Product Description

A history of the Habsburg monarchy from the end of the Holy Roman Empire to the monarchy's dissolution in 1918. The book offers an insight into the problems inherent in the attempt to give peace, stability and common loyalty to a hetergeneous population.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24928 in Books
• Published on: 1990-09-27
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

About the Author
A.J.P. Taylor (1906-1990) was one of the most controversial historians of the twentieth century. He served as a lecturer at the Universities of Manchester, Oxford, and London.

Customer Reviews

Of great educational value, somewhat turgid
Like AJP Taylor's other books written in the 40/50s, this is an immensely intelligent and investigated piece of work yet difficult to read. Some of the information is shocking, and gives great perspective to subsequent events. For example, to question what the Sudeten Germans were doing before 1918, why Trieste was considered Italian (Italian was a naval language of the earlier period), or similiarly, to examine the real racial history of balkans. Most shocking of all perhaps, the observation that German was almost a "class" in central europe. So, an excellent book which really enlightens the reader. However, I found it difficult to read in sessions of more than thirty pages, mostly because of the blow-by-blow account (same as Struggle for Mastery in Europe) that predates his improved writing style of the 60s, such as Origins of the Second World War. Still, I am immensely positive about the book.

Perceptive, balanced and amusing
Mr Taylor compared the Habsburg monarchy to the plaster cast around a broken limb, in that while it sustained Eastern Europe, it had to be shattered to bring freedom. Now that the region has broken free of the Communist cast, his book provides an excellent study of the region and its place in the Balance of Power.

The book punctures many myths, not least the 'inevitabilist' view, that Austria was destined to collapse no matter what. The epilogue dealing with the postwar problems of the replacement multinationals, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, is particularly prescient, forecasting the difficulties both of these states would face. There is a very slight bias in favour of the Czechs and Serbs, but the overall picture is fair and balanced. I cannot recommend it too highly.

Dry but brilliantly analytical
This book, first published in the late 1940s, traces the policy of the Austrian emperor and his ministers. It is a brilliantly analytical study of the empire's weaknesses and the problems of holding together and governing a collection of lands and peoples with nothing in common beyond having been acquired at some point in history by the Habsburg dynasty. The book is not, and doesn't attempt to be, a general history of Austria-Hungary in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Tension builds as the end approaches and Taylor's epilogue, summarising events in Central Europe after 1918, foretells in an almost uncanny way events since the collapse of the Soviet Union.