Even though science strives to transcend national differences, scientists in the multi-national, multi-lingual, multi-ethnic Habsburg Empire could hardly avoid being caught up in a web of competing ethnic, national, and imperial interests. Where should their identities and loyalties lie and where should they seek support for their work? At the level of the empire as a whole? One of its component kingdoms or principalities? Other institutions? What audience should they write for, and in what language? Or, from (...) the point of view of their patrons, how could science be used to promote unity and develop culture and identity? This fine essay collection on The Nationalization of Scientific Knowledge in the Habsburg Empire, 1848–1918 explores a variety of solutions with which scientists and scientific institutions experimented.The editors’ introduction, by Mitchell Ash and Jan Surman, is most concerned with the historiography of nationalism, nation formation, center–periphery relations, and po .. (shrink)

This chapter relates post-1918 Italy to the collapse of the Habsburg Empire and the ascent of the successor states, and analyses, from the Trieste’s vantage point, fascist projects, practices and networks of ‘empire’ in the Adriatic Sea, in Mitteleuropa and in the Balkans between 1918 and 1938. It focuses on three connected aspects. Firstly, the northern Adriatic was the first setting of the ascent of squadrismo, a model of violent action against ‘enemies within’ then replicated elsewhere. Secondly, (...) Italian nationalism and imperialism aimed to reconfigure the post-Habsburg economic space and to reconnect the Adriatic with Central and Balkan Europe. Thirdly, Italian nationalist (then Fascist) élites from Trieste played a critical role, by boosting processes of empire-building and defending Austria vis-à-vis the prospects of Anschluss. In sum, the Habsburg legacies kept on shaping the dynamics of Italianization and fascistization in northern Adriatic and on feeding the search for Italy’s informal empire in Central and Southeastern Europe. (shrink)

This study offers an overview of ‘the nationalities question’ in the Habsburg Empire, with special focus on its treatment by the Austrian social democrat, Otto Bauer, and the Hungarian ‘radical’ or ‘liberal socialist’, Oszkár Jászi. Analysing and comparing the writings of these intellectuals published between 1907 and 1918, this article shows how the contrasting legal and political contexts in Austria (Cisleithenia) and in Hungary (Transleithenia) led these authors to create contrasting alternative solutions to the problems posed by the (...) multi-ethnic composition of the Habsburg Empire. It is argued that these thinkers’ positions were fundamentally defined by Austria’s status as a ‘nationalities state’, Hungary’s identity as a nation-state, and the authors’ own affiliations with the dominant nationalities within their respective states. The article underscores the important temporal component at work in their respective pre-1918 assessments of the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary and its effect on their stances on the reign of the Habsburgs. Whereas Bauer saw the Hungarian king and Austrian emperor Franz Joseph as a possible strong ally for the implementation of his ideas, Jászi viewed the acts of the Habsburg dynasty as alien to Hungarian interests and therefore as a source of potential danger. (shrink)

Vladimir Putin’s legitimation of Russia’s brutal war of aggression against Ukraine raises questions about traditional understandings of nation and empire. Should we contrast the two in terms of values and practices? In this case, Putin uses both nationalist and Imperialist rhetoric to justify his actions. My essay questions how we understand nation and empire using the example of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. How did this empire develop laws, institutions and administrative practices to manage conflicts and claims around (...) language use and nationalism? How did Austria’s governments rule a multi-lingual, multi-confessional society effectively, without resorting to brutal policies of nationalization? When nationalist conflicts arose in different settings, how and why did they originate? I conclude that in European terms, Imperial Austria and even nationalist Hungary apparently managed daily-life issues around diverse language use and religious practice far more humanely and effectively than did the successor nation states after 1918. (shrink)

This paper introduces a collection of essays exploring different aspects of the relationship between medical knowledge and administration in the Habsburg Monarchy. The collection brings together a range of perspectives upon the confrontation between programmes for centralised medical bureaucracy emanating from Vienna, and their implementation in a variety of different cultural, linguistic, social and practical circumstances. Such confrontations raise issues about the nature and limits of enlightened universalism, the relationship between knowledge and government in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, (...) and the similarities between the processes of centralisation and the issues addressed by historians of empire. The case of Gerard van Swieten, Catholic Dutch medical practitioner appointed as the chief physician to the Habsburg Imperial family, is used to illustrate some of the main issues involved. (shrink)

Historians are showing increasing interest in scientific internationalism, the notion that science transcends national differences and hence advances peace and cooperation. This notion became particularly popular in the decades around 1900, the heyday of the universal expositions and the so-called first era of globalization. In this article I argue that in order to properly historicize scientific internationalism, it is imperative to understand how actors imagined science to have pacifist effects, and to relate their technoscientific to their geopolitical imaginaries. To illustrate (...) this, I analyze the 1911 novel Der Menschheit Hochgedanken (translated as When Thoughts Will Soar) by the famous Austrian pacifist Baroness Bertha von Suttner. It tells the story of a scientific conference whose participants, by the sheer brilliance of their thought, ward off war and preserve world peace. Relating the novel to von Suttner’s own life experiences, I situate her internationalism in the social texture and international relations of the late Habsburg Empire. It appears that Von Suttner mobilized notions of the pacific effects of science with an eye to preserving both the European system of states and the position of the aristocracy. (shrink)

Nationalism is often singled out as the powerful force that brought about the collapse of the last great land empires of the 19th and early 20th centuries. We offer a different picture: nationalism was weak before 1914, with war being caused by the fears of the great powers rather than pressures from below; crucially war was less an opportunity for pre-existing nationalists to seize than a maelstrom that created new identities.

