Twenty-two years of work have gone into the second volume of Derek Beales's biography of Joseph II. In addition to looking at the Habsburg monarch's youth and education, the first volume (published in 1987) dealt mainly with the difficulties between mother and son during the co-regency, whereas the second volume is devoted to the years of Joseph II's sole rule from 1780 to 1790. Based on meticulous archival studies, Beales's book presents a chronologically organized analysis of the Josephinian era and, in particular, of its major reforms: the Edict of Toleration and Church reform, the abolition of serfdom, the introduction of (limited) freedom of the press, and the administrative homogenization of the Habsburg monarchy.

Beales declares that the biographer's main task is “to distinguish Joseph's personal contribution to the policies and actions of the government carried on in his name” (8) and to “reconsider in the light of all available evidence some of the wider questions about Joseph's character and actions” (8). This premise fundamentally shapes the book under review here, both in the configuration of its subject and in relation to the selection of sources. Beales prefers to draw on documents that promise insights into his protagonist's plans, decision-making processes, and state of mind: letters; diaries; unpublished memoranda; secret reports. Already in 1975, while hunting for the “real” Joseph, Beales had achieved a philological coup, when he identified as forgeries letters supposedly written by Joseph II and accepted by other historians as the genuine article (“The False Joseph II,” Historical Journal, 1975). Letters also play a prominent part in the second volume of this biography: Joseph's correspondence with his confidante, Princess Eleonore Liechtenstein, and her correspondence with her sister provide the basis for Beales's assessment of Joseph's character. On the basis of a single letter from Joseph to Hofrat Heinke, Beales elucidates the state of Joseph's plans to reform the church at the beginning of his sole rule. And Beales accuses Paul von Mitrofanov, author of the major reference work on Joseph II's rule (published in German as Josef II. Seine politische und kulturelle Taetigkeit in 1910) of not having used Joseph's letters to Ludwig Cobenzl and Count Trauttmansdorff.

Building on this foundation, Beales delivers what he promised: an overview of Joseph's rule and reforms, inclusive of the Austrian Netherlands and Hungary. Beales also discusses the monarch's wide-ranging travels, which allowed him to gain his own impressions of the ability and efficiency of local administrators, and the extensive use he made, both in Vienna and while traveling, of the practice of petitioning. All this is documented in great detail, supported with meticulous archival references, and enriched with telling anecdotes.

But is it really possible to paint an adequate picture of a historical individual if the biographer's attention is directed exclusively at one person, in this case, the monarch? Does the persistent search for the true Joseph—for Joseph the individual—not run the risk of chasing a ‘biographical illusion’ in Pierre Bourdieu's sense (L'illusion biographique, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 1986), that is, attempting to narrate a life as a coherent sequence of events and decisions out of itself alone, without any reference points other than the subject being investigated? Can Joseph's actions and agency be analyzed without anchoring them concretely in their respective social, cultural, and intellectual fields? This question applies to the discussion of Joseph's reforms, for example, his church reforms or the abolition of serfdom. How can they be judged a success or a failure—a question that occupies every study of Josephism, including Beales's book—if wider historical research is excluded from the biography? It also applies to the sorts of questions that Beales raises in the introduction and conclusion of his study, such as “was Joseph Enlightened?”

Anyone who asks this cannot avoid approaching the phenomenon of the Enlightenment in the current state of discussion, whether via the emergence of a public sphere and the elements that constituted it, the development of different national versions of the Enlightenment, the role of the Catholic orders, or the value and place of the concept of “improvement,” to mention only a few approaches, all of which are directly relevant to the contexts Beales addressed. Readers may well be surprised to have the Enlightenment presented to them in a few lines as a movement of thinkers, the origins of which lay in Britain, the Netherlands, and France, and whose aim was to take thinking out of the hands of the church: “Perhaps the most important single inspiration of the Enlightenment was Newton's demonstration of the law of gravitation” (69), followed by a brief reference to Voltaire's écrasez l'infâme. This adequately characterizes neither the Enlightenment nor Joseph II. Scholarly debates about both will continue, but Beales's biography will be an essential reference point for all future contributions.