Why did Austria / Austria-Hungary decline?

Austria was one of the great powers of Europe in 1814 but in 1914 it wasn't doing so well and had been eclipsed by its rivals. So why did this happen? Why did Austria and later Austria-Hungary decline?

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[Alssadar]

Everyone's all about Bissonette, but there's been a guy spinning three plates continuously for 4 years now.

[mr_potato_the_third]

Austria went from a small unimportant realm, to a Great Power across Europe, back to a small unimportant state.

[GanyuSimpingDegenerate]

It's really depressing how Austria went from one of the great powers of Europe to getting confused with a barren desert penal colony

[todd]

It all fell apart when James Bissonette stepped down as Emperor. 😔

[JustAGuyWhoLikesStuff.]

1:56: "And Hapsburg Foreign Policy was atrocious."
Excellent. Just excellent.

[Wilderness-Will]

All eight of my immigrant ancestors came to the U.S. from the collapsing Austro-Hungarian Empire between the years of 1891-1922. The bureaucratic indifference with which the Habsburgs treated "Galicia" (modern day southern Poland & Western Ukraine) led to a series of famines in the mid-to-late 19th century called the "Galician Misery" that was arguably worse in scale and scope than the Irish Potato Famine.

There's an extraordinarily limited amount of English-language information about the slow decay of the Habsburg Empire, and I think it's a topic of extraordinary relevance and importance. Thank you for adding a little more to what's out there.

[dylangtech]

Fun fact: "Concert Europe" refers to the Vienna Concert Hall. That's how much the Habsburgs represented the traditional order.

[RedDot-vziw]

One has to keep in mind though, that while nationalism was popular and nationalistic movements within the empire were growing, most people prior to ww1 didn´t want independent states because they reckognized the benefits that the united empire provided. For example, while the people in the city of Triest on the Adria coast were italians and identified as such, they also knew that Triest was the only great Adria port of the empire. If Triest were to become an italian city, it would just be one Adria port of many, and quickly loose its economic importance (which is exactly what happened after ww1). Or take for example the bohemian industrialists. Bohemia was the industrial center of the empire. But most of the rich people who consumed all those industrial goods lived in the austrian part, in citys like Vienna or Graz, and many of the raw materials and ressources came from other parts of the empire as well, a hard border with all of those territories would´ve seriously worsened the situation for bohemian industrialists.
Next example: Galicia: The region of galicia was THE provider of oil for the austrian empire, thanks to galicia austria was the second largest oil producer in the world for a short time in the early 20th century. But without austrian and bohemian industrialists as guaranteed buyers, galician oil just wasn´t competitive, and poland, the new owner of galicia, just didn´t have enough industry that could buy all the oil, therefore galicia began to decline.
Hungarian grain, emerging car manufacturing, etc. The examples of economic advantages that the united empire provided, were numerous, and most people knew that. And because of this, many people within the empire might have been nationalists, but they also were rationalists and this meant that most people might have been in favour of more autonomy, but they weren´t in favour of abolishing the empire completely

[simplyhistory]

The one good thing about the Austro-Hungarian Empire is that the British didn't get involved.

[Zeruel]

3:23 Franz Ferdinands last words were "Sophie! Sophie! Don't die! Stay alive for our children!"

He didn't know his wife was already dead by that point

[angelb.]

Honestly, the fact that the multi-ethnic Austrian Empire outlived Yugoslavia in long-year comparison, despite the ethnic tensions and divisions in the country, is an achievement on its own. Give them credit for that.

[Mightfox]

There's a lot more that can be added to this.

-A fundamental issue was its military spending had structural problems. If you look at "Tactics and Procurement in the Habsburg Military 1866-1918" by John Dredger, you see that the Austrian military constantly gave out shitloads of promotions for reasons, and ended up with an enormous officer class(and not enough NCOs!) that cost a shitton of money, partially because they received generous pensions.

This resulted in wasteful military spending because of so much money going to this bloated officer class, shitty leaders who would push more bad financial military decisions(like making lots of forts and giving them outdated guns). This also lead to a cycle of losing wars->having loans because of wars->more incentive to keep military spending high because of losing wars->budget is crunched.

So I would like to push back on the idea of "oh, Austria didnt spend enough on the military because of the Hungarians and so on" prior to a specific period. They spent comparative amounts to other countries up until 1889- the problem was their military spending was largely wasted on their officer class and stupid spending projects like forts and trying to catch up on the battleship race from scratch. Spending more in the 1800s would not have made them capable of winning wars, it wouldve just wasted money! They needed military reform. I dont know what the officer promotion situation looked like after 1890, nor the origin of it- the Napoleonic era Austrian military did not have this issue(it had different ones), so the origin was after that.

- Austria used to maintain its position by being diplomatically flexible- whenever threatened by a power, it would team up with others who were scared by that power in order to avoid a threat. The ossified alliance system of WW1 prevented them from being able to use this.

- Pieter Judson has some interesting comments on how nationalism was exacerbated by various political structures in Austria, but i havent finished reading his book so I cant elaborate. But I think theres a lot to be said about the nature of the situation regarding nationalism.

- The Austria-Hungary compromise sure was crippling. If you look at the Austrian half, they had universal male suffrage 10 years before Britain did! But the Hungarian half was way behind that, and was also vastly more agricultural than modern countries at the time like USA/Germany/etc, keeping them behind economically. It didnt satisfy the Hungarians either-the compromise only satisfied the Hungarian nobility, so its not like it placated Hungarian nationalism, it felt like a betrayal to those who believed in the Hungarian cause of 1848.

- Regarding the Crimean war, I'd recommend watching "The Perils of Neutrality: Austria and the Crimean War" by Old Britainnia

[justtheilluminativ]

Good video ideas:
- Why did Venezuela decline?
- Why did Haiti fail?
- Why did the First Mexican Empire collapse?
- Why isn’t Central America united?
- Why did Afghanistan fail?
- Why does San Marino exist?
- Why did the Mali Empire decline?

[Shroud]

Austrian here... my country was never good at being a military powerhouse. Austria was always best when they tried the diplomatic route and avoid fighting. "Bella gerant alii, tu felix Austria nube." - "May others wage war, you happy Austria marry." This means that Austria always tried to settle disputes by marrying their line to other powerful lines in order to form alliances and stable relations. But whenever we were "forced" to fight it seldom went well.

[LitD]

Fun fact: The "return Europe to a state before the French revolution" wasn't implemented due to several reasons but a rather significant one for Prussia, Austria and Russia was Poland (or the PLC to be exact) would exist in it's post 1st partition borders. As none of them wanted that it was decided that rather than pre-Revolution Europe would be "pre-Napoleon" and even then not entirely.

[dodgyduck]

I appreciate the separate flags of Austria and Hungary. Just shows how detailed and well-researched these videos are.

[westrim]

Lack of backing from the ancient and wealthy Bissonnette line.

[EmperorNapoleon]

Look what they did to my boy.

Much respect to Austria-Hungary. Their foreign policy was indeed atrocious in the mid nineteenth century, but for centuries they dominated the continent because of the political savvy of the Habsburg Dynasty. Massively impactful family, monarchy, and empire.

Also, the Austro-Hungarian army is a joy to play in the tabletop miniatures game Blood and Valor. I highly recommend it👍🏻

[jpvansplunder]

Just got home after a rough day, open YouTube, History Matters uploaded... Hell yeah.

[MrGhostsoap]

As someone who has been studying history for the last five years, I greatly appreciate the channel and the accuracy of the ever changing European borders throughout 1800-1950