Regional Imbalances and Imperial Cohesion. Austria-Hungary’s Multiple Spatial Arrangements in the Aftermath of the Dual Settlement

This article discusses processes of core formation and peripheralization in the Habsburg Monarchy, focusing on political, economic and cultural factors and their interplay in various lands of the empire between the regional, the provincial and sub-state level in the aftermath of the Austro-Hungarian Dual Settlement or Compromise (1867). The formula of the Compromise offered a way to find a political balance between the Austrian and the Hungarian sub-empires in spite of an unequal economic division of labor between industrial and agrarian provinces. The common market benefited Hungarian big agriculture as well as Austrian and Bohemian big industry, offering graduated perspectives for different business and national elites to accept the dual framework. K.u.k. unity was challenged at countless occasions, but it did not collapse before the defeat in World War I. The article also discusses Austro-Hungary’s international relations, which are characterized by a semi-peripheral position vis-a-vis West European great powers on the one hand and European as well as non-European colonized or dependent regions on the other hand. Although not possessing proper colonies, Austria-Hungary participated in “colonial complicity” with European colonial powers, especially on the Balkans, Africa and Asia. Moreover, the entangled imbalances between the sub-empires, the lands and the provinces showed similarities with colonial relations and compensated for Austria-Hungary’s lack of oversee colonies, hence contributing to imperial cohesion.