Description
In a sweep of 200 years, from the early 18th century to 1918, Okey (history, U. of Warwick) explores how the multi-national dynasty uniquely reacted to the same forces that were affecting Europe as a whole, and how it changed not so much in a consistent direction but according to the personalities of the various generations. Like other scholars, he wonders whether the monarchy had made enough adaptions to the modern world to have survived 20th-century democracy had the world war not supervened. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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The multi-national Habsburg empire has never lost its fascination since its fall in 1918. Robin Okey's book shows how the Habsburg peoples experienced the same social, economi, and political processes as most other Europeans, in ways that cast interesting light on these processes from both the European and the Habsburg angle. Opposing views that the national problem was therefore subordinate to underlying socio-economic backwardness, Okey argues for the inextricable entanglement of the two themes, as nationalism emerged from a process of social mobilization which threatened the position of dominant Austro-Germans and Magyars. Robin Okey brings a distinctive approach to an intriguing subject, in a comprehensive study based on wide reading in most of the Monarchy's languages.
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