This article was first conceived as a commemorative address for the centenary of the extinction of the Habsburg monarchy, which occurred in November 1918. It seeks to take a correspondingly broad view, geographically and chronologically, of the factors that occasioned that collapse. It addresses three main themes, structured loosely around three classic historiographical analyses of the monarchy as a whole. The great irony of the last phase of Habsburg rule in Central Europe is that it was undermined by precisely those elements in the politics and society of the region that seemed, on the face of things, to derive most advantage from it. The article concentrates on the long-term dysfunctionality caused by the evolution of the Hungarian and German problems, and by the progressive enfeeblement of dynastic institutions. It also engages more briefly with a countervailing phenomenon, that some of those interests most conspicuously spurned by central government might have been the readiest to rescue it. On the argument presented here, World War I, which finally brought the monarchy low, was a catalyst rather than an independent determiner of that outcome.

In the early modern period the Holy Roman Empire, or Reich, was one of the oldest and largest European states. Its importance was magnified by its location at the heart of the continent, by the extensive international connections of its leading families, and by the involvement of foreign rulers in its governance. This book breaks new ground in its collective exploration of aspects of cross-border and transnational interaction, and of political and diplomatic, social and cultural relations. There are essays on important turning-points, especially 1648 and 1806; on the patterns of rulership of the emperors themselves; on areas which lay on the margin of the Reich; on neighbouring countries which interacted with the Empire; and on visual and material culture. Contributors are Wolfgang Burgdorf, Olivier Chaline, Heinz Duchhardt, Jeroen Duindam, Robert Evans, Sven Externbrink, Robert Frost, Lothar Höbelt, Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Petr Mat'a, Nicolette Mout, Thomas Munck, Géza Pálffy, Jaroslav Pánek, Adam Perłakowski, Friedrich Polleroß, Blythe Alice Raviola. Peter Schröder, Kim Siebenhüner, Peter H. Wilson and Thomas Winkelbauer.

Journal Article Crater's Edge, by Michał Giedroyć Get access Crater's Edge, by Michał Giedroyć (London: Bene Factum, 2010; pp. 199. £19.99). R.J.W. Evans R.J.W. Evans Oriel College, Oxford robert.evans@history.ox.ac.uk Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The English Historical Review, Volume CXXVI, Issue 523, December 2011, Pages 1582–1583, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/cer265 Published: 01 December 2011

ABSTRACTIn the vibrant current debate about European empires and their ideologies, one basic dichotomy still tends to be overlooked: that between, on the one hand, the plurality of modern empires of colonisation, commerce and settlement; and, on the other, the traditional claim to single and undividedimperiumso long embodied in the Roman Empire and its successor, the Holy Roman Empire, or (First) Reich. This paper examines the tensions between the two, as manifested in the theory and practice of Habsburg imperial rule. The Habsburgs, emperors of the Reich almost continuously through its last centuries, sought to build their own power-base within and beyond it. The first half of the paper examines how by the eighteenth century their ‘Monarchy’, subsisting alongside the Reich, dealt with the associated legacy of empire. After the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 the Habsburgs could pursue a free-standing Austrian ‘imperialism’, but it rested on an uneasy combination of old and new elements and was correspondingly vulnerable to challenge from abroad and censure at home. The second half of the article charts this aspect of Habsburg government through an age of international imperialism and its contribution to the collapse of the Dual Monarchy in 1918.

Kirchliche Einigungsversuche in Ungarn. Die Unionsverhandlungen Christophorus Rojas y Spinolas in der zweiten Hälfte des 17. Jahrhunderts. By András Forgó. (Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Europäische Geschichte Mainz. Abteilung für Abendländische Religionsgeschichte, 212.) Pp. vii+216 incl. 2 maps. Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 2007. €36. 978 3 8053 3776 2 - Volume 60 Issue 3

The series of Creighton memorial lectures, delivered annually since 1907, reflects changing interests and priorities within British historiography. This centenary address seeks to illustrate attitudes to the history of Europe as revealed especially in the lectures, but also in the context of the development of the historical profession in this country as a whole. Many of the issues raised were already adumbrated in the work of Mandell Creighton himself. How far was Britain a part of Europe for historiographical purposes? Did a British perspective involve any particular presuppositions or yield particular insights? And in what ways did the study of individual foreign countries interplay with attitudes to Britain, and to the Continent as a whole?

