Austria Supreme (if it so Wishes) (1684): 'A Strategy for European Economic Supremacy'

Philipp Wilhelm von Hrnigk's text Austria Above All if Only She Wills So (working translation) deserves to be called an all-time classic. It was the most widely read economic treatise in Europe before Adam Smith's 'Wealth of Nations', containing, in a nutshell, the essential ingredients of economic strategy that would make Austria and Europe grow rich and eventually overtake the rest of the world as the first world region that experienced an industrial revolution.