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.

The theories on foreign policy and international relations which have emerged in the last decade stress the interaction between foreign policy and internal social structure. Contemporary analysis of this interaction has benefited from refined social science methods and concepts developed since the end of the Second World War, but awareness of the connection between foreign policy and internal policy is not new. For instance, as long ago as the eve of the First World War Rudolf Goldscheid wrote that “nothing is more Utopian than the belief that substantial alterations in internal policy can be realized without simultaneous corresponding changes in foreign [policy] and vice versa.” The interaction between Austro-Hungarian foreign policy and the nationality problem in the monarchy from 1867 until 1914 is a striking example of Goldscheid's general thesis.

In a rather agitated correspondence between Emperor Francis Joseph and Pope Pius IX in 1874, Pius IX highly praised the members of the Austrian episcopate, who, in his opinion, had, through their noble leadership, performed excellent work in helping the monarch to accomplish his goals. He asked, moreover, whether anyone could cite a single deed of a Catholic priest that could be used as a pretext for abrogating the concordat which the Austrian government had made with the Church in 1855 and denounced in July, 1870.

After the Habsburg empire rose to the position of a great power and successfully defended itself against the expansionist drives of Ottoman imperialism, both the population and the territory of the southeastern part of the monarchy began to increase. As a consequence of this expansion, an increasing number of Orthodox peoples were incorporated into the multinational empire on various legal bases. The Orthodox population of the empire certainly did not constitute anything resembling an undivided unit, whether in regard to the language which the people spoke or the length of time they lived in the area or belonged to the Habsburg monarchy. A real community of interests existed only insofar as folklore, tradition, and their common legal struggle for religious freedom were concerned. This was especially true of the Serbs and the Rumanians. During the course of their struggle to attain religious freedom a hierarchical social structure, dominated by the Serbian higher clergy, came into being which remained in existence for a long period of time.

Since the days of the great empress Maria Theresa education has been considered a political concern in Austria. That is to say, its provision has been regarded as an obligation of the state and as one of its legitimate fields of activity. When the state assumed responsibility for education the nationality problem and the language question began to affect the Austrian school system.

Although it cannot be denied that the primordial manifestations of nationalism can be traced back to the pre-capitalistic age, it has long been obvious to scholars who have investigated the economic and social factors involved in nationalism that its development has been closely connected with that of modern capitalism. It is just as apparent that economic developments in Eastern Europe have differed fundamentally from those in the western part of the same continent.2 These differences in development can be detected as far back as the fifteenth century, and they have become more and more evident during the course of the succeeding centuries. The relationship between social and economic factors and nationalism has consequently been entirely different in Eastern Europe from what it has been in the countries of Western Europe, which have more advanced economies as well as populations constituting a more or less homogeneous nationality.

Enormous as the problems of the Habsburg empire had become by 1914, war, for that matter even a victorious war, was unlikely to solve any of them; on the contrary, it was bound to make their solution even more improbable than before. When before approving the war against Serbia Count István Tisza demanded assurances from Count Leopold von Berchtold that it would not lead to the incorporation of substantial numbers of Serbs into the Dual Monarchy, his demand should have raised doubts in sober minds about the practicability of war as a means of improving the stability and power of the Habsburg monarchy. Most of the Austrian policymakers believed that Austria-Hungary was forced to go to war in order to retain her reputation as a great power, but after Serbia had accepted practically all the demands of the Austrian ultimatum, Austria-Hungary could have been reasonably certain that it would emerge from the crisis sufficiently respected. A radical policy of prestige, such as that which the German government urged upon the Austrians during the July crisis, can, however, easily produce a neglect of reality.

In its final phases, World War I was a revolutionary war. When it ended, several of the belligerents, on both sides of the front lines, had been swept or were about to be swept by revolutions. Among them was the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. When the Allied Powers signed an armistice with Austria-Hungary in the Villa Giusti near Padua on November 3, 1918, the empire was in the process of dissolution. National committees, councils, and assemblies had sprung up all over the multinational Habsburg empire and declared the independence of the peoples whom they claimed to represent. Encountering little resistance from the imperial bureaucracy, they formed nuclei governments of the Successor States.