Selma Krasa-Florian. Die Allegorie der Austria: Die Entstehung des Gesamtstaatsgedankens in der österreichischen Monarchie und die bildende Kunst. Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2007. Pp. 285, illus. - Volume 40

The register of a convent controversy (1517–1518). Pope Leo X, Cardinal Bakócz, the Augustinians, and the Observant Franciscans in contest. By Gabriella Erdélyi. (Collectanea Vaticana Hungariae, Classis II, 1.) Pp. lxxxvii+228+2 plates. Budapest–Rome: P. Pázmány Catholic University, 2006. 963 9206 08 3; 1787 2758; 1787 1816 - Volume 59 Issue 1

THEHabsburgermonarchie series has transformed our understanding of the history of the Dual Monarchy and of the antecedent period of instability between the revolutions of 1848 and the settlement of 1867. Given the special circumstances of the historiography of the Habsburg lands, the agenda of which has so often been set by preoccupations in the successor states of Central Europe that replaced the Monarchy after 1918, its significance has been incalculable. Previously, the subject had been the preserve of a succession of increasingly heroic one-man efforts, culminating in C. A. Macartney's great work which appeared exactly half a century after the collapse.1 By that point, the Historische Kommission of the Austrian Academy of Sciences had already begun planning a collective venture to embrace the final seventy years of Habsburg history. It would manifestly be a vast undertaking, but even they can hardly have appreciated quite how vast. Most of the early volumes in the series now appear comparatively modest in scale: the economy (Die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung [1973]; rev. ante, xc [1975], 925), administration and law (Verwaltungs- und Rechtswesen [1975]; rev. ante, xcv [1980], 860), religion (Die Konfessionen [1985]; rev. ante, ciii [1988], 447) and the army (Die bewaffnete Macht [1987]; rev. ante, civ [1989], 140), all came out at between 700 and 900 pages. But Volume III, Die Völker des Reiches (1980; rev. ante, xcviii [1983], 637), as befitted coverage of the issues of nationality, already ran to two books and 1,500 pages, and so did Volume VI, with its innovative blend of diplomacy and the mutual perceptions of Austria and foreign powers (Die Habsburgermonarchie im System der internationalen Beziehungen [1989]; rev. ante, cx [1995], 136). The stage was set, after a decade's hiatus, for the massive dimensions of Volume VII, which has 2,695 pages and weighs five kilograms. It was not just the increasingly monumental proportions of the enterprise which excited attention, but the extent of collaboration, from the outset, on an international basis: a bold move when we recall that the best expertise on much of the Monarchy lay at that time behind the Iron Curtain. Volume VII has almost forty authors, drawn from nearly all of the countries of the old Habsburg lands and beyond, besides the long-suffering editors, who each contribute substantial chapters. Alongside the shorter pieces stand several monograph-length ones, which are major achievements of interpretation as well as of synthesis.

