Crime, Enlightenment, and Punishment: Bureaucratic and Scientific Change in Habsburg Austria, 1750s–1820s

by Stephan Sander-Faes

This book studies the social consequences of bureaucratic and scientific change during the transition to modern states and societies in the Age of Enlightenment, as it explores how the Habsburg Empire deployed new ways and means to integrate existing structures into supra-regional systems of order.

Exemplarily focused on Lower Austria, the book ties together the bustling imperial capital of Vienna and its hinterlands, where there was little economic, political, and social change before 1850. Previously unused archival materials such as administrative paperwork and printed wanted notes, in combination with published educational and legal texts, allow for the analysis of how bureaucratic procedures, social norms, and scientific change contributed to increasing exchange between Vienna, regional hubs such as Krems and Zwettl, and individual seigneurial holdings. Conceiving of these dynamics as a patchwork-in-progress, this study investigates state-making dynamics by transposing centralising norms and practices into everyday administration. It looks carefully at the intersections of local/central authority, offering a way beyond binary centre-periphery assumptions.

256 pages, Paperback

Published May 1, 2025