The Mad Monarchist takes a look at how the Empire dealt with its multi-ethnic makeup.
From The Mad Monarchist (28 May 2017)
With current events being what they are, with Donald Trump and his
“America First” policy (which seems to be increasingly pushed aside but
that’s a story for another place and time), the British voting to leave
the European Union and doubts being cast on the future of the EU with
the increased (though insufficient) popularity of politicians like
Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders, the refusal of countries like Poland
and Hungary to obey EU orders on allowing non-Poles and non-Hungarians
into their countries and so on and so forth, nationalism has become a
word one hears much more often than in the past. This is something that
some reactionaries have had trouble with and I have myself been
challenged on the subject as to whether or not an old fashioned
counter-revolutionary can be or even have anything to do with
nationalists. A typical challenge to any suggestion that you can often
involves someone citing the example of the multi-national or, dare I
say, “multicultural” Habsburg monarchy of Austria-Hungary.
Dealing with this issue can be a bit problematic because of how many
different sorts of people and movements are referred to as
“nationalist”. This is an increasingly common problem in our modern
times as so much has become relativistic and words are often used to
smear even if the person or group being smeared does not fit the actual
definition of the word. This leads to the odd situation in which people
who oppose the EU are referred to as “nationalists” while the Scottish
National Party, which calls itself nationalist, is more pro-EU than
probably anyone else in Britain. The EU itself is an international
organization that stands to benefit a great deal from nationalists of a
certain variety. They certainly have no problem with the Scottish
nationalists as represented by the SNP and I doubt they would have any
fundamental problem with Basque nationalists or Walloon nationalists.
Those who wish to break up already relatively small European countries
into even smaller countries would be creating minor states that would
have to depend even more on the collectivization of the European Union
for their survival. However, a British, Spanish, French or Italian
nationalist is one they would probably oppose because such states have
existed quite well on their own without an international organization to
regulate them.
True, some reactionary types draw back in horror from the “nationalist”
label but I am not one of them. I would need to know more about them
first. I have firmly come to disagree with the notion that nationalism
was some wicked innovation introduced by the French Revolution. There
has always been nationalism because there has always been nations, it is
only that in the old days there were things above nationality in the
hierarchy of importance such as religion was in the ‘Ages of Faith’ and
of course the monarchy which the Church, generally, reinforced. That, of
course, is when the Austro-Hungarian card is usually played as though
this were an irrefutable contradiction of such a position. Again, not
so, at least as I see it. Austria-Hungary is an often abused whipping
boy on the subject which both sides like to throttle, some nationalists
holding it up as an example that “multiculturalism” does not work and
one which the advocates of multiculturalism hold up, not because they
admire a Catholic imperial monarchy, but because they think it must
disarm any traditionalist opposition. So, let us talk about
Austria-Hungary directly.
Remember that Austria-Hungary did not spring forth from the thigh of
Jupiter. The entity lastly known as Austria-Hungary or the
“Dual-Monarchy” had previously been the Austrian Empire and the Austrian
Empire was the primary successor state of the “First Reich” which was
the “Holy Roman Empire of the German NATION” which had been around a
very long time before the French Revolution, before Westphalia, before
Luther and the Protestants and anything else you want to point to as
being the origin of that terrible bogeyman known as nationalism.
Austria-Hungary and its predecessor states had been around long before
nationalism had become all the rage but certainly not before such a
thing as nationalism had existed. Nationalism, again, is nothing new, it
is not a recent or innovative concept. It has always been there, it is
only that it has shifted, depending on the circumstances, around in the
hierarchy of priorities for peoples and princes.
Even in the Middle Ages, people knew that an Italian was not a German
and a German was not a Spaniard and a Spaniard was not a Frenchman and a
Frenchman was not an Englishman. If you like, nationalism was often not
seen as important but only by those people for whom it was not under
threat or for whom there was some greater struggle underway over
something that was even more important to them. However, that does not
mean it did not exist or just because it was not their top priority did
not mean that it didn’t matter to them at all. During the Middle Ages,
religion was generally held as more important than anything else, yet
because almost the whole of Europe was Catholic, religion was not always
the primary issue. When the English invaded France during the Hundred
Years War, the French did not think having an English king and English
lords was acceptable since they were all Catholics. No, they were
determined to drive the English out of their country and have France for
the French, which they ultimately did.