This is the revised and expanded version of a work first published thirty years ago as The British Image of Hungary, 1865–70. As the new title implies, Professor Frank has meanwhile drawn the conclusion that for most British observers Hungary was just part of a larger entity. In fact there is still not much here on the rest of the Monarchy as such: the first representatives of English Czechophilia—Morfill or Wratislaw—are as little in evidence as the entrepreneurs and bankers who helped propel the Austrian economy to its phase of industrial take-off. Yet in terms of the politics which this book mainly treats, the stress on Hungary remains justified. These were the years of negotiation and implementation of the 1867 Compromise, and Frank, as well as providing much valuable information quite unavailable elsewhere, finds himself engaged on what has become a highly topical kind of study: some of his existing material on sources and channels of communication is now suitably wrapped up into a new section on ‘marketing’. Frank shows that whereas until 1866 Britain regarded the Monarchy as a basically German state, indeed still as the Confederation's hegemonic power and expected to win out in any contest with Prussia, in the aftermath of Königgrätz she speedily accommodated to the new German realities, which were on the whole welcomed. Now the Habsburg state was promptly viewed as an eastern power, and thus urged to strike a deal with the entrenched constitutional opposition in Hungary: a ‘compromise’ indeed (though it would have been good to know just how this free translation of the local terms Ausgleich and kiegyezés came into English usage). Gone was enthusiasm for Kossuth and other separatist heroes of the mid-century. Instead Britons looked henceforth for sober arrangements designed to rescue the great-power status of the Monarchy—and perhaps even to serve as a dry run for future British management of the Irish question. Of course, as Frank is happy to admit, the starting-point was a dismally low one: the Victorian public displayed widespread apathy about continental politics as a whole and their central-European dimension in particular, perhaps never more so than in the earlier 1860s; and, even after some galvanisation through war reporting during the Bohemian campaign, much of the still narrow band of expertise remained at least semi-official, associated either with the Austrian embassy in London (which had the Hungarian aristocrat Rudolf Apponyi at its head) or with its British equivalent in Vienna. The latter yields the most important new source for this edition of Frank's book: the reports compiled by Robert Morier as envoy to the Hungarian diet in early 1866 which are printed in extenso in an appendix. These already show the acuteness and insight that Morier would display in his later career, as documented in Agatha Ramm's major study of 1973. It is odd that Frank does not seem to know Scott W. Murray's more recent work on this earlier phase of Morier's diplomatic life which, with its analysis of British views of Germany, furnishes a valuable complement to Frank's approach. But the ignorance was mutual (Murray takes little notice of Austria or Hungary at all), and we must hope that in their handsome new format Frank's significant findings will now command the attention they deserve.

Robert Kann in his Day famously asked large questions about nationality, revitalizing and imbuing with new academic rigor an already classic debate on ethnic sins of omission and commission in Central Europe. Language was, of course, always recognized as somehow intrinsic to this discussion; and it has exercised a fascination, whether lasting or just casual, for many with interest in the region. The Habsburg lands are renowned as thelocus classicusof a polity whose ethnicities were notably marked by language. Moreover, they encompassed a large number (eleven in all, though it is a trope too to exaggerate the total!) of widely divergent languages: German; two Romance tongues, Italian and Romanian; a range of Slavonic languages from all the three branches—western, eastern, and southern—of that family; and Hungarian, or Magyar, from the Finno-Ugric group.

Journal Article Empire: The Russian Empire and its Rivals Get access R. J. W. Evans R. J. W. Evans Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The English Historical Review, Volume 118, Issue 477, June 2003, Pages 728–730, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/118.477.728 Published: 01 June 2003

1Oriel College, Oxford Federalism and Enlightenment in Germany, 1740–1806 MaikenUmbach LondonHambledon P. 2000232£38

1Oriel College, Oxford Historik v měnícím se světě JosefPolišenský PragueUniverzita Karlova 2001352Paperback

Journal Article SHORTER NOTICES Get access Das Reich und Österreich, 1648£1740, by Harm Klueting (Miinster: LIT Verlag, 1999; pp. 129. DM 39.80). Reichsständische Libertät und habsburgisches Kaisertum, ed. Heinz Duchhardt and Matthias Schnettger (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1999; pp. 362. Pb. DM 58). R. J. W. EVANS R. J. W. EVANS Oriel CollegeOxford Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The English Historical Review, Volume CXVI, Issue 468, September 2001, Pages 963–964, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/CXVI.468.963 Published: 01 September 2001