Austria's Wars of Emergence: War, State, and Society in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1683-1797 (review)

In the period between the infamous second siege of Vienna (1683) and the end of the War of the First Coalition (1792-97), the Habsburg Monarchy emerged as one of the truly great European powers. Although this is a straightforward statement, the realities of that growth were anything but simple. The Monarchy fought numerous wars against both Turkish and European enemies, lost and gained territories, and underwent complicated but often subtle systemic political changes. To the average student or reader, the Habsburg experience often remains a nearly impenetrable morass of people, events, and institutions, not to mention that the material available in English is limited. Much of this dilemma is now addressed with the publication of Michael Hochedlinger's new book.

Austria's Wars of Emergence is broken into five sections, the first topical, the last four chronological. Each section is made up of three to seven chapters, and each chapter is again divided to deal with specific details. The first section is perhaps the most important and useful, endeavoring to explain the wide range of political institutions and relationships that existed in the Monarchy prior to 1700. Here Hochedlinger shows how Habsburg rulers and ministers labored to assemble greater centralized authority while limiting the power of the noble estates and the inclination to provincial preferences. He does this first by analyzing specific areas where changes occurred, like finances, the army, the Reich, and so on. Second, he makes great use of numerous, easily read and understood graphs, charts, and maps. This first section alone makes the book worth owning and could act as either a good introduction for students of Modern Europe looking to understand the Monarchy, or even for gleaning details for lecture material. The next four sections—the Age of Heroes, 1683-1733; the Crisis of a Great Power, 1733-48; Reform, Revenge, Aggression; and Revolutionary Challenge, 1789-1797—take the Monarchy chronologically from 1683 to 1797, with the greatest space dedicated to the period between the War of the Austrian Succession and the beginning of the French Revolution.

Hochedlinger, a senior archivist at the Austrian State Archives, does not present much in the way of new thinking concerning the Monarchy. His treatment of the military, while relatively extensive, is only considered in relation to its broader diplomatic or economic impact. Battles and campaigns, however important, are only given brief mention or analysis. This is true of the entire study, as in the end the book is necessarily an overarching view of an immense topic, and serves more as an effective introduction. In the end the reader can conclude that the Monarchy's rise to great power status, much damaged but not ended by the success of the French Revolution, was a matter of mostly successful military, political, and diplomatic endurance in the effort to achieve limited goals.