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Embers of Empire

Embers of Empire

Paul Miller | Claire Morelon

(2018)

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Abstract

The collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy at the end of World War I ushered in a period of radical change for East-Central European political structures and national identities. Yet this transformed landscape inevitably still bore the traces of its imperial past. Breaking with traditional histories that take 1918 as a strict line of demarcation, this collection focuses on the complexities that attended the transition from the Habsburg Empire to its successor states. In so doing, it produces new and more nuanced insights into the persistence and effectiveness of imperial institutions, as well as the sources of instability in the newly formed nation-states.


Claire Morelon is ERC Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Padova. She holds a dual doctorate in Modern European History from the University of Birmingham and the Institut d'Études Politiques in Paris, and was a Junior Research Fellow at The Queen’s College, University of Oxford.


Embers of Empire is a highly impressive, thoroughly researched, and very well-written collection that draws on sources from multiple archives across all of the languages of the successor states. It will be of great interest to historians of Europe and Habsburg scholars, as well as specialists focusing on Eastern Europe and the Balkans.” • Günter Bischof, University of New Orleans

“The brilliant and well-informed essays in this collection insightfully deal with continuities between the late Habsburg and post-Habsburg eras. It exemplifies the recent stream of scholarship that has significantly revised the history of the Habsburg Empire and its legacies.” • Rudolf Kučera, Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences


Paul Miller is Associate Professor of History at McDaniel College in Maryland, USA. His current research concerns the history and memory of the Sarajevo assassination.

Table of Contents

Section Title Page Action Price
Embers of Empire iii
Copyright iv
Contents v
Illustrations vii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
Part I. Permanence and Revolution 13
Chapter 1. Negotiating Post-Imperial Transitions 15
Chapter 2. State Legitimacy and Continuity between the Habsburg Empire and Czechoslovakia 43
Chapter 3. Strangers among Friends 64
Chapter 4. Ideology on Display 90
Part II The Habsburg Army’s Final Battles 115
Chapter 5. Reflections on the Legacy of the Imperial and Royal Army in the Successor States 117
Chapter 6. Imperial into National Officers 136
Chapter 7. Shades of Empire 157
Part III. Church, Dynasty, Aristocracy 175
Chapter 8. “All the German Princes Driven Out!” 177
Chapter 9. Wealthy Landowners or Weak Remnants of the Imperial Past? 203
Chapter 10. Sinner, Saint-or Cipher? 229
Part IV. History, Memory, Mentalité 259
Chapter 11. “What Did They Die For?” 261
Chapter 12. “The First Victim of the First World War” 284
Afterword 318
Index 327