Cameralism and commercial rivalry: Nationbuilding through economic autarky in Seckendorff's 1665 Additiones

Veit Ludwig von Seckendorff (1626-1692), one of the earliest proponents of Cameralism, sought to rebuild the German states after the Thirty Years' War through a variety of new policies, including achieving a high degree of economic autarky. Writing at a time when trade wars and 'visible hands' were the order of the day, Seckendorff, like many of his contemporaries, sought to develop domestic productive capacity to escape an excessive and debilitating dependency on foreign powers. His 1665 Additiones to the Teutscher Fürsten-Staat in particular, written after a visit to the economically thriving Dutch Republic, shows how his embryonic Cameralism sought to adapt the clearly observable mechanisms of economic growth in the Low Countries to the peculiarities of the German social and political context. © 2005 Springer Science + Business Media, Inc.