Ukrainian science and its terminology in the nineteenth century experienced a number of twists and turns. Divided between two empires, it lacked institutions, scholars pursuing it, and a unified literary language. One could even say that until the late nineteenth century there was a possibility for two communities with two literary languages to emerge – Ruthenian (Habsburg Empire) and Ukrainian (Russian Empire). Eventually, both communities and languages merged. This article tracks the meanderings of this process, arguing that (...) scholarly publications played a crucial role in shaping the standard for the scientific language. The article follows the biography of the naturalist Ivan Verhrats’kyi (1846–1919), the author of the first dictionaries of naturalist terminology in Ruthenian in 1860, a translator and author of textbooks, and the head of the Mathematical–Naturalist–Medical Section of the Shevchenko Society in L’viv. He thus shaped many Ruthenian, and then Ruthenian–Ukrainian scholarly projects. Initially successful with his approach to making the Ruthenian scientific language vernacular, in the 1890s his approach was losing ground to the internationalization of vocabulary and to the growing pressure toward the unification of Ruthenian and Ukrainian. Finally, in the beginning of the twentieth century, Verhrats’kyi became marginalized within the Ukrainian scholarly community. By discussing the history of a minority language within imperial structures, I argue that the media in which scholarly work was published requires special attention. In the Ruthenin–Ukrainian case, they determined the standard for scientific language. Lacking professional journals, Ruthenian scholars published in the 1860s–late 1880s in popular newspapers and in school textbooks, requiring them to use a language that was near to the spoken tongue of the Habsburg province. Once the political situation changed, favoring Ruthenian–Ukrainian unification, and scholarly journals appeared and transgressed the imperial boundary, the favored language had to be transimperial, ousting out the vernacular. (shrink)

In 1878, as a consequence of an international Balkan summit in Berlin, Austria–Hungary was given permission to occupy the troubled Ottoman provinces Bosnia and Hercegovina. A gory invasion campaign ensued, followed by four decades of civil administration. Finally, the territories were annexated by the Habsburg Monarchy in 1908 as an appendix of sorts, which almost caused the premature outbreak of a great war in Europe. This article will sketch the background for this last – and lethal – expansion of (...) the empire and pursue the research questions of (a) whether this constitutes a case of colonialism within Europe and (b) what its repercussions were, critically challenging the alleged ‘civilising mission’ that would legitimise the whole undertaking. (shrink)

The transition from empire to nation-state poses challenges in managing religious and ethnic pluralism. Empires, characterized by hierarchical structures and diversity, contrast with nation-states, which aim for uniformity and unity. As empires modernize administratively, they grapple with different approaches to pluralism. While Habsburgs were more in favor of a federal plurality, the Romanovs pushed for centralization and assimilation. Throughout the nineteenth century, the Ottomans vacillated between these two alternative paths. This vacillation is most evident in their approach to millet (...) system which simultaneously followed the contradictory policies of undermining millet boundaries in order to promote a sense of unity across the multi-faith society and policies of promoting and safeguarding the privileges and group-specific rights of non-Muslim communities. Ottoman nationalism eventually shifted towards a homogenizing model, akin to the Romanov approach, leading to the exclusion of religious minorities. This process of homogenization continued in the nationalist policies of modern Turkey and resulted in the secular Turkish Republic being less tolerant towards non-Muslims than the Islamic Ottoman Empire. (shrink)

This text responds to the review forum on The Life and Death of States featuring Clara Maier, Kathryn Ciancia, Charles Maier, and Nathaniel Berman. It considers the place of Central Europe and the Habsburg Empire in our geographies of the modern world. Rather than hopelessly hamstrung by backwardness, the empire and its subjects were, in Clara Maier’s words, “simply struggling more insistently than complacent Westerners with the perplexities of the modern condition.” The text also considers questions of (...) the post-colonial and the post-imperial, literary genre, and the relationship between conceptual clarity and political legitimacy. (shrink)

During the 1840s, physicians from the Habsburg Empire played a decisive role in the reform of medical structures in the Ottoman Empire. This paper discusses different aspects of this scientific and cultural encounter. It emphasizes the importance of Austrian health care structures as a model for the work of these physicians in the Ottoman Empire and studies the role of the medical school ran by the Austrians as a means of representing, on the one hand, the (...) reformatory efforts of the Ottoman Empire and, on the other hand, the motivations of the Habsburg monarchy for an involvement in Ottoman health care affairs, strongly bound up with its own quarantine politics towards the Ottoman Empire. (shrink)

The article introduces a special section about history of science in Central and Eastern Europe before and after the fall of Communism, and sketches a conceptual framework within which the three papers in the section can be understood together. This introduction provides information about the workshop from which the papers were recruited, and continues with more general considerations on the nationalization of scientific knowledge in the territories of the Habsburg empire and its successor states. In the second half (...) of the introduction, themes addressed by all three papers in the special section are named and discussed briefly. (shrink)

SummaryThis essay aims to study the impact made by Véron de Forbonnais's Elémens du commerce on the development of economic thought in the German Empire. Starting from the 1755 translation of the Elémens, construed here as an aspect of the gemeinnützig-oekonomische Aufklärung, it will examine the reception of the work in cultural and political terms. The analysis will thus focus first on the German universities, where a renewed teaching of Polizei transposed Forbonnais's theoretical ideas into a new ‘science of (...) the state’ centred on economic and commercial mechanisms. Secondly, the political reading of the Elémens during the Seven Years’ War and in the years of Kaunitz's government in Vienna will be taken into consideration. The Journal de commerce published in Brussels will serve as a pathway towards understanding the complex cultural transfer between France and the Empire that Forbonnais's work facilitated: the Elémens were in fact variously used as the manifesto of a new political and economic alliance between the French Crown and the court of Vienna and as theoretical support of Habsburg politics which, in the second half of Maria Theresa's reign, were committed to the principles of free trade and anti-corporatism. (shrink)

Spreading the universal monarchy myth in the early 16th century was closely linked to the magnitude of the territories controlled by Charles V. For the imperial chancellor Mercurino Gattinara, universal and messianic ideas, which were integrated into the symbolism of the Empire, were to legitimate a policy that aimed at giving a more rational structure to Charles’ territories and at securing a prominent influence for the Habsburg family in the whole of Europe. Gattinara imagined a kind of supranational (...) monarchy, organised in accordance with the mythical model of the Roman Empire, which would be able to guarantee peace under the aegis of Christianity. (shrink)

There are two Habsburg empires in our minds: One – that of Stefan Zweig and Joseph Roth – evokes melancholy and a sense of loss, a yearning not for simpler but perhaps more colourful, less exacting...

