Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 This Newfangled Age
- 2 From Ancient Constitution to Mosaic Republic
- 3 A New System of Civil and Commercial Government
- 4 The Natural Relation of Things
- 5 A State within a State
- 6 The Israelites and the Aristocracy
- 7 Jews, Commerce, and History
- 8 Capitalism and the Jews
- Afterword: Industrialization and Beyond
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - The Natural Relation of Things
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 This Newfangled Age
- 2 From Ancient Constitution to Mosaic Republic
- 3 A New System of Civil and Commercial Government
- 4 The Natural Relation of Things
- 5 A State within a State
- 6 The Israelites and the Aristocracy
- 7 Jews, Commerce, and History
- 8 Capitalism and the Jews
- Afterword: Industrialization and Beyond
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Of all the Enlightenment-era treatments of the Jewish political economy, it was the work of a young official in the Prussian foreign affairs ministry, Christian Wilhelm Dohm (1751–1820) that came to exert the most far-reaching influence. Dohm's 1781 On the Civic Improvement of the Jews (Ueber die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Juden) dominated discussions of Jewish civic status for decades. Any commentator – apologetic or denunciatory – who hoped to shift public opinion on the Jewish question was obligated to reckon with Dohm's analysis. By portraying Jewish economic life as profoundly distorted, while laying the blame on oppressive conditions imposed on Jews rather than their own natures or religion, Dohm formulated a new paradigm. At once sympathetic and critical, embracing economic freedom along with paternalistic state remediation, Dohm's approach suited an era of profound social reform. On the Civic Improvement of the Jews remained the touchstone of Jewish political economy through the early 1820s and retained its influence if not its vibrancy even well beyond that date.
What made the work so effective was its unusual mixture of sobriety and advocacy, its qualities of informed and incisive analysis, of perceptive criticism and humane sympathy. More empirical in approach than even a philosemitic treatment like Reasons for Naturalizing the Jews, Dohm's book eschewed the messianic utopianism of Toland's pamphlet, even though its conclusions were essentially optimistic.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Politics of Jewish CommerceEconomic Thought and Emancipation in Europe, 1638–1848, pp. 94 - 134Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008