750s by François Quesnay, Madame de Pompadour's (1721–1764) personal physician and premier médecin ordinaire at the court of King Louis XV (r. 1715–1774), physiocracy achieved a loose coherence through the 1760s, largely because of the efforts of a close network of prominent and well-connected acolytes. Chief among the latter were the Marquis de Mirabeau (1715–1789), Pierre-Samuel Du Pont (1739–1817), Nicolas Baudeau (1730–1792), Pierre-Paul Le Mercier de la Rivière (1720–1801), and Guillaume-François Le Trosne (1728–1780). Madame de Pompadour's patronage proved to be critical for securing an early standing at court for them, especially given the controversial nature of their ideas. The physiocrats criticized the inordinate complexity of France's mercantile and financial system, contending that it should be reshaped according to the Natural Order. Building on the key tenet that land (la terre) was the unique source of wealth, especially in agriculture, they called upon France and the world to invest in farming, remove barriers to free trade, and abolish the prevailing tangled and confused taxation practices that bred corruption and inefficiency. Instead, states should rely on a much more simplified single tax (impôt unique) collected from the surplus produced (produit net).Footnote 3 The physiocrats also made strong claims about the truth of their arguments, maintaining that the latter enjoyed incontrovertible évidence (“self-evidence”)—a concept that Quesnay elaborated on at length in the famous Encyclopédie. This term, he explained, signified “a certainty so clear and so obvious in itself, that the mind cannot deny it.”Footnote 4
Physiocratic certitude convinced Karl Friedrich of Baden, who became one of its most prominent supporters. Though it is unclear exactly when he experienced his “conversion” to physiocracy, it appears that his interest in it intensified over the course of the 1760s, as he and his ministers sought out practical knowledge to guide them in their endeavor to boost the economic conditions of the territory.Footnote 5 The deliberations of an economic society he established at Karlsruhe in 1762, reveal that Karl Friedrich and the officials in attendance encountered foundational physiocratic conceptions in the early 1760s, just as the doctrine first achieved broad diffusion. This early interest appears, however, to have been focused largely on the more technical aspects of agronomy and not on any revolutionary implications for transforming the social order.Footnote 6 In 1769, when the margrave had achieved a significant understanding of physiocratic principles, he wrote his first letter to Mirabeau, the earliest and perhaps best known of Quesnay's committed disciples. Seeking advice about enacting physiocracy in the particular circumstances of Baden, Karl Friedrich hoped that, “in this way, you [Mirabeau] will shed more light on economic science in showing that it is applicable to every case and to every circumstance.” Indeed, Mirabeau and his “sublime colleagues” would have the honor of guiding the margrave and his people along the path of the Natural Order, a path, he explained, that was accessible through “this sublime science made by the Author of Nature for all climates and nations, for the happiness of mankind.”Footnote 7 Mirabeau's evasive response was anything but satisfying, thereby ensuring a continuing correspondence.Footnote 8 Karl Friedrich was nevertheless convinced that the Natural Order offered the promise of prosperity, and he felt compelled to see its realization in his lands.
The physiocratic experiment started in the village of Dietlingen, a community located near the city of Pforzheim, some fifteen miles to the southeast of the territorial capital, Karlsruhe. Now a pleasant and comfortable town situated in the municipality of Keltern, Dietlingen today can easily charm visitors with its picturesque southern German architecture, surrounding natural beauty, and fine winemaking. Matters were much different in the 1760s, however, when living conditions there left much to be desired. The village was among the poorest in the territory, and its approximately 640 inhabitants were largely impoverished, heavily indebted, and relatively unproductive.Footnote 9 Success in improving such a hardship case would certainly help the physiocrats substantiate their arguments.Footnote 10
The official charged with investigating the village and initiating the reforms, Johann Schlettwein, was, like his monarch, convinced of the truth of the physiocratic Natural Order. Before his arrival in Baden, Schlettwein had taught at the University of Jena, where he developed an expertise in the cameral and philosophical sciences. Like other cameralists of his day, he prioritized the practical value of his broad learning. His particular devotion to the study and application of useful sciences, especially natural philosophy, reinforced his image as a pragmatic philosophe. Indeed, for him, even the ostensibly speculative study of metaphysics could not escape its ultimate justification in utility.Footnote 11 Before entering the margrave's service, Schlettwein published a collection of essays, titled Bemühungen in der Naturkunde und andern nützlichen Wissenschaften (Endeavors in the Study of Nature and in Other Useful Sciences) (1756), which praised the fact that scholars and societies in his day had finally dedicated themselves as never before to promoting the welfare of states. Dismissing the suggestion that such efforts were below the dignity of academicians, Schlettwein questioned the value of “brooding over possibilities.” He fancied instead their realization.Footnote 12 Enjoying the favor of Karl Friedrich and captivated by the promise of the Natural Order, Schlettwein got to work on a project that would begin in the village of Dietlingen, and, he hoped, end with the physiocratic salvation of all humanity.