On November 11 and 12, 2011, a symposium held at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill honored John M. Headley, Emeritus Professor of History. The organizers, Professor MelissaBullard—Headley’s colleague in the department of history at that university—along with ProfessorsPaul Grendler (University of Toronto) and James Weiss (Boston College), as well as Nancy GraySchoonmaker, coordinator of the Program in Medieval and Early Modern Studies—assembled presenters, respondents, and dozens of other participants from Western Europe and North America to celebrate the (...) career of their prolific, versatile, and influential colleague whose publications challenged and often changed the ways scholars think about Martin Luther, Thomas More, the Habsburg empire,early modern Catholicism, globalization, and multiculturalism.This special issue contains the major papers delivered at the symposium, revised to take account of colleagues’ suggestions at the conference and thereafter.^John O’Malley studies the censorship ofsacred art with special reference to Michelangelo’s famed “Last Judgment” and the Council of Trent.John Martin sifts Montaigne’s skepticism about contemporaneous strategies for self-disclosure andself-discipline. Stressing the significance of grammar, Constantin Fasolt helps us recapture theRenaissance’s and the early modern religious reformations’ disagreements with antiquity. RonaldWitt’s reappraisal of humanist historiography probes Petrarch’s perspectives on ancient Rome. JohnMcManamon includes tales of theft and market manipulation in his study of the early moderncollection and circulation of books and manuscripts, the commodification of study. To “nuance” John Headley’s conclusions about “the Europeanization of the world,” Jerry Bentley repossesses the influence of other than European societies on several European theorists of human rights.^Kate Lowe’s remarks on the reconstruction of race in the Renaissance explores the effects of a critical mistranslation on what being black was taken to mean by Europeans. David Gilmartin introduces readers to the shape of democracy in nineteenth- and twentieth-century India, as well as to the understandings of popular sovereignty that affected elections, suggesting strides that scholars might take “toward a worldwide history of voting”.The remarkable range of these contributions comes close to reflecting the range of ProfessorHeadley’s interests and achievements, which James M. Weiss maps in his tribute, identifying“unifying themes” in Headley’s work. (shrink)

How can people of diverse religious, ethnic, and linguistic allegiances and identities live together without committing violence, inflicting suffering, or oppressing each other? In this volume, contributors explore the limits of toleration and suggest we think beyond them to mutual respect. Salman Rushdie reflects on the once tolerant Sufi-Hindu culture of Kashmir. Ira Katznelson follows with an intellectual history of toleration as a layered institution in the West. Charles Taylor advances a new approach to secularism in our multicultural world, and (...) Akeel Bilgrami responds by offering context and caution to that approach. Nadia Urbinati explores why Cicero's humanist ideal of Concord was not used in response to religious discord. The volume concludes with a refutation of the claim that toleration was invented in the West. Rajeev Bhargava writes on Asoka's India, and Karen Barkey explores toleration within the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires. Sudipta Kaviraj examines accommodations and conflicts in India, and Alfred Stepan highlights contributions to toleration and multiple democratic secularisms in such Muslim-majority countries as Indonesia and Senegal. (shrink)

Notwithstanding the recent prominence of the term “problem” in the humanities, few scholars have analysed its history. This essay tries to partially fill that lack, principally covering the period from late modernity through to the 1960s, in order to understand the role that the term plays in “Continental” philosophy, with special emphasis on the writings of Gilles Deleuze. This analysis focuses on the strategies employed by different agents to define “philosophical” problems, or “philosophical” ways of posing problems. The term, originally (...) used in antiquity by knowledge-producers located in an autonomous position, implied an idea of cognition oscillating between production and reproduction. Once the term escaped the context of geometry, it was involved in symbolic struggles that radicalized during modernity. The Kantians placed “philosophy” in a supposedly neutral position of science treating “the problem of all the problems” and invented a new genre, the “history of philosophy,” focusing on the analysis of “philosophical problems.” This approach had great institutional success in the German and French universities and clashed, during the twentieth century, with another usage of philosophy as a practice of “dissolution of problems,” developed in the United Kingdom and the Austro-Habsburg Empire. (shrink)

The paper seeks to indicate ways in which the crude distinction between Anglo-Saxon and Continental philosophy may have to be amended in light of recent developments in Eastern Europe. As is well known, the philosophy of science is to no small part a product of the universities of the Habsburg Empire (in Vienna, Prague, Lemberg/Lwow, etc.). Logic, too, has played a more significant role in Eastern Europe (not least in Poland) than in the philosophical cultures of Germany or (...) France. For these and other reasons, a shift in the center of gravity of Continental philosophy is currently being realized, as younger Eastern European philosophers in newly liberalized institutions begin to return to their roots in their native pre-Communist intellectual traditions. (shrink)

Gellner is mostly known for his theory of nationalism, which he saw as antithetical to the principle of the multinational, hierarchical, empire. But like his LSE colleague Elie Kedourie, Gellner was fascinated by empire. In his last, posthumously published work, Language and Solitude, Gellner returned to the region of his childhood, the former Habsburg Empire, to explore its impact on the work of Malinowski and Wittgenstein. This essay will reflect on Gellner’s thoughts about empire, and (...) the way in which he assessed their necessary disappearance – as he thought – in the modern world. (shrink)

The present essay seeks, by way of the Austrian example, to make a contribution to what might be called the philosophy of the supranational state. More specifically, we shall attempt to use certain ideas on the philosophy of Gestalten as a basis for understanding some aspects of that political and cultural phenomenon which was variously called the Austrian Empire, the Habsburg Empire, the Danube Monarchy or Kakanien.

