How would a surviving Austria Hungary affect modern discourse on multiculturalism?

Many people now regard multiculturalism as destructive and never able to work. This attitude can be seen a lot with regard to the migrant crisis.

So, how would a surviving Austria Hungary affect this? Say it manages to retain it's 1914 borders somehow. What then?
 
Many people now regard multiculturalism as destructive and never able to work. This attitude can be seen a lot with regard to the migrant crisis.

So, how would a surviving Austria Hungary affect this? Say it manages to retain it's 1914 borders somehow. What then?
The only way is CP winning and serbia and russia liking their wound per generations....i think it will be like a micro mittle europa, all talks their local language but have to learn german for business both vienna and berlin and how each culture work for the business side of the nation
 
Many people now regard multiculturalism as destructive and never able to work. This attitude can be seen a lot with regard to the migrant crisis.

So, how would a surviving Austria Hungary affect this? Say it manages to retain it's 1914 borders somehow. What then?

Austria wasn't a multicultural nation: it was a state containing multiple cultures who saw themselves as their own nations under a loose common umbrella. HOW Austria builds a civic nationalism and gets people to identify as Habsburgs Non-Hyphanated first and foremost is an absolutely vital peice of information
 
Many people now regard multiculturalism as destructive and never able to work. This attitude can be seen a lot with regard to the migrant crisis.
Hate to break it to you but multiculturalism is still the norm across our world. A majority of the world's countries are multicultural or civic states. You live in the Western Hemisphere? You're living in a Civic State. You live in Sub-Saharan Africa? Civic State. Over one in 10 people in the world live in India, the World's largest democracy. What about Indonesia, The Philippines, and Iran in Asia? Civic States. Each has or is on track to have over 100 million people.

Now none of these counties are perfect or have had spotless records since independence. But most of them are functional. And among most of the successful ones there seems to be a pattern. There is no dominant ethnic group. Or we could say there isn't a single ethnic group the others can blame their troubles on. They may agree on a common language to speak to each other, but that doesn't make them homogeneous! It is almost like a sort of super ethnic parliament in that way?

Austria-Hungary contained about 10 different ethnic groups. If they had given each a voice, we could have seen some sort of scaled down India in the heart of Europe. If they don't they would end up a corpse.
 
I'd guess the same way India does. People need to keep in mind that the "nation state" for a certain ethnic group is almost exclusively a European thing.
 
I'd guess the same way India does. People need to keep in mind that the "nation state" for a certain ethnic group is almost exclusively a European thing.
Ehh, not quite. Many countries outside Europe are fairly homogeneous. Japan, Lesotho, the Koreas. And even in many less homogenous countries, one ethnicity still makes up a large majority.
 
Ehh, not quite. Many countries outside Europe are fairly homogeneous. Japan, Lesotho, the Koreas. And even in many less homogenous countries, one ethnicity still makes up a large majority.
Almost exclusively, as i said. And often the result of centuries long ethnic conflicts.

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Well that isn't truer anywhere else than it is in Europe.

Anyhow, I think a surviving Austria Hungary would have interesting effect. It would provide a good, working alternative to nation states.

Well, that depends on how it holds. Does F.F live and crack down on the Magyars, triggering a crackdown on seprtism and a "White Revolution" dictated from Vienna? Are the elites of the various minorities co-opted and given motivation to tie their fates to the Empire? Does the Soviet Revolution and a deep Red Scare give the Habsburgs the renewed mantle if Shield of Christiandom, only now against the Athiest rather than Muslim hoardes, to build an identity around opposition to communism (nothing unites like a common enemy)? These are states of very different character!
 
Why wouldn't it just end like yugoslavia?

A better question is: why would it?

From my understanding, Yugoslavia was born as a Serbian-dominated state, and its death was the result of it being pushed back towards being one by its new leadership. Austria-Hungary was made from a feudal/dynastic collection of possessions; back then, "the Hungarian nation" meant a handful of nobles with the privilege of attending certain meetings with the monarch. One could make an argument for it being dominated by Germans, but that runs into the issue of "German" as an identity being formed during the time in which all these regions were under Habsburg control.

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Regarding the matter of developing civic nationalism - I would say this is already done. There's dynastic nationalism, in the sense of loyalty to the K.u.K. in Vienna, as well as a general sense of belonging to the Empire as a whole. The reason Austria-Hungary broke apart wasn't the inevitable result of being full of nationalists who all want to split off from the country, but because people who starve, slave away in factories and watch their fathers/brothers/sons die in their millions tend to lose their trust in the institution that caused that combination of woes.

In order to make Austria-Hungary survive, you'd just need to make it not die; despite the tautologous nature of that statement, I think it sums the situation up well: like the Russian and German empires, Austria-Hungary can live provided its leadership doesn't massively mishandle one or more great crises.

Getting to the OP's question, assuming an Austria-Hungary that shuffles along without too many large changes, I'd say it would offer those seeking transnational integration or union a strong example to point to, as well as being an easy retort for those arguing in favor of cultural integration etc.
 
