What could Austria Hungary could of done to fix its Over Diversity and National instability in its Ethnic army, and government.

[Alternativity]

Austria Hungary was a mess, of Croatians, Slavs, Polish, Hungarian, German, and Bohemian ethnicites, possibly the most unstable Empire I've ever seen.
Don't Believe me?
Look at this ethnic Map.

So what do you think could have stopped this?

 

[Oda]

Cry

 

[Alternativity]

Cry

Point Taken.

 

[lukedalton]

stomp the Hungarian till they don't even try to look funny at Wien and start some gradual devolution of power to various ethnic part (Bohemian, Croats, etc. etc.), accept that some real democratic reform along the way are unavoidable, try much harder to create an Hasburg identity maybe using Latin as lingua franca...i know it's hard but honestly it can't be worse than OTL.
And more importantly not wait, this are thing to do as soon as possible, more time pass less probable is that they suceeded

 

[Mildtryth]

Austria Hungary was a mess, of Croatians, Slavs, Polish, Hungarian, German, and Bohemian ethnicites, possibly the most unstable Empire I've ever seen.
Don't Believe me?
Look at this ethnic Map.

So what do you think could have stopped this?

Butterfly away nationalism somehow?

 

[Alternativity]

stomp the Hungarian till they don't even try to look funny at Wien and start some gradual devolution of power to various ethnic part (Bohemian, Croats, etc. etc.), accept that some real democratic reform along the way are unavoidable, try much harder to create an Hasburg identity maybe using Latin as lingua franca...i know it's hard but honestly it can't be worse than OTL.
And more importantly not wait, this are thing to do as soon as possible, more time pass less probable is that they suceeded

To be fair, that can make things worse, The Austrians were desperate to not lose a Huge chunk of its Empire, which is why it came to the Dual monarchy to give the Hungarians SOME autonomy, they defiantly needed to focus on the powder keg, due to the the Instability in Bosnia, and Serbia.

 

[lukedalton]

To be fair, that can make things worse, The Austrians were desperate to not lose a Huge chunk of its Empire, which is why it came to the Dual monarchy to give the Hungarians SOME autonomy, they defiantly needed to focus on the powder keg, due to the the Instability in Bosnia, and Serbia.

I know that i using a lot of hindsight, but in the end giving to the Hungarian has been extremely counterproductive to the stability of the Empire, much more than the instability in Bosnia.

 

[Alternativity]

I know that i using a lot of hindsight, but in the end giving to the Hungarian has been extremely counterproductive to the stability of the Empire, much more than the instabili

Indeed, but they were desperate not to lose Hungary.
Hungary actually had stable ethnicity counterpart to most of the empire

 

[Tibi088]

stomp the Hungarian till they don't even try to look funny at Wien and start some gradual devolution of power to various ethnic part (Bohemian, Croats, etc. etc.), accept that some real democratic reform along the way are unavoidable, try much harder to create an Hasburg identity maybe using Latin as lingua franca...i know it's hard but honestly it can't be worse than OTL.
And more importantly not wait, this are thing to do as soon as possible, more time pass less probable is that they suceeded

Oh those pesky moustache twirling hungarians, if only they would have been brought to heel everything would have gone perfectly...

Also lets ignore all the other miriad of ethnic nationalistic squable the Empire never managed to solve (like what to do with the germans in the Bohemian lands, what to do with the poles and Ukrainians, the Croats, the romanians and the serbs, etc). Also ignore that if you look at the working of the two sides of the dual monarchy before WWI the austrian one looked significantly more disfunctional than the hungarian one...

My ideal solution would be (that to my knowledge none ever proposed) to separate nation and state. Retain the existing states, lands etc. These would deal with criminal law, military and infractructure projects etc. But relegate all cultural stuff to nations - this could exist even across borders. Every citizen of the Empire would have the right to decide which nation of the Empire he / she belongs to. Part of the taxes he / she payes would go to the nation of question. People would be free to change nations if they want with maybe a limit (like you can change only once in 5 years or something like that). The retaining of the old boundaries would be a fig leaf to the conservatives, the creations of nations would give the rights to the smaller nations they did not have and coveted while at the same time it would possibly be acceptable to the bigger nations as them having more money (taxes and positions they already occupy, etc) would make being a member of their nation be more lucrative.

