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INTRODUCTION Government policies often pit central against regional interests and some regional interests against one an' other. This was especially true in the Habsburg Monarchy of the eighteenth century as enlightened absolutists sought to centralize and modernize their realm. Dealing with the intensity and nature of the grievances that resulted from their efforts required able rulers willing to try solutions other than mere retrenchment. From midcentury on the reforms were greater in number than ever before-or at least they seemed so to many Habsburg subjects-and reached avalanche proportions under joseph II. Each succeeding ruler had to cope both with the need for change and with the new problems and reactions created by change. Each succeeding ruler also had his or her own style of government, and a close look at Habsburg policy for Italian Tyrol affords an interesting opportunity for a comparison of the different approaches used by Maria Theresa, her two sons joseph and Leopold, and her grandson Francis II. While all these rulers attempted to deal with the problems of the Ital, ians in Tyrol, the greatest activity occurred during the reign of Leopold II when an organized movement arose that sought a redress of grievances. But the Italians were not the only problems Leopold had to face. In 1790 when Leopold II took over as head of the Habsburg Haus, macht in Vienna, he brought with him the experience of twenty,five years as Grand Duke of Tuscany and a reputation as one of the century's most enlightened, shrewdest, and most capable rulers. In almost all his new lands, he found unrest ranging from open grumbling to outright rebellion. The situation in the Princely County of Tyrol was one of the more seriousexceeded only by those in the Austrian Netherlands and Hungary and perhaps in Galicia. Although there were echoes of the more distant Ameri, can Revolution and the much closer French Revolution, the Estates of Tyrol (and the other lands) were reacting above all to a half,century of reform that had gradually stripped them of a meaningful role in governing their land. In Tyrol the coup de grace had been joseph II's abolition of almost all Estate institutions. To cope with the reaction to his predecessors' policies, Leopold ably used several strategies, including the traditional Habsburg one of divide and conquer. In Tyrol the Germans, who were predominant, were threatening 1 2 INTRODUCTION rebellion. Leopold therefore encouraged the province's Italians to come forward with their own list of grievances and supported them against both the local Germans and those reforms initiated from Vienna that had greatly disadvantaged them-such as the new language laws. Most of this occurred at the beginning of Leopold's reign, with activity spurred by the convoca, tion of the Tyrolean Diet in 1790, the first Diet in seventy years. The 1790 Italian movement in Tyrol is therefore interesting as an example and a segment of Habsburg policy toward regional interests and toward national awakening of the many peoples of the Habsburg Monarchy at the end of the eighteenth century. Until now there has been no full account of this 1790 Italian movement-its origins, growth, and achievements and how it became part of the struggle between centralization and regional rights. In Tyrol the struggle was three cornered, involving the monarch and his bureaucracy, the German Tyroleans, and the Italian Tyroleans. The actions and interac, tions of these three groups, although unique to Tyrol, were in many in, stances indicative of what was happening elsewhere. Tyrol's grievances, Italian and German, were shared at least in part by the Habsburgs' other lands and were in large measure the outgrowth of the same reform policies begun during Maria Theresa's reign (1740-80) and continued more vigor, ously during the reign of her son Joseph II (1780-90). These two rulers had in fact been building on the Habsburgs' long, at times unsteady but contin, uing, effort begun by Maximilian I in the sixteenth century to unify and centralize their many lands, that is, to create a Gesammtmonarchie. In 1790 Tyrol's German Estates - the Italians were effectively excluded from Estate membership - were clamoring for restoration of their own historic rights and institutions while rejecting the quite fair aspirations of their Italian countrymen. Tyrol's Italians, after a century or so of economic, intellectual, and cultural flowering, were ready to seek an equitable share in the affairs of the princely county, to which they had been attached...

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