Robert A. Kann

Dynasty, politics and culture : selected essays

A collection of essays by the distinguished historian of the Habsburg monarchy and a pioneer student of the nationality problems of the Habsburg Monarchy.

Dynastic Relations and European Power Politics (1848-1918)

The characteristic features of a social or political institution can best be tested against the background of institutions and social relations of a different kind. In this sense a study which deals with the associations between dynasties of various countries will yield little insight if it is focused on an era when royal absolutism prevailed in Europe. Relationships between sovereigns were then simply relationships between governments. If we concentrate our attention on an era when monarchical government had to compete and comply with the principles of constitutional, more or less representative, government, we can perceive distinctive traits far more clearly. Consequently the period from the middle of the nineteenth century to the year 1918 lends itself best to such investigation. To be sure, at the beginning of this era a constitutional system existed neither in the Habsburg empire nor in Russia, and only in a very restricted sense in the Germanies. Yet one of the major consequences of the revolution of 1848 was the expectation that general acceptance of constitutional government in continental Europe outside of Russia was only a question of time, and a very short time at that. By 1867, Russia was the one remaining Great European Power where constitutional government had not been introduced. The end of the period is even more clearly marked. By 1918 the institution of monarchical government, up to that time the rule, had almost become the exception. 1 For reasons of simplification this study is limited further to the Great European Powers, to be surveyed in the following order: Great Britain (in several respects a model case), Germany, and briefly Russia, Austria-Hungary, Italy, and France. In this last case the relationship of the monarchical powers to a country which throughout the era surveyed here shifted from republican to monarchical government and back to republican offers additional insight by way of contrast. Inasmuch as the

Should the Habsburg Empire Have Been Saved? An Exercise in Speculative History 1

The observations which I shall put before you require the kind of apology that is always necessary when the historian leaves the ground of facts and turns to the hazy realm of what might have been or ought to be. Still there may be extenuating factors for an undertaking of this kind. I refer here, of course, to the frequently voiced assumption of the value of hindsight prophecies for the prevention of errors in the future, the wishful thinking that may generate appropriate action and, in a more general way, the training of the mind that may derive from speculative thinking.