The origins of World War I were different and varied. But it was Austria-Hungary which unleashed the war. After more than four years the Habsburg Monarchy was defeated and ended as a failed state.
In historical writing on World War I, Czech-speaking soldiers serving in the Austro-Hungarian military are typically studied as Czechs, rarely as soldiers, and never as men. As a result, the question of these soldiers’ imperial loyalties has dominated the historical literature to the exclusion of any debate on their identities and experiences. Men under Fire provides a groundbreaking analysis of this oft-overlooked cohort, drawing on a wealth of soldiers’ private writings to explore experiences of exhaustion, sex, loyalty, authority, and combat itself. It combines methods from history, gender studies, and military science to reveal the extent to which the Great War challenged these men’s senses of masculinity, and to which the resulting dynamics influenced their attitudes and loyalties.
"This fine collection on competing political loyalties in the late Habsburg Monarchy is framed by clear research questions.The dynasty faced formidable competitors in its own crownlands, cities and villages. [This volume] presents this competition in vibrant and varied case studies. From it readers will take a sampling of some of the best recent scholarship on the Habsburg Monarchy." - Slavonic and East European Review "Any future discussion on the last years of the Habsburg Monarchy's political history should build on this collection's significant achievements whether the point of departure is the monarchy's ultimate failure or a decidedly a-teleological perspective...It is not a book that only critiques the old; but it also points to the possibility of something new, and arguably more exciting." - H-Net Reviews "[The] rich case studies and vivid vignettes...[offer] the first coherent attempt in examining the efforts to generate dynastic-oriented patriotism and the responses to these efforts.[T]his book contains many seeds for a more nuanced and sophisticated discussion of the late monarchy. It is not a book that only critiques the old; but it also points to the possibility of something new, and arguably more exciting." - Habsburg "There is a welcome intellectual coherence and high scholarship to this latest volume in Berghahn's series on Austrian and Habsburg Studies." - German History The overwhelming majority of historical work on the late Habsburg Monarchy has focused primarily on national movements and ethnic conflicts, with the result that too little attention has been devoted to the state and ruling dynasty. This volume is the first of its kind to concentrate on attempts by the imperial government to generate a dynastic-oriented state patriotism in the multinational Habsburg Monarchy. It examines those forces in state and society which tended toward the promotion of state unity and loyalty towards the ruling house. These essays, all original contributions and written by an international group of historians, provide a critical examination of the phenomenon of "dynastic patriotism" and offer a richly nuanced treatment of the multinational empire in its final phase.
The historic myths of a people/nation usually play an important role in the creation and consolidation of the basic concepts from which the self-image of that nation derives. These concepts include not only images of the nation itself, but also images of other peoples. Although the construction of ethnic stereotypes during the "long" nineteenth century initially had other functions than simply the homogenization of the particular culture and the exclusion of "others" from the public sphere, the evaluation of peoples according to criteria that included "level of civilization" yielded "rankings" of ethnic groups within the Habsburg Monarchy. That provided the basis for later, more divisive ethnic characterizations of exclusive nationalism, as addressed in this volume that examines the roots and results of ethnic, nationalist, and racial conflict in the region from a variety of historical and theoretical perspectives.
This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.
A EuropeNow Editor’s Pick A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year “Pieter M. Judson’s book informs and stimulates. If his account of Habsburg achievements, especially in the 18th century, is rather starry-eyed, it is a welcome corrective to the black legend usually presented. Lucid, elegant, full of surprising and illuminating details, it can be warmly recommended to anyone with an interest in modern European history.” —Tim Blanning, Wall Street Journal “This is an engaging reappraisal of the empire whose legacy, a century after its collapse in 1918, still resonates across the nation-states that replaced it in central Europe. Judson rejects conventional depictions of the Habsburg empire as a hopelessly dysfunctional assemblage of squabbling nationalities and stresses its achievements in law, administration, science and the arts.” —Tony Barber, Financial Times “Spectacularly revisionist... Judson argues that...the empire was a force for progress and modernity... This is a bold and refreshing book... Judson does much to destroy the picture of an ossified regime and state.” —A. W. Purdue, Times Higher Education “Judson’s reflections on nations, states and institutions are of broader interest, not least in the current debate on the future of the European Union after Brexit.” —Annabelle Chapman, Prospect
A prize-winning, magisterial history of World War I from the perspective of the defeated Central Powers For the Central Powers, the First World War started with high hopes for an easy victory. But those hopes soon deteriorated as Germany's attack on France failed, Austria-Hungary's armies suffered catastrophic losses, and Britain's ruthless blockade brought both nations to the brink of starvation. The Central powers were trapped in the Allies' ever-tightening Ring of Steel. In this compelling history, Alexander Watson retells the war from the perspective of its losers: not just the leaders in Berlin and Vienna, but the people of Central Europe. The war shattered their societies, destroyed their states, and imparted a poisonous legacy of bitterness and violence. A major reevaluation of the First World War, Ring of Steel is essential for anyone seeking to understand the last century of European history.
Examining the origins of the First World War has been called "the ultimate who dunnit". In his book, published on the anniversary of the assassination said to have triggered it, John Zametica, focusing on the Habsburg Empire and the Balkans, re-examines the evidence. This leads to a number of radical new interpretations and some remarkable revelations about the events that in 1914 led to the outbreak of the First World War. The centenary of WW1 has spawned many new books on the subject. Utilizing a wide range of Serbo-Croat and German-language sources, the author overturns most of what we have been led to believe about the respective culpability of Austria-Hungary and Serbia for the outbreak of war. He also re-examines the role of Russia and Germany in this. The reader is left to conclude that Britain was drawn reluctantly into the war in defence of two small countries, one on each side of Europe, which had been attacked simultaneously by Austria-Hungary and Germany without provocation. In Folly and Malice John Zametica reveals that: * The First World War was kick-started by an ailing Austria-Hungary which believed that waging a successful war was the only way it could remain a Great Power; * This empire, with its eleven squabbling nations, and with its statesmen unwilling to contem-plate any meaningful internal reform, was the real powder keg of Europe; * Franz Ferdinand, the Austro-Hungarian Heir to the Throne normally portrayed as a likely enlightened reformer of the Empire, was actually seeking to destroy the Dualist political compromise between Austria and Hungary and replace it with his own centralist autocracy; * Serious antagonism between the Austria-Hungary and Serbia really only began as late as 1906 and had on the whole almost nothing to do with the supposedly crucial 'South Slav' question; * Gavrilo Princip, Franz Ferdinand ́s assassin, was impelled to do his deed by a Yugoslav ideology conceived and propagated from within Habsburg Croatia, not independent Serbia; * The notorious Black Hand, the secret Serbian officers' organisation, far from planning to assassinate Franz Ferdinand during his visit to Bosnia, was in May-June 1914 busy plotting to overthrow civilian rule in Serbia and replace it with a military-led dictatorship; * The famous Serbian warning to Vienna, intended to thwart Franz Ferdinand ́s assassination, was the work of Lieutenant-Colonel Apis, the leader of the Black H∧ * In July 1914, Vienna also wanted its 'good' war against Serbia so as to dislodge Russia from the Balkans and thus secure complete regional hegemony for itself. Germany, harbouring ambitions for continental supremacy, approved and encouraged Austria-Hungary ́s Balkan adventure. Both powers consciously risked the probability of a wider international conflict.