The Habsburg Monarchy, 1848 1918, and the Habsburgermonarchie Project

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

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