The Civilizing Mission of the Habsburg Monarchy on its Eastern Borders

The geopolitical expansion of the Habsburg Monarchy led to a profound reshuffling of its internal power structure. Сentralist tendencies were reinforced to impose a tighter control on resources and political power by the imperial court in Vienna. This manifold process was inextricably linked to a legitimizing discourse that strived to impose homogeneous cultural values and social norms that were considered conducive to future cultural and socio-economic transformation. The imposition of these values and norms ultimately led towards the construction of a strong fiscal-military state and facilitated empire-building. While many of these social norms, such as thriftiness and industriousness, were part of the reformist discourse of cameralists, their cultural framework was heavily influenced by other Enlightenment ideas, such as the civilization discourse and the theory of developmental stages. Orientalist metaphors contributed to construct social and spatial hierarchies within the Habsburg Empire. While integration strengthened the imperial framework, the discourse that facilitated these processes also contributed to the establishment and legitimation of unequal treatment between the centers and peripheries of the Habsburg Empire.