Modernizing Europe’s Imperial Monarchies

Up until recently, Europe’s three imperial monarchies – the German, Austrian, and Russian Empires – were seen as moribund political entities, unable to accommodate the forces of political, social, economic, and cultural modernization, and as a result collapsed collectively during or shortly after the First World War. More recently, scholars have underlined the viability of these polities, including as frameworks for democratic experiments and fixed points for (supra)national identification, notwithstanding the suppression of minorities and colonial undertakings of these empires. This book takes a different approach: it demonstrates that these three imperial monarchies were capable of and willing to initiate and steer the modernization of their institutions and polities. Rather than understanding modernization as a linear and teleological process, this contributed volume draws instead on Samuel Eisenstadt’s notion of ‘multiple modernities’ to demonstrate how these empires sought to modernize on their own terms. By drawing on this concept, it becomes possible to challenge notions of inevitable decline and instead demonstrate how these imperial monarchies sought to forge modernization on their own terms in the nineteenth and early twentieth century.
Heidi Hein-Kircher is Director of the Martin Opitz Library (Herne) and Professor for German History and Culture in Eastern Europe at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany.
Frederik Frank Sterkenburgh is Assistant Professor of Political History at Utrecht University, The Netherlands.