PERIPHERAL IMAGES OF A 19TH CENTURY EUROPEAN GREAT POWER: Hungarian and Romanian assessments of the Habsburg Monarchy
PERIPHERAL IMAGES OF A 19TH CENTURY EUROPEAN GREAT POWER: Hungarian and Romanian assessments of the Habsburg Monarchy

Summary/Abstract: The paper presents an overview of how the Habsburg Monarchy was seen by Hungarian and Romanian political thinkers of the 19th century, especially with regard to its place in the European and global order. It includes, on the one hand, a sketch of the changing conceptual framework that these theorists employed in their descriptions of the international system, and, on the other hand, will try to reconstruct their assessment of the internal conditions needed for this multinational empire to keep its great power status. The focus is on the pre-1848 period, though post-revolutionary developments and their theoretical assessment are also mentioned whenever meaningful. The issue of imperial rule in a multinational empire, structurally and constitutionally very diverse, was related by these theorists to the political and economic transformations in the wider Europe, while these were in their turn seen as being reflected on the internal scene. A particular concern for these theorists was the prospect of the emergence of powerful nation-states which could lay claims on parts of the Habsburg Monarchy, especially the projects of German and Italian unification. The paper assesses how these processes and the long disintegration of the Ottoman Empire were incorporated in the considerations of the Hungarian and Romanian thinkers.

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