"Traveling in disguise: Joseph II's Journey to the European Enlightenment", by Monica Cherning, translated by Rong Yu, Shanghai Bookstore Press 丨 Yaren, September 2024 edition, 362 pages, 89.00 yuan

Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II (1741-1790) was an enlightened absolute monarch contemporary of Frederick the Great and Catherine the Great. During his twenty-five years of his reign (the first 15 years of which he co-ruled with his mother, Queen Maria Theresa), Joseph implemented reforms and devoted himself to building the monarchy under the Habsburg Dynasty into a nation-state in the modern sense. In the view of the Austrian historian Monika Czernin, the promulgation of a series of governing laws was mainly due to his multiple field inspections and surveys inside and outside the empire-according to Chernin'sTraveling in disguise: Joseph II's Journey to the European EnlightenmentAccording to the conclusion in the book, Joseph focused on transforming the research report into specific policy policies, which not only successfully avoided the recurrence of the French Revolution-style tragedy in his country, but also changed the course of modern European history to a certain extent.

Joseph's research is unusual. After the emperor's death, court librarian Zelliers filled eleven cardboard boxes with documents compiled from a large amount of raw materials-they were "evidence of a series of events more than two hundred years ago, clues to an emperor's unique attempt to understand his country and people through visits." Biographer Derek Beals paid high tribute to the monarch who loved to cruise: "Just by speaking of this nearly 50,000 kilometers (exceeding the circumference of the Earth's equator), Joseph's journey can be said to be unprecedented." However, it was not just the scale of the miles traveled that Beals, a British historian, admired-Frederick the Great of Prussia and, of course, Peter the Great of Russia, also a famous traveler-"but no ruler has ever followed such a plan, and no one has since followed it."

Before every outing, Joseph always made a careful plan. In 1771, famine broke out in the empire, and the emperor decided to go to the border disaster area to investigate the disaster. He has always believed that a major problem with the monarchy is the court's lack of channels to obtain real information-sitting deep in the palace is full of problems, and only by going deep into the grassroots can we find solutions. Joseph believes that only through empirical research can we get rid of the shackles of tradition and prejudice and make wise reform decisions. His motto is,"I have no preconceptions. I just went to see, listen, and analyze." In a letter to Hartzfeldt, the local administrator, Joseph wrote,"Since I intend to leave here the day after tomorrow for Moravia and Bohemia, I would like you to first inform me of the list of stations and local officials in all areas. Secondly, what are the annual special taxes, debt taxes, livestock surcharges, meat taxes and beverage taxes in these two places? Finally, calculate how many residents there are and how much property does each resident have?"-- It is worth mentioning that the thousands of terrain and population distribution maps drawn by Joseph during his previous inspections have also become an important reference basis for him to formulate various major policies.

Joseph traveled lightly. Except for the draftsmen and the accompanying court doctors, he refused any bodyguards and retinue. He did not greet him in advance, listened to reports, or gave instructions wherever he went, and refused to accompany him and receive him. His always style was to get straight to the point and go straight to the scene. After being warmly welcomed by local officials near the suburbs of the capital, he flew into a rage, and then wrote again to warn his subordinates in fierce terms,"I am not allowed to be received anywhere. I will go to the city of Timisoara in person, and no member of the administrative committee will have to meet with me... I will carry a tent with me for a rainy day "-because the emperor not only wanted to learn more about military facilities, hospitals, dungeons and mines, but also wanted to understand the actual living conditions of the local residents. To this end, the only thing the local authorities had to do was to "take into account the imperial edict that his identity was strictly confidential"(usually the emperor would use the pseudonym of Count Falkenstein when traveling to avoid alarming the governors and courts of various countries along the way), and "I don't need any useless comfort... As the enemy of all formalism and red tape, I will avoid social occasions and not enter the residences of high-ranking officials."

During the trip, in addition to distributing questionnaires to local officials and ordinary administrative personnel, Joseph also assigned himself an additional task, which was to listen to people's petitions. In the village of Kaponak, Joseph met an elderly petitioner whose property had been confiscated because he failed to obtain a brewing license issued by the relevant authorities. "Your Majesty, can you help me bring back my soju pot? I need it so much." The hunchbacked old man stammered and begged, and handed his petition to the emperor with trembling hands. Joseph ordered the immediate return of the old man's property-would it hinder anyone by making soju, making a few Guldens a year, and using alcohol to make his life a little sweeter? The local official who was reprimanded looked embarrassed, while the attendant took the petition from Joseph and put it in a special pouch. As a rule, Joseph left short essays in his travel diary almost every day. That night, there was a line in his diary: "Because asylum seekers were everywhere, I was able to witness some rude and abusive behavior."

