The aim of this paper is to point out that the growing need for well‐educated citizens in the increasingly bureaucratized 18th Century, in itself a wellknown phenomenon, should be seen in a wider context. First, we must consider how it relates to the gradual emergence of the modern European nationstate; and secondly, to the cultural and political consequences of social stratification. In nations with a cohesive social structure and, in some cases, a tradition of statehood, the growing numbers and importance of the new intelligentsia were primarily the result of an expansion of existing elites drawing on their own social class. In emerging nations formed largely through nationalist movements, on the other hand, the process was accompanied by the upward mobility of young men from the middle and lower middle classes. In some nations, such as the Czechs and the Finns, these were often the sons of petit bourgeois and artisan families; but in the majority of cases the emergent national intelligentsia found its recruits chiefly among farmers and the rural population as a whole (Lithuania, Estonia). Understandably, this distinction led to differences in the formation of national stereotypes, political cultures and attitudes to social organization. The use of the term "plebeian intelligentsia" in this context is meant as a typological characteristic rather than a pejorative label., Miroslav Hroch., and Obsahuje bibliografické odkazy
Unlike the pre-White Mountain period, the development of the city administration in the royal city of Brno has not yet been systematically studied for the decades of the early modern period post-1620. The present contribution thus represents a kind of first probe into the mode of operation, structure and competences of the city council in terms of its political-administrative, economic and judicial functions from the post-White Mountain period to the mid-18th century, marked by the first phase of Theresian administrative reforms. The preliminary results presented are for the most part based on research of sources of a normative nature concerning the gradual reduction by the state of the originally autonomous competencies of the city council to the levels of executive power indicated. Although renewals of the council corps took place in Brno in the early decades of the 18th century in what were in principle ‘free’ elections, from 1710 on it was the monarch alone who confirmed the councillors in office. and Etatistic interventions manifested themselves in all these areas, one of the most burdensome being the establishment in 1726 of a special economic directorate, subordinate to the provincial office, to control the financial management of the city. The author deliberately traces the culmination of these restrictive measures by the state only until the middle of the 18th century, when the municipality became a complex structured office. These reforms were only a harbinger of other fundamental changes in the functioning of the city administration in general in the 1780s, when the mayor became a civil servant and his deputies were elected by indirect election. However, the impact of the gradual etatization and bureaucratization of the executive apparatus of the leading royal Moravian city will need to be substantiated in the future by thorough source analyses in order to objectively ascertain the impact of the above-mentioned measures on the entire urban society. The question also remains whether the newly installed representatives of the highest municipal administrations continued to enjoy general respect.