Chapter 21: The Habsburg Empire, 1848–1914
Further reading
The two most accessible books on the Habsburg Empire in the nineteenth century are A.J.P.
Taylor, The Habsburg Empire (London, Penguin, 1948) and A. Sked, The Decline and Fall
of the Habsburg Empire, 1815–1918 (London, Longman, 1984). Taylor’s book takes a
somewhat jaundiced view of the empire’s prospects, while Sked’s is more optimistic. E.
Crankshaw, The Fall of the House of Habsburg (London, Longmans, 1963) gives a lively
narrative account of the empire, and is particularly good on members of the Habsburg family.
For a fuller account of the empire see C.A. Macartney, The Habsburg Empire (London,
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969) and its abbreviated version, The House of Austria (Edinburgh,
Edinburgh University Press, 1978). A.J. May, The Hapsburg Monarchy, 1867–1914
(Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1951) is particularly strong on social and
cultural aspects of the empire. The empire’s foreign policy is well covered by F.R. Bridge,
From Sadowa to Sarajevo (London, Routledge, 1972). See also Samuel R. Williamson Jr.,
Austria Hungary and the Origins of the First World War (London, Macmillan, 1992). There
is a useful discussion of the Austro-Hungarian Empire between 1867 and 1914 in two articles
by John Garland, ‘The Strength of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1914’, parts 1 and 2, New
Perspective, vol. 3, nos 1 and 2, September and December 1997, www.historyontheweb.
co.uk. Significant additions to the history of the Balkan peninsula have been made in
Barbara Jellavich, History of the Balkans, vol. 1: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, vol. 2:
Twentieth Century (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984) and Stephen K.
Pavlivich, The Balkans 1804–1945 (London, Longmans, 1999) See Christopher Clark, The
Sleepwalkers: How Europe went to War in 1914 (London, Penguin, 2013) chapter 2 for a
portrait of the Habsburg Empire following its defeats by France and Prussia in 1859 and
1866. The rich intellectual life of Austria-Hungary around 1900 is well covered by Robert
Pynset, Decadence and Innovation: Austro-Hungarian Life at the Turn of the Century
(London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989).
Websites
The two most useful sites are accessible through http://eudocs.lib.byu.edu under headings for
Austria and Serbia, and the linked to the site Habsburg Source Web Archive.
The nationalities problem
Map, Europe 1783–1914, see p. 373
Constitutional arrangements
The Austrian Constitution of 1867
The Hungarian–Croatian compromise, 1868
both at http://eudocs.lib.byu.edu
Count Beust gives his explanation of the Ausgleich
www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1867beust.html
The Near East Crisis, 1875–78
Correspondence respecting affairs in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Count Andrassy to Count Beust,
December 1875.
Correspondence respecting the affairs of Turkey, May 1876. Letter from Lord Odo Russell
(British Ambassador in Berlin) to the Earl of Derby (Foreign Secretary)
http://eudocs.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Main_Page see Serbia
Letters from Bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer to W.E. Gladstone, 1875–78
Reports from the US representative in Vienna, June–December 1877
Both to be found at Habsburg Web Source Archive, via
http://eudocs.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Main_Page see Austria
Articles
John Garland, ‘The Strength of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in 1914’, New Perspective,
vol. 3, no. 1, vol. 3, no 2
www.users.globalnet.co.uk/-semp/newspape