Cameralism is the husbandry of resources within a country or provinces for the benefit of the state. The term resources cover goods, kind and cash available for taxation and the administrative bureaucracy in place to process and collect available wealth. In this context, state means the central governing body, usually a king, prince or even emperor. It is a different from other forms of economic governance because it relies on the manipulation of local agrarian and industrial yields, as well as the legal circumvention of local legislation. Whereas French mercantilism relies on the taxation of trade, and British economic policy on the benefits of borrowing credit from business’s and gathering interests on loans.

Cameralism is synonymous with central Europe, specifically Prussia, Sweden and Austria. Though as a style of government it was employed by varying sizes of states and not just larger militarised societies. The end of the Thirty Years War and the unique nature of the Peace of Westphalia made the fiscal governance of a state a priority, as now many princes and electors were forced to rely upon their own means to sustain their existence. This meant the raising of troops and the creation of a standing army was now solely the responsibility of the local ruler and removed from Imperial jurisdiction. This presented an extra cost, one many local states of the Holy Roman Empire could not sustain without the 'micro' managing of an agrarian economy with the intention to promote greater yields and thus higher fiscal contributions. In order to achieve this, many state reformers hoped to circumvent the local Estates and minor governments who were tasked with collecting taxes by replacing them with a centralised bureaucracy who reported to the ruler and his officials. The central body would then handle taxation directly with the local industries, farmers and traders, whilst also assisting with increasing output and improving yield.

Around the same time, universities were slowly becoming secularised and rulers sought to turn them into training schools for state bureaucrats. Many seats for professors were now introduced -beginning in Halle - with the intention of teaching a school of thought that would best promote the needs of the state over local jurisdictions. Soon such seats could be seen all across central Europe, with those who took a course taught by Cameralists obtaining the best 'graduate' positions within Kammer (treasury). Within these courses, students would be taught '...royal domain rights, agriculture, grazing, how to draft inventories of fields and animals, brewing, regalian rights in general, mines and salt works, coins, postal privileges, taxes, forests and fisheries, “town and police affairs in general,” the Akzise, guilds and artisans, factories, “the brew-nourishment in towns and that its decline mostly has to do with bad hops,” how to curtail legal processes and the maintenance of buildings.'

In summary, Cameralism is the economic science of resource husbandry and agrarian stimulation for the benefit of the state, with administrators acting as both government bureaucrats and business consultants to improve and coordinate fiscal reforms and processes. It arose so states in central Europe could compete against both the maritime powers who had access to vast colonial holdings and France who had a far larger population and aggressive fiscal central administration, as well as each other in the great power system of the time.

Start with:

ANDRE WAKEFIELD, Books, Bureaus, and the Historiography of Cameralism, European Journal of Law and Economics, 19: 311–320, 2005.