scholarly journals The Grand Strategy of the Habsburg Empire

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. WESS MITCHELL
Keyword(s):  
Grand Strategy ◽  
Habsburg Empire

The Grand Strategy of the Habsburg Empire

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-111
Author(s):  
Jonathan Kwan
Keyword(s):  
Grand Strategy ◽  
Habsburg Empire

scholarly journals The Grand Strategy of the Habsburg Empire

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Wess Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Great Power ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
Habsburg Empire ◽  
Middle Europe

The Empire of Habsburg Austria faced more enemies than any other European great power. Flanked on four sides by rivals, it possessed few of the advantages that explain successful empires. Yet somehow Austria endured, outlasting Ottoman sieges, Frederick the Great, and Napoleon. This book tells the story of how this cash-strapped, polyglot empire survived for centuries in Europe’s most dangerous neighborhood without succumbing to the pressures of multisided warfare. It shows how the Habsburgs played the long game in geopolitics, corralling friend and foe alike into voluntarily managing the empire’s lengthy frontiers and extending a benign hegemony across the turbulent lands of middle Europe. The book offers lessons on how to navigate a messy geopolitical map, stand firm without the advantage of military predominance, and prevail against multiple rivals.

The Habsburg Legacy

2019 ◽  
pp. 304-316
Author(s):  
A. Wess Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
Habsburg Empire ◽  
East Central ◽  
Central European ◽  
Strategic Environments ◽  
Buffer States ◽  
East Central European

This chapter discusses the Habsburg grand strategy. The Habsburg Empire had an especially pressing need to engage in the pursuit of grand strategy because of its vulnerable location and the unavailability of effective offensive military instruments with which to subdue the threats around its frontiers. Weakness is provocative, and apathy is rarely rewarded in even the most forgiving of strategic environments. For an impecunious power in the vortex of east-central European geopolitics, these traits, if permitted to coexist for long, would lead to the extinction of the state. This was the signal lesson from the wars of the eighteenth century, which had culminated in a succession struggle that saw a militarily weak Austria dangerously bereft of allies invaded from three directions and almost destroyed. These experiences spurred Habsburg leaders to conceptualize and formalize the matching of means to large ends in anticipation of future threats. The result was a conservative grand strategy that used alliances, buffer states, and a defensive army to manage multifront dynamics, avoid strains beyond Austria’s ability to bear, and preserve an independent European center under Habsburg leadership.

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