CONF-Report: Globalizing the History of Late Habsburg Central Europe, Budapest, May 11, 2018

Veronika Eszik Discussion

Globalizing the History of Late Habsburg Central Europe
Workshop Review
International Workshop, Budapest, May 11th, 2018

Despite the spread of global perspectives within the field of historical scholarship, as Frank Hadler and Matthias Middell put it, "research into transnationalization has received so far little consideration in East Central Europe”.[1] The hiatus being perceived, eminent scholars of the field of (global) history were brought together to discuss possible ways to write history beyond borders in this particular region of Europe.

After welcoming the participants, Bálint Varga (IAS CEU/Hungarian Academy of Sciences)shortly traced the paths of recent research concerning Habsburg East Central Europe, highlighting the way in which Pieter M. Judson and others have renewed the field by challenging the ’nation versus empire’ discourse and cultivating what one may call „New Imperial History”. Focusing on empire, argued Varga, is not the only way though to transgress the boundaries of national history. Global or transnational history offers alternative methodological tools and different research questions that are worth investigating.

In his keynote speech, Matthias Middell (University of Leipzig) sketched the recent boom of transnational studies and also suggested an explanation of the fact that in East Central Europe the reception of this new trend by historians has proven to be ambivalent. They claimed a more detailed research on national history, on the one hand, they took for granted the transnational nature of East Central European past on the other, given that the region was long dominated by empires. Rejecting these claims, Middell urged historians to discover more connectedness and to exploit the potential offered by comparisons. Finally, he gave an account of the project leading to the above-cited handbook, displaying the structure and main ideas of the work.

William O’Reilly (University of Cambridge) challenged the wide-spread vision of the Habsburg Empire as a landlocked, multi-ethnic yet exclusively European state when associated the Habsburg Monarchy in the 18th century with a range of new modes, methods, and means of what some have styled ‘colonial rule’. He reminded how incredibly modest historiography was concerning global networks, knowledge transfer and transoceanic engagements of the Habsburgs after the loss of the Spanish throne in 1714 whereas Vienna’s strategies to rule newly reconquered lands from the Ottoman Empire, such as Transylvania or Austrian Wallachia clearly reflect colonial experiences. By underlining these developments, he also critically reflected the imprecise nature of notions like "Habsburg post-colonial", "internal colonialization" and "orientalist imaginaries", as the keywords of recent research on the mainly Balkan-oriented colonial ambitions of the Habsburgs.

Economic historian Judit Klement (Hungarian Academy of Sciences/Eötvös Loránd University) placed Hungarian economic life in what many call the First Global Economy. She traced the evolution of Hungarian modernization in the frames of the Habsburg Monarchy, as well as the proliferating historiographical debate on the advantages and disadvantages of the country’s position in this setting. Finally, she suggested new research fields by enumerating economic phenomena related to global from worldwide crises to entrepreneurial culture through Hungarian international trade policy. James Callaway (New York University) analyzed the delicate division of labor between Trieste and Fiume, their respective roles in Austria’s empire-building and Hungary’s national ambitions. This division, argued Callaway, was motivated way more by geopolitical than by economic interests. According to his observation, Hungary, rather devoid of the quest for great power status was free to act in accordance with the economic logic, whilst Austria used Trieste to project a Habsburg presence throughout the globe. As a result, the profit-oriented behavior does not entirely explain the functioning of the two commercial fleets of the Monarchy, ideological drivers must be taken into consideration.

Susanne Korbel (University of Graz) explored the globalization of popular culture in Austria-Hungary.  She depicted how mobility influenced popular culture between the Habsburg Empire and New York and especially interactions of Jews and non-Jews in it. By analyzing the ways artists and other actors in entertainment industry organized voyages, created international characters or transgressed linguistic borders, Korbel sketched a newly formed space where several stereotypes were challenged.

Finally, Bálint Varga examined the role of migration – mainly to the United States and occasionally returning to Hungary – in the transnationalization of Hungarian society at the turn of the century. Given that transnational migrants were almost exclusively agricultural workers, migration had an immediate impact on the transnationalization of the rural population. The paper explored three examples of this impact, namely transnational knowledge production, culture, and economics. Examining overseas influences in the Hungarian countryside around 1900 resulted in captivating scale change in reasoning. Interesting references had been made to local agencies dealing with challenges or using the potentials of transnationalization. Each panel was followed by a thought-provoking debate about theoretical questions such as definition problems of international, transnational and global history, as well as by an engaged discussion of sub-problems and research perspectives in globalizing the history of late Habsburg Central Europe.

Through six very different papers, dealing with the theoretical frames and possible research orientations of global East Central European history, the economic reality of the Habsburg state embedded in world economy, or globalizing culture in the region, the workshop showed the fruitfulness of such an approach and offered a detail-rich picture of the transnationalization process of former Habsburg lands.

[1]Frank Hadler and Matthias Middell, Handbuch einer transnationalen Geschichte Ostmitteleuropas, (Göttingen, 2017), p.13.