This paper investigates the reception of a set of Florentine anatomical wax models on display at the medico-surgical academy Josephinum in late-eighteenth-century Vienna. Celebrated in Florence as tools of public enlightenment, in the Habsburg capital the models were criticised by physicians, who regarded the Josephinum and its surgeons as a threat to their medical authority. The controversy surrounding these models from the empire’s periphery temporarily destabilised the relationship between surgeons and physicians in the Austrian capital. The debate on (...) the utility of the Tuscan anatomical models in Vienna highlights the fact that the centre of the Habsburg empire was by no means medically homogeneous, and that the implementation of reforms could be as difficult to achieve in the capital as in the provinces. (shrink)

Although their contributions to the history of economic thought and their scholarly reputations are firmly established, relatively little is known about the relationship between Carl Menger, founder of the Austrian School of economics, and his son, Karl Menger, the mathematician, geometer, logician, and philosopher of science, whose famous Mathematical Colloquium at the University of Vienna was central to the early literature on the existence of general equilibrium and the concomitant development of mathematical economics. The present paper begins to fill this (...) gap. Karl Menger’s diaries, held in the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Duke University, offer insight into the intimate relationships within the Menger clan, Karl’s work and study habits, and the development of his uncommonly broad intellect, as well as on life in a vanquished city, Vienna, in the immediate wake of the humiliating defeat of the First World War and the disintegration of the Habsburg Empire. (shrink)

The paper examines the very beginnings of Bible Mission in Hungary within the Habsburg Empire in the first part of the nineteenth century. It divides the first thirty years into two major epochs: the one before Gottlieb August Wimmer, Lutheran pastor of Felsőlövő (Oberschützen) and agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS) and the one characterized by his work until the revolution of 1848. In the paper, I summarize the main obstacles of Bible Mission both political (...) and religious as well as the main achievements and formations of policies and practices that still define Bible Mission of the Bible Societies in all around the world. The work of BFBS in Hungary in this period was also intertwined with the formative period of the Budapest Scottish Mission, a topic that I also touch in the paper. (shrink)

Between 1724 and 1760, in the frontier area of the Habsburg empire waves of a hitherto unknown epidemic disease emerged: vampirism. In remote villages of southeastern Europe, cases of unusual deaths were reported. Corpses did not decay and, according to the villagers, corporeal ghosts were haunting their relatives and depriving them of their vital force. Death occurred by no later than three to four days. The colonial administration, alarmed by the threat of an epidemic illness, dispatched military officers (...) and physicians to examine the occurrences. Soon several reports and newspaper articles circulated and made the untimely resurrection of the dead known to the perplexed public, Europe-wide. “Vampyrus Serviensis”, the Serbian vampire, became an intensively discussed phenomenon within academe, and thereby gained factual standing. My paper depicts the geopolitical context of the vampire’s origin within the Habsburg states. Secondly, it outlines the epistemological difficulties faced by observing physicians in the field. Thirdly, it delineates the scholarly debate on the apparent oxymoron of the living dead in the era of enlightened reason. Fourthly, the early history of vampirism shows that ghosts and encounters with the undead are not superstitious relics of a pre-modern past, or the Enlightenment’s other, but intimate companions of Western modernity. (shrink)

Anatomical exhibitions, online atlases and televised dissections have recently attracted much attention and raised questions concerning the status of and the authority over the human body, the purpose of anatomical education within and outside medical schools and the methods of teaching in the digital age. I propose that for understanding the current public views of anatomy, we need to gain insight into their historical development. This article focuses on anatomies accessible to non-medical audiences in the capital of the Habsburg (...) Empire, Vienna, at the time when the city was the seat of a world-leading medical school. Anatomy at the University of Vienna was famous for its research, instruction and the abundant provision with dissectible corpses. Public anatomies were equally rich and ranged from exhibitions at the Präuscher’s Panoptikon und Anatomisches Museum , established in 1871 in the Prater amusement park, lectures on human and comparative anatomy by the university professor Carl Bernhard Brühl (1863–1890), to displays of anatomical objects at the World Exhibition in 1873. I finish by discussing a collection of letters written by the prospective ‘cadaver donors’, offering an insight into the ways in which medical encounters and anatomical knowledge informed the working-class views of their bodies. By looking at the kinds of anatomy in circulation, as well as at the participants in these exchanges, I want to illuminate the relationship between academic and public anatomies, as well as to reveal the purposes to which public anatomy served. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 461 Whitehead moved beyond classical accounts of "points" and "instants" toward a relativistic understanding of space/time. Lowe is cautious about reading too much of the later thinking into the pre-191o writings. Whitehead's interest in philosophy was satisfied mainly through his discussions with fellow members of the Cambridge Apostles who met regularly to discuss issues of a general nature. Among the Apostles McTaggart stands out as having had (...) the most important influence on Whitehead's philosophical development. McTaggart 's staunch neo-Hegelianism served as a stimulus to Whitehead but he retained an independent outlook throughout. Readers of Process and Reality will be interested in Lowe's treatment of Whitehead's flirtation with Roman Catholicism and his subsequent agnosticism during the last decade of the nineteenth century. By 19~5 he had regained his theism and found a place for it in his system. Much care is given to the collaboration with Russell on Principia Mathematica during the first decade of the new century. Lowe corrects the oft-held belief that Whitehead let Russell do most of the work on the text. By a careful study of the correspondence, Lowe shows that Whitehead continually guided the joint enterprise toward more detailed proofs and elaborations. Russell frequently remained content with truncated arguments for his fundamental logical principles. Whitehead demanded that each argument receive sufficient articulation so as to enhance the pedagogical value of the work. Russell's atomic pluralism, which insisted that all relations were external to their relata, never appealed to Whitehead. During the period of the Principia, Whitehead chose to ignore that aspect of Russell's perspective. One difficult dimension of this decade-long collaboration is Russell's alleged affair with Evelyn Whitehead. Lowe argues that this relationship was never consummated even though Evelyn was and remained one of the three great loves of Russell's life. Whitehead somehow managed to overlook what must have been an obvious threat to the integrity of his marriage. Lowe's brilliant and definitive account in this first volume of a two-volume work brings us to the Whiteheads' move from Cambridge to London. Difficulties with University officials and a need for larger horizons compelled Whitehead to emerge from the cozy atmosphere of Trinity College where he had spent thirty highly creative years working on the frontiers of mathematics and logic. The second volume will take us from the years in London to Whitehead's life at Harvard, and should, no doubt, be as rich and insightful as the first. ROBERT S. CORRINGTON The Pennsylvania State University Allan Janik. Essays on Wittgenstein and Weininger. Studien zur OsterreichischenPhilosophie, Band 9. Amsterdam: Rodopi B.V., 1985. Pp. 161. Paper, $18.95. In 1973, Allan Janik and Stephan Toulmin published Wittgenstein's Vienna in which they explored the intellectual atmosphere of the city in which Wittgenstein grew to intellectual maturity. Both Toulmin, who had been a student of Wittgenstein's at 46~ JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY ~5:3 JULY 1987 Cambridge, and Janik, who was interested in Wittgenstein and Schopenhauer, suspected that Wittgenstein might more accurately be seen as a Viennese intellectual dealing with the problems pervading the late Habsburg empire than simply as the successor of Frege and Russell who comes to dominate English and American philosophy. In the section on method in Wittgenstein's Vienna, Janik and Toulmin carefully avoided claiming that their picture of Wittgenstein and Vienna explained the Tractatus or the Philosophical Investigations, but they suggested that Wittgenstein is more intelligible as both a man and a thinker when viewed against his complete historical context, rather than when he is seen solely as a misfit in Cambridge in his last years. Janik has continued exploring themes connected with pre-World War I Austrian philosophy and has emphasized the connection between thinkers in this milieu with the new image of Wittgenstein which is emerging from the wealth of Wittgensteiniana now appearing. The present volume is a group of non-consecutive essays written from 1966 to 1984 in which Janik argues in favor of recognizing Austrian philosophy as something to be understood in terms of the special circumstances of the late Hapsburg empire and its demise. One of its... (shrink)

