The Habsburg Monarchy and Austria–Hungary Between Global and Comparative History

Abstract

This review article examines two conflicting approaches to nineteenth-century Habsburg history. The relatively new but now widely applied framework of global history reaches beyond the nation-state to empires and transnational, preferably transcontinental connections. Pieter Judson calls his magisterial volume A New History. As detailed below, he concentrates on transnational social and cultural connections within its borders and into the wider world. Like the general practice of global history, the diplomacy of great power politics and the domestic conflicts of party politics are barely mentioned. The longer standing approach, particularly to the post-1867 framework of Austria–Hungary, is comparative history. Its interwar founding fathers, as repre-sented in the first section of a new reader ( The Rise of Comparative History , edited by Trencsényi, Iordachi and Apor, pp. 61–142) focus instead on comparing the economic and social history of near neighbours. The selections from Henri Pirenne, Henri Sée, and more explicitly from Marc Bloch spell out the attraction of comparing similar cases in order to identify the differences. Austria and Hungary, 1867– 1914, compiled an ample record of separate economic statistics and elected bodies to invite this approach. The invitation to compare the foreign policies of the competing European powers before 1914 is of even longer standing in scholarship too