Abstract
Reviewed by: Rok Stergar, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
John Deak’s book is a history of Habsburg state-building efforts from the reign of Maria Theresia to the beginning of the First World War. He traces the establishment of a modern administration central to the transformation of the heterogeneous territories cobbled together by the Habsburg dynasty into a reasonably modern state. Consequently, the main protagonists in this history are the bureaucracy and the bureaucrats. From high-ranking men like Friedrich Wilhelm Haugwitz, Franz Stadion and Alexander Bach to simple civil servants, they – often for little or no money – tried to stay true to the principal goal of the imperial administration. They worked to improve the functioning of the state and the lives of the Emperor’s subjects. Beginning with the reign of Joseph II, the Habsburg bureaucracy was – as Deak shows – imbued with the spirit of reform. Even after conservatives took over after the deaths of Joseph and his successor, Leopold II, reformist Josephinism survived in the imperial administration.
Deak’s study of the Habsburg administration – from the central offices in Vienna to the district prefectures – is well developed and full of interesting detail. The reader will surely come away with a much better understanding of the administrative structures, their workings, and development. Although some passages feel a bit repetitive, for the most part the author manages to present the complicated subject matter with clarity. The tables and diagrams are a very welcome addition and help disentangle the most complex bureaucratic structures. The work would benefit from a similarly well-informed presentation of the administrative structures of Hungary after the Compromise of 1867. Still, Deak’s decision to only deal with the Austrian half of the Dual Monarchy is understandable since the administration of dualist Hungary differed greatly from its counterpart on the other bank of the Leitha.
Moreover, the focus on Cisleithania is intrinsically connected to the author’s main goal. Namely, the book is a challenge to the still widely held opinion that Imperial Austria was a relic of the past and destined to fail because it had not been able to meet the challenges of the nineteenth century. Deak is certainly not the first historian to argue against the teleology that interprets the collapse of the Dual Monarchy as an inevitable outcome of long-term developments. On the contrary, amongst historians specializing in Habsburg history, the view that the Empire was a viable polity is well established. Nevertheless, Deak brings a lot of new arguments to the table as he traces the reform proposals and actual reforms that were designed to adapt the Habsburg state to changing circumstances. He shows that the state was successfully modernized to meet the Prussian challenge in the middle of the eighteenth century and how – after a lot of experimentation – it met the challenges of political representation and mass politics in the second half of the nineteenth century.
Deak convincingly argues that the chaotic scenes in the parliament, the Reichsrat, were just one facet of the period immediately preceding the First World War. The occasional histrionics in the neoclassical palace on the Ringstrasse – Mark Twain famously compared them to a Comanche raid – were certainly not a welcome sight and obviously impeded legislative work. However, as Deak points out, at the same time the bureaucrats, business leaders, and politicians were actively working on solutions to the many problems Austria was facing. The bureaucrats tried to bypass the increasingly dysfunctional Reichsrat and solve the most pressing problems, above all the incessant nationalist conflicts. They were preparing an administrative reform that would give more decision-making powers to the lower levels of administration. Thus – they hoped – the conflicts would be depoliticized and consequently become easier to solve; not least because nations could be separated at the lowest levels and ‘the administration [liberated] from the damage of national hatred’, as one of the would-be reformers put it (257).
As Deak correctly points out, the fact that the Habsburg monarchy did not transform itself into a nation-state does not mean it did not transform itself at all or that it was not a modern state. On the contrary, its bureaucrats were constantly finding solutions that were appropriate for its specific circumstances. In Deak’s opinion, the outbreak of the war profoundly changed that as the army took control and the bureaucrats were pushed aside. It was the war that ‘unmade the Habsburg state’, he argues (264). It is hard to disagree with such an interpretation; the war certainly changed a lot and it is entirely possible – even probable – that without such a shock the Habsburg state would have continued to evolve. However, one still wonders if a long-term solution would have been possible without a political compromise at the highest levels and if there was sufficient willingness to find one.