The Cameralism of Peter I’s Administrative Reforms: Pro et Contra[Камерализм административных реформ Петра I: pro et contra]

The common view that Peter the Great’s administrative reforms were largely borrowed from primarily Swedish European practices and resembled the seventeenth-century kinds of governance associated with cameralism provides this study’s starting point. The article describes how the reform process that introduced the collegia unfolded and amounted to a true bureaucratic revolution with fully elaborated paperwork and regulations. Reconstructing the legislative processes of these reforms helps in understanding the extent to which they were borrowed and the way they differed from European prototypes. The article’s main objective is to show the variety of methods employed to argue for cameralist features in Peter’s administrative reforms, as well as to identify the advantages and disadvantages of a broad and narrow way of interpreting them. The broad interpretation of cameralism offers discourse about its striking resemblance to the spirit and tone of modernization but does not invoke any specific influences. This logic of historical elective affinity between phenomena is in the end too simplistic and may result in invalid conclusions. The paper maintains that it is more valuable to identify causal relationships and direct paths of influence. An example of this approach can be seen in Claes Peterson’s historical reconstruction, which clearly demonstrates how the ideas of the seventeenth-century cameralists Schroeder and Seckendorff were applied in Sweden’s regulations. This is the kind of diligent work that can firmly establish a connection between cameralism and the reforms. Broad generalizations capture only the most general features of the era and render the content of the term “cameralism” meaningless.