A History of the Habsburg Empire 1700-1918 by Jean Bérenger; C. A. SimpsonReview by: Martyn RadyThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 77, No. 3 (Jul., 1999), pp. 552-555Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4212927 .

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552 SEER, 77, 3, I999

general. If his principal reason for not sticking to the matter in hand was that, as he points out, not much work has been done in Russian on the subject of the book, he might have considered turning to the relevant literature in languages other than Russian. A study of the administration of the imperial borderlands that fails even to mention B. E. Nol'de's La Formation de l'Empire russe (2 vols, Paris, I952-53) can hardly be considered authoritative. The seven geographically specific chapters deploy a mountainous quantity of information, but in the absence of a substantial prefatory attempt to set it in some sort of context one's head begins to spin. Although the present reviewer was fascinated to learn that the last of the tsars' many territorial acquisitions was Tuva in April 1914 (PP. 93-95), he had difficulty getting very excited about, for example, the abolition of the Governor-Generalship of Western Siberia in I882 and the consequent placing of the provinces of Tobol'sk and Tomsk on the same footing as provinces in the imperial heartland (p. 8 I). The principal service of most of this book, therefore, is to provide students of particular parts of the Empire with convenient summaries of the history of tsarist institutional arrangements in the areas of their specialism. Even in this regard, however, the book sometimes leaves a little to be desired. To say of the participants in the negotiations at Pereiaslav in I 654, for example, that they 'supported the entry of Ukraine into the structure of Russia' (p. ii 8) is at best an over-simplification. John Basarab devoted the greater part of a monograph (Pereiaslav i654: A Historiographical Study, Edmonton, I982) to showing that 'entry of Ukraine into [... .] Russia' was very unlikely to have been what both sides in the negotiations thought they were agreeing to. It is a pleasure, in the light of these strictures, to say that the eighth and final chapter of the book rises above the severely empirical and attempts a categorization of the tsars' various administrative arrangements on the periphery of their domains. Perhaps this chapter should have been placed at the beginning. The author first suggests that the evolution of the Russian Empire's 'politico-administrat- ive system' may be broken down into five chronological periods (pp. 356-59), then considers the fate within each period of various administrative forms (local administrative autonomy, local political autonomy, the protectorate), and only finally turns to the nuts and bolts of particular administrative methods. One may question various propositions here (that centralization usually worked better than decentralization, that Russia did not prevent non- Russians from entering the imperial bureaucracy, that military force was not crucial to the maintenance of Russian authority in the borderlands), but the chapter is a great deal more thought-provoking than the rest of the book.

Department of Histogy DAVID SAUNDERS University ofNewcastle

Berenger, Jean. A Histogy of the Habsburg Empire I700-I9I8. Translated by C. A. Simpson. Longman, London and New York, I997. ix + 342 pp. Maps. Chronology. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. C420oo; 'i6.99.

PREVIous histories of the later Habsburg empire variously have as their starting date I 790, I 809, I 815 and I 848. The present work selects I 700. This

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REVIEWS 553

choice has all to do with publishing considerations. The original French edition which appeared in I990 as Histoire de l'Empire des Habsbourg I273-I9I8, ran to over eight hundred pages and was evidently too large for any English- language publisher to contemplate issuing as a single edition. Berenger's French text had, therefore, to be spliced in two. The first half, which covers the period before I700, was accordingly published in I994 as a separate volume (reviewed SEER, 74, I996, 4, pp. 687-99).

With respect to the present volume, the decision to divide Berenger's original account at I700 does have certain merits. Hitherto, all preceding accounts of the later Empire have, because of their more restricted chronology, conveyed a sense of immanent failure and ruin. The early eighteenth century was, by contrast, the apogee of Habsburg greatness, when the dynasty stood renewed by the treaties of Utrecht, Rastatt and Passarowitz, and when by its resistance to Louis XIV it could even pose as the defender of German liberties. These triumphs proved short-lived and, as Berenger points out (p. 38), were largely the achievement of the Habsburgs' allies. Nevertheless, the exposure of the Empire as a 'paper tiger' prompted in its turn a flurry of reforms which were sufficient to make good for a time its claims to mastery in Central Europe. Thus, whereas other histories of the later Empire begin with the deceits and conceits of Metternich and of his imperial masters, Berenger can give us Haugwitz, Kaunitz and the brilliance of the court of Maria Theresia. For too long, undergraduates and others have treated the Habsburg Empire as the Christian counterpart of its Ottoman adversary and thus as caught in a relentless process of decay. By commencing his account in I700, Berenger and his publishers have unwittingly demonstrated the immaturity of this teleology. For no other reason than this, the present reviewer will include the work at the top of his undergraduate reading-list.