Schlettwein already had some familiarity with this locale, largely because of his ongoing efforts to introduce agronomic improvements. When the subjects in the Pforzheim district (Oberamt) started to cultivate clover for stall feeding, Dietlingen and neighboring Brötzingen and Ellmendingen contacted him for advice and help in 1764. Tithe demands on the part of ecclesiastical authorities, for example, posed a challenge to the innovation. Schlettwein later boasted that the large-scale cultivation of clover was one of his singular achievements in the margrave's territories, and he highlighted his work in Dietlingen as evidence.Footnote 13 Furthermore, he enjoyed the confidence of the village leadership at the time, more specifically, that of the village administrator (Schultheiß) Hanns Michel Bischoff, a “good, honest, and active man,” who helped usher in the reforms proposed by Schlettwein and continued to support them.Footnote 14
The experiment in Dietlingen received wide publicity, largely thanks to Schlettwein, who, from the start, gave a detailed account of the rationale, preparation, and initiation of the reforms. In this way, the experience taking shape in the village could be made “evident” to those whose lack of means, opportunity, or interest hindered an on-site visitation.Footnote 15 The operation began after 1769, when several families in the village requested manumission in order to emigrate to Pennsylvania. The request, which was ultimately rejected, prompted a desire on the part of the authorities in Karlsruhe to investigate the causes underlying this desperate act on the part of villagers.Footnote 16 The matter came to the attention of Karl Friedrich himself, to whom, Schlettwein boasted, he enjoyed “the unforgettable happiness, at the time, of almost daily access,” and the margrave commissioned him to undertake a detailed investigation to determine the state of Dietlingen's arable land, pastures, vineyards, gardens, and forests. In April 1769, Schlettwein secured the order from Karl Friedrich to carry out a visitation.Footnote 17
The goal of the investigation was to discern the causes behind the village's sorry state of affairs. Before heading off, Schlettwein gathered “data” about the tithes and taxes recently submitted by the village. Upon examining the tithe collection at twelve-year intervals from 1733 through 1768, he was “shocked” to discover a steady, and tragic, deterioration in Dietlingen's total production since 1745.Footnote 18 Schlettwein recognized, however, that numbers could only tell part of the story. To uncover the “true causes,” he needed to visit the village directly, interview the inhabitants, and observe the circumstances there himself.Footnote 19 He came prepared. Prior to his arrival on July 9, 1769, he had drafted a list of questions, which he subsequently posed to the inhabitants, noting their answers. These queries overwhelmingly solicited information about “whether” and “how much”—in other words, facts. Only two of the twenty-five questions probed for reasons. For instance, one question asks: “Why does he not improve his farmland (Fruchtäcker) to obtain a better yield?” Those who denied that more fertilizer would help improve their crop production were requested to elaborate on why they believed this was so.Footnote 20 Turning next to the village leadership, Schlettwein elicited their thoughts about the plight of the village. He put factual questions to them as well, inquiring, among other things, about the extent of Dietlingen's common lands, pastures, and buildings. One query asked whether the rate of interest paid on debts was too high—which was not the case. Apart from a certain pastor's wife, Pfarrerin Renckin in Langenalb, none of the creditors demanded more than 5 percent, and even she did not go much above that. Another question inquired about the personal habits of villagers, asking whether “carelessness, indolence, or an otherwise disordered lifestyle” might be behind the condition of the village. This was rejected: it was true that the village had a pair of boozy householders (Haushälter), but a good “thrashing before the community” appeared to have straightened them out. Instead, opined the elders, “the cause of the impoverishment was, for most, ignorance and incompetence in managing their affairs and households, as well as a prejudice in favor of the old way of doing things.”Footnote 21
One should resist exaggerating Schlettwein's role here as the ostensible savior of a distressed village. By the second half of the eighteenth century, the champions of what has been called the “Economic Enlightenment” had indeed endeavored to abolish a perceived obsolescence in agriculture.Footnote 22 In his inaugural lecture of 1755, at the University of Göttingen, the famed cameralist Johann Justi (1717–1771), for instance, stressed the importance of the “Economic and Cameral Sciences,” suggesting the role that “Oeconomie-Inspektores” could play in promulgating innovative agrarian practices among the landed population. Enjoying a practical knowledge informed by a thorough study of nature (Naturkunde), these inspectors, Justi explained, would be in a position to help farmers “acquire all the advantages and improvements of agriculture obtainable by virtue of the land and regional conditions.”Footnote 23 Reflecting this attitude, Schlettwein investigated Dietlingen with the aim of providing deliverance from adversity. Yet, as David Warren Sabean has noted, village farmers of Schlettwein's day were hardly subjects bereft of initiative.Footnote 24 Indeed, as mentioned earlier, Schlettwein claimed that the inhabitants of Dietlingen and of nearby villages had approached him about planting fodder crops in 1764. Nearly four years after Schlettwein's departure from Baden, the head of its Finance Ministry (Rentkammer), Christian von Gayling (1743–1812), conducted a visitation to Dietlingen in March 1777, and reported what appeared to him to be a village experiencing improvement. He underscored the enterprise of the farmers to enhance their productivity by acquiring expertise and technology.Footnote 25 The relationship between state officials like Schlettwein and Gayling, on the one hand, and the village leadership and community, on the other, suggests that “popular enlightenment” (Volksaufklärung) here entailed less a top-down approach than a multifaceted interaction among both state and village actors.Footnote 26
