Austria Supreme (if it so Wishes) (1684): 'A Strategy for European Economic Supremacy’
Austria Supreme (if it so wishes) (1684) provides a translation of and a scholarly introduction to the Austrian-German Mercantilist classic Oesterreich über Alles Wann es Nur Will (1684) by Philipp Wilhelm von Hörnigk. Published a few months after the unsuccessful 1683 siege of Vienna by the Turks, a turning point in European history, the book stayed in print for more than 100 years. This was the most widely read German language economic textbook of the period, containing, in a nutshell, the essential ingredients of economic strategy that would make Austria and Europe grow rich and eventually overtake the rest of the world as the first world region that experienced an industrial revolution. In Oesterreich über Alles Wann es Nur Will Hörnigk updates and redefines the Mercantilist political economy – a strategy for achieving national wealth and political strength simultaneously by building up a competitive domestic manufacturing industry with the help of the state. Austria Supreme (if it so wishes) (1684) is the first-ever English translation of a work whose importance for European economic development and the ‘European Miracle’ cannot be overestimated.
Philipp Robinson Rössner is a senior lecturer (associate professor) in early modern history at the University of Manchester, UK. Trained as an economic historian at the University of Göttingen, Germany, where he did his MA in 2003, he moved to the University of Edinburgh, UK, where he did his PhD. Between 2007 and 2012 Rössner worked as a lecturer in social and economic history at the University of Leipzig, Germany, where he obtained a senior doctorate in social and economic history.