Most contemporary criticism on multiculturalism focuses on the effects of sudden and recent large-scale immigration, not on the type of multiculturalism which results from different ethnicities living close to each other for hundreds or thousands of years. Austra-Hungary was more of the second type.
 
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To reiterate, a great deal depends on how AH develops and what it looks like in terms of internal borders. German imposed at gunpoint everywhere but the places being Magyarized is a far cry from a personal union a few steps more integrated than the core Eurozone and a half-dozen recognized languages atop the formal legislative one in each component state.
 
My observation is that in many ways nationalism amped up post-Great War, the war seeming to reiterate the primacy of nation, nationalism and that separation which gives us an even deeper notion of cultural or ethnic competition, superiority, inferiority and the Darwinist struggle to the death. Imploding A-H for me is fueling the violent cycle of nationalism rather than expressing ideals of independence. Obviously we have linguistic, cultural and ethnic oppression, minorities do not feel powerful enough to get opportunity, respected enough to get value out of being part rather than apart. And for me "German" is a language, within the A-H I think it can be a unifying element, as a lingua franca it binds the diverse peoples, to be "German" is to speak the language, and in any scenario I think Germany is the dominant player, not unlike OTL, its economy is the focus of Europe, thus A-H can consolidate Europe upon its core economy, giving access and leveraging these diverse "states" more than they got by being shards of the broken Europe. So I acknowledge that "German" is still going to be a dominant if not domineering force. But how did English or French or Russian do?

So a surviving A-H is going to have to do better to survive, it must address the problems rather than quit and devolve into what we note negatively as "Balkanization." I do not believe FF was on a path to do better, he merely wanted to double down on "German" dominance, but I think Karl had a better grasp of the issues, if so then he is opening up the Empire to its parts. But that too is fraught with danger, once giving a say, next is autonomy and quickly it can become independence. So what A-H needs is both value in the combination as well as risk in the breaking apart.

First I do not believe the Kaiserreich wants Austria and next I do not believe the Hungarians want to merely break away. Those are the extremes not the default end for A-H. The Poles want independence but could be included. The Czechs are about the same. I do not believe the Croats or Slovenes wanted to be jettisoned or added to Serbia. The Galicians are only leaving if an independent Ukraine is forming. Post-Great War there is still a lot of gravity to the Empire but again it needs more to survive longer term.

My opinion is that it moves to something similar to Germany, a more federal framework, that is the nearest working model, it has local recognition, regional (ethnic or linguistic) representation at one level and overall representation if a national assembly is placed into the mix. The two legislatures contributed to the divide, I think Vienna and Budapest need to be reduced to merely Landtag status, and I do not know if that is in the cards. A Bundesrat could bleed off the ethnic, regional and linguistic pressures that pull the peoples apart enough to let the national assembly be a better mixing of interests to cross-cut those pressures. If we get that then I think A-H begins to show that despite differences a functioning state with many languages, multiple cultures and even antagonisms can still be, the legacy would be a less divisive model, less emphasis on the purely national, the purely local, the path outward might be better transnational governance, rather than just a state by state the systems recognize that you indeed need the melting pot where differences debated are more than language, culture or ethnicity differences. Longest term it could be a paradigm shift for Europe and the world. As always there is plenty for TTL to grumble over and it might look rather unfortunate to have not created so many "independent" states yet I think A-H stands for interdependence, something that if successful can build a better ATL, a world becoming united in diversity, unafraid of the connections, the inclusion.
 
TBH I'm not sure how much it would change the overall debate. IOTL there are plenty of examples of multiethnic/multicultural societies either working or not working. One more example of one working, which could be dismissed as "the Habsburg prison-house of nations" or "a Ruritanian anachronism" wouldn't change opinions too much I think.
 
It may or it may not as Catholicism as loyalty to the crown and Hapsburg dynasty would likely become powerful ingredients to build a shared Danubian identity. Rising economic wealth powered by the natural georgraphic area that is the Danube basin may also play a part in building a new common identity.
It wouldn't be multiculturalism per se but more a layered identity where one could be Danubian as well as Austrian, Hungarian etc. In effect something very similar to the United Kingdom and British identity.
 
TBH I'm not sure how much it would change the overall debate. IOTL there are plenty of examples of multiethnic/multicultural societies either working or not working. One more example of one working, which could be dismissed as "the Habsburg prison-house of nations" or "a Ruritanian anachronism" wouldn't change opinions too much I think.
Well, no. But having such a country in Europe aka the birth of ethnic nationalism would have some effects
 
It would be interesting to see how Austria-Hungary's nationalities evolve over time. As infrastructure improves and the costs of moving go down a lot more people are going to be moving from the country side to the cities, and from those cities to others. Most urban areas of the empire, even second rate ones, would probably end up becoming highly cosmopolitan despite the empire not being a major recipient of immigrants.
 
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