Normally, by the end of the journey, the emperor would receive hundreds of similar petitions, and if the petitions were not resolved on the spot, he would take them back to Vienna. "No petition will be shelved or discarded. The supreme ruler of the Christian world had degenerated to such an extent that it violated any theory of governance at the time. He wasn't just pretending to follow the latest ideas, but was truly interested in the needs and concerns of the people." According to Cherin, it is difficult to estimate how many petitions Joseph collected during his life, but the total must be in the tens of thousands. To this end, he had to set up a special petition department in the government to handle such petitions-officials would respond seriously one by one, and the emperor would occasionally conduct random inspections and send briefings to various places, reiterating that the wishes and needs of his subjects must be met. At the same time, the petitions submitted to the emperor in many unforgettable and heartbreaking scenes had a lasting impact on the emperor himself-they awakened his sympathy and compassion. At the same time, it was this spirit of public welfare that made Joseph II far surpass his contemporaries and therefore appeared "different". For example, Joseph ordered midwives to go to the countryside, assigned rural doctors to treat the poor for free, and took care of workers in emerging factories. Social charities such as social hospitals and welfare homes he founded are still functioning well today-Vienna's general hospital is the best example. The above measures not only greatly enhance "citizens 'awareness of equality", but also inspire "patriotic sentiments that unite the people and respect social order", allowing a scattered monarchy to move steadily towards a unified nation-state.

In 1768, a plague broke out in the southeastern part of the Empire. In May, Joseph arrived in Belgrade and visited seven local plague isolation stations or quarantine stations."In Zemun, one of the busiest places in trade, I found the scene to be the most chaotic and the situation to be the worst," the emperor commented in his diary.,"If infected people can still talk to anyone, what is the point of isolation?" According to the local epidemic prevention policy, merchants must bring their livestock and carriages through the city gate to the quarantine station: first check people and livestock for symptoms of plague, and then they will be quarantined for forty-two to eighty-four days (the accompanying goods will need to be fumigated and exposed to the sun) before leaving the quarantine station. Noticing that the isolation measures between merchants and quarantine personnel were not strictly enforced, Joseph found that the epidemic prevention system was in name only and could not play any preventive role at all; at the same time, due to the long closure time, it was difficult to protect the basic lives of the quarantine personnel, leading to widespread complaints. More importantly, the move seriously hindered foreign trade along the road to the East and the Silk Road-an epidemic policy that, in Joseph's view, was simply ridiculous. As Chernin said, the emperor was "ashamed of his empire. The dehumanizing policies of this country sometimes almost drove him crazy."

Joseph was particularly concerned about the lives and health of the people. During a visit to the Palais de Palais Hospital in Paris, he ignored dissuasion and asked the nuns to take him into the smallpox ward. The poor and patients there lived together. The hospital was short of manpower and seriously short of drugs, and the infected had to resign themselves to fate. In the nearby delivery room, the tragic scene was even more shocking: a large bed was crowded with four or five poor women undergoing labor pains, close to each other, covered only with dirty sheets. "Almost none of them voluntarily became pregnant with good hope"-because a high probability of pregnancy means death. Joseph generously donated 48,000 livres to the hospital. Chronicle writer Dikudre wrote: "In this place plagued by poverty, his great soul showed a compassionate side." Taking this as a lesson, the emperor wrote back to his country, asking the Vienna General Hospital to redefine standards for the European medical system. Before leaving, Joseph secretly vowed to "avoid the tragedy here from happening in Vienna."

In the Ghetto district of Austria, Joseph also conducted in-depth research and lamented the religious persecution suffered by the Jewish congregation. In fact, as early as the 1760s, he suggested to Queen Teresa to implement a policy of religious tolerance within the empire. After being rejected by the Queen, he even threatened to abdicate. In the second year of his reign (1782), Joseph issued a religious tolerance decree, announcing the lifting of all discriminatory restrictions such as clothes, hats and clothing in Jewish life, allowing Jews to engage in handicrafts and commerce, and allowing them to enter institutions of higher learning. According to historians, by liberating the Jews, Joseph II gained the most loyal imperial subjects and laid a solid foundation for the transformation of the nation-state. At the same time, Joseph regarded various Catholic orders, orders, and monasteries as "sinks of superstition" and "birthplaces of religious fanaticism", so he ordered the closure of them (except for monasteries engaged in medical care and school education). Many original church festivals, celebrations, pilgrims and parades were also banned. In Joseph's view, these pompous gatherings have nothing to do with religious piety and are purely superficial: they not only delay labor and production, but also encourage extravagance. He passed legislation to crack down on the power of the Catholic Church, uprooted the Jesuit Order, and then used the huge wealth plundered by the Church for education and charity. As a result, he undoubtedly attracted strong resentment from the Holy See and the Catholic Church in the country. Some radical Catholics even called the Emperor Joseph an inhuman "cold-blooded tyrant."

