| Abstract (english) | This doctoral thesis represents an analysis of academic careers of the professors presiding over the Department of natural, general public and international law, which was an integral part of the Faculty of Law at the Royal Academy of Sciences in Zagreb between 1776 and 1850. The intellectual influences which shaped their careers are consisted within two spheres of their activity: in the institutional academic careers on the one hand, and scientific production in the contemporary legal field on the other. This dichotomy corresponds to the source material used and collected in this dissertation. Namely: the academic reports consisting of certificates of academic degrees and further information on the professors' professional careers and engagements at various instances of higher educational hierarchy, and their legal production, mainly consisting of booklets on topics of natural, general public and international law, which were regularly published as exam material, as well as a couple of textbooks. Based on the critical observations obtained from consulting the source material, the dissertation offers an insight into the professors' academic networks on the one hand, and transfer of ideas within their written legal works on the other. Theoretical model is based on P. E. Lovejoy's The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea (1936), and it's reception in contemporary intellectual history. The primary concept utilized is the unit idea which offers a defined set of parameters with which to focus on a unit of knowledge that is transferred between people and texts. On the methodological level, the dissertation utilizes the model of network analysis with the help of digital technology in order to reinterpret the traditional perspective of knowledge exchange between various entities. With such a strong interdisciplinary background, the dissertation is a product within the growing field of digital history. Furthermore, the heuristic tools from both aspects of this interdisciplinary field, with historical critical theory being merged with digital text analysis in order to reinterpret previous scientific findings. This approach also accepts the premise of critical reading, named close reading, being supported by digital tools for data extraction, processing and visualization. The investigation into their legal education, attainment of doctoral degrees and positions at various higher educational institutions within the Kingdom of Hungary, to which the only Croatian Academy, the one in Zagreb, belonged, is the first step in attaining data neccessary for creating and interpreting intellectual networks they obtained. Each professor had a developed career and an elaborate position within the structure of higher educational hierarchy, which is important for our understanding of knowledge fluctuations within an institutional framework. As the first professor at the Department for natural, general public and international law, Vinko Kalafatić, who taught between 1776 and 1784, set the boundaries for professorial activities at the Academy in Zagreb. As he was already of age and he retired after the position in Zagreb, he was an influential individual in the public intellectual life, but also wrote on scientific topics. The second professor, Pavao Antun Marković, who taught between 1785 and 1810, was probably the most productive and engaging of all six teachers occupying the Department during the years of it's existence. Apart from his long engagement in Zagreb, he was known for accepting the modern enlightened ideas, whose main purporter was an Austrian jurist, Karl Anton von Martini, as well as for his later career as a dean of Legal Faculty at the only Hungarian university in Pest. His successor, Konstantin Farkaš taught law at the Zagreb Academy between 1810 and 1819. He was well known for his interest in the Hungarian public law, which made him a typical Hungarian jurist of the late Enlightement period. His career was short due to poor health. Antun Ferdinand Albely served as the professor between 1823 and 1829. His intellectual interests ranged widly, which mirrored his energetic career. He taught Greek language and natural law as a supporting teacher even before obtaining his degree at the University of Pest. He left Zagreb for a better position in Győr, where he continued to teach natural, general public and international law. After a period in which no professor was named, Teodor Tivadar Pauler taught at the Zagreb Academy between 1840 and 1847. He is not well known for his career in Zagreb, with his activity seldomly being marked in institutional records, but his later career as a professor at the University of Pest led him to political scene, where obtained the position of Ministry of Teaching and Culture. Emerik Mirko Šuhaj's career at the Academy in Zagreb was cut short by revolutionary turmoil of 1848 and 1849, soon after which the Academy closed. He did however continue to teach at the reformed faculty of law, which functioned until 1874 and establishemt of a modern University of Zagreb. With rudimentary biographical facts established, this part of the dissertation investigates the academic networks they established during their careers. The second analytical part of the dissertation, starting with chapter four, deals with detecting intellectual influences which shaped the tripartite field of natural, general public and international law. The main proponents of this typical disciplinary product of the Age of Enlightenment were Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes and Samuel von Pufendorf, whose ideas shaped this field of legal studies throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. The introduction of this theoretical legal knowledge into Hungarian intellectual circles mostly occured with the works by Karl Anton von Martini, whose textbooks became the norm in the late 18th century Hungarian academy. However, the reception of these ideas among the professors in Zagreb was by no means uniform. The source material in this chapter consists of almost 40 booklets published from 1780 to 1847, which contain mostly theoretical principles form the field of natural, general public and international law. These compilations of legal knowledge were usually shortened versions of their more extensive counterparts, such as Martini's textbooks, but are between them very similair in form and could almost represent a serial edition. For this reason the main focus of investigation are modifications of legal knowledge throughout the years in which the Royal Academy of Sciences in Zagreb operated. Those modifications occured with each of the professors starting to publish their own compilations as they succeeded the Chair in Zagreb. Utilizing the Voyant Tools web resource in quantifying, collocating terms extracted frome these texts, and visually representing the text analysis performed by this digital tool, the resulting analysis shows the benefits of mutually using the models of 'close' and 'distant' reading. The chapter shows each of the professors, excluding Emerik Šuhaj for the absence of any of his similar booklets, in the light of his own disciplinary preferences. Furthermore, because of the apparent changes between e. g. Kalafatić and Marković, and between Pauler and the rest of the professors especially, we can conclude that the institutional framework did not function as a hindering force in performing their legal investigations. Form of legal knowledge in the field of natural, general public and international law depended on the professors's preferences. Contained in tese booklets, the analyisis of their positions point to predominant influences on their legal thought, but also points to modifications of legal ideas, depending on the professors' preferences, despite the seemingly strict institutional framework. In 1818 Konstantin Farkaš published his legal textbook. Judging by his former engagement in particularity of hungarian legal tradition, it did not come as a surprise that he decided to cover the topic of the public law of the Kingdom of Hungary. Apart from teaching the same legal discipline as his colleagues at the Chair for natural, general public and international law, Albely was well-diversed in his ineterests and wrote a textbook on financial science, which was, unfortunately, not published up until recently. The financial science was a very new form of economic discipline, heavily concerned with reevaluating cameralistic and physiocratic ideas. Although the textbook was never published, it does, however, remain a valuable source of information on which legal knowledge the author collected in order to create an original document of surprisingly creative approach. That is why Albely's textbook is the prime example of how 'close' reading could use help from digital analysis tools and be supplemented by 'distant' reading of source material, larger corpuses of legal literature in this case. As it turns out, Albely was not merely a compiler of various ideas extracted primarily from german jurists, but also an improver of Hungarian economy, advocating savings in public treasury and rational governance over the state's treasury. This approach provides a basis for detecting the intellectual influences which shaped Albely’s writings, thus utilizing new viewpoints on the knowledge transfers which emphasize the mediality of knowledge and its modifications in the process of exchange. The Academy in Zagreb was therefore, much like other smaller hubs of knowledge exchange during the late Enlightenment and in the years before the Revolutions of 1848/1849, a place of modest intellectual activity, but by no means neglectable. This activity, manifested itself through both the academic exchange and through intellectual endeavors of the professors to accept, but also revise and modify new ideas. |
