Picturing Austria-Hungary: The British Perception of the Habsburg Monarchy 1865-1870

As in our own time, during the late 19th century, Europe faced a choice between centralised authority and national sovereignty, common affairs vs. home rule, federal administrative power vs. state rights. This is a study of the British perception of the making of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in 1867, a process which posed fundamental structural questions for Central Europe and beyond. The book focuses on ideas, techniques, and methods of political marketing that created most of the national images and stereotypes of the Habsburg Monarchy in Victorian England, then the centre of world power and world opinion. Among the many different makers and shapers of the British image of Austria-Hungary, Lajos Kossuth, Henry de Worms, and Arthur J. Patterson are depicted here on the basis of a variety of newly discovered primary sources.

The book is made up of four main sections: The first, entitled “Intervention or non-intervention: foreign affairs in British political thought in the 1860s”, outlines the guiding principles of British foreign policy at the time with special reference to the nature of Britain’s limited but material interest in the Habsburg Monarchy. The second and more substantial part, under the title “Marketing Austria-Hungary: sources and channels of information”, addresses diplomatic, commercial and military relations and the impact of contemporary British journalism. The third section, entitled “Images of Austria-Hungary”, reproduces, from journals and books, including memoirs, British impressions of, among other subjects, the economy and society in Austria-Hungary; the history and national character of the Hungarians; the nationality question in Hungary, as well as the creation of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise. The fourth part conveys the complete series of secret British diplomatic reports of Sir Robert B.D. Morier from Buda-Pest, dated in 1866, which are published in this volume for the first time.