Sunday Book Review: The Habsburg Monarchy
By The Habsburg Empire has always fascinated me. Whenever I play Diplomacy or a computer game based on 19th century Europe, I try to play Austria-Hungary. What most appeals to me is the alternative model of state authority. Of all the great powers, the Habsburg Empire stands out most clearly as an anachronism. To modern readers, it is the least understandable of 19th century states.
The late Habsburg state encompassed modern Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, parts of Poland, Transylvania, parts of Italy, Croatia, Slovenia, and Bosnia-Hercogovina. The Habsburgs ruled the various nations through a number of different methods; what passed for state authority differed between Poland and Croatia. In this, the Habsburgs were the last true European empire, in the sense that an empire is a different critter than a unitary nation-state (I understand that Russia may be an exception to this). The imperial elite spent most of the 19th and early twentieth centuries trying to defend the old order against liberals, socialists, and nationalists. In this, they were less than successful. The odd union of nationalism and liberalism finally finished the empire off, although even Woodrow Wilson envisioned the survival of Austria-Hungary as a federal monarchy after World War I.
Nationalism and liberalism don’t tend to mix well; one is premised on a non-voluntary community, the other on the primacy of the individual. As Robin Okey shows, the last forty or so years of the Monarchy saw the slow deterioration of the conservative position in favor of a nationalist-liberal alliance. Even when the formal institutions of liberalism did not exist, liberal attitudes regarding freedom of the press and of association gave nationalist groups a space in which to act. The nationalism of 19th century Austria-Hungary didn’t manifest itself in the sort of violence and brutality that we came to expect in the 20th, but rather through a struggle over the structure of imperial institutions. Most nationalist groups didn’t even seek formal independence until late in World War I; recall that Franz Ferdinand was assassinated by a Serb, not one of his own subjects.
What’s interesting about this is that it suggests the possibility of a national communal feeling without an independent state as its object. There is no good reason, in a liberal order, why different nationalities should require internationally recognized independent statehoods. This isn’t such a radical idea; Scotland, Wales, and Quebec, for example, all exist as national communities within a larger liberal state order. Moreover, it’s seems quite a good idea, given the difficulties that nationalism has produced, especially in the areas the Habsburg Empire once encompassed.
Anyway, I guess that I’m not certain that the situation of Austria-Hungary really was “desperate but not serious.” The Empire may have offered a vision of political order completely out of sync with the realities of 20th century nationalism, but, on the other hand, we may take that reality for granted when it was actually contingent. The artistic, scientific, and cultural achievements of late Habsburg life supply some reasons to think that the pursuit of an alternative order may have been worthwhile. Of course, the survival of the Habsburg Empire would have required a competent and enlightened political class, no evidence of which has ever been displayed.
In any case, if you want to read about Austria-Hungary, DO NOT read the book I just finished, Robin Okey’s The Habsburg Monarchy. It’s crushingly boring, even for someone used to crushingly boring texts. Okey gets bogged down in the endless details of small political conflicts without ever giving any larger narrative of Habsburg life between 1750 and 1914. Without an anchor, the arcane political debates have no bite, and the reader has no reason to care about them. A remarkably disappointing book.
UPDATE: Oddly enough, it appears that Karl I, last Emperor of Austria-Hungary, has just been beatified. Note to Saddam Hussein: Curing the varicose veins of a Brazilian nun makes up for ordering the use of poison gas.