Further an official a language for at the very least the army and burocracy would be imperative to have. The most practical for this would be german, but im pretyy sure some nationals would find that problematic so maybe latin. Or they create a mesh language for military and offficial business along the lines off making it as simple and easy to learn as possible that would only cover practical needs.

 

[lukedalton]

Oh those pesky moustache twirling hungarians, if only they would have been brought to heel everything would have gone perfectly...

Cheap and not really usefull irony aside, the big problem of the Hungarian is that they are not really friendly with the other ethnicities at the end it come to a choice between them and the others as any increase on the right of let's say croats will have not taken well in budapest. Deal with the hungarian nobility as soon as possible and at least you can try to work some agreement with the other parts, keep things as they are and you will fight an uphill battle even for the slightest modification.

 

[Evil Crusader]

The Empire had the bad luck to never quite have a single dominating ethnicity in the one timeframe where that was a major challenge. Even so, they only went down as losers of the First World War, a fate partially shared with Russia (who similarly lost a great many minorities) and which heavily impacted the German Empire too.
There probably isn't too much that could be done, and personally just one compromise was the best compromise - having to juggle multiple parties vying for control would have been even worse in the mid- and long-term.

 

[Wolf-Salami]

Maybe it's because my main familiarity with Austria-Hungary is it's decline but it always struck me (almost) like a fluke of a country. Like an Alt-History Austria that was wanked to be super buffed before collapsing under the weight of reality got transported into reality.

It's such a mishmash of different ethnicities and different decentralised institutions that how it came about and survived for as long as it had always struck me as bizarre.

You've got two ways to save Austria-Hungary.

1. To save Austria-Hungary and turn into any sort of success would either involve the Austrians becoming more iron-fisted and dominates other groups.

2. Alternatively, (the way I would do it) decentralise even further and release different countries and unions under Habsburg cadet branches or major nobility of said countries ethnic group with a sort of Austria-Hungarian Confederation. That way Austria maintains it's grip on the empire while appeasing various nationalists and devolving problems the Vienna government is either too far away or far too incompetent to deal with.

Cry

As this user says, you should just cry unless your working on a timeline with a much sooner timeframe so problems mentioned can be prevented rather than reformed.

 

[Tanc49]

If it's that unstable and doomed to failure, how come it existed in one form or another for centuries?
It seems to me it's a bit of a teleological approach, just like we talk about the decline of the Roman Empire from Commodus when the damn thing lasted another 1000 years (alright, 280 years for the Western half), or how the Ottoman Empire was in decline since the XVIIth century.
If your empire is in "terminal decline" for longer than most countries have existed, perhaps we are looking for signs of weaknesses rather than proofs of resilience.

I'd say that seeing the Empire having an over-diversity issue is also a hangover from XIXth/XXth century view of nation states. If we look at European states in 2023, a lot of them are probably more ethnically diverse than in 1918. If we take an even wider view, the European Union is mostly functioning, is getting ever more integrated, and is waaay more diverse than the Empire ever was.

This article goes on about those things in further details (not mine but interesting)

What would Leibniz say about the schisms in Europe today? | Aeon Ideas

Leibniz believed a pluralistic Europe could keep aggressive forces in check. What would he make of the state of the EU today?

aeon.co

As said above, we should be wary of looking for issues while knowing it will fail. If we looked at it in 1900, would we be certain all of this was a problem? Would it be guaranteed it'd all break down 18 years down the line?
Or was, like Tsardom and the Prussian Empire, broken down by the traumatism of WWI, which caused cracks that might have existed but not been existential, to become major fractures.

It is a major question for today's countries: can states be diverse or do they have to be absolute nation-states, with one ethnicity/culture?

 

[Tibi088]

Cheap and not really usefull irony aside, the big problem of the Hungarian is that they are not really friendly with the other ethnicities at the end it come to a choice between them and the others as any increase on the right of let's say croats will have not taken well in budapest. Deal with the hungarian nobility as soon as possible and at least you can try to work some agreement with the other parts, keep things as they are and you will fight an uphill battle even for the slightest modification.

