Cameralism

Origin

This name comes from the creation of " chaires" of economy in German faculties. There was with Strasbourg, then town of Empire, as of 1500. One spoke about fiscal science because the word " Kamera" in German language the place indicated then where the public money was preserved. The administrator of royal finances bore the name of camerarius. One called cameralists all the authors alarming of the enrichment of the State.

The cameralists gave councils to the chiefs of the German principalities during the Guerre Thirty Year old; they were influential during the two following centuries.

The cameralism evolved/moved to include/understand the whole of the science of the administration. According to Lindenfeld, that recovered three fields: public finance, Oeconomie and Polizei. That became the way of training of the civils servant of the royal rooms.

The case of Prussia

The cameralism became the economic and social school of thought Prussian which recommended the reform of the company. The State was not to be only any more focused on the maintenance of law and order, but to also promote collective prosperity, for example by adopting economic measures. Its goal was to place all the population at the service of the community property.

This school obtained a marked academic statute because of the increasing requirements in expertise for administrative management. The king Frederic-Guillaume Ier of Prussia establishes posts of professor of cameralism in the universities of Frankfurt and Halle. Most known was Johann Heinrich Gottlob von Justi (1717-1771), which bound the idea cameralist and the idea of Natural law.

The University of Utrecht created also a post of professor of Cameralisme.

Reference

David F. Lindenfeld, The Practical Imagination: The German Sciences off State in the Nineteenth Century, 1997

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