7. Conclusion

Ludwig Zinzendorf was a sophisticated economic thinker in the mid-eighteenth-century Habsburg monarchy, part of the wider intellectual movement in Europe dedicated to understanding political economy and presenting it as an independent and important activity. Self-educated, polyglot and hard-working, Zinzendorf was formidably well-read and impressively numerate. His output was detailed and analytical. Zinzendorf sought to provide a different kind of economic advice and attempted to open government up to new concepts on the economy. He was a reformer resolute in his determination to propagate the most advanced European ideas and practices. Foreign thinkers, in particular French, provided Zinzendorf with the arguments with which he developed a new system of political economy for the monarchy. For Zinzendorf, who was a pragmatist, tried and tested ideas were preferable to new ones. They could be adapted to a different political environment. In this, and in his desire to generate a more open debate on economic arguments, Zinzendorf attempted to apply a moderate format of Gournay’s French initiative in the monarchy.