Berenger provides much more, however, than undergraduate reading- fodder. His account is a masterful synthesis of the current literature and a succinct compression of two centuries. Although at times the reader may be overwhelmed by the sheer detail of events, Berenger still retains a pan- monarchic and pan-European perspective: most notably in his analysis of the options available to Schwarzenberg in the aftermath of I848, and in his account of the diplomacy preceding the disaster at Sadowa. As a French historian, he refreshingly identifies a quite different set of academic villains to those preferred by his Anglo-Saxon counterparts. Whereas we may single out R. W. Seton-Watson and Wickham Steed as particularly responsible for speeding the Empire's demise, Berenger identifies Louis Leger, Ernest Denis and Louis Eisenmann as equal accessories in crime.

Elsewhere, however, Berenger's study falters. His description of events in the Empire in 1848 is weak and his study of Franz Joseph's decision to go to war in I 914 is cursory. There are, moreover, far too many factual errors and confusions in the text. Even an unstudied reading of the text reveals the following mistakes: Queen Mary of England died in I 694 and not in I 702 as is implied on page I 5; St John rather than Saint John (p. 22); the Pragmatic Sanction was approved by the Hungarian diet of I722-23 and not in I724 (p. 34); no Latin text of Montesquieu is extant and we rely for knowledge of its existence only on a traveller's tale (p. 53); the suggestion that Joseph II had

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554 SEER, 77, 3, 1999

Frederick the Great as his role-model needs severe qualification (p. 99); the Horia-Klosca revolt did not originate in any failure to extend commutation of the robot to Transylvania but on a misunderstanding of the benefits flowing from military service (p. I07); Ferdinand I, 'der gtitig', is variously called both the Benign (pp. I43, 276) and the Debonnaire [sic] (p. 172); Istvan Szechenyi never advocated the 'total independence' of Hungary (p. 148); Metternich escaped Vienna in a variety of carriages, both horse and steam, but not (to my knowledge) 'a la Toad in a laundry-wagon (p. I 6 i); the details of compensation for robot-service were not established in the I848-49 Reichstag but in the patents of I 851-54 (p. i 65); Windischgratz was not governor of Bohemia but its military-commander and one who in fact attacked Bohemia's lawful government (p. I67); the I849 'Stadion' constitution is misdated by thirty years (p. I 70); the I 14 executions in Hungary in I 849 scarcely amounted to a 'bloodbath' (p. I7) -in fact, the Emperor showed clemency and spared many hundreds more; the 'Arad Martyrs' were ignominiously hanged rather than shot as officers (p. I 72), which was precisely why their execution cried to Heaven; ministerial responsibility was abolished in August I85 I, the Stadion constitution by the Sylvester Patent published in the December of the same year (p. I74); the passage on the vicissitudes experienced by the holders of dominical land after the I 85os is garbled (p. I 8o); by I 85o, Hungary had over two hundred kilometres of railway track (p. I84); the Reichsrat of the Stadion constitution became the core of the parliamentary structure created in I86o-6 simply because it was all that was left of Stadion's original scheme, everything else having been abolished (p. I87); a kingdom of Naples mysteriously reappears in i 866 (p. i 99); the Saxons had been in Transylvania since the twelfth century (p. 2I3); the demolition of the bastions around the Innere Stadt of Vienna had been completed well before i875 (p. 226); for Ugodba, read N/agodba (p. 238); Ballhausplatz (pp. 50, 240); Lassalle (p. 245); it is hard by the time of his premiership to consider Taaffe as being of Irish stock (p. 249); the I905 crisis was not about democracy in Hungary but instead about the Kommandosprache and thus Hungarian state-rights (p. 25 I); narrow- gauge was used in Bosnia not on account of Hungarian malice but on account of the terrain (p. 256) it was for the same reason laid in Serbia; Wilson in January I9I8 did not promise the 'freeing' of Bohemia but the opportunity for 'autonomous development' (p. 264); it was Louis II who perished at Moh'acs (p. 29I), in I526 (p. 292); the identity of the 'peasant masses fanaticized by the clergy', whose role is referred to in the conclusion, is never clarified (p. 295); for Rastadt read Rastatt (p. 297); for Elley read Elie (p. 3 I 7); there have been to my knowledge no recent multi-volume studies of Kaunitz (p. 3 14); there was no kingdom of Italy c. I720 (p. 320).

