LFU:online

This course goes beyond the standard tropes of Habsburg history confined within the European dimension in order to re-orientate your perspectives on the history of the Habsburg monarchy. By taking this course, you will become proficient in the application of global history. We will be using the example of the wide-reaching history of the Habsburg monarchy. This means you will also deepen your knowledge about the global entanglement of one of the world’s most important dynasties and Central Europe in particular. This course also combines the techniques of global history with multiple historical sub-fields such as architectural history, history of art, cultural history, economic history, international history, postal history, postcolonial history, travel history, and world history. You will therefore be exposed to a broader thinking about the merits of global history and its relevance for the Habsburg monarchy from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries.

Discover the true ‘empire upon which the sun never set’ from Charles V’s vision of a ‘universal monarchy’ in 1500s to Franz Ferdinand’s tour around the world in 1893. Our own journey will also take us around the world, from Franz Joseph’s Land in the polar north to Baja California in the West to Tristan de Cunha in the mid-Atlantic to New Guinea in the East to Tianjin in present-day China. We will encounter dreamers and schemers, cash-strapped merchants and stressed-out explorers, revolutionary Mughals and Mexican revolutionaries, familiar figures and unfamiliar lands.

Along the way, we will learn the answers to such questions as: Why did the Habsburgs place so much value in the discovery of the New Word? Why are the Habsburgs not seen as slave-traders today? Why did so many Jesuits in the New World come from Central Europe? Why did the notion of spreading Catholicism remain central to the Habsburg engagement with the world? Why did the father of Maria Theresa seek to rebuild a global empire for the Austrian Habsburgs? Was she more successful than her father? Why was her face known around the world for centuries? Why was the eighteenth-century marked by the beginning of Austrian colonisation? Why did these attempts fail by 1800? Why were so many scientific expeditions led by Austria across the world? Why did the United States of America almost declare war on Austria in the mid-nineteenth century? Why did Mexico fail to become a Habsburg state? Why did Persian and Thai monarchs want to meet with Emperor Franz Joseph? And why has modern-Austria ‘forgotten’ about its global past?

Our overarching goal will be to re-discover the complicated but vibrant role that the Habsburg monarchy played in the shaping the world and that the world played in shaping the Habsburg monarchy.

Each week an online lecture will be given introducing you to main topic, locale, and historical approach to the global history of the Habsburg monarchy. We hope to utilise the online nature of this course by including guest academics who are the relevant experts in the topic to be discussed. The use of break-out rooms for guided peer-to-peer discussion is also envisioned but may not be required each week.

A spoken or written test (Klausur) at the end of the semester according to Covid-19 restrictions.

Detailed information on literature will be announced in the course and according to individual language ability. Students might want to familiarize themselves with the following English-language works if they so wish:

Alison Frank, ‘The Children of the Desert and the Laws of the Sea: Austria, Great Britain, the Ottoman Empire, and the Mediterranean Slave Trade in the Nineteenth Century,’ American Historical Review, 117 (2012), 410-444.

Eleanor A. Laughlin, ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes: Maximillian von Habsburg and the Visual Culture of Dress during Mexico’s Second Empire,’ Hispanic Research Journal, 18:5 (2017), 391-410.

William O’Reilly, ‘Lost Chances of the House of Habsburg,’ Austrian History Yearbook, 40 (2009), 53-70.

Geoffrey Parker, Emperor: A New Life of Charles V (New Haven, CT, 2019), Chps. 8, 13, 17.

Martyn Rady, The Habsburgs: The Rise and Fall of World Power (London, 2020), Chps. 6, 8, 18, 27.

Lawrence Sondhaus, The Habsburg Empire and the Sea: Austrian Naval Policy, 1797-1866 (West Lafayette, IN, 1989)

Stephan Steiner, ‘“An Austrian Cayenne”: Convict Labour and Deportation in the Habsburg Empire of the Early Modern Period,’ in Global Convict Labour, Christian G. de Vito and Alex Lichtenstein (eds.), Studies in Global Social History 19 (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2015), 126–43.

Online registration required. This course will be held in English.

This course is also considered Extra-European History I or II for students of the curriculum BA History (2009). In this case, a reduced workload applies.