Behind only that of Bronislaw Malinowski, the influence of the Central European polymaths Ernest Gellner and Karl Polanyi on socio-cultural anthropology in the 20th century was profound. Gellner and Polanyi also influenced much wider swathes of scholarship. They belong to different generations and were raised in quite different settings in Prague and Budapest respectively. What these thinkers have in common is a philosophy of history which posits the industrial revolution in northwest Europe as a radical rupture in Weltgeschichte. Polanyi’s ‘great (...) transformation’, with its focus on the economy, corresponds to Gellner’s metaphor of the ‘big ditch’ and focus on a new polity. The cultural homogenization of the nation-state and the disembedding of the economy from society in the era of free trade are two sides of the same coin. This paper argues that these complementary models derive to a considerable degree from the scholars’ background on the margins of industrializing Europe, in the ruins of the Habsburg Empire. (shrink)

The theses exposed by Alexius Meinong in two newspaper articles in 1873 are taken as the paradigm of a feeling that was common to young Austrian intelligentsia. Meinong upholds a conception of life as struggle and of history as a series of struggles among nations. In his view, the defence of the interests of a people is absolute and generates conflicts among nations that will increasingly dominate future scenarios. The concept of nation has an identification function inward and one of (...) dissociation outward. This discourse is contextualised within the framework of the various student corporations of the University of Vienna, where the new ruling class was forming which, despite different political ideas, was united by nationalism. Finally, the paper analyses the opposing views of Eric J. Hobsbawm and Anthony D. Smith on the idea of nation and suggests some similarities between the Habsburg Empire and the European Union. (shrink)

The thesis according to which technologies of communication have implications not just for the form, but also for the content and indeed for the overall logic of what is being communicated rests on a set of general philosophical assumptions as regards the relation between thought and its medium. The paper shows that formulating these assumptions, and elaborating them, has been a characteristic concern of Austro‐Hungarian philosophy; that between the philosophers who played a role in the relevant endeavours there obtained significant, (...) sometimes mutual, influences; and that Austro‐Hungarian realities ‐ basically, the phenomenon of disturbed communication within the Habsburg Empire ‐ had a marked effect on their thought. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Naharaim Jahrgang: 10 Heft: 2 Seiten: 195-213.

After the unification process of 1918, in the former Hungarian State schools Romanian language was introduced as a teaching language. Consequently, the Hungarian as a teaching language was solely pre- served in the vocational schools. The governments showed little understanding toward the minorities’ vocational schools, aiming rather at the unification of the scholar system. The Roman Catholic Church sustained and administrated hundreds of elementary and secondary schools, many of them having a multi-secular history. Based on the documents from the churches’ (...) archives, this study presents the efforts of the Roman Catholic Church to preserve and maintain all these schools. (shrink)

Some central issues of fin-de-siècle Hungarian philosophy and intellectual tradition can be retrieved from the writings of József Eötvös and his mid-nineteenth century contemporaries. An ambiguous attitude towards metaphysics, emphasis on sociological issues as well as a regional perspective are apparent in his texts prior to the emergence of the great fin-de-siècle generation of Hungarian intellectuals. They survived the Habsburg Empire thanks to the post-Monarchical literary tradition and Péter Esterházy’s works; they provided an adequate vocabulary for the Central (...) European experience following the Soviet Era. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article examines attitudes towards the Austrian state among British Liberals, in the years between the European revolutions of 1848 and the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867. Much commentary in this period treated Austria as an antagonistic, autocratic menace, as had become conventional since Waterloo. But the 1850s and 1860s also saw the growth of a more substantial interest in the architecture of the Habsburg monarchy. Its transition from despotism to constitutionalism was used to affirm some of the basic (...) claims of mid-Victorian Liberalism, and even to suggest solutions to broader problems in modern politics. At a time when Ireland and the overseas empire were posing serious political difficulties, moreover, British writers also began to find analogies between the British and Austrian imperial projects. This article explores how Liberal thinkers and commentators responded to two decades of rapid, complex, and sometimes contradictory changes in the shape of the Austrian state. It deals both with the periodical press, and with the more developed analyses outlined by the historian Lord Acton and the political philosopher John Stuart Mill. (shrink)