In any event, Schlettwein stressed in his accounts how he had diagnosed the challenges the village faced, and then initiated its physiocratic trial. His agronomic and physiocratic assumptions enabled him to direct his inquiry and to suggest, as the “self-evident” remedy, the speedy removal of impediments to the Natural Order.Footnote 27 Having analyzed Dietlingen's challenges, he then suggested a plan to the margrave to improve the village: “I was convinced that efforts had to be directed chiefly at aiding the inhabitants and educating and encouraging them so that they could improve their agriculture and increase the net yield of their lands.”Footnote 28 Schlettwein proposed a combination of agronomic improvements and physiocratic reforms, all intended to enable the Natural Order to flourish there. The villagers would be given more animals, to be fed in the stall for their manure. They would be freed of restrictions to buy, sell, and practice trades anywhere in the territory. Finally, the numerous and cumbersome taxes that they had traditionally paid would be abolished and replaced by a single tax on landed productivity. Given that agricultural improvements would continue in the village, Schlettwein had no doubts that the operation would quickly bear fruit in dramatically improved production, and even lead to prosperity.Footnote 29
When physiocracy arrived in Dietlingen in 1770, it did so with the full consent of the villagers. Their agreement was essential, because the physiocratic project demanded that its “self-evidence” be the reason for its adoption. The people in Dietlingen were not simply subjects, then, of a scientifically contrived and justified experiment; they had to be made agents of the trial, whose outcome served a much bigger purpose. Only by enabling and publicizing their voluntary acceptance and initiative could the demonstration be effective. Schlettwein was later open about the fact that his work, up to 1769, had entailed “preparatory measures, whereby I encouraged and supported the villagers of Dietlingen, and sought to gain their trust for the agreed-upon tax reform, to be carried out in the following year, 1770.”Footnote 30 He convinced the inhabitants to try out the “natural” method of taxation in their village at the end of June 1770, recounting this success in a triumphant letter written to Karl Friedrich shortly thereafter. Having gone to Dietlingen to see for himself the state of its farming, Schlettwein described the impressive improvements: fields of clover, sainfoin, vetch, and peas; an increase in cattle by some seventy head; and beautiful elm saplings. “Every hope is there,” he wrote, “that Dietlingen will appear in blessed circumstances.” Broaching the subject of the reformed, and much simplified, system of taxation, Schlettwein expressed his astonishment at how quickly the villagers had agreed to try it out. “I conducted discussions of my method with the village leaders, its court, and the community [Gemeinde], and succeeded in convincing them to carry out the great proposal for a trial period of two to three years. They gave me their approval with joy.”Footnote 31
Persuading the villagers to go along with the tax reform might seem to have entailed a near insurmountable challenge. After all, the physiocratic impôt unique demanded that all taxation be collected at the source of production, i.e., on agriculture, according to the net yield. Other forms of taxation had to be abolished, including excise, consumption, and personal taxes, as well as levies on commodities and services provided by the so-called sterile class of nonfarming professions. Why would the village farmers agree to such a tax? In an account published soon after the reforms were implemented, Schlettwein made it clear that he had convinced them using the force of argument and calculation, thereby showing the straightforward truths of the Natural Order in a way the people could understand:
I went there, convened all the citizens (citoyens), and proposed this plan. I demonstrated through reasons and the most simple and evident calculations the disastrous effects of the many arbitrary and indirect taxes and the dangerous consequences of the corvée and commercial restrictions. Finally, I proved to them by calculations of the utmost clarity the advantages that they would be able to draw from the liberty of commerce, the suppression of the majority of taxes, the abolition of the corvée, and the introduction of a single tax on the net yield of land.Footnote 32
Recognizing the difficulty of extirpating “inveterate abuses,” Schlettwein exhorted, even supposedly begged, those assembled to offer objections “with complete candor of heart,” which they apparently did. He claimed to have convinced the doubters, deploying arguments appropriate to the “simplicity” of everyone's judgement:
When I saw many of them indeed shocked [to hear] that the new tax would fall solely on the landowners or farmers, and that all the other classes of citizens would be exempt, I laid out before their eyes all the relations between the expenditure of the other classes and the net yield of land; I then demonstrated to them in the most simple way that the value of the net yield the farmers derive from their lands is only a result of the consumption of all the other classes and, therefore, citizens of every kind contributed to paying the tax that is collected on the net yield of the land.Footnote 33
An epiphany purportedly ensued, which Schlettwein recorded with delight. He repeated his calculation, this time even more clearly, and saw, “with pleasure, that the farmers in Dietlingen agreed with the views of their sovereign and consented to carrying out the aforementioned reform.”Footnote 34 In hindsight, his narrative comes off as self-serving and perhaps disingenuous, given that he prompted the villagers with unwarranted promises of prosperity, and even sweetened the deal with grain advances and gifts of cattle, seed, and interest-free loans.Footnote 35 Officials later observed the extreme skepticism with which the inhabitants of Dietlingen greeted calculations and proposals made by the authorities, mostly as a result of what some regarded as trickery on Schlettwein's part to gain their consent for the earlier measures.Footnote 36
