The Rise and Fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire

The Rise and Fall of Austria-Hungary

Social Media

Sources:

Licensing:
Images

[jorinton]

Welp you're not wrong, but also you're not really right.

Firstly the Entente wasn't interested in breaking A-H up until 1916 and even then there wasn't supposed to be so many countries.

And mainly, you claim that so much power was given to the local governments, but you don't mentioned Hungarization or Germanization at all. Despite A-H giving certain competencies to local governments, the fact was that it wasn't at all somehow federalizing or even giving out autonomy. The central government didn't become unimportant all of a sudden. It was the push of the local governments wanting more power over their matters from the central government that fueled the independence lust. The local governments within the Austrian part had little actual power, to the point they had to fight tooth and nail to even get a national theatre or something of that matter and the important legislation being discussed in the Austrian parliament, not the local ones.

And that's not even mentioning Hungary, where most people lived a life similar to a serf up until the 1940s. Hungary actively denied autonomy to it's "subjects", especially to Romanians and Slovaks. While yes, Austria did allow language to be used in administration and school, Hungary didn't. Even at the turning point of the century Hungary actively censored local languages and hunted schools teaching in local languages. As far as the Hungarian aristocracy was conserned all in their domein were Hungarian and there was no other nationality in their realm. This is truly what pushed the Empire over the edge, including what you mention in the video.

[SiVlog]

It's ironic that Franz Josef, who came to the throne after the Hungarian rebellion and was unpopular with them as such, was grown to be loved in Hungary as a result of his wife

[jlpack]

All 8 of my great grandparents emigrated from the Austro-Hungarian empire to the USA around 1900, though none of them were Austrian or Hungarian. 4 were Polish, 2 were Croat, and 2 were Lemko/Ukrainian.

[alehaim]

19:00
"Russian revolution of 1817"
I didn't remember communism being the ideology of Russia for 174 years

[TheAustrianAnimations]

Another lesser known fun fact about Austria-Hungary: Austria-Hungary was the 3rd largest oil producer worldwide, after the USA & Russia in the early 20th century (especially 1909), since A-H had an oil-rich region, Galicia. The first European attempt to drill for oil was in Bóbrka, Krosno County, Western Galicia, in 1854 (which used to be part of the Austrian Empire). However, there was a decline just before WW1, and although the oil fields weren't destroyed by the Russians in 1914, oil production was stopped. Galicia was the Central Powers' only major domestic source of oil during the Great War. Today we Austrians have little to no oil at all. Imagine Austria being an oil power. 😂

[CivilWarWeekByWeek]

A topic I haven't thought about for over a year, yeah its worth the half hour

[Orthane]

The equality part of the Empire showed that had it had just a bit longer to continue with their reforms, and had Franz Ferdinand not been killed, the Empire might actually be around to this day in at least one form or another. Franz Ferdinand was actually in support of greater freedoms for ethnic minorities in the Empire, and killing him crushed any chance those groups had. It's collapse ironically caused places like Yugoslavia to be even more oppressive of ethnic minorities than the Austro-Hungarian Empire was.

[joeottolino]

I liked how you matched the background music to the nations being discussed at the time. Franz Liszt when discussing Hungary, Chopin when discussing Poland, etc.

Nice touch

[budiharyadi]

The breakup of A-H is simply an interesting case study, though i personally found it rather depressing. Looking at the direction the country took after The Compromise you almost hope that the system somehow worked and the country was slowly growing, yet it failed. A-H provide important lessons to all multiethnic countries (mine, Indonesia, included) in both how to and how not to manage a multiethnic society.

[AA-blsg]

As an objective Hungarian I do find it pretty significant the lack of criticism against Germanization and Magyarization in the two parts of the empire. It was overall s well documented video, but the loyalty of the minority populations was largely lost with these forceful processes of German and Hungarian nationalism. The federalization should have began much more earlier and then maybe we would have another Switzerland in Central Europe

[barkasz]

“Russia helped Austria in the 1848 revolution” is sort of a gross simplification. The Russians crushed the rebellion and without them the revolution would have been successful.

[liltinglullaby]

29:08

That is objectively untrue. It was not peaceful anywhere. Hungary waged war against Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia when they invaded. And even the annexation of Burgenland wasn't that peaceful, since many locals took up arms against the Austrian soldiers.

[JJMHigner]

Karl I wanted to stay in Austria as Emperor or monarch on some level but was refused this. He did not abdicate exactly but simply withdrew from the affairs of state' which meant the same thing. He tried to regain the crown of Hungary twice but failed. I love all of your videos! Thanks again. This one is a favorite subject of mine as well.

[zolkaa]

As a Hungarian it's interesting to hear how people from other countries learned this. There were some things that we didn't learn the same.

[artemis]

That moldavian bussy got me questioning my loyalty to the emperor

[itsblitz]

Glad you covered the Austro-Hungarian Empire because its always treated as a footnote in history.

[TheDarthbinky]

I mean, Austria didn't exactly "decide" to go to war with Prussia in 1866. War was declared on them by Prussia.

In 1864, Austria and Prussia successfully defeated Denmark in a 9 month war, and Austria was given control over Holstein (a small region in that neck area where the border of what's now Germany and Denmark is). But about a year and a half later, Prussia correctly guessed that (with some help from Risorgimento Italy) they could easily defeat Austria's military, so they claimed that a certain law Austria passed in Holstein violated the treaty ending the 1864 war; Prussia used that as justification to seize Holstein and to declare war on Austria. The war only lasted about a month.

[mariomusic]

In Croatia, older people spoke mostly positively about Austro-Hungary. Life was relatively good at that time, a lot was being built at that time. Today, there is a lot of architecture from the time of Austro-Hungary in Croatia. Most of the objections were to the imposition of foreign languages, ie the neglect of the Croatian language.
But small nations in history have almost always been under someone’s domination. But when you compare all those forces that had power and influence in this area from the Venetians, Hungarians, Turks, Italy, Yugoslavia, to today's EU, we can say that Austria-Hungary was the most successful in its time and least hated by ordinary people.
We have the opinion that Austria-Hungary lost the war and failed when Russia intervened in the First World War. This is not mentioned at all in this video.

[daveanderson]

Half an hour well spent It's was one great mess, and very complicated And you did a full on job explaining the situation Well done

[mobdb]

There are a few mistakes.
#1 serfs didn't give all they had to the nobility, and were far form slaves. Serfs gave about 1/10 to nobel whose land it was and about 1/9 to the church, so much less then required by today's taxes in the same area.

#2 special position of Croatia within the monarchy was enjoyed because Hungarian crown that joined with Austria was a personal union of Hungary and Croatia, so each emperor had to be crowned emperor of Austria but separately king of Hungary and King of Croatia.