Untertanen, Staatsburger und Andere

The history of integration in Europe has become a hot topic. As Europeans face giving up national sovereignty in order to create a more unified European Union, they likewise face reports of their own ‘failed multiculturalism’ and inability to integrate foreign immigrants into their respective national cultures. Benno Gammerl, however, takes us back to deep roots of European conceptions of citizenship and national belonging. This is a work of comparative history that began its life as a dissertation in the Berliner Kolleg für Vergleichende Geschichte Europas at the Freie Universität Berlin. The objects of the author’s comparison are two empires: the British Empire and the Habsburg Empire; and the fixed variable of comparison is integration or, as the author puts it, belonging or not belonging to a common community. In his work, he wades into the historical debate over the legal institutions that differentiate between ‘In-und Ausländer’ in the British and Habsburg Empires.

Art · Citizenship · Economic history · Empire · European union · Face (sociological concept) · Humanities · Immigration · National state · Political science · Sociology · Sovereignty · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · History · Law