After agreeing to the reforms, the villagers, with Schlettwein's assistance, apparently worked out for themselves the sum of the single tax that each promised to pay. Yet, however clear the reasoning and calculations might have been to the villagers at the start of the operation, the specific method that Schlettwein used to determine the net yield and associated taxation proved later to be a source of serious controversy.Footnote 37 According to his early published accounts, a committee—organized by Schlettwein and composed of two officials, two judges, and a few other members of the community—classified the village's arable land, meadows, and vineyards according to their respective yields. “I instructed the farmers in the method of calculating the annual advances and the net yield,” Schlettwein wrote. “I let them make all the necessary calculations and left it to them to determine the amount of the tax. They pledged to pay, beyond the customary tithe, around a fourth of the net yield from arable land, meadows, and gardens, as well as the sixth part of the net yield of vineyards.”Footnote 38 Finding that the sum total of the new, simplified single tax exceeded the welter of earlier “arbitrary and indirect taxes,” Schlettwein convinced Karl Friedrich to reduce the amount of the impôt unique from one quarter of the net yield the villagers had agreed to pay on arable land, meadows, and gardens, to just one fifth.Footnote 39 In this way, the reform received its final stamp of approval:
[His Highness] agreed to the reduction in the tax that I proposed in order to induce the villagers to improve their agriculture, and issued the decree of August 22, 1770, by which all the old arbitrary and indirect taxes in Dietlingen were cancelled at once, the corvée abolished, a complete freedom of commerce established, and the single tax on land solemnly introduced.Footnote 40
The total sum of the annual land tax (Schatzung) to be paid by the village was fixed at slightly more than 2,240 Gulden (fl.), with an additional 280–300 fl. for the corvée, which was now commuted to a monetary payment.Footnote 41 On September 18, 1770, the new ordinance was proclaimed to the assembled villagers, who committed themselves to it and, according to the official report, expressed their appreciation for the beneficence.Footnote 42
It is clear that the reforms in Dietlingen were intended to be only the start of a comprehensive transformation being planned for the margrave's territory. Schlettwein claimed to be preparing similar reforms elsewhere, notably in the nearby village of Niefern (near Pforzheim) and in a number of other villages located south in the Oberamt Hochberg (around Emmendingen): Balingen, Teningen, Denzlingen, Broggingen, and Tutschfelden. Schlettwein had visited these locales, instructing the inhabitants about their “true interests” (veritables intérêts) in agricultural reform and the single tax on land.Footnote 43 Exhibiting a near boundless confidence, he predicted a glorious future: “His Highness will continue these operations for the sake of establishing in a short time in all his territories the most simple and least costly collection of taxation, the most extensive liberty of commerce, the most flourishing and rich agriculture, the most active and profitable industry, and, finally, the most enduring happiness among his subjects.”Footnote 44 As it turned out, only the villagers of Balingen and Teningen followed Dietlingen down the path of Schlettwein's reforms—and soon sought deliverance from their mistake.Footnote 45
The Natural Order as Public Experience
By 1772, a combination of capital investment (avances) and physiocratic reforms were transforming Dietlingen into a site in which the Natural Order could potentially flourish. Schlettwein's operation sought, however, to do more than make a few village farmers wealthy: he aimed to demonstrate the truth of physiocracy, effectively showing that the local experience of the village stood in for the reality of the Natural Order. Schlettwein's advocacy of the new science and his engagement with its critics illustrate the dynamism of the Enlightenment, with its diversified aspirations and initiatives.Footnote 46 Like their opponents, the physiocrats did not shy from robust debate. Bearing this point in mind, one might regard the village trials in Baden as an “active process of argument and persuasion” pointing to a larger context of eighteenth-century experimental practice—a context that, in this case, encompassed popular enlightenment, public spectacle, and ongoing efforts to realize material and moral progress.Footnote 47
The ostensible fact that Schlettwein motivated the villagers to consent to the reforms and that he persuaded them to cooperate with him in their implementation appeared to justify physiocracy as an ongoing project of public education.Footnote 48 Indeed, despite their confidence, the physiocrats were well aware of the challenges they faced generating popular conviction in their principles. Probing the deep causes underlying prosperity, the speculative thrust of their arguments struck many as simply absurd, running not only against the grain of common practice but also contrary to plain common sense. Before Quesnay the physician advanced his new vision of economics, he had described the difficulties faced by those seeking to make known principles intellectual enough to be “insensible to the inattentive.”Footnote 49 They might have harbored the conceit typical of the eighteenth-century philosophe, but the physiocrats also shaded such sentiment with a tinge of optimism: it was true that most would fail initially to recognize the verity of the Natural Order, but they could come to learn it. Proper education was crucial. In his “Maximes générales du gouvernement économique d'un royaume agricole” (General Maxims of the Economic Government of the Agricultural Kingdom) of 1767, Quesnay prescribed “that the nation be instructed in the general laws of the Natural Order, which evidently constitute the most perfect government.”Footnote 50 In this regard, the physiocrats championed the formation of a public knowledgeable about the effects of positive legislation on the annual reproduction of wealth. Quesnay's “Despotisme de la Chine,” also published in 1767, termed this public the “moral body of the nation” or the “thinking part of the people,” whose understanding, in essence, aided the sovereign in his or her task and prompted correction when necessary.Footnote 51