At the beginning of the 16 th century, Transylvania had been an officially Catholic land belonging to the Kingdom of Hungary and led by an elite consisting of three nations, the Hungarian nobles (increasingly referred to as the Hungarian nation), the Saxons and the Szeklers. However, the general population, deprived of any political power, consisted of Orthodox Romanians. In other words, in Transylvania the Latin West met the Byzantine Orient. The old Hungary fell apart between 1526 and 1541, its central (...) regions taken by the Ottoman Empire, the west and the north by the Habsburgs, while the eastern part, Transylvania, became an autonomous principality under Ottoman suzerainty. At the same time, various Protestant trends made their presence felt among the leading nations, eventually crystallizing in the form of Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Unitarianism. In the space of three decades (1540–1570) these rival denominations gained legal status and joined Catholicism as the official religions of the country. Catholicism became a marginal denomination, deprived of assets and of its hierarchy. Under Protestant pressure, the Orthodox Romanians were still kept away from power. The last three decades of the century saw some attempts at Counterreformation and at a Catholic Reformation, at a time when the principality was once again led by a Catholic dynasty. In this context, new Catholic cultural (educational) models, supported by the Jesuits, were implemented in the existing Protestant and Orthodox context, in an often desperate attempt to reverse or at least balance the situation. In this respect, the Jesuit College of Cluj (today Cluj-Napoca, Romania), established in 1581, remains a most memorable episode, whose consequences can still be seen today. By resorting to education and learning, the college was meant to influence and alter the surrounding Protestant and Orthodox world. In fact, it became an interesting facet of the multicultural, multiethnic and multiconfessional character of Transylvania, a miniature Europe inhabited by Latin, Germanic, Finno-Ugrian, Slavic peoples etc., by Byzantines, Catholics and Protestants, by rightful citizens and “tolerated” inhabitants, by masters and servants, by privileged categories and by groups merely “allowed to exist”. The troubled events of those years have left us with a model of cohabitation based on both cooperation and rivalry that truly deserves consideration. (shrink)

_A revisionist account of Zionist history, challenging the inevitability of a one-state solution, from a bold, path-breaking young scholar_ The Jewish nation-state has often been thought of as Zionism’s end goal. In this bracing history of the idea of the Jewish state in modern Zionism, from its beginnings in the late nineteenth century until the establishment of the state of Israel, Dmitry Shumsky challenges this deeply rooted assumption. In doing so, he complicates the narrative of the Zionist quest for full (...) sovereignty, provocatively showing how and why the leaders of the prestate Zionist movement imagined, articulated, and promoted theories of self-determination in Palestine either as part of a multinational Ottoman state, or in the framework of multinational democracy. In particular, Shumsky focuses on the writings and policies of five key Zionist leaders from the Habsburg and Russian empires in central and eastern Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—Leon Pinsker, Theodor Herzl, Ahad Ha’am, Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky, and David Ben-Gurion—to offer a very pointed critique of Zionist historiography. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.1 (2002) 129-149 [Access article in PDF] Lord Acton and "the Insanity of Nationality" Timothy Lang "I hope I need not warn you against Montalembert's declamation about Poland—He has no idea of the insanity of nationality...." Acton to Richard Simpson, 25 September 1861 The sixty-year period that culminated in the First World War witnessed a momentous transformation in the European state system. Italian (...) and German unification, the expulsion of the Ottomans from southeastern Europe, the destruction of the three remaining empires—the Austrian, German, and Russian—as casualties of the war, their replacement by a band of successor states stretching from the Baltic to the Balkans: these developments completely altered the face of Europe, as dynastic states gave way to nation-states. Looking back on this transformation once the war was over, many Europeans believed the decision to rebuild their continent on the basis of nation-states made perfect sense. To establish the principles of self-determination and democracy would contribute to peace and prosperity by solving the nationalities problem that had caused such mischief in the past. But in the 1860s, as this transformation was just beginning, the question looked very different, especially to the young John Dalberg Acton—the future Lord Acton, famous for the Cambridge Modern History—as he contemplated without benefit of hindsight the rise of the modern nation-state. 1 [End Page 129]Acton's views on the nation-state appeared in an article on "Nationality," which he wrote in 1862 for the Home and Foreign Review. 2 Nationality—today we would call it nationalism—was, Acton pointed out to his colleague Richard Simpson, a "new question in political philosophy" 3 ; and Acton's essay was a remarkably precocious treatment of the subject. In this tour de force he placed nationalism in its historical context, enabling readers to understand its significance for their own time and to see in nationalism the most potent force unleashed by the French Revolution. For Acton the Revolution had given a new direction to social protest. Whereas in the past, people had resisted oppression by calling for a return to traditional ways, now, after 1789, they demanded a new social and political order. The Revolution thus spawned protest movements of a wholly unprecedented kind. These movements were "spontaneous and aggressive," he warned. They were "popular, unreasoning, and almost irresistible." They appealed to the masses, encouraging them to be "arbitrary as well as insubordinate" and to disregard tradition, prescription, and established rights. Nationalism, with Mazzini as its representative figure, was the most formidable of these new mass movements; for it subverted the existing order by attacking the territorial arrangement and sovereignty of legitimate states, and it provided the impetus behind contemporary revolution. 4 In contrast to later generations, who may have regarded nation-states as likely to promote peace and prosperity, Acton believed that to create these states by imposing the principle of nationality would damage irreparably the Europe he knew and valued.Acton clearly appreciated the power of nationalism—and for this he deserves credit—but too much can, and has, been made of his foresight. He was disturbed by nationalism not because he was clairvoyant, not because he saw in nationalism the twentieth century's totalitarian nightmare, but rather because he was preoccupied with very nineteenth-century concerns. 5 When in 1859 Cavour and Louis Napoleon contrived their war against Austria, hoping to drive the [End Page 130] Habsburgs from Italy and capture the provinces of Lombardy and Venetia for Piedmont, they exacerbated the nationalities problem in much of southern Europe. In Italy this problem was solved by the creation of a unified nation-state. The war against Austria was the first step in the process of unification that culminated in 1861 with the founding of the Kingdom of Italy. As a result of unification, inhabitants of the Italian peninsula found themselves subject to a highly centralized state, with an administration modeled on the Napoleonic system that was adverse to regional autonomy. The Italian war also aggravated the nationalities problem in... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume XXI, Number 2, November 1995, pp. 315-332 Robertson, Hume, and the Balance of Power FREDERICK G. WHELAN William Robertson, like his Scottish Enlightenment colleague David Hume, practiced a kind of philosophic history which, although it appears to consist mainly of narratives of political and military events, is also designed to teach moral and political lessons of general significance and utility. The principal theme of Hume's History (...) of England, for example, is the growth of legal and constitutional government in connection with the emergence of modern society; Hume's narrative implicitly justifies both such a government and the moderate politics on which it depends. A theme of comparable importance in Robertson's History of Charles V (1769) is the emergence of a balance of power and thence a relatively stable international system among European states in the early sixteenth century, when the policy of balance first clearly appeared. As he declares in his Preface: The political principles and maxims then established still continue to operate. The ideas concerning the balance of power, then introduced or rendered general, still influence the councils of nations. (R 307)1 Robertson both describes the relevant policy decisions (especially the alliance between the traditional enemies, England and France, to counter the threat posed by Charles Vs unprecedentedly large empire) and justifies such policies as reasonable and beneficial.2 Frederick G. Whelan is at the Political Science Department, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh PA 15260 USA. 316 Frederick G. Whelan In treating this theme, Robertson was taking up a topic that was of interest to Hume as well. Hume refers on a number of occasions to the sixteenth century balance of power in his History chapters on the reign of Henry VIII (1759),3 especially in the portion extending through the 1520s, and he treats the topic more systematically in his earlier essay "Of the Balance of Power" (1752).4 Hume like Robertson defends balance of power policies in general, and Hume certainly (Robertson probably) had a more particular reason for doing so: to justify contemporary British (Whig) foreign policy (and several wars), which since the reign of Louis XIV had aimed at maintaining a European counterbalance to France.5 Hume's and Robertson's favorable descriptions of the sixteenth century anti-Habsburg policy provide a useful background for defending the eighteenth century anti-Bourbon policy.6 Indeed, both Hume and Robertson probably exaggerated the prevalence of the balance of power, at least as a conscious policy, in the early sixteenth century; although they were no doubt correct in noting that something like the modern state system first began to take shape at that time, they seem to have projected the eighteenth century emphasis on balance backwards in time as a way of legitimizing it.7 Robertson sums up the fifty year period he covers by observing that the similar stage of development of the states of Europe at that time, together with the policy of balance, permitted the preservation of a fairly stable system of independent states that has lasted until the present: But the advantages possessed by one state were counterbalanced by circumstances favourable to others; and thus prevented any from attaining such superiority as might have been fatal to all. The nations of Europe in that age, as in the present, were like one great family.... There was not among them that wide diversity of character and of genius which, in almost every period of history, hath exalted the Europeans above the inhabitants of the other quarters of the globe, and seems to have destined the one to rule and the others to obey. (R 704) Hume's concern with contemporary policy, and with France, is more conspicuous: Europe has now, for above a century, remained on the defensive against the greatest force that ever, perhaps, was formed by the civil or political combination of mankind. And such is the influence of the maxim here treated of, that tho' that ambitious nation, in the five last general wars, have been victorious in four, and unsuccessful only in one, they have not much enlarged their dominions, nor acquired a total ascendant over EUROPE.... In the last three of these general Hume... (shrink)

