At the height of their power in the Baroque Age, the Habsburgs aspired to rule the entire world; by the end of the ninetheenth century, they strove merely to maintain control over the volatile lands of the upper Danube valley. We trace how the Habsburgs' domains evolved from a messy collection of local duchies into an absolutist empire, and finally into a complex military-industrial state, the home of artistic modernism, which was nonetheless threatened with destruction by a welter of nationalist movements and by the rising power of Serbia and Russia.

Previous lecture on Central Europe & the Rise of the Habsburgs: https://soundcloud.com/historiansplaining/age-of-absolutism-1-central-europe-and-the-rise-of-the-hapsburgs

Image: Painting by Johann Nepomuk Geller of Emperor Franz-Josef walking in the gardens of the Schonbrunn in winter, 1908

Suggested further reading: Mason, "The Dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire"; Sked, "The Decline & Fall of the Habsburg Empire"; Kohn, "The Habsburg Empire"; Rady, "The Habsburgs: To Rule the World."

music: J.S. Bach, Sonata No. 4 in E Minor, played on pedal clavichord by Blaint Karosi.

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