Modernizing Europe's Imperial Monarchies

Up until recently, Europe's three imperial monarchies the German, Austrian, and Russian Empires were seen as moribund political entities, unable to accommodate the forces of political, social, economic, and cultural modernization, and as a result collapsed collectively during or shortly after the First World War. More recently, scholars have underlined the viability of these polities, including as frameworks for democratic experiments and fixed points for (supra)national identification, notwithstanding the suppression of minorities and colonial undertakings of these empires. This book takes a different approach: it demonstrates that these three imperial monarchies were capable of and willing to initiate and steer the modernization of their institutions and polities. Rather than understanding modernization as a linear and teleological process, this contributed volume draws instead on Samuel Eisenstadt's notion of 'multiple modernities' to demonstrate how these empires sought to modernize on their own terms. By drawing on this concept, it becomes possible to challenge notions of inevitable decline and instead demonstrate how these imperial monarchies sought to forge modernization on their own terms in the nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Challenges historiographical arguments about the inability of imperial monarchies to modernize Revives discussions on modernization by drawing on Eisenstadt's concept of 'multiple modernities' Demonstrates the open-ended nature of imperial modernization in the nineteenth century

Auteur

Heidi Hein-Kircher is Director of the Martin Opitz Library (Herne) and Professor for German History and Culture in Eastern Europe at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany.
Frederik Frank Sterkenburgh is Assistant Professor of Political History at Utrecht University, The Netherlands.

Contenu

1: Modernizing Europe's Imperial Monarchies: Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia in the Nineteenth Century .- Part I Reorientation and Restructuring of Imperial Monarchies.- 2: Prussia's road to 'Iron and blood': Wilhelm I and the nationalisation of the Hohenzollern monarchy.- 3: Sacrifice and sovereignty: reform and the meaning of monarchy in the late German confederation.- 4: Between Reform and Reaction: The Great Reforms, Siberian Regionalism, and the Limits of Modernisation in Russia.- 5: Modernising Germany's most unmodern monarch: Grand Duke Carl Alexander of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach (1818-1901) and the art of dynastic survival.- Part II Politicizing Imperial Monarchies, Fostering the State.- 6: State Transformation as Dialogue between Centre and Periphery: Non-State Actors and Everyday Administration in Lower Austria, 17901848 .- 7: The Struggle for the Public Good: Local Government, Civic Commitment, and Municipal Modernisation in Late Imperial Russia.- 8: The military dimension of modernising the Habsburg Monarchy in the 1850s.- 9: The Formation of Modern Policy-Making: A Case Study on the Chaussee Policies in Prussia, c. 1786-1850s.- 10: The Modernity of the Unmodern? The German Emperor in the Constitution of the Kaiserreich.- Part III Creating and Communicating the Imperial Monarchy's Image.- 11: Between Modernity and Persistence the Austrian Practices of Enoblement as a Symbol of the Administrative and Societal Transformation in the Late Habsburg Monarchy.- 12: Continuity and Modernity? The Cult of Franz Joseph in the Bohemian Crownlands.- 13: Modern, constitutional, and multinational: images of the Habsburg monarchy in Austrian schools, 1867-1914.- 14: The Emperor's Hungarian Gambit: How Franz Joseph Transformed from Tyrant to King.- Part IV Conclusion.- 15: Modernizing the Unmodern State: Concluding Thoughts.