This book considers the way that Cesare Beccaria's slim 1764 volume On Crimes and Punishments influenced policy developments worldwide and over decades, if not centuries, after its publication. For those who turn to Beccaria's work today, the encounter is shaped by that knowledge. Appreciative of his book's dual nature as historical document and repository of ideas, the contributions in this collection address different aspects of the criminal justice theory Beccaria offered his readers and face up to methodological questions raised by (...) meeting a historical text of this kind - unsystematic and by modern standards often under-argued - with modern scholarly conventions in mind. Contributions in the first part of the book engage with Beccaria's 'political theory of criminal justice' through the lenses of political and penal philosophy. How do we get from Beccaria's blending of social-contractarian foundations and proto-utilitarian policy analysis to the concrete set of criminal justice practices Beccaria presents as justified? This leads across to the second part where contributors approach Beccaria's ideas with present-day reforms and developments in mind. Many of his policy proposals and arguments remain significant from our contemporary perspective, their limitations and omissions proving as instructive for the contemporary scholar as their more prescient elements. The third part offers those looking at Beccaria's work today a glimpse into the practical difficulties facing the firebrand author turned public servant during his long career in the Habsburg-Lombardian administration. It puts his work into the broader context of pathways to criminal justice reform in northern Italy, Habsburgian Lombardy, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire in Beccaria's day. (shrink)

Philosophy in the historical Kingdom of Bohemia has never received much attention in the Anglophone world. Yet in the early modern period, Bohemia and especially Prague were an extraordinarily fertile ground for philosophical thought. Stanislav Sousedík of Charles University in Prague is now the foremost expert on this region and period. His Philosophy in the Bohemian Lands between the Middle Ages and the Enlightenment appeared in Czech in 1997 and is now available in a nearly identical German translation.Within the Holy (...) Roman Empire, the Bohemian Lands formed a cultural unity that was also under independent rule until it came under the Habsburg crown in 1526. This study reveals the contribution of philosophy to the creation of this unity from the late Middle Ages until the end of Joseph II’s rule in 1790.The book starts with the Thomism , the Scotism , and the Lullism taught at the University of Prague after Jan Hus had imposed a strict ontological realism. Under independent Bohemian kings, political philosophy became relevant, and Renaissance Platonism was eventually received and flourished in coexistence with the inherited. (shrink)

German MS. 2 is a previously unstudied armorial dating from the mid-sixteenth century. This article shows that it was produced in the workshop of Lucas Cranach the Younger for Elector August of Saxony, and that it was copied from an earlier armorial of c.1500 which was kept in Cranach’s workshop, probably as reference material. Much of the original content and structure of this ‘old armorial’ has been preserved in Rylands German 2. On this basis, the original armorial can be located (...) in a late fifteenth-century Upper German tradition of armorial manuscripts known as the ‘Bodensee’ group. It was also closely linked to the Habsburg dynasty, and appears to have been dedicated to Empress Bianca Maria Sforza. The armorial therefore opens significant new perspectives on the relationships between artists and heraldry and between women and heraldic knowledge, and on ways of visualising the Holy Roman Empire through heraldry. (shrink)