As for Austria-Hungary, just remember that part of the problem they had
was specifically because they did NOT consider nations to be
interchangeable. A Magyar was not a German and a Slovak was not a
Croatian, these nations were unique and preserved on their own territory
within a larger unity. This is a major difference with the
internationalists of today who claim that people basically are
interchangeable, an unavoidable and inevitable result of spreading the
notion that all people are equal. The Habsburgs had long known that
their subjects were more diverse than those of most other European
sovereigns and most tended to regard this as a problem. Emperor Joseph
II tried to Germanize the whole empire, which did not work out and
Emperor Francis Joseph agreed to transforming the Austrian Empire into
the dual empire of Austria-Hungary very reluctantly. He was not a man
who liked change under any circumstances but viewed the sharing of power
with Hungary as a necessary concession to prevent further strife and
possibly the downfall of his empire.
The problems that Austria-Hungary had, and this is why so many Austrians
long advocated for the conquest of Serbia (which the Hungarians
opposed) was when you had part of a nation in one country and the
majority of that nation in another country. This is why their
relationship with Italy was always problematic and it is why the Serbian
problem ultimately brought about a world war and their ruin. Peoples
who were entirely within the empire could be managed, then there were
peoples like the Poles who had only part of their population within the
empire but who did not have an independent nation-state of their own
just across the border. The Austrians in particular, worried about this
and so pushed for the conquest of Serbia so that the whole Serb
population would be within the empire and could be managed. However,
since power-sharing had become the trend, the Hungarians opposed this
for the obvious reason that adding a third nation to the table would
mean less power and influence for themselves. Each side had a reason for
either wanting or not wanting the war and each was understandable.
None of these issues would have even existed if Austria-Hungary had been
“multicultural” in the way modern people define the term. There was no
one group of people that were ethnically “Austrohungarians”.
Austria-Hungary has often been described, as a way to criticize it by
way of an unflattering comparison to America, as a melting pot with no
fire underneath it. In other words, rather than mixing and blending
together as immigrants to America did, the nationalities of
Austria-Hungary remained on their own lands, among their own people,
with their own local customs and bickered with each other. However, that
was obviously a more “nationalist” way of life than an actual melting
pot would be which would see all of the unique ethnic groups of the
empire destroyed as they merged into one, uniform people. This was never
something that any Habsburg, at least during their reign, wanted to see
with the possible exception of the aforementioned Joseph II who was
very much a German nationalist. He never bothered to have a coronation
in Hungary, fought Prussia in an effort to keep Austria dominant over
the German states and tried to make everyone in his empire speak German.
Obviously, he was not a nationalist as far as his non-German subjects
were concerned and he was unsuccessful in making the Germans of Austria
the master of Germany as a whole as things worked out. However, he was
obviously not opposed to nationalism, at least for the Germans and he
certainly did not think that nationalism was unimportant or imaginary.
None of the remaining Habsburg monarchs did either. Having been pushed
out of Germany, they first tried, with the Austrian Empire, to rule over
a multitude of nationalities with the German-Austrians at the top,
though the Hungarians and to a lesser extent other certain areas had
always had a degree of autonomy. That ultimately proved unworkable and
so the famous compromise was agreed to that created Austria-Hungary.
Again, this was not about saying everyone was the same, it was not about
mixing Austrians and Hungarians together, but rather was about two
distinct units; the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary, working
together as partners under a shared monarch.
Nationalism was a fact, a fact that predated Austria-Hungary and the
last Austrian Kaiser, as well as the man who was supposed to have been
the last, each tried to find a way to stop the arguments between the
nationalities in order that a higher loyalty could unite them. Neither
ever suggested for a moment that these nationalities should be wiped out
with demographics or thoroughly mixed together. Archduke Francis
Ferdinand had wanted to unite the southern Slavic people, which is to
say the Serbians, within the boundaries of the empire and give them an
equal share of power alongside the Germans of Austria and the Magyars of
Hungary. He could see the problem was having only part of the Serbians
on one side of the border and the rest of the Serbians on the other side
in their own state. That is also a major reason for his assassination.
The Serbian nationalists did not want him coming to the throne and
bringing about any changes that would make the Serbians within the
empire any better off and thus more contented and thus less desirous of
uniting with Serbia.
Emperor Charles, though he had little time to rule, seemed to be aware
of this view as well. I would suggest this is one reason for his desire
to be King of Poland once the Russians were driven out of the Romanov
portion of the old Polish lands. Having all of Poland within the empire
would have been manageable, perhaps even a strength, while having part
within the empire and the rest in a separate Kingdom of Poland would
have spelled trouble for the Polish population within Austria-Hungary.
