The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815–1914 (The Penguin History of Europe Book 7)

by Richard J. Evans

The Kingdom of Prussia, for instance, had been compelled to free the country’s serfs from the most onerous dues and obligations to which they had been subjected, to modernize its army, and to reform bureaucratic administration of the state to make it more effective. Tsar Alexander I’s reforming minister, Mikhail Speransky (1772–1839), a brilliant administrator of humble origin, had led the centralization of Russia’s ramshackle state apparatus, drastically reducing the power of the aristocracy over the direction of the country’s affairs and rationalizing administration through a system of functional Ministries headed by a Council of State charged with scrutinizing imperial legislation. However, his wider plans for reform, including the introduction of representative institutions, were frustrated and led to his dismissal in 1812. By this time, nevertheless, Speransky had pushed through a major reform of education, with a new system of secondary schools and new universities founded in a number of major towns. In many parts of Europe, the influence of Napoleon had created greater efficiency in administration and the vital arts of troop recruitment and tax-gathering that went hand in hand with measures to stimulate economic production, allowing entrepreneurs to accumulate wealth for themselves and their families so long as they paid their dues to the state. Military efficiency was thus linked productively to economic growth in ways that the restrictive and rapacious state econo...