L’article s’intéresse aux sages-femmes dans la Bosnie habsbourgeoise montrant comment ce groupe professionnel joue un rôle de médiation inédit entre l’Empire austro-hongrois et la population bosnienne. À partir des méthodes et concepts de l’anthropologie sociale, il s’agit de comprendre la configuration des relations qui s’instaurent entre administrateurs, sages-femmes et habitantes à partir de la réforme statutaire des sages-femmes en 1898. Ces relations, qui remettent en cause l’ordre social existant hérité de l’époque ottomane, constituent pour les différents acteurs historiques à (...) la fois un défi et un espace de possibilités comme le montre l'exemple parmi d’autres de la sage-femme Ivka Ratković à Bosanski Petrovac. (shrink)

The Ottoman State contains many different ethnic elements which constituted a legal perspective. In this regard, the necessary precautions were taken to ensure that Muslims and non-Muslims live together peacefully in Vidin, a border city that was very important for the Western military expeditions of the Ottoman State known as “dār al-jihad wa-l-mujāhidīn” during the 18th century which set a historical example. The economic and social dimensions of the relations between the Muslim and non-Muslim population comprising the society in Vidin (...) who have shared the same city, neighborhood and public space during 1700-1750 were examined in this study and the conflicting subjects with regard to the ongoing relations between these two communities were tried to be determined. A total of 15 shari‘aregistries kept by the qāḍī (Muslim Judge) court for the related period located at the Oriental Department of National Library of Bulgaria constitute the main resources of the study. The shari‘aregistries that are the main resources of urban historical studies are full of countless examples that provide information on the relations between Muslims and non- Muslims in Vidin. The examination of these examples is of significant importance for putting forth the methods with which the nation system is applied by the Ottoman Empire as well as their opinions towards the non-Muslims they rule.SummaryVidin, located today in northwest Bulgaria was founded during the 1stcentury BC to the right of the River Danube by the Romans and named as Bononia. This settlement which was named as V’dinby the Muslims throughout the Middle Ages was transformed into a castle about 800 years after its foundation. The city that continuously changed hands due to its location at the border fell under the Ottoman rule after Battle of Nicopolis dated 1396. Vidin became one of the important border cities of the Ottoman against Serbia, Walachia and Hungary until the beginning of the 16thcentury. This importance of Vidin gradually decreased after the Ottoman Empire conquered Belgrade, Budin and Timişoara. Vidin retrieved its status as a border city against the Hungarians and the Wallachians after the Habsburgs dominated the region following the Great Turkish Wars that took place during 1683-1699, and thus regained its past importance. Even though the pressure influenced Vidin as a result disappeared with the 1739 Treaty of Belgrade, the conflicts between Austria and the Ottoman Empire did not end completely and continued throughout the 18thcentury. Vidin preserved its status as a first-degree border city for the Ottomans during the period of time, as examined in this study, which was also known as “dār al-jihad wa-l-mujāhidīn” starting from the beginning of the new century. Majority of the settled public were comprised of military classes in Vidin due to its geographical location where the Muslims and non-Muslims lived together. While the Muslim population was higher during the period of time following the establishment of the Ottoman rule, the non-Muslim population continued to increase throughout the 17thcentury reaching 23.961 taxpayer non-Muslim men in the 18thcentury. The Ottoman Empire based its ruling in Vidin, where almost the same number of Muslim and non-Muslims lived, on the principles of Islamic Law rules for non-Muslims. Since this legal system takes into consideration religious differences, non-Muslims were not held responsible from the prayers of Muslims and the actions that were not prohibited in their religion did not pose any contradictions with regard to Islamic law. The Ottoman Empire did not apply the Islamic Law on its non-Muslim citizens living in Vidin and allowed them to continue their social and religious lives based on their own religious principles in a special legal stance. Thanks to the system applied, the Muslim and non-Muslim community in Vidin were able to continue their daily lives without serious conflicts.The main purpose of this study is to explain how the Muslim and non-Muslim population related with each other in the city of Vidin during the second half of the 18thcentury and the dynamics with which they continued these relationships. Following this purpose, the cases between Muslims and non-Muslims in court records kept by the Vidin sharia court during 1700-1750 are examined. The relations between Muslims and non-Muslims are subject to two different classifications as economic and social issues, and each topic is supported and explained as sub-titles using different case examples. Majority of the relations between Muslims and non-Muslims in the city are economic according to Vidin court records. In this regard, it seems that there is no religious discrimination between the artisan groups in the city. In addition, many home, land, store and vineyard sales took place between the Muslims and non-Muslims which were resolved in the court mostly for registration purposes. It can also be understood from the court records that there were commercial relations between the Muslims and non-Muslims, that they had partnerships and that they lent money to each other which can be seen as an example of interpersonal support. Various social relationships were also established between the Muslim and non-Muslim population in Vidin during the period examined in this study. Even though non-Muslims had the right to carry out marriages and resolve their issues at their own community courts, it was observed that they frequently applied to the sharia courts for these purposes. They have developed witnessing relationships in such cases with the Muslims. The non-Muslim community did not experience any issues in finding Muslim witnesses for their cases with the Muslims; many Muslims acted as witness against their fellow Muslims without any hesitation. Two cases of injuries and few robbery issues were reflected in the courts of Vidin between the Muslims and non-Muslims during the fifty-year period examined in the study and no incident ending with death took place. Various singular cases took place between the two groups which were resolved at the sharia courts without escalating into severe conflicts. When all court records are taken into consideration, it can be understood that the Muslim judge of Vidin did not make any distinctions between the non-Muslims and Muslims and that he did not compromise from the principle of fairness. Both the Muslims and non-Muslims managed to live comfortably by acting carefully so as to not cross their own lines in both their economic and social relations in Vidin. When the faith-related conflicts that are taking place in our day in many regions of the world despite the level of education and culture are taken into consideration, it is very meaningful that people living in Vidin during the first half of the 18thcentury managed to live in peace. (shrink)