It was largely on account of his efforts to advance and promulgate their science that the physiocrats eagerly commended the rule of Karl Friedrich, a monarch who had also made the effort to become acquainted personally with Quesnay's inner circle. By the end of the 1760s, the margrave had taken up a correspondence with Mirabeau that later included others as well, notably Pierre-Samuel Du Pont. During the summer of 1771, Karl Friedrich packed up his princely family and moved to Paris for several months. There the crown prince received private instruction in physiocratic doctrine from Du Pont. Furthermore, Karl Friedrich's literary efforts, his patronage of the science, and his attempted reforms figured in the pages of the Éphémérides du citoyen (1765–1772), the journal of the new economists.Footnote 52 For the physiocrats, he embodied the ideal of the philosopher-prince. Having recognized its importance for royal legitimacy, he had not only grasped the truth of the Natural Order, but also dared to enrich it. “This Prince does not limit himself to supporting the science of political economy,” proclaimed an issue of the Éphémérides in May 1771. “He has cultivated it himself with the attention of a philosophe, and with very much success, because he has recognized that this science contains the Philosophy of Sovereigns.”Footnote 53
Karl Friedrich's interest and efforts seemed to confirm that physiocratic ideals were convincing, and it was easy, at the start, to read into his reforms the beginning of a credible demonstration of the reality and benefits of the Natural Order. It was true that these reforms appeared, at face value, to be modest in Baden, but Karl Friedrich had nevertheless taken pains to convince his subjects, appealing to their reason and acquiring their consent before he enacted them. Praising the measures, the Éphémérides noted the importance of showing landowners (propriétaires) the clear benefits of physiocratic taxation and of putting them in a position to judge for themselves what they could and ought to pay. Generating conviction through effective education was crucial: “It is necessary to instruct and persuade before commanding, and to set in motion political operations only for the sake of furthering instruction.”Footnote 54 Because the margrave had acted as the teacher of his people, the establishment of the Natural Order was taking place with the knowledge and complicity, even desire, of subjects becoming increasingly aware of their own true interests. As success became evident on a small scale, the Éphémérides confidently asserted that more of them would agree to the changes.Footnote 55
A few months later, in July 1771, the Éphémérides published a brief account by Schlettwein that described the implementation of the physiocratic operation in Dietlingen, specifically stressing how he had acquired the consent of the village.Footnote 56 Praising Schlettwein as an “enlightened” magistrate, Du Pont commended his efforts, but added critical notes to the submission—ensuring thereby an intensification of the already testy relationship between the two men.Footnote 57 Schlettwein's description of his efforts, however imperfect, nevertheless bore out the fact that the “self-evident” truths of physiocracy could be understood by village farmers, i.e., by simple and authentic folk who, having become acquainted with their true interests, had taken it upon themselves to accept the reforms of their benevolent and enlightened monarch. Du Pont also reiterated the value of any ostensible achievement in Baden: success in such a modest state could then be replicated in a “vast empire.”Footnote 58 He was not alone among the physiocratic elite in his public praise of the manner in which Karl Friedrich had applied physiocratic principles to his domains. Le Trosne dedicated his De l'ordre social (1777) to Karl Friedrich, claiming that the margrave's initiative to reform taxation, as reflected in the reforms underway, showed how much he acted “as a father who persuades, not as a Sovereign who commands.” Indeed, such persuasion was possible because he had made plain the truths underlying the transformation he sought: “You have made manifest, in the eyes of a people full of confidence in your love for them, those truths whose conviction has prompted you to desire this change … You wanted to govern by reason and conviction those who were receptive to encouragement, and you only showed your power to legislate a change longed for by a people enlightened by your efforts.”Footnote 59
When the physiocrats celebrated the operations underway in Baden, they expressed a widely held conviction about the power of considered experience to inspire assent. Even before his embrace of physiocracy, Karl Friedrich and his officials aimed to “enlighten” their subjects about economic matters, especially agriculture, by gathering and communicating useful knowledge and effective practices. They held experiential validation in high regard. Expressing the intention and pragmatic underpinnings of the Karlsruhe Economic Society at a session in November 1764, the then finance minister, Reinhard von Gemmingen (1698–1773), reiterated the margrave's hope that the Society would encourage the improvement of the “Oeconomicum” in his lands, noting the importance of grounding its work not only in solid theory but also (and mainly) in practice and oft-repeated experiments.Footnote 60 At the time Gemmingen made this point, the work of the Society was coming under the control of Schlettwein. He brought some competence and organization to the group, which had apparently struggled early on because of insufficient expertise.Footnote 61
