Title: The Decline & Fall of the Habsburg Empire 1815-1918
Genre: History
Year: 1989
Pages: 280
Origin: a tried and trusted library book
Nod Rating: 3 nods out of 5
‘The Habsburgs were Europe’s greatest dynasty.’The Habsburgs were a family that ruled much of central Europe for many centuries, from the medieval world to the modern. They fought great territorial wars against the French, perhaps most famously Napoleon some two hundred years ago. And after the great general’s final defeat at Waterloo in 1815, the Habsburg family survived to see a changing, industrialising world. Yet by the end of the First World War the empire was shattered into numerous countries and states, and the Habsburg dominance was never to return. It is these final hundred years that the historian, Alan Sked, has decided to focus on in the hope of finding just when the decline of their rule began.
Rather than a narrative account of the last one hundred years of the empire – from the final defeat of Waterloo to the defeat of the German forces at the hands of the western allies in the Great War – Sked investigates some of the big arguments surrounding the demise. These arguments focus on the all-powerful and pervasive figure of Metternich and his widely touted “System”; the causes and impact of the 1848 revolutions that spread across the continent; the coming together and relationship of the reformed Dual Monarchy between Austria and Hungary; the road to the First World War, labelled her by Sked as ‘the road to disaster’. If too great a number of pages is devoted to the consequences of 1848, perhaps too little room is given to the big figures of the period, including Metternich – who merits a whole chapter – himself. The famed historian Carlyle is quoted as having said that history is the biography of great men; but this is an interpretation not viewed by Sked. Biography is skewed in the place of analysis; with the author stating that there is not space for a recounting of events: either from a narrative or biographical perspective.
Sked’s conclusions are interesting to read; the biggest of all, perhaps, is the use of the words ‘decline and fall’, with Sked arguing that such terms is ‘misleading’. He discusses the idea that the empire could have continued to exist, if only defeat in the First World War did not happen. A German victory would have seen the empire’s survival in some form or another, but such speculation is beyond the pale of serious analysis: and a German victory would change the map of all Europe and the world forever, including what it meant for the survival of the Russian revolution and the stunted rise of a Hitler. Perhaps a different question to ask is: how did the Habsburg empire survive for so long? Even in Metternich’s day – in the first half of the nineteenth century – it was already becoming an anachronism, what with the rise of new nation states. Austria-Hungary’s bizarre set-up of a multitude of tongues and peoples being tied to a personal monarchy is a feature more fitting of the medieval age. But yet it continued and survived, due to the strong efforts of Metternich, and despite the growing forces of nationalism, of liberalism, of revolution, and the new kid on the block to the north of it: Germany.
Researched, written and published at the tail-end of the Communist era in eastern Europe, Sked’s analysis is rooted in Cold War rhetoric. But, like all good historians, he was aware how his own interpretations of the facts would change with succeeding generations, noting how fresh interpretations would bring about new meanings. Sked himself, within the book’s introduction, notes just this, hoping that the ‘book might encourage others to help fill in the gaps.’
Greatest dynasty, as Sked claims, perhaps. However, despite being rooted in deep research and rational analysis, this book falls short of being “the greatest” account on the Habsburgs. The dynasty was filled with too many rich characters for them to be dismissed in place of hard, Gradgrind-esque facts; although there is a mind with its light on in this book, there is the distinct lack of a beating heart.
Buy it here
