The Habsburgs
Apr. 9th, 2011 05:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stoutfellowMy most recent bus book was Robert Kann's A History of the Habsburg Empire 1526-1918. It was an interesting read; I won't give a full review, but merely a few comments large and small.
1) Like Safavid Iran, this is not a traditional military/political history. Kann speaks of wars - the Thirty Years War, the War of the Spanish Succession and that of the Austrian Succession - in passing, but is far more interested in their effects on the complex interplay among the various peoples of the empire. The peoples of its constituent kingdoms - Austrians, Magyars, Czechs and Croats; the peoples who had ties to external states - Poles, Italians, Romanians, later on Serbs; and the unlucky ones who had neither status - Slovaks, Slovenes, Ruthenians; these are his primary focus. The difference between the traditional boundaries and the ethnic realities, echoed in, e.g., the split between the Old Czech and New Czech movements; the ways in which the Magyar assertion of semi-autonomy after 1867 was a setback for, e.g., the Croats and Romanians; the shift in the relative positions of the Croats and Serbs within the empire, as Hungary tightened its grip on the former; all these and more receive interesting treatment.
2) Kann was a native of Vienna, and the fact that English was not his native language is easy to discern. There's nothing flagrant about it, but the occasional odd word choice ("illusionary", where "illusory" would be more natural to a native speaker) and un-English syntax made me blink from time to time. The casual use of "robot" as a verb, and the use (though he does pause to define it) of the word "octroy", made me double-take. The first time he referred to the Ottoman Empire as the "High Portal" puzzled me, too, until I remembered the old epithet of the "Sublime Porte".
3) Though the book covers nearly four centuries, the final century and a half, from about the reign of Maria Teresa on, receives well more than half the page count. I'm not sure whether this is a question of the quantity of available records, or simply of the increased complexity of the situation stemming from the rise of Romanticism and ethnic nationalism. I would have liked a bit fuller treatment of, say, the seventeenth century.
4) I had read that the unfortunate Franz Ferdinand had thoughts of converting the Dual Monarchy to a Triple or even Quadruple, but did not know of his motives for this. He was no liberal; rather, he was unhappy with the leverage the Magyars had gained as a result of the Compromise of 1867 (which gave rise to the Dual Monarchy), and saw elevating the Czechs and Croats as providing a counterweight. The historical bonds between Bohemia/Moravia and Austria, and the ill-treatment Croatia had suffered after their crown was merged with that of Hungary, would, he felt, once again give Austria a firm upper hand. Interesting....
5) Kann does go into the power politics of the mid-to-late 19th century in some detail; the Habsburg dilemma, of having to choose between playing second fiddle to Prussia or to Russia, is discussed at some length. I do wonder how much this was colored by the politics of the era in which Kann was writing - late in the Cold War, but before the signs of its sudden end had begun to appear. In any case, it's an interesting treatment.
I think, though, that I ought to supplement this reading with a more conventional history. The details of Austria's participation in the partitions of Poland and in the Napoleonic Wars still elude me. (Come to think of it, I really want a thorough treatment of Revolutionary France and the Napoleonic Wars; my knowledge of that period is pretty sketchy.)
1) Like Safavid Iran, this is not a traditional military/political history. Kann speaks of wars - the Thirty Years War, the War of the Spanish Succession and that of the Austrian Succession - in passing, but is far more interested in their effects on the complex interplay among the various peoples of the empire. The peoples of its constituent kingdoms - Austrians, Magyars, Czechs and Croats; the peoples who had ties to external states - Poles, Italians, Romanians, later on Serbs; and the unlucky ones who had neither status - Slovaks, Slovenes, Ruthenians; these are his primary focus. The difference between the traditional boundaries and the ethnic realities, echoed in, e.g., the split between the Old Czech and New Czech movements; the ways in which the Magyar assertion of semi-autonomy after 1867 was a setback for, e.g., the Croats and Romanians; the shift in the relative positions of the Croats and Serbs within the empire, as Hungary tightened its grip on the former; all these and more receive interesting treatment.
2) Kann was a native of Vienna, and the fact that English was not his native language is easy to discern. There's nothing flagrant about it, but the occasional odd word choice ("illusionary", where "illusory" would be more natural to a native speaker) and un-English syntax made me blink from time to time. The casual use of "robot" as a verb, and the use (though he does pause to define it) of the word "octroy", made me double-take. The first time he referred to the Ottoman Empire as the "High Portal" puzzled me, too, until I remembered the old epithet of the "Sublime Porte".
3) Though the book covers nearly four centuries, the final century and a half, from about the reign of Maria Teresa on, receives well more than half the page count. I'm not sure whether this is a question of the quantity of available records, or simply of the increased complexity of the situation stemming from the rise of Romanticism and ethnic nationalism. I would have liked a bit fuller treatment of, say, the seventeenth century.
4) I had read that the unfortunate Franz Ferdinand had thoughts of converting the Dual Monarchy to a Triple or even Quadruple, but did not know of his motives for this. He was no liberal; rather, he was unhappy with the leverage the Magyars had gained as a result of the Compromise of 1867 (which gave rise to the Dual Monarchy), and saw elevating the Czechs and Croats as providing a counterweight. The historical bonds between Bohemia/Moravia and Austria, and the ill-treatment Croatia had suffered after their crown was merged with that of Hungary, would, he felt, once again give Austria a firm upper hand. Interesting....
5) Kann does go into the power politics of the mid-to-late 19th century in some detail; the Habsburg dilemma, of having to choose between playing second fiddle to Prussia or to Russia, is discussed at some length. I do wonder how much this was colored by the politics of the era in which Kann was writing - late in the Cold War, but before the signs of its sudden end had begun to appear. In any case, it's an interesting treatment.
I think, though, that I ought to supplement this reading with a more conventional history. The details of Austria's participation in the partitions of Poland and in the Napoleonic Wars still elude me. (Come to think of it, I really want a thorough treatment of Revolutionary France and the Napoleonic Wars; my knowledge of that period is pretty sketchy.)
