The Salzburg transaction

by Mack Walker

In 1731-32 the archbishopric of Salzburg expelled some 20,000 Protestant farmers from the alpine districts above the city and, upon the invitation of King Frederick William I, they were resettled as colonists in a distant corner of East Prussia. The episode provoked a sharp confessional confrontation that threatened to destroy the delicate political equilibrium of the Holy Roman Empire, but today it is remembered, if at all, as an anachronistic outburst of obscurantism and intolerance unbecoming to the century of Enlightenment, a source of Protestant pride and Catholic discomfort. In this elegant book Mack Walker not only provides the most complete available account of the expulsion but also makes a strikingly original contribution to historical method. He tells the story in five different ways: as an episode in the history of the Salzburg archbishopric, in the history of the Prussian state, in the confessional and constitutional life of the Holy Roman Empire, in the experience of the