In 1765, the Society published a bulletin that expressed its mission and basic approach.Footnote 62 Now renamed the “Society of Sciences Useful for Promoting the Common Best,” it called upon the subjects of Baden to participate collectively in a scientifically informed endeavor to improve the welfare of the territory. Questions, for example, were appended to the program, which also noted that knowledgeable “patriots” would be selected to serve as correspondents responsible for submitting “authentic” (unverfälschte) reports. It was true that oversight and evaluation were to be expected, but the Society hoped to encourage inhabitants to conduct observations and experiments of their own, and to make use of them for the advantage of the land and its subjects.Footnote 63 The members of the Society promised to look in the current literature for what was suitable for Baden, suppressing “fictions, errors, and unfounded recommendations” through “sound experience and exact testing.” The bulletin predicted that the Society would acquire enough material to publish its own journal, which, it stressed, would include nothing but “observations, experiments, and reliable proposals.”Footnote 64
The publication of such a journal never materialized, and the deliberations of the Society became more infrequent, before formally ceasing altogether in 1769. The Society's aims nevertheless reflected a contemporary faith in knowledge grounded in persuasive experiences, broadly construed as observations and experiments. After the 1730s, according to Margaret Jacob and Larry Stewart, experiments, in particular, increasingly captivated an audience larger than that of the select company of natural philosophers, especially as the practical value of their disclosures was realized. Lecturers, for example, could utilize experiments to inform and entertain a public eager to witness dramatic demonstrations of abstract Newtonian principles, often deploying contrivances not readily seen outside the walls of more formal scientific institutions.Footnote 65 Furthermore, over the course of the eighteenth century, demonstration experiments became increasingly routine in the university classroom, thereby enabling instructors to clarify and enliven their presentations of natural philosophy.Footnote 66
In this respect, it is useful to consider the work of the mathematician and philosopher Christian Wolff (1679–1754), a figure whose intellectual ambition and output helped set the tone for eighteenth-century German academic life. He regarded observation and experiment as essential means of investigating the physical world, stressing the value of experiments when instructing and persuading people in dense matters of difficult abstraction.Footnote 67 In Philosophia rationalis sive logica, his lengthy Latin treatment of “logic,” Wolff laid out the value of convincing others by means of experience (a posteriori), claiming that Confucius and even Christ himself (in John 7:17) had endorsed such a method of persuasion.Footnote 68 “Nowadays,” he explained, the truths of practical mathematics, namely, those in optics and mechanics, “are confirmed by experiments, chiefly for the sake of those unable to understand (formal) demonstrations.” Wolff repeated his own view, which sought to maintain an “undefiled marriage of reason and experience” in order to confirm a posteriori what had been sustained through reason a priori. “So it is clear,” he continued, “in this way we can teach doctrines useful for judgment and the practical matters of life to those who are not able to be compelled to assent through (formal) demonstrations; they thereby understand these doctrines no less than they are convinced of their truth.”Footnote 69 Wolff also suggested that the utility of experimentation extended to practical philosophy, the branch of his philosophical enterprise that considered human beings as moral agents who could perfect themselves and their condition. In this way, having proven its value in exploring and confirming the truths of nature, the practice of experience—both observation and experimentation—could likewise advance the improvement of human social life.Footnote 70
By staging the Natural Order in selected villages, Schlettwein hoped to put the merits of physiocracy on display. After all, Le Trosne's praise of Karl Friedrich, discussed earlier, suggested that the weighty truths of physiocracy, though not so plain to the mind, might be so to the eyes. Thanks to the French physiocrats and to Schlettwein, the operation received due publicity in print, and, for those who wished to experience it for themselves, Schlettwein offered to entertain them with an on-the-scene tour. Dietlingen was the showcase. The young Karl von Hardenberg (1750–1822), destined later to preside over Prussia's “Great Reforms” as prime minister during the storms of the Napoleonic era, traveled to Baden in October 1772, meeting the court and visiting sites.Footnote 71 The margrave and his wife Karoline Luise (1723–1783) impressed him—especially the latter, who appeared to be someone of extraordinary understanding and broad knowledge. A discussion of the Harz region, for instance, revealed that the margravine was knowledgeable about mining, and, like Karl Friedrich, eager to discuss cameral matters and manufacturing.Footnote 72 According to Hardenberg's travel diary, Schlettwein immediately urged him to travel to Pforzheim and Dietlingen so that he might witness the fruits of the new system. An entry for October 26 reads: “In the afternoon I got to know Cammerrath Schlettwein, who wants to take me to Pforzheim and Dietlingen. The margravine informed me that he has an excellent standing with the margrave and has conducted experiments on the new Mirabeauian (physiocratic) system.”Footnote 73 The excursion took place two days later. Apart from remarking that the farmers produced a lot of wine (the year was a good one), Hardenberg did not seem overly impressed. He noted that Schlettwein was a “good and very loyal man,” but remarked that he and the physiocratic project in general were controversial in the territory.Footnote 74