Im not saying that the hungarians werent a problem or even the biggest hurdle if you wanted to federalize the Empire but there were also other, incredibly hard to impossible to solve to the satisfaction of all sides problems. Take the second biggest one: What do you propose as a solution to the czech question? Look at the demands of the czech nationalist and tell me a solution thats acceptable to both them and the germans? Because I really cant.

Further if you wanted to rank the nations of the Empire in terms of importance for the survival of the Empire IMO that would look like:
Germans - had money and positions, the core of the empire
Hungarians - had money and positions, fully in the Empire, no unsolvable disutes with the most important nations
Czech - had money and positions, fully in the Empire but a nearly impossible to solve dispute with the germans
Croats - had money and positions, fully in the Empire serious but IMO not unsolvable dispute with hungarians
Poles - had positions and some money, hard to solve dispute with Ukrainians, also unreliable in the case Poland ever gets its freedom
Slovakians - no money or positions, but at least fully in the Empire, unsolvable dispute with hungarians
Slovenians - AFAIK no money or positions, at least fully in the Empire, very hard to solve dispute with germans
Serbs - no positions but some money, not reliable because of hostile Serbia on the other side of the border
Romanians - no positions but some money, not reliable because of Romania on the other side of the border
Ukrainians - AFAIK no money or positions, but more reliable than the above two
Italians - few and unreliable because of Italy on the other side of the border

I admittedly know much less of the austrian affairs than the hungarian ones. The point im trying to make is that if you want the Empire to survive in the long run you have to get at a bare minimum the germans, hungarians and czech on board. It would be a huge bonus if you could also win ower the croats and/or the poles. A military solution against the hungarians will alienate them, and you will do so in big part to win ower serbs and romanians (who are hard to rely on because of their national state on the other side of the border), and slovaks (who have neither the money nor the education to be of much use initially).

Further and most importantly look at the situation in Hungary before the war: there was very little pressure on the hungarian leadership to even consider a change. There was little internal pressure: there were no mass rallies by the national minorities, or even terrorist actions or anything. They were also barely present in pairlament. The socialist caused more trouble than the minorities to the government.
There was little outside pressure: Neither the austrian side nor the Emperor was pressing the hungarians to accept any change of the Empire.
The hungarian elite is often portrayed as blockheads absolutely refusing to change. They had no reason to - there was very little pressure on them to do so. There is little reason to suppose that this would not change if there was serious pressure put on them to accept a change - like FJ dying and FF pushing for changes as Emperor, or the natinal minorities in Hungary becoming much more active politically in or outside of pairlament.
I also want to point out that the idea that the problem can be solved by getting rid of the hungarian "nobility" - lets say elite, supposes that unlike any other nations in Europe at the time the hungarian common people who did not have the vote were not nationalistic and be fully ready to sign away most of what they saw as their country. That I consider as incredibly naive.

Personally my opinion is that most people who want a surviving Habsburg Empire do so by going for an easy solution that IMO would not work because it completely fails to consider that the Empire was an incredible complex mix of nations, rivalries and interests. Untangling all of that in a somewhat workable form.... The only workable way forward in such an environment would be a huge amount of compromise on every side reached with tons of diplomacy, which is inredibly hard to do, requires a lot of patience and might be just impossible even with that. But people want to move forward with their ideas and timelines, and not dwell on some of the most complex issues of the time. So they go the easy way - blame it all on the hungarian elite, the forcefull removal of which will magically solve all the problems of the Empire and have everyone else be happy to set aside their grievances and differences, and create a new imperial federation...

 

[Intosh]

Austria Hungary was a mess, of Croatians, Slavs, Polish, Hungarian, German, and Bohemian ethnicites, possibly the most unstable Empire I've ever seen.
Don't Believe me?
Look at this ethnic Map.

So what do you think could have stopped this?

Nothing, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Kingdom was a prison where the Germans and later the Hungarians were the jailers of severals nations who for half of them had a prestigious past and independant states well before the XIX century.

The " prison of peoples" or the "prison of nations" was a quote from a French author about the Empire of Russia. But I saw it apply also to Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire.