In this concluding lecture I wish to express my thanks for the excellent papers presented at this carefully prepared and in many ways unique conference. In one who grew up, now more than half a century ago, under the reign of Francis Joseph and who has always retained some emotional loyalty to those years of his own youth and his own student days, who went to war in 1914 under the black and yellow flag of the Austrian monarchy—in such a person the fact that here in faraway Midwestern America the problems of the long defunct monarchy are being discussed with a sense of actuality in an international scholarly gathering by men of diverse ideologies and nationalities arouses a feeling of satisfaction and some melancholy.

The status of Habsburg studies in the United States could easily be described in one word: “flourishing.” Evidence for this assertion can be found in any issue of the Austrian History News Letter or its successor, the Austrian History Yearbook, or in the very fact that this conference is being held. Readily available are long lists of books and articles published by Americans on the history of the Habsburg monarchy, of dissertations completed and in progress, and of research projects contemplated and under way—all good signs of much scholarly activity.

At this moment I understand how Ludwig August von Benedek must have felt in the late spring of 1866 when charged with a task for which he felt inadequate, because find myself in a similar situation. In no way can my remarks meet the standard set in the paper which Prof. Schroeder has presented to the conference. The reason for this difference partly to be found in the topic itself, for in a certain way. I think, Mr. Schroeder's assignment to examine the American literature was an easy one. He had to read a huge number studies published in the past years by American scholars specializing in research on the Habsburg monarchy; his task was to select and to organize. My task turned out to be completely different. When I tried to find studies of the Habsburg monarchy published in Western Europe after 1945, instead selecting from a plethora of material, I had to determine whether there actually was as little material available as there appeared to be. When, at my request, Dr. Friedrich Gottas, of the Historical Institute of the University of Salzburg, checked my findings through a careful search of bibliographies and periodicals, his research supported my theory that after 1945 the history of the Habsburg monarchy was not a favorite topic among historians in Western Europe. Given this circumstance, I thought it best to concentrate my informal observations on certain trends which in my opinion have been noticeable in Western European historiography since 1945.

For this volume of the Yearbook a few minor changes have been made in the original plans as outlined in the preface. In order to include in a single volume all articles bearing on the nationality question in the Habsburg empire, Walter Goldinger's essay on “The Nationality Question in Austrian Education” is published in Pt. 3 of this volume rather than in Vol. IV, as originally announced. Moreover, the editorial staff concluded that a work of this nature should be provided with an index. Finding space for these two additions, however, has necessitated a departure from the original plan of including a lengthy summary outlining the various points of view expressed by the participants of the conference.

The many friends, colleagues, and students of Prof. May were genuinely shocked when they learned of his untimely death on June 17, 1968. Certainly nobody who saw the commanding figure of this man preside with customary charm, wit, and vigor over a panel on Austrian history at the American Historical Association convention in Toronto in December, 1967, would have expected this tragic news.

Since the conference on the nationality problem in the Habsburg monarchy was held at Indiana University in April, 1966, two of the active participants whose scholarship and leadership were a source of inspiration to many students of Central European history have died. Each was an active scholar busily pursuing major research projects until the day of his death. Kent Roberts Greenfield passed away less than a week after he returned the corrected galley proof of the article on “The Italian Nationality Problem of the Austrian Empire” published in the second part of this third volume of the Yearbook. He was in the process of preparing an article on American publications in Italian history for the Rassegna storica del Risorgimento. Arthur J. May died the night before he was to tape a television show on the fiftieth anniversary of the U.S.S.R. He had practically completed the manuscript of his history of the University of Rochester and was getting ready to write his long-projected enlarged history of Vienna, based on a vast number of documents collected during numerous trips to that city.