Hardenberg's tepid response was kind. Others immediately contested Schlettwein's confident tale of progress. Besides, even if success were achieved in one village, could this really mean anything for regions and states—let alone for a “vast empire,” as Du Pont put it?Footnote 75 In response to his critics, Schlettwein mustered physiocratic arguments, and he bolstered his case by pointing out what allegedly had been achieved in Dietlingen. The experience of the village, he thought, should be convincing, especially to those who visited it. Immediately after Schlettwein published Les Moyens d'arrêter la misère publique in 1772, an anonymous author penned a savage critique, mercilessly mocking the argument of the text.Footnote 76 Schlettwein swiftly answered, decrying the author's “mean-spirited” (hämisch-gesinntes) heart for making his attempted “experiences” in Dietlingen suspect. “Friend!” he beseeched:
Come to me and give me the pleasure of traveling with you to Dietlingen. We'll want to stay a few days; that way, I can show you everything most clearly and accurately. You'll see some 200 Morgen of flourishing clover and sainfoin fields; you'll see scarcely 100 Morgen of fallow land; you'll see extraordinarily handsome cattle; you'll hear the judgments and wishes of the inhabitants … Thus you will become most powerfully convinced of the truth of my account of Dietlingen.Footnote 77
As he penned this passionate appeal, Schlettwein's days in Karl Friedrich's service were drawing to an end. Believing the margrave had lost faith in him, Schlettwein quit his post in 1773. He continued to champion physiocracy, however, and aggressively sought opportunities to stage other convincing experiments in support of its principles.Footnote 78 He came to understand that the reforms in Balingen and Teningen in the Hochberg had misfired, but strongly maintained, even after his departure from Baden, that those in Dietlingen—over which he appeared to have had much more control—had been organized to succeed and would, in fact, have done so but for the incompetence and hostility of officials who had consistently undermined them. He did not lose faith that a properly constituted demonstration would reveal the truth of the Natural Order.
When, in 1782, Johann Gottlieb Hunger, a finance officer (Finanz-Sekretär) in Dresden, attacked the physiocrats for their speculative approach, claiming they were bedazzled by “golden dreams” and that, for the sake of “a utopian republic,” they failed to consider matters “as they are,” Schlettwein responded forcefully. He took particular umbrage at Hunger's suggestion that the physiocrats would be hard put to convince those in charge of state finances, as long as “experience” (Erfahrung) defied them, explicitly pointing to the reforms in Baden as evidence of failure.Footnote 79 “One must enable a physiocrat to conduct experiments [Erfahrungen],” Schlettwein declared, “and refrain from placing obstacles in his path out of jealousy or evil intentions, if one seeks through experience to be certain about the reality of the system. Before that, Herr Hunger cannot claim that experience stands opposed to the physiocrat.” If a careful examination of the principles of physiocracy betrayed their falsehood or unfeasibility, then one could not reasonably risk, Schlettwein acknowledged, the welfare of a state by putting them to the test. Hunger, however, had failed to grasp the unmistakeable cogency of physiocratic arguments, whose truth must be put on display for all to see:
If one is absolutely certain that each aspect of the system is incontrovertible truth, and that each operation, which the physiocrat demands, is doable without harm, then one must allow the physiocrat to conduct a trial [Probe] without disruption in order to convince people of the veracity and of the happy consequences of the system. Otherwise, one is simply hindering the Good.Footnote 80
Unbowed by the controversy surrounding his efforts in Baden, Schlettwein offered his services to any regent interested in supporting such an “experiment” (Versuch).Footnote 81 Unfortunately for him, there were no takers this time.
Epilogue and Conclusion
This article has argued that the goal of the village trials in Baden was to provide a public experience sufficient to justify physiocratic principles and their corresponding reforms. In the decade after Schlettwein's departure, however, it became clear to nearly everyone involved that the trials had turned out not to be the successful demonstration originally sought. The villages of Balingen and Teningen, which had found the reforms to be highly disruptive, began reverting back to their earlier tax system after 1776. Far from enjoying the prosperity promised by the Natural Order, the inhabitants of Dietlingen fell increasingly into debt in the 1770s, and they grew more restive as the deficiencies, inequities, and inconsistencies of the reforms became more evident. Unnerved by the village's falling revenue and its mounting debts, officials in the Pforzheim district office and in Baden's Finance Ministry carefully analyzed conditions there, hoping to ascertain what had gone wrong and how best to remedy the challenges. Karl Friedrich maintained a keen interest in these efforts, and it was determined that serious mistakes had indeed been made in the attempt to put physiocracy into practice.
Broadly considered, several major problems became apparent.Footnote 82 Schlettwein miscalculated the net yield of the villages. Since there was no clear indication of how he had arrived at his figures, officials attempted to reconstruct whether (and how) he had overestimated their agricultural productivity, or underestimated their expenses, or both. The assumption spread that he had not bothered to make an accurate determination at all, but had instead simply summed up the total taxes traditionally paid in the villages and then distributed them among the taxable properties. That is to say, rather than abolishing the so-called arbitrary and indirect taxes, he just unloaded them onto the farmers. This maneuver certainly contravened the dictates of the Natural Order, which demanded that taxation be based solely on the net yield. The farmers came to believe that their annual tax was now unjustifiably paying for special rents and concessions that benefitted others, with little or no advantage to themselves.
