Historians also refer to the Habsburg Monarchy as the ‘Habsburg Empire,’ but by any name it was truly ‘cosmopolitan’ in several senses of the word.
During the first few decades of the twenty-first century, some political leaders have called for an end to nationalism and patriotism. Leaving aside the difficulty of securing a precise definition for ‘nationalism’ and ‘patriotism,’ how would the world look without those two concepts?
The answer might be found in an examination of the Habsburg dynasty, which is arguably non- or pre-nationalistic, and non- or pre-patriotic.
If patriotism and nationalism have something to do with one’s enthusiasm about, and allegiance to, a country or land or nation, then, by contrast, the ideology in the Habsburg territories was an enthusiasm for, and an allegiance to, a dynasty.
Although Austria and Bohemia were parts of the Habsburg Empire, the residents of those lands did not identify themselves as Austrians or Bohemians, but rather as subjects of the Habsburgs. While these, and other, territories within the Habsburg Empire retained their languages and other aspects of their cultures, they did so not in a nationalistic or patriotic sense, as historian A.J.P. Taylor writes:
Francis I, told of an Austrian patriot, answered impatiently: “But is he a patriot for me?” The Emperor was needlessly meticulous. Austria was an Imperial organisation, not a country; and to be Austrian was to be free of national feeling — not to possess a nationality. From the battle of the White Mountain until the time of Maria Theresa “Austria” was embodied in the territorial aristocracy, the “Magnates.” These, even when German, thought of themselves as Austrians, not as Germans, just as the Prussian nobility regarded themselves solely as Prussians. In Bohemia, home of the greatest estates, they were especially divorced from local feeling; for these great lords were purely Habsburg creations in the period of the Thirty Years’ War.
The psychology of the Habsburg Empire was partially shaped by lingering attitudes from feudalism. Although the Habsburgs had, by the later years of their reign, a modern industrial economy, they still in some ways considered themselves as lords, and expected that their subjects would consider them that way, too.
Dynastic feudalism may be the alternative to nationalism.
There are parallels between the Habsburgs and some other situations, e.g., the British monarchs. Prior to the advent of modern political nationalism, an English soldier most likely thought of himself as serving ‘his majesty’ instead of serving the nation.
There is some parallel, too, between the Habsburgs and the English rule in Ireland, as A.J.P. Taylor notes:
Even the Hungarian magnates, Esterhazys, Karolyis, Andrassys, had little traditional background: their greatness, too, rested on Habsburg grants, made when Hungary was recovered from the Turks and Rakoczi’s rebellion was subdued. A native nobility existed only in Galicia and in Italy: the Polish magnates did not owe their greatness to the Habsburgs and never forgot that they were Poles — though they denied this name to their peasants; the Italian nobles were cosmopolitan, but Italy was their world. Apart from Galicia and Italy, the Austrian Empire was a vast collection of Irelands, except that — unlike the Irish landlords, who had at any rate a home of origin in England — the Austrian nobility had no home other than the Imperial court.
The conception and self-conception of the Habsburg Empire may have relevance for exploring the etiology of the First World War: many history textbooks have pointed to ‘nationalism’ - however defined - as one of the factors which led to the war.
If the Habsburg Empire was devoid of nationalism, then there is less likelihood that nationalism was a cause of World War One. If both the subjects and the rulers in the Habsburg Monarchy did not harbor nationalism in their conceptual frameworks of the world, then it is improbable that nationalism fueled the start of World War One.