The present reviewer could add to this list several score more misspellings and inconsistencies, but the point is made. It is not, however, of any purpose to criticize authors for errors of this type. Surrounded by heaps of notes and by misinscripted disks, and with a text which gradually assumes a life and permanence of its own, authors writing an 8oo-page book such as this cannot be humanly expected to spot every mistake. It is for this reason that authors have publishers. In the good old days, a reputable publisher such as Longman would have employed copy-editors and bought in academic readers. They

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REVIEWS 555

would have corrected and checked, and applied an alert and fresh mind to the text. Nowadays, however, publishers' in-house editorial teams seem reluctant even to turn on the spell-check. The prodigious author of this book and his readership might reasonably have expected more.

School of Slavonic and East European Studies MARTYN RADY

University of London

Lubke, Christian (ed.). Struktur und Wandel im Friih- und Hochmittelalter: Eine Bestandsaufnahme aktueller Forschungen zur Germania Slavica. Forschungen zur Geschichte und Kultur des ostlichen Mitteleuropa, vol. v. Geisteswissen- schaftliches Zentrum Geschichte und Kultur Ostmitteleuropas. Franz Steiner, Stuttgart, I998. 380 pp. Maps. Tables. Illustrations. Indexes. DM I76.00: oS I285.00.

THE present volume contains thirty essays on the German settlement in Mecklenburg and Western Pomerania during the period from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries. The collection is predictably arranged. It begins with essays which variously lament the political uses of Ostforschung, urge an awareness of the ethnic and cultural symbiosis which took place during the course of the German eastward movement, and go on to promote the use of a new term, in this case 'Germania Slavica'. The present reviewer is, however, unconvinced as to the value of this neologism, particularly since, according to the editor of the volume, it has two quite separate fields of reference: a 'Germania Slavica i', referring to the Slavonic regions of settlement west of the Oder, and a 'Germania Slavica 2', meaning East Brandenburg, Silesia, Pomerania and Prussia (p. 14).

These introductory essays are followed by short micro-historical studies relating to individual small regions of settlement. Many of these, being reports of research in progress, are concerned with problems of methodology and with the difficulties involved in bringing together multi-disciplinary tech- niques. Despite the avowed purpose of the recently-founded Geisteswissen- schaftliche Zentrum Geschichte und Kultur Ostmitteleuropas in Leipzig to advance research and comparative investigation in the whole region between the Baltic and the Adriatic, the contributions are confined in their geographical scope. They thus convey few of the insights of Peter Erlen's important comparative study, Europdischer Landesausbau und mittelalterliche deutsche Ostsied- lung. Ein struktureller Vergleich zwischen Suidwestfrankreich, den Niederlanden und dem Ordensland Preussen (Marburg/Lahn, I992). Nevertheless, several essays in the present volume reward reading. Three separate contributions on the Cister- cian house at Dargun, and a fourth on its sister foundation at Eldena, illustrate the significance of religious foundations in the Landesausbau. Michaela Scheibe importantly indicates the way in which new regional loyalties and identities were constructed in Mecklenburg and Pomerania out of the interaction of Germanic and Slavonic groups (pp. 333-40). Regrettably, the volume lacks a concluding essay which might serve both to establish its larger contribution to current research and to indicate possible new directions of scholarly enquiry.

School of Slavonic and East European Studies MARTYN RADY

University of London

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