Another serious challenge became clear as the large-scale adoption of physiocratic reforms and taxation did not materialize in the margrave's territories. The isolated nature of the trials consequently failed to generate free-trade competition over an area large enough to compel cost-effective trade and manufacturing methods. In this way, the radical tax simplification and its associated “Policey-Freyheit” did not provide the villagers, especially in Dietlingen, with the benefits that the abolition of trade, excise, and consumption duties had been intended to provide. The farmers, who supposedly paid these taxes in their impôt unique, found it difficult to purchase goods and services more cheaply—and to sell their own more profitably. They painfully discovered, for example, that tavern owners, even those now exempt from the tax on serving wine (Ohmgeld), did not feel any obligation to sell their wares more cheaply to them. Not facing any serious competition, artisans, millers, bakers, and butchers similarly charged the same rate for their services, despite the fact that the farmers had taken on the dues that allowed them to practice these trades. As the trial continued in Dietlingen, the farmers there felt enormously burdened, at one point speculating that Karl Friedrich had perhaps merely sought to punish them.Footnote 83
The farmers witnessed first-hand the difficulties created by the misguided attempt to create a physiocratic world in their locality. They did not remain passive, however, and their petitions of grievance remind us that their experience was also part of the story of the physiocratic trials in Baden. Their acceptance and participation had indeed been critical from the start. They now had misgivings, and, having failed to receive what had been promised, they sought either a reduction in their annual land tax or a reversion to the old system of taxation. They also revealed that they could now employ physiocratic arguments to their advantage: if the net yield on their lands was so low, then why was their single tax so high? Like university professors and philosophes, high and mighty princes and state functionaries, they recognized, too, that experience—in this case, their own—counted in the active process of argument and persuasion.
In 1781, the “community” (Gemeinde) of Dietlingen submitted a particularly poignant appeal, venting their frustration in a language that echoed learned discourse: “But here we can likewise call upon the surest test of all truth, namely, on the experience—and, indeed, on the tragic experience—that our locality is more than 2,000 fl. in the most grievous state of arrears, which will become unmanageable if it continues in this way.” The village petitioners admitted that their experience was different from that of Karl Friedrich and his officials, and that it might be dismissed on the basis of detailed calculations. Still, through “trial and error” (nach mehreren Versuchen), the farmers’ experience was, they suggested, if not a learned one, then one that was correct and true, and that, in the end, must reveal to them what is useful and advantageous.Footnote 84 Physiocratic reform and the experiences it engendered now became part of the mutual discourse and practices—fraught with tension, of course—between the villagers and the state officials who relentlessly sought to tax them.Footnote 85
Based on the advice of his chief ministers, and in response to the complaints of the villagers, the margrave did approve a strategic modification of the physiocratic taxation for Dietlingen in 1795. Still dissatisfied, the villagers succeeded in having their unique system of taxation repealed by 1802; Dietlingen was subsequently integrated into the general tax scheme imposed on its neighbors. It should be pointed out, however, that Schlettwein's botched undertaking did nothing to compromise physiocracy in the minds of Karl Friedrich and those officials sympathetic to the new economics. In their view, the mistakes made in conducting the reforms were serious enough to absolve physiocracy of any blame for the debacle. Indeed, the reforms were branded a grotesque perversion of the Natural Order, a loathed “Schlettweinian System” that had cursed a village for three decades and undermined the credibility of physiocratic doctrine.Footnote 86
There is indeed a strong urge to view the physiocratic trials in Baden as an instance of flawed reforms, initiated and supervised by an overzealous reformer-bureaucrat, and informed by dated and faulty economic theory.Footnote 87 One might also consider, however, what this episode reveals about the history of experimental practice, especially about its standing in the public mind of the eighteenth century. However deficient, Schlettwein's operation revealed the emphasis accorded to validated and shared experiences, illustrating that experiments, broadly conceived, could be deployed to explore and justify modifications to the existing social order—and perhaps even inspire the creation of a radically new society.
Experimentation, like social reform, can be an alluring yet tricky business. The celebrated biologist François Jacob has recounted the excitement and anxiety he experienced when he began his laboratory work at the Pasteur Institute in 1950, describing his euphoria about the opportunity to pursue questions prompted by his ongoing experiments: “The game was that of continually inventing a possible world, or a piece of a possible world, and then of comparing it with the real world.” Indeed, his experiments in the laboratory were, for him, a “machine for making the future.”Footnote 88 Schlettwein, like the physiocrats, saw in the Natural Order the promise of a better world, one whose realization had to be tried out and demonstrated. It would be a stretch, of course, to consider his village operations as a laboratory, in any twentieth-century sense of the term. One might, however, look upon them instead as experimental situations, i.e., as semi-controlled processes that produced and applied scientific knowledge. In this respect, the future did not turn out as Schlettwein hoped, for he failed, in the end, to provide a convincing demonstration of the truth of physiocratic ideals. He nevertheless helped create a different future: Schlettwein's interventions in Badense village life left his successors with the task of figuring out what had happened there, and of asking themselves how they might best apply the principles of economic science to pick up where he had left off.
