Prussian agriculture—German politics: Max Weber 1892–7

While Weber's interest in prussian agrarian policy in the 1890s is generally recognised, there have been no serious attempts to examine the extensive writings that were the outcome of this interest. This article seeks to provide an outline of the issues arising in this work and present them in terms of teh changing structure of Wilhelmine politics. Further, it is s hown that important 'methodological' issues surface in these writings which form the basis for the later writings addressed to questions of the tasks and role of the social sciences. Thus presented, the distinction between Weber's 'historical' and 'empirical' work on the one hand, and his 'theoretical' contributions on the other, can be shown to be invalid.