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How did Joseph II try to make the Habsburg government more centralized?
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Joseph II
Joseph II, Holy Roman emperor, detail of a painting by Pompeo Girolamo Batoni, 1769; in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
Joseph II sought to centralize the Habsburg government by rationalizing administration and subordinating local institutions to the will of the sovereign. His efforts to create a more efficient and uniform state included several key strategies:1
- Administrative Reorganization: He extended the separation of the judiciary and the executive to lower administrative levels. In regions like Hungary, he transformed local counties into branches of the state service that took orders directly from the central government.12
- Linguistic Standardization: To unify administration, he replaced Latin with German as the official legal language, particularly in Hungary.12
- Fiscal and Legal Reform: He worked to balance the monarchy's finances and issued the Universal Code of Civil Law in 1786. He also conducted topographical surveys to prepare for a system of equal taxation on all land, regardless of whether it was held by noblemen or commoners.123
- Subordination of Institutions: He curtailed the power of the Roman Catholic Church by secularizing clerical training, limiting the authority of bishops, and dissolving monasteries that did not perform useful social services like education or healthcare.13