The Habsburg Empire’s grand strategy for outmaneuvering and outlasting stronger rivals in a complicated geopolitical world The Empire of Habsburg Austria faced more enemies than any other European great power. Flanked on four sides by rivals, it possessed few of the advantages that explain successful empires. Its army was not renowned for offensive prowess, its finances were often shaky, and its populace was fragmented into more than a dozen ethnicities. Yet somehow Austria endured, outlasting Ottoman sieges, Frederick the Great, and Napoleon. The Grand Strategy of the Habsburg Empire tells the story of how this cash-strapped, polyglot empire survived for centuries in Europe's most dangerous neighborhood without succumbing to the pressures of multisided warfare. Taking readers from the War of the Spanish Succession in the early 1700s to the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, A. Wess Mitchell argues that the Habsburgs succeeded not through offensive military power or great wealth but by developing strategies that manipulated the element of time in geopolitical competition. Unable to fight all their enemies at once, the Habsburgs learned to use the limited tools at their disposal—terrain, technology, and treaty allies—to sequence and stagger their conflicts, drive down the costs of empire, and concentrate scarce resources against the greatest threat of the moment. Rarely holding a grudge after war, they played the "long game" in geopolitics, corralling friend and foe alike into voluntarily managing the empire's lengthy frontiers and extending a benign hegemony across the turbulent lands of middle Europe. A study in adaptive statecraft, The Grand Strategy of the Habsburg Empire offers lessons on how to navigate a messy geopolitical map, stand firm without the advantage of military predominance, and prevail against multiple rivals.

Political Economy in the Habsburg Monarchy is an important study of the contribution of Austrian Enlightenment economist Ludwig Zinzendorf to the political economy of the Habsburg monarchy in the mid eighteenth century. Simon Adler provides the first comprehensive analysis, and first ever study in English, of the development of Zinzendorf’s thinking on the economy, commerce and, above all, state finances. Political Economy in the Habsburg Monarchy shows the extent to which Zinzendorf’s insights were part of the wider European movement dedicated to understanding political economy as an independent and important activity. It establishes Zinzendorf, a protégé of the State Chancellor Wenzel Anton Kaunitz, as a pivotal figure in the development of Austrian economic and financial policies during the 1750s and 1760s and explains how he challenged cameralism using the most advanced European economic ideas, notably from French writers around Vincent de Gournay. This book is based upon wide-ranging research of primary sources and comprehensive coverage of secondary literature and adds significantly to the ongoing historiographical turn towards political economy in the eighteenth century.

This first of a two-part examination of the economic development of the Czech lands deals with the period from the mid-eighteenth century (the accession of Maria Theresa to the Austrian throne) to the end of the World War I. In this key period of industrialization, economic, social, political, legal, and cultural changes intersected. Featuring chapters by leading Czech experts in the economic development and social history of the Czech lands, this broad study explores the multifaceted conditions and outcomes of modernization in Central Europe—from social development to industry, agriculture, banking, transport, and infrastructure—as well as offers valuable comparisons with relevant regions of the Habsburg Empire and Western Europe. Also included are an extensive bibliography and indexes and charts of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, the scope of the authority of the chambers of trade and industry, the development of leading engineering companies, and various maps, including of the Czech railway network.

This is the eagerly awaited second volume of Jean Bérenger's history of the Habsburgs. It covers the last two centuries of their rule and provides a compelling account of the fluctuations of Habsburg dynastic power and its disintegration after World War One. Bérenger gives a rich portrait of Habsburg greatness under Maria Theresa and Joseph II and shows how their successors proved more adroit at riding the tide of nationalism in their multi-ethnic empire than is often recognised.

John Komlos examines the industrial expansion of Austria from a fresh viewpoint and develops a new model for the industrial revolution. By integrating recent advances in the study of human biology and nutrition as they relate to physical stature, population growth, and levels of economic development, he reveals an intense Malthusian crisis in the Habsburg lands during the second half of the eighteenth century. At that time food shortages brought about by the accelerated population growth of the 1730s forced the government to adopt a reform program that opened the way for the beginning of the industrial revolution in Austria and in the Czech Crownlands. Comparing this "Austrian model" of economic growth to the industrial revolution in Britain, Komlos argues that the model is general enough to explain demographic and economic growth elsewhere in Europe--despite obvious regional differences. The main feature of the model is the interplay between a persistent, even if small, tendency to accumulate capital and a population with an underlying tendency to grow in numbers while remaining subject to Malthusian checks, particularly a limited availability of food. According to Komlos, modern economic growth in Europe began when the food constraint was finally lifted. Originally published in 1989. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This second volume deals with power relations between the Industrial Revolution and the First World War.