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Foreign Policy1 and the Nationality Problem in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1800–18672

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2009

Enno E. Kraehe
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina

Extract

In view of the many paradoxes that have studded the history of the Habsburg monarchy, it is fitting at the outset to observe that as the nineteenth century opened Austrian foreign policy proceeded with complete obliviousness to the nationality problem and for this very reason was the principal contributor to the nationality problem of the future. It was a time of unprecedented territorial change, indeed of the founding of the Austrian empire itself, and the net result of the changes was an increment to the ethnic diversity of the Habsburg lands. The acquisition of western Galicia in the third partition of Poland added several million Poles. By the Treaty of Campo Formio in 1797 Walloon and Flemish subjects in the Netherlands had been exchanged for the Italian, Croatian, and Serbian population of Venice, Istria, and Dalmatia, and the prospect was held out for adding more Germans in Upper Bavaria and Salzburg. The Treaty of Lunéville in 1801 did not change the territorial holdings of the Austrian Habsburgs; it did, however, affect them indirectly by providing for the transfer of the members of collateral branches of the family who ruled in Modena and Tuscany to unspecified territories in Germany. Two years later, in 1803, the Imperial Recess of the Holy Roman Empire named these territories: Salzburg, for Ferdinand; and the Breisgau and Ortenau, on the Upper Rhine, for the Duke of Modena. Both awards represented Austrian losses, Breisgau and Ortenau having been Austrian lands to begin with, Salzburg having been previously promised.

Type
Foreign Policy
Copyright
Copyright © Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota 1967

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References

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28 Protocol of the state conference of March 5, 1818, Kriegsarchiv (Vienna), Hofkriegsrath, Präsidium, Fasz. II-XXI, Fos. 226–231.

29 See ante, p. 9.

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45 Betley, Belgium and Poland in International Relations, 1830–1831, p. 22; Jelavich, A Century of Russian Foreign Policy, p. 93.

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49 Some writers (for example, Andics, in his Das Bündnis Habsburg-Romanow, p. 14) make much of the promise as a basis for Russian intervention in Hungary in 1849. It is true that the Austrians melodramatically invoked it then, but it is worth noting that the promise was not in the Münchengrätz conventions themselves.

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61 On Schwarzenberg's domestic policy, see Redlich, Josef, Das Österreichische Staats- und Reichsproblem (2 vols., Leipzig: P. Reinhold, 19201926), Vol. I, pp. 323482Google Scholar; Kiszling, Fürst Felix, zu Schwarzenberg, pp. 61–107 and 166–202; and Friedjung, , öuml;sterreich von 181,8 bis 1860, Vol. I, pp. 255484Google Scholar.

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81 Srbik, , Deutsche Einheit, Vol. II, pp. 333335Google Scholar.

82 The legend persists that Prussia insisted on command of the federal armies and that Austria refused. Actually Austria offered the command to Prussia provided that the latter operated within the framework of the federal rules. Prussia, however, wanted freedom of action, which would have violated federal law and opened the way for Prussian hegemony in the North. See instructions for General Willisen, May 8, 1859, in Ibbeken, Rudolf et al. , (eds.), Die auswärtige Politik Preussens 1858–1870/71 (10 vols., Oldenburg: G. Stalling, 1932–34), Vol. I, No. 378Google Scholar.

83 The literature on these matters is hard to summarize, but two articles of mine cover the subject fairly well: “Austria and the Problem of Reform in the German Confederation, 1851–1863,” The American Historical Review, Vol. LVI (1950–51), pp. 276–294; and “Practical Politics in the German Confederation: Bismarck and the Commercial Code,” The Journal of Modern History, Vol. XXV (1953), pp. 13–24.

84 The standard works on this subject are Steefel, Lawrence D., The Schleswig-Holstein Question (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1932)Google Scholar; and Clark, Chester W., Franz Joseph and Bismarck. The Diplomacy of Austria before the War of 1866 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1934)Google Scholar. See also Pflanze, Otto, Bismarck and the Development of Germany (2 vols., Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1963), Vol. I, pp. 233262Google Scholar.

85 Hallberg, Franz Joseph and Napoleon III, pp. 334–338.

86 For the details, see especially Pflanze, Bismarck and the Development of Germany, Vol. I, pp. 284–311; and Becker, Otto, Bismarcks Ringen um Deutschlands Gestaltung (Heidelberg: Quelle and Meyer, 1958), to name two of the more recent panoramic accountsGoogle Scholar.

87 Barker, Nancy Nichols, “Austria, France, and the Venetian Question, 1861–1866,” The Journal of Modern History, Vol. XXXVI (1964), pp. 145154CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

88 Pflanze, , Bismarck and the Development of Germany, Vol. I, pp. 302307; Pflanze, “Nationalism in Europe, 1814–1871,” p. 134Google Scholar.