 

[Aincrad]

Raise Bohemia, Galicia and Illyria as kingdoms, and centralize to the level of the U.S Federal government. This would placate nationalist feelings, lock them into struggles with their own separate local ethnicities, and thus diverting their energies from Vienna and allowing a sense of unity to emerge based on the limited but effective powers of the central government.

 

[Triune Kingdom]

Yet that rickety, ramshackle Empire, the "Dungeon of the Nations", floatsam of feudal past, imperial dreams and Habsburg ambition did rather well, once we get past the obvious propaganda which newly formed nations had, in an effort to legitemize themselves and their authority over these "nationalistic" masses they claimed to represent. Look beyond, and realize the enormity of the challenge that the Great War represented for all the combatants, and then add at one moment four fronts that Austria-Hungary had to take care of, and overall relative success despite its own shortcomings both political and social.

 

[Tanaka did nothing wrong]

I guess we are talking about a post 1867 POD.

Not an expert, but for one, the Obrenovic dynasty retaining more of its legitimacy. Some easy ways might be Union Generale not going bust, which could allow the railways in Serbia to be completed and stay under the control of pro-Austrian actors; Kalnoky managing relations with Russia better, including not changing the arrangement with Russia over the Balkans, which facilitated the outbreak of the war of 1885, which might allow Austria to negotiate a settlement where Serbia would secure compensation for the union between Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia. Such successes could allow Austrian influence in Serbia to survive for longer and the Obrenovic to hang on. Keeping Serbia out of Russia's nest and perhaps keeping Austria competitive in Bugaria too might help with making Romania more willing to acquiesce to Austrian requests and more attentive to Austrian anxieties.

The problem with federalism is that it wouldn't be an one way process. The crown could achieve perhaps something akin US federalism in Cisleithania; but in the case of Hungary, it would require a level of centralisation that would be difficult to get without conflict. The common financial obligations of the monarchy alone would probably be controversial, and even with federalisation, I think it would still remain a bone of contention, if not made worse due to the multiplication of the potential sources of opposition - creative solutions might be needed. Best possible outcome would probably be "parallel" reform, where Transleithania gradually reforms its own system and lands, reducing the scope of Magyarisation and recognising more rights and autonomy for the other ethnic groups of that half of the empire, Cisleithania implements its own set of reforms and perhaps more permanent agreements are made on matters of common interest.

Edit: customs union existed as other members rightly pointed out, corrected

 

[Tibi088]

Raise Bohemia, Galicia and Illyria as kingdoms, and centralize to the level of the U.S Federal government. This would placate nationalist feelings, lock them into struggles with their own separate local ethnicities, and thus diverting their energies from Vienna and allowing a sense of unity to emerge based on the limited but effective powers of the central government.

One of the better and more practical ideas - the big problem is Bohemia. What do you do with the sudeten germans? Because as much as the empire needs the czech on board loosing the germans support would kill it.

 

[Tibi088]

I guess we are talking about a post 1867 POD.

Not an expert, but for one, the Obrenovic dynasty retaining more of its legitimacy. Some easy ways might be Union Generale not going bust, which could allow the railways in Serbia to be completed and stay under the control of pro-Austrian actors; Kalnoky managing relations with Russia better, including not changing the arrangement with Russia over the Balkans, which facilitated the outbreak of the war of 1885, which might allow Austria to negotiate a settlement where Serbia would secure compensation for the union between Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia. Such successes could allow Austrian influence in Serbia to survive for longer and the Obrenovic to hang on. Keeping Serbia out of Russia's nest and perhaps keeping Austria competitive in Bugaria too might help with making Romania more willing to acquiesce to Austrian requests and more attentive to Austrian anxieties.

The problem with federalism is that it wouldn't be an one way process. The crown could achieve perhaps something akin US federalism in Cisleithania; but in the case of Hungary, it would require a level of centralisation that would be difficult to get without conflict. Customs union alone would probably be controversial, because of the fact that the first time it was created, it was during the days of Neoabsolutism and centralisation. Best possible outcome would probably be "parallel" reform, where Transleithania gradually reforms its own system and lands, reducing the scope of Magyarisation and recognising more rights and autonomy for the other ethnic groups of that half of the empire, Cisleithania implements its own set of reforms and perhaps more permanent agreements are made on matters of common interest.

...Austria-Hungary was a customs union.