WORLD HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -The motivations of Joseph II After paying dues to the landlord, the serfs were unable to create high tax revenues for Joseph’s centralized state. The Emperor recognized that the abolishment of the feudal system would allow peasants to pay higher tax rates to the state.

Detailed explanation-2: -The reorganization of the army secured Joseph’s position in Europe. He ordered the abolition of serfdom; by the Edict of Toleration he established religious equality before the law, and he granted freedom of the press.

Detailed explanation-3: -Josephinist economic policies may be characterized by two key features: first, acknowledgement of the principle of free competition and hostility to the system of privileged industries, and second, an autarkic tendency with regard to foreign trade.

Detailed explanation-4: -Joseph II is one of the best-known representatives of Enlightened Absolutism. As a monarch he was indebted to the ideas of Enlightenment rationalism and implemented numerous reforms in the Habsburg Monarchy, some of them far-reaching, in the name of ‘usefulness’.

Detailed explanation-5: -Serfdom was abolished in Austria with the 1781 Serfdom Patent that was issued by Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II. Joseph II was also co-regent of the Habsburg Monarchy with Maria Theresa (his mother) from 1765 until she died in 1780.