The Habsburg Monarchy has received much historiographical attention since 1945. Yet the military aspects of Austria’s emergence as a European great power in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have remained obscure. This book shows that force of arms and the instruments of the early modern state were just as important as its marriage policy in creating and holding together the Habsburg Monarchy. Drawing on an impressive up-to-date bibliography as well as on original archival research, this survey is the first to put Vienna’s military back at the centre stage of early modern Austrian history.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Table of Contents -- List of Maps -- List of Tables -- List of Figures -- Acknowledgements -- Abbreviations -- Glossary -- Introduction: The belated great power -- Modest Origins - the Habsburg Monarchy During the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century -- 1. The domestic foundations -- The question of terminology -- The territorial and administrative configuration of the Habsburg Monarchy -- Limited absolutism: the provincial Estates -- Economy -- Finances -- 2. The primacy of power politics -- The instruments of foreign policy -- From domestic to foreign policy: the Habsburgs and the Reich after 1648 -- Geopolitical challenges and responses -- 3. Home defence -- Feudal levy and peasant militia in the Austro-Bohemian lands -- Hungary -- The Military Border (Militärgrenze) -- The contribution of the Reich -- 4. The standing army -- Origins and growth -- The High Command -- The officer corps -- Military administration -- Artillery -- Technical branches -- The guards -- Weaponry -- Military industries -- Uniforms -- Quarters and provisions -- Soldiers' families and the baggage train -- Military justice -- Religion -- Medical service and disabled soldiers -- Tactics, strategy and the primacy of logistics -- Austria's 'age of heroes' 1683-1733 -- 5. The Turkish War 1683-1699 -- The Kuruc rebellion -- The siege of Vienna -- The Habsburg counter-offensive -- 6. The Nine Years War 1689-1697 -- The 'reunions' -- The French invasion of Germany -- From stalemate to peace -- 7. The War of the Spanish Succession 1701-1714 -- The Spanish inheritance -- The Italian peninsula -- Germany -- The Spanish Netherlands -- Spain -- The peace treaties of Utrecht, Rastatt and Baden 1713-1714 -- The Rákóczy rebellion 1703-1711 -- 8. Renewed expansion -- The Turkish War of 1716-1718 -- Trade expansion.

In the late spring of 1718 near the village of Pozarevac (German Passarowitz) in northern Serbia, freshly conquered by Habsburg forces, three delegations representing the Holy Roman Emperor, Ottoman Sultan, and the Republic of Venice gathered to end the conflict that had begun three and a half years earlier. The fighting had spread throughout southeastern Europe, from Hungary to the southernmost tip of the Peloponnese. The peace redrew the map of the Balkans, extending the reach of Habsburg power, all but expelling Venice from the Greek mainland, and laying the foundations for Ottoman revitalization during the Tulip period. In this volume, twenty specialists analyze the military background to and political context of the peace congress and treaty. They assess the immediate significance of the Peace of Passarowitz and its longer term influence on the society, demography, culture, and economy of central Europe.

Britain’s War for the Mediterranean provides a definitive study on British warmaking in the Mediterranean during the War of the First Coalition. It traces the origins of foreign and naval policies from the early eighteenth century to describe the duality of British affairs. These contradictions manifested themselves in the War of the First Coalition as Great Britain attempted to build consensus in the Mediterranean World while clinging to its power base of naval power and commerce. The book explores the decisions of individuals and the wider trends of the British political and naval system, honed over the course of the eighteenth century. In explaining war against Revolutionary France, the book follows the decisions of admirals, diplomats, and politicians in attempting to cobble together a coalition of Spanish, Austrian, Sardinian, and Neapolitan forces. This book also makes connections with the other theaters of war: The Austrian Netherlands and the Caribbean. Britain’s War for the Mediterranean examines the internal working of the British government during the crisis of the French Revolution. It focuses on how politicians, diplomats, and military commanders formulated strategy for the Mediterranean theater. One of the major conclusions of this book is that the British government never spoke with one voice. Lacking synchronization in a changing conflict, the structure and conflicting objectives of each branch of the government failed to create a coherent plan to resist Republican expansion in the region. The book complicates the simplistic view of previous works on the weakness of allies and the naivete of the Pitt ministry, providing agency to diplomats and commanders across the region. The second major conclusion is that these conflicting objectives were firmly rooted in the experiences of the eighteenth century. British diplomacy, crippled in the aftermath of the American Revolution, saw the French Revolution as an opportunity to build consensus and a shared view of a British world. French aggression offered an opportunity to reclaim a position of influence lost over the course of the 1700s. In contrast, the trajectory of British foreign policy shaped the use of the Royal Navy in the eighteenth century. A trans-Atlantic force, a war in the Mediterranean forced British admirals to relearn the complicated nature of regional foreign policy. Diplomacy and naval power clashed over the conduct of the war – one rooted in foreign courts, the other in maritime coercion.

The Birth of a Great Power System, 1740-1815 examines a key development in modern European history: the origins and emergence of a competitive state system. H.M. Scott demonstrates how the well-known and dramatic events of these decades - the emergence of Russia and Prussia; the three partitions of Poland; the continuing retreat of the Ottoman Empire; the unprecedented territorial expansion of Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, halted by the final defeat of Napoleon - were part of a wider process that created the modern great power system, dominated by Europe's five leading states. Enhanced by maps and a chronology of principal events, this comprehensive and accessible textbook is fully up-to-date in its coverage of recent scholarship. Unlike many other treatments of this period, Scott extends his beyond the French Revolution of 1789 in order to demonstrate how events both before and after this great upheaval merged to produce the central political development in modern European history. This book addresses the crucial phase in the emergence of the modern international system which, with the subsequent addition of the USA, Japan and Russia, has prevailed until the present day.