In sharp contrast to this is the heartfelt love of the domestic people, especially the peasant class, for the emperor. During a survey, Joseph took a plow from a Czech farmer and tilled a furrow on the ground to show his closeness and affection for the farmers. Out of gratitude, the farmers called Joseph, who imitated the ancient Eastern sage, the "Friend of Farmers"(Freund der Bauern), or the "Farmer Emperor"(Bauernkaiser). The plow also created "a symbolic union" between the peasants and the emperor-the gap between the imperial monarch and the long-neglected peasant class was wiped out. During his close contact with farmers in the fields, Joseph gained a more realistic understanding of the situation of farmers: for example, in some places within the vast empire, notorious serfdom remained. Not only were the serfs on the manor unable to enjoy personal freedom, they also had to fulfill countless contractual obligations, such as mill obligations (meaning that serfs could only grind grain in the mills designated by the lord) and cellar obligations (requiring serfs to only drink beer brewed in the lord's workshop). The lord not only had a monopoly on food (meaning that serfs could only sell food to the lord and buy seeds there), but also to a certain extent had personal control (the children of serfs had to serve as slaves on the manor for a long time or bear corvee)-this contradicted Joseph's strong advocate of the principle of freedom and equality for all subjects of the empire, and thus strengthened his belief in abolishing slavery.

As early as February 1781, Joseph declared in a letter to the Archbishop of Salzburg: "The empire I rule must be governed according to my own principles; prejudice, fanaticism, injustice and the enslavement of the mind must end." Each of my subjects will regain his natural freedom." Soon, he issued a decree requiring the lord to take the initiative to terminate the personal dependence of serfs, and ordered the state agencies to entrust lawyers to help farmers go through relevant status conversion procedures. This imperial edict enabled the vast majority of farmers in the empire to migrate, work and marry to a large extent. On this basis, Joseph established the "Grundsteuer-Regulierungspatent" in 1785, stipulating that farmers 'work on any land other than their own land was paid farming, and no one could force them to work in labor. The aristocratic lords hated the edict to abolish serfdom deeply, while the vast number of farmers hung portraits of Joseph and the Virgin Mary side by side on their walls, and created thousands of folk songs and nursery rhymes to remember the farmer's great savior. Biographer Fran？ois Feit commented: "In any era before this, not even in the era of the philanthropist Maria Theresa, no one has done so much for the poor." The court physician Giovanni Brambila was both Joseph's traveling friend and one of the few people truly close to Joseph. He wrote in his eulogy after the emperor died: "Nothing can stop him, as long as it concerns human suffering, all dangers will disappear before him; This lofty emotion swallowed up other thoughts in his mind...(He) often risked his life and risked everything to visit patients. These are the virtues of a ruler, and such virtues can only arise in the heart of a loving father."

In 1786, perhaps sensing that his days to serve his country and people were numbered, Joseph worked harder than ever (Cherin described him as "like a candle burning at both ends"). He had a great goal in mind, and wanted to completely transform the monarchy so that it could carry the great cause of the empire and fundamentally innovate over the next hundred years, thereby creating a modern world. In a letter sent back to the court during his trip, he wrote: "Surveying is underway, shipping on the Danube is gradually developing, industry and trade are moving forward steadily, and countless Nuremberg people, Schwa himself and even the British have come to set up workshops on our land. The new system has been implemented in Italy, and now it is the Netherlands, where the entire monarchy will be a unified whole, governed according to the same principles." In fact, everything he did was to transform the scattered imperial governance structure into a unified national system. For example, through the Code of Joseph, he gradually transformed imperial subjects into national citizens (i.e. individuals with equal rights and obligations). By abolishing serfdom, he freed farmers from the binding relationship between forced labor and land (farmers who had been bound to the land for a long time were able to move freely to the cities and industrial centers of the monarchy and become taxpayers), thus providing a strong guarantee for the industrialization process of Austria in the 19th century. In short, the political reforms he initiated within the empire were actually an enlightenment revolution-a revolution that "broke the aristocratic monopoly of public office and laid the foundation for the rise of the bourgeoisie in the modern state."

Perhaps it was in this sense that Chernin asserted that Joseph "prevented a French-style revolution" in his land and promoted the birth of the modern world. Suppose that if Louis XVI, the French monarch in the 1770s, had been as politically savvy as Joseph II, the Revolution might not have occurred-because Joseph had what Louis XVI lacked most: he "transcended the feudal tradition of court rule and the shackles of servitude to integrate with the people." He never worried about his personal safety for a moment while traveling in disguise because he lived among people who loved him.