The Germans, however, were not totally onboard with adding ‘King of
Poland’ to the list of titles of the Emperor of Austria and in the end
the revived Kingdom of Poland never decided on a monarch before the
Central Powers lost the war. Emperor Charles, presiding over the
deteriorating war situation, had to deal with the increasingly fractured
nature of his empire and he did this by recognizing national
differences rather than trying to ignore or destroy them. He called for
the creation of a “United States of Greater Austria” which was for
equality and local autonomy for all the nationalities and not for trying
to mix them all together as if they were the same. It was to be a
confederation of sorts, each nationality on its own land, keeping its
own customs, speaking its own language but all under one monarch for
shared security and economic advantage.
Finally, to compare the situation in Europe today with that of
Austria-Hungary is completely nonsensical. Compared to today,
Austria-Hungary was hardly “multicultural” at all. The peoples who were
subject to the Habsburg monarch were almost entirely European with the
Jewish population being the only group of non-European ancestry. Those
who populated Austria-Hungary were overwhelmingly Christians and for the
most part Catholic. Yes, there were pockets of Protestants, the Jewish
minority, Orthodox Slavs and, after the annexation of Bosnia, a Muslim
minority but they were all easily dwarfed by the number of Catholic
Austrians, Poles, Slovaks, Croats, Hungarians, Italians and so on.
People with this much in common can, and have, been able to work
together but even among them there were obviously difficulties. This is
hardly the same as expecting peoples from different continents,
different races, different religions, different hemispheres of the earth
to melt together with no problems at all. In fact, religious
differences is a major part of the reason why Austria-Hungary existed
with the polyglot collection of peoples that it had.
My apologies to any who may be offended but I am about to trample on a
time-honored talking point that Habsburg apologists, myself included,
have long adored. Any monarchist who knows anything about the Habsburgs
will have heard the saying, “Others make war, but thou, oh happy
Austria, only marries”. This is usually repeated in the context of
implying that the Habsburgs were superior to other dynasties because
they built their empire through marriage rather than through conquest.
To a large extent, that is entirely true an accurate. However, it is
also, to a large extent, complete and utter nonsense. A great deal of
the territory that was the Austrian Empire and later Austria-Hungary was
not gained by marriage but through back room bargaining, political
“horse-trading” and, yes, war and conquest. Many of those wars and much
of that conquest was in a centuries-long struggle against the Islamic
armies of the Ottoman Empire. Orthodox Slavs, Catholic Magyars and
Catholic Austrians were brought together out of a shared desire to avoid
the increased “diversity” of being ruled by the Sultan in Turkey. They
were all Christians and all Europeans, Asians and Africans being rather
thin on the ground in Austria-Hungary to put it mildly.
This is, again, an example of there being other classifications that, at
various times, took priority over the ethnic classification. It is also
true that those areas which the Austrian Empire and later
Austria-Hungary had the most trouble with were areas which had the least
amount of history under the Habsburg Crown. Lombardy-Venetia and the
Italian populated areas on the Adriatic coast were the first to be lost
and they had only been part of the fold since the French Revolution when
Austria and the First French Republic agreed to seize and divide
between them the territory of the Republic of Venice. The Serbian
population which proved so problematic was largely gained only after the
Balkan Wars and the annexation of Bosnia in 1909. It also did not help
that there were religious differences with the Serbians and, again, in
both cases, the Habsburgs were reigning over a part of a population with
the rest in an independent nation-state of their own next door.
No, I am afraid that those pushing the “multicultural” agenda will have
to look elsewhere for a tool to silence disaffected traditionalists than
Austria-Hungary. To put it in a more simplistic way, Austria-Hungary
was a collection of peoples rather than a mixture of peoples. The core
populations such as the Austrians, Hungarians, Bohemians and so on were
of the same region, had been together for centuries with a long shared
history, had generally the same values and that because they were
largely of the same religion. A German-Austrian and a Magyar are
certainly different but they share vastly more similarities as
Europeans, and Christians brought together in centuries past by dynastic
alliance (yes, that was one of them, though it took winning a war with a
rival to make it permanent so…) than either would have with an Arab, a
Somali or a Pakistani. Even in the happy days of the greatest unity and
peace, every member nationality of the Habsburg empire was proud of who
they were, very definite about who they were and not about to try to be
something they were not. Nationality was never unimportant to them but
as their identity was not under threat, they could, and for lengthy
periods happily did, unite with others as part of a great, familiar,
common whole. Do not confuse one state with many cultures for one state
with no culture which, make no mistake about it, is precisely where the
so-called multiculturalists are taking us.
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