Page - 333 - in Österreich-Ungarns imperiale Herausforderungen - Nationalismen und Rivalitäten im Habsburgerreich um 1900

© 2020, V&R unipress GmbH, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783847110606 – ISBN E-Lib: 9783737010603 G#borEgry RegionalElites,NationalistPolitics, LocalAccommodations. Center-PeripheryStruggles inLateDualistHungary Thehistoryof empires is currently enjoyinga revival andhasnowbecome the subject of intensive scholarly interest. A significant example of the growing literatureon“NewImperialHistory,”1 is PieterM. Judson’sworkontheHabs- burg Empire. This book also typifies the newwave of historiography on the history of the Habsburg realm, a trend that has also led to a thorough re- consideration of Eastern Europe’s not too distant past.2The literature on the dualist state however, tends to replicate its peculiar structure, and the works barelyattempttoconnect thehistoryofits twohalves.Thereisgoodreasonand justification for this approach;Hungary and the ‘provinces represented in the Reichsrat’(Cisleithania;or,inshort,Austria)hadprofoundlydifferentstructural characteristics fromtheperspectiveof their state structures.TheAustrianhalf was a conglomerate of provinceswith various administrative traditions: these were partial legislations that retained (or, relative to the neo-absolutist times, regained) a certaindegreeof autonomyevenafter 1867.Hungary, on theother hand,wassupposedtobeaunitarystatewithaunifiedadministrationandlegal system.Furthermore,whiletherewasnonationalmovementintheAustrianhalf thatwouldhaveencompassedallof theprovinces tomake it a startingpointof overall nationalizing attempts, Hungarywas imagined as a nation state by its eliteswithall of itsnationalizingconsequences.3Butquestions thathave rarely been raised thus farnowseempertinent andnecessary inorder toaddress the mechanics of integrating two states within a common imperial framework. 1 Ulrike von Hirschhausen, New Imperial History? Programm, Potenzial, Perspektiven, in: GeschichteundGesellschaft 41 (2016),p. 718–757. 2 PieterM. Judson, TheHabsburg Empire. ANewHistory, Cambridge 2016; GaryB. Cohen, NationalistPolitics and theDynamicsofState andCivil Society in theHabsburgMonarchy, 1867–1914, in:CentralEuropeanHistory40(2007),p. 241–278,seealsothenumerousworks onnational indifference. 3 WesleyHiers/AndreasWimmer, Is nationalism the cause or the consequence of the end of empire?, in: John A. Hall/Sinisa Malesevic (ed.), Nationalism andWar, Cambridge 2013, p. 212–254.