East Central Europe in the Nineteenth Century

The course is intended to introduce students to the developments in East Central Europe before World War One. Partitioned Poland will be examined in addition to the focus on the sprawling Habsburg Empire. Within the survey of the Austrian Empire (later Austria-Hungary), special attention will be devoted to four areas of wider concern: the nationalities question, with an eye cast toward theories of nationalism (and given the present question of the European Union); the pace of modernization in the economic, societal and political spheres (given the traditional notion that Eastern Europe is somehow “backward”); the role of the nineteenth-century alliance system and the desires and actions of the Great Powers before World War One; and the role these and other factors played in the ultimate dissolution of the empire.

Required Books:

Charles Ingrao. The Habsburg Monarchy, 1618-1815. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000.

A.J.P. Taylor. The Habsburg Monarchy 1809-1918. Chicago: UC Press, 1976 [1948].

Josef Roth. The Radetzky March. Woodstock/NY: Overlook Press, 2002.

VERY highly recommended (can be read in place of the Taylor):

Robert Kann. A History of the Habsburg Empire, 1526-1918. Berkeley: UC Press, 1980 [1974] or

Jean Berenger. History of the Habsburg Empire, 1700-1918. London/NY: Longman, 1997, or

C. A. Macartney. The House of Austria: The Later Phase, 1790-1918. Edinburgh: University Press, 1978.

The first four of the above are (or will very shortly be) available at Labyrinth Books (on 112^th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam) and on reserve in Butler, along with two copies of the last two items. Unless otherwise indicated, all readings are/will be in Butler Reserves, where they are being scanned in.

Grading:

Midterm Exam: 20%

Final Exam: 30%

Final Paper: 30%

Discussion section attendance and participation: 15%

Quiz grade: 5%

21/23 January. Introduction: Who Lived In East Central Europe and Why Were They “Backward?”

Taylor. 7-32.

Ingrao. 1-22.

Daniel Chirot. “Causes and Consequences of Backwardness” and Robert Brenner. “Economic Backwardness in Eastern Europe in Light of Developments in the West.” In: Daniel Chirot, ed. The Origins of Backwardness in Eastern Europe. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1989. 1-52. Available online at: http://www.columbia.edu/cgi-bin/cul/resolve?AUM6935

Larry Wolff. Inventing Eastern Europe. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1994. 1-16. On reserve for another class, so use author’s name.

28/30 January. And You Thought the Nineteenth Century Was a Long Time Ago.

Skim Ingrao. 23-149.

Norman Davies. Heart of Europe. Oxford: OUP, 2001. 245-77.

Piotr Wandycz. The Lands of Partitioned Poland, 1795-1918. Seattle: Univ. of Washington, 1974. 2-23.

Adam Mickiewicz. Selection from “The Books of the Polish Nation.” Handout.

Set of statistical data and a map.

4/6 February. The Enlightenment and Napoleon Come to Town: The Habsburgs 1740-1815.

N.B. The quiz will be administered in discussion section this week.

Ingrao. 150-247.

“The Pragmatic Sanction” and “The Edict of Toleration of Joseph II.” In: Stephen Fischer-Galati, ed. Man, State and Society in East European History. NY: Praeger, 1970. 93-9. Handout.

11/13 February. Who Was This Metternich and Why Does He Get His Own Age?

Taylor. 33-56.

David Good. The Economic Rise of the Habsburg Empire, 1750-1918. Berkeley: UCP, 1984. 1-10, 38-73.

Paul Schroeder. “Did the Vienna Settlement Rest on a Balance of Power?” American Historical Review 97.3 (June, 1992) 683-706. Available online at: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8762%28199206%2997%3A3%3C683%3ADTVSRO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-8

Alan Sked. “Metternich and the Federalist Myth.” In: Crisis and Controversy. Essays in Honour of A. J. P. Taylor. London: Macmillan, 1976. 1-22.

Johann Hüttner. “Theatre Censorship in Metternich’s Vienna.” Theatre Quarterly 10/37 (Spring, 1980) 61-9.

Selections from Prince Richard Metternich, ed. Memoirs of Prince Metternich. NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1880-82. Handout.

18/20 February. To the Barricades!: The Revolutions of 1848.

Taylor. 57-82.

Heinz-Gerhard Haupt and Dieter Langewiesche. “The European Revolution of 1848: Its Political and Social Reforms, its Politics of Nationalism, and its Short- and Long-Term Consequences” and Jiří Kořalka “Revolutions in the Habsburg Monarchy.” In: Dieter Dowe, et al., eds. Europe in 1848: Revolution and Reform. NY: Berghahn Books, 2001. 1-23, 145-69.

Priscilla Robertson. “Student Government in Vienna.” Chapter XI of her Revolutions of 1848: A Social History. Princeton: PUP, 1952. 206-36.

“Hungarian Declaration of Independence, April 1849.” Available online at: http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~habsweb/sourcetexts/hungind.html

“Frantisek Palacky's Letter to the Committee of Fifty.” Handout.

Collection of Hungarian Revolutionary Poems. Handout.

25/27 February. Insurrections Defeated: East Central Europe Around Mid-Century.

Roger Price. “‘The Holy Struggle Against Anarchy’: The Development of Counter-revolution in 1848.” In: Dowe, ed. 25-54.

Alice Freifeld. “The Cult of March 15: Sustaining the Hungarian Myth of Revolution, 1849-1999.” In: Maria Bucur and Nancy Wingfield, eds. Staging the Past. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue UP, 2001. 255-85.

Piotr Wandycz. “The November Insurrection and Its Aftermath,” “The Decade of Hope and Despair, 1846-56” and “At the Crossroads – the January Insurrection.” Chapters Six through Eight of his The Lands of Partitioned Poland, 1795-1918. Seattle: UWP, 1974. 105-79.

