Rating: 2 out of 5
I think this is an okay introduction into the Austrian (and Austro-Hungarian) state, but at the same time there’s a lot about this book that I did not like. Nevertheless, I learned some new things, especially about suffrage in Austria and Hungary as well as on some other topics.
What did I like? Mr Judson seemed to know his subject, but historical expertise normally is focussed on some subsets of a complete polity. In this case, we hear a lot about social issues and political developments, partially in response to the ingrained narrative of a failed multi-cultural state, but this also seemed very much to be the author’s personal interest.
There are some anecdotes (I found the idea of Emperor Franz Joseph threatening his government with increasing suffrage to be the best), but on the whole the title maintains a relatively serious tone. I was also very interested to learn how suffrage developed in the state(s) as well as how so-called Federal assistance followed down from the crown lands to the periphery. Thankfully—on the right to vote—the author did not bring in comparisons to other states, which is a typical pitfall for most historians. But it’s interesting to know these comparisons, even if they don’t really play a role when understanding the subject of the title.
What did I not like? Well, there were a few things. I never felt like succession was described particularly well, except perhaps in the case of Maria Theresa and Karl I (Charles I / Károly IV), but in every other instance the nuance of imperial continuation seemed to be lost. How, why, who, etc…
It also looked to me that the constitution of the state was not described in very clear terms. We have an idea of what Prussia/Germany was like, we also know about Japan: it’s clear how the military takes over there. But in this case, the author merely states that in Austria the military created a police state in 1914, but doesn’t say how this was done. Given that the military wasn’t generally mentioned very often, this was a bit of a blank slate.
I was very annoyed that every town had to be described using every name that it ever had. So a town which today is in Romania and was then a part of Hungary, would always—not just the first time it was mentioned!—be noted using it’s German, Hungarian, and Romanian names. This made a mess of a number of sentences and could have been simplified by only mentioning the names that the author did not want to use with the first reference. I’m guessing perhaps Mr Judson wanted to use the German names, but didn’t dare to do so without additional commentary that he decided not to input.
Lastly, and for me the biggest issue: it wasn’t chronological. Or rather, subject by subject, the author brings the reader to the First World War, but it makes a mess of trying to compare events in Austria and Hungary as well as across different subjects. I found it very confusing as this also naturally meant that for example when civil unrest was mentioned, a change in the person of the emperor that happened at the same time was not mentioned, but it clearly was an important part of how these things developed, etc.
Overall, I’m not a fan of the book, but I found a lot of it very interesting and I would probably still recommend it as an introduction into a very interesting topic.
