Klaas Van Gelder, ed. More than Mere Spectacle: Coronations and Inaugurations in the Habsburg Monarchy during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries New York: Berghahn, 2021. Pp. 338.

Abstract

The Belgian historian Klaas Van Gelder is the author of an important monograph on the advent of Austrian Habsburg rule in the Southern Netherlands following the War of Spanish Succession. He is currently active at the Free University and at the State Archives in Brussels but was previously connected to Vienna through a series of research positions. In this edited volume, Van Gelder presents the results of several meetings on eighteenth-century inaugurations and coronations. More than Mere Spectacle brings together ten substantial and carefully researched chapters on Habsburg inaugurations and coronations from the seventeenth to the later nineteenth century, plus an introduction and epilogue. The volume deals with Habsburg composite monarchy in its various incarnations but leaves out the senior Spanish line and its possessions. In the introduction, Van Gelder underlines the sociopolitical relevance of acts of homage and coronations: in one way or another, these moments helped to define as well as show the balance between local political institutions and the overarching figure of the Habsburg ruler. The enactment of rulership took distinct shapes in the various component parts of Habsburg monarchy, from the Southern Netherlands to Galicia, and from the supreme elective imperial dignity of the Holy Roman Empire, the Hungarian and Bohemian crowns to the Austrian archduchies. Van Gelder rightly notes that the literature examining these occasions has tended to focus on the period from the later Middle Ages to the end of the seventeenth century. Moreover, it frequently asserts that inaugurations lost some of their political relevance in this period. This volume extends the debate into the nineteenth century; it highlights changes in the format and frequency of inaugurations but successfully defends the view that they retained great relevance. The contributions by Petr Mat ’ a and William Godsey form the backbone of the volume. These two authors examine the “ plethora ” of Habsburg investitures, respectively, from the 1520s to the 1790s and from the 1790s to 1848. Together, they provide the outlines of the phenomenon. Mat ’ a