4/6 March. From Absolutism to Dualism: The Habsburgs 1850-1867.

Taylor. 83-140.

Peter I. Hidas. “The Peasants of Hungary Between Revolution and Compromise.” East European Quarterly 19.2 (June 1985) 191-200.

Herman Freudenberger. “An Experiment in Historical Causation: The Compromise of 1867.” In: Solomon Wank, et al., eds. The Mirror of History. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 1988. 51-67.

Alan Sked. The Decline and Fall of the Habsburg Empire, 1815-1918. NY: Dorset Press, 1989. 187-97.

Count von Beust. “Memoirs of the Ausgleich, 1867.” Handout.

11/13 March. OK, I Give, We Will Talk About Nationalism.

N.B. Midterm is 11 March.

Geoff Eley and Ronald Grigor Suny. “Introduction: From the Moment of Social History to the Work of Cultural Representation.” In: Geoff Eley and Ronald Grigor Suny, eds. Becoming National: A Reader. Oxford: OUP, 1996. 3-37.

Jeremy King. “The Nationalization of East Central Europe: Ethnicism, Ethnicity and Beyond.” In: Bucur and Wingfield, eds. Staging the Past. 112-52.

18/20 March. Spring Break. Come to class if you want to, but I won’t be here.

25/27 March. Should We Talk About the Government?: Cisleithenian Politics and Society, 1867-1897.

Taylor. 141-84.

Zdenek Kárník. “Attempts to achieve a German-Czech Ausgleich in Habsburg Austria and the consequences of its failure.” In: Uri Ra’anan, et al., eds. State and nation in multi-ethnic societies. Manchester/NY: Manchester UP, 1991. 81-97.

Pieter Judson. “From Liberalism to Nationalism: Inventing a German Community, 1880-1885.” Chapter Seven of his Exclusive Revolutionaries. Ann Arbor: U. of Michigan Press, 1994. 193-221.

Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin. “Habsburg Vienna: City of Paradoxes.” Chapter Two of their Wittgenstein’s Vienna. NY: Simon and Schuster, 1973. 33-66.

1/3 April. Should We Talk About the Government II: Transleithenian Politics and Society, 1867-1900.

Taylor. 185-95.

Tibor Frank. “Hungary and the Dual Monarchy, 1867-1890” and the first ten pages of Géza Jeszensky. “Hungary Through World War I and the End of the Dual Monarchy.” In: Peter Sugar, et al., eds. A History of Hungary. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1990.” 252-77.

Mirjana Gross. “The Character of Croatian Autonomy in the First Decade after the Hungarian-Croatian Compromise of 1868.” In: Wank, et al., eds. The Mirror of History. 275-94.

John Lukacs. “The City” and selections from “The People.” Chapters Two and Three of his Budapest 1900. NY: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988. 29-66, 76-83, 99-107.

8/10 April. The Much Renowned Austro-Hungarian Fin-de-Siècle (and Domestic Politics before 1914).

Taylor. 196-214.

Carl Schorske. “Politics in a New Key: An Austrian Trio.” Chapter Three of his Fin-de-Siècle Vienna. NY: Vintage, 1981. 116-81.

Péter Hanák. “The Garden and the Workshop: Reflections on Fin-de-Siecle Culture in Vienna and Budapest.” Chapter Three of his The Garden and The Workshop. Princeton: PUP, 1998.63-97.

15-17 April. The Other Two Partitions: German and Russian Poland before World War One.

N.B. There will be no class on 15 April, as I will be in a Prague prison. Also note that the readings for this and the subsequent weeks are shorter than in the past. This is because a) you need to be working on your papers and b) because I expect you also to be reading The Radetzky March for discussion the final week of classes.

Norman Davies. “Preussen.” Chapter Three of Volume Two of his God’s Playground. NY: Columbia UP, 1984. 112-38.

Piotr Wandycz. “Russian Poland and the Industrial Revolution,” selections from “The Rise of Mass Movements” and “From Revolution to World War.” Chapters Ten, Fourteen and Fifteen of his Lands of Partitioned Poland. 193-213, 288-303 and 308-30.

22/24 April. A Blurry Fast Run Through Nineteenth-Century Balkan History, and The Road to World War One.

Taylor. 214-32.

Robert Bideleux and Ian Jeffries. “The Decay of the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of Balkan ‘national’ states.” Chapter Four of their A History of Eastern Europe: Crisis and Change. London: Routledge, 1998. 97-108.

Samuel Williamson. “Austria-Hungary and the International System: Great Power or Doomed Anachronism?” and “The Domestic Context of Habsburg Foreign Policy.” Chapters One and Two of His Austria-Hungary and the Origins of the First World War. London: Macmillan, 1991. 3-33. On reserve under another professor’s name, so use the author’s name.

29 April and 1 May. World War One and the End of the Habsburg Empire.

N.B. Final papers are due 29 April.

Taylor. 233-51.

Joseph Roth. The Radetzky March. Woodstock/NY: Overlook Press, 2002.

Mark Cornwall. “Morale and patriotism in the Austro-Hungarian Army, 1914-1918.” In: John Horne, ed. State, society and mobilization in Europe during the First World War. Cambridge: CUP, 1997. 173-91.

Gunther Rothenberg. “The Habsburg Army in the First World War: 1914-1918.” In: Robert A. Kann, et al., eds. The Habsburg Empire in World War I. Boulder: East European Quarterly, 1977. 73-86.

Stefan Zweig. “The First Hours of the War of 1914.” Chapter Nine of his autobiography, The World of Yesterday. Lincoln: U. of Nebraska, 1964. 214-37. Appended to it is the text of the “Hasslied,” to which Zweig refers.

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