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BORBÁLA ZSUZSANNA TÖRÖK resulted in the “tyrannical control and supervision of every facet of economic and public life in the petty states of Germany.” On the domestic terrain, the government thus had to see to it that all its subjects lived in security and justice, and that they prospered spiritually and economically. In the external domain these interests were regarded as levers to boost potentials in competition with the neighbouring states. A permanent self-comparison with these had the function of identifying the relative strengths and weakness of the polity. If Achenwall’s Staatenkunde inquired into both the internal and external affairs of the state, those authors from Hungary who focused only on their home country, modified their perspective to the domestic affairs. Thus the Statistik by Martin Schwartner (1759-1823), one of the first Protestant professors and chief library custodians at the University of Pest, described the task of the discipline as follows: “(...) das Bestreben nach Sicherheit und auch positivem und negativem Glück hat den Menschen bewogen einen guten Theil seyner natürlichen Freyheit aufzugeben und in den Staat zu treten. Wie und durch welche Anstalten führt ihn nun die Regierung zu seinem Glücke an? Wie nahe dazu oder wie entfernt davon ist er? Dies ist die große Frage, welche in den letzten Theile der Statistik eines Staates erörtert wird. Man frage also: was tut die Regierung zur Sicherheit seiner Bürger im Staat, in Absicht auf die Erhaltung ihres Lebens und ihrer Gesundheit? In Absicht auf Ihre Vermeerung? (...) Um sie reich zu machen?”” The statistical textbooks written in Hungary during the feudal era, operate with similar definitions. They all identify the state with the (civil) society of the inhabitants, and as a benevolent power meant to care for the security, material property and proliferation of the population. Endre Daniel Michnay (1804-1857), professor at the law academy in Pozsony considered in 1844 too that the goal of Staatenkunde is to demonstrate “how states use their powers to achieve their goals, and to what extent they achieve their interests”.** Similar definition is formulated in the work of Gabor Szeremley (1807-1867), professor 22 RAEFF, Marc, The Well-Ordered Police State and the Development of Modernity in Seventeenthand Eighteenth-Century Europe: An Attempt at a Comparative Approach, The American Historical Review, 80 (1975), 1221-1243, here 1226. SCHWARTNER, Martin, Statistik des Königreichs Ungern. Ein Versuch von Martin Schwartner, Professor der Diplomatik, und Erstem Bibliotheks-Custos, aus der Königl. ungarischen Universität zu Pest, Pest, Trattner, 1798. A second, enlarged, and updated edition of the book was published in two volumes; Vol. 1, 1809 and Vol. 2, 1811. An abbreviated French translation was published in 1813 in Frankfurt-am-Main. All later references to Statistik refer to the 1798 edition, 7-8. 4 MICHNAY, Endre Daniel, Statistika, Pozsony, Wigand, 1844, 4-5. + 190 +
