The Habsburg Puzzle

This introductory chapter provides a background of the Austrian Habsburgs. Amassed over several centuries by marriage, war, diplomacy, and luck, the eastern realm of the Austrian Habsburgs was an omnium gatherum of tribes and languages—German, Magyar, Slav, Jew, and Romanian—bound together by geographic happenstance, legal entailment, and the person of the emperor who ruled them. The lands inhabited by this multiethnic menagerie were a place of war; in every direction, the Austrian Habsburgs faced enemies. Indeed, the outside environment placed Austria in a position of continual danger while the political and economic structure of the empire narrowed the range of viable tools for responding effectively to external threats and putting it on a secure long-term footing. Yet somehow, despite the seemingly insurmountable threats arrayed against it, the Habsburg Monarchy had survived. It outlasted Ottoman sieges, Bourbon quests for continental hegemony, repeated efforts at dismemberment by Frederick the Great, and no fewer than four failed attempts to defeat Napoleon Bonaparte. Each time, it weathered the threat at hand and more often than not emerged on the winning side. Thus, by virtually any standard measure, the Habsburg Empire must be judged a geopolitical success.