Plausibility check: different Ausgleich

OK, I think you've all heard of the Ausgleich aka the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, if not: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ausgleich. It was a result of the necessity for drastic reform and was a stopgap solution, but it remained in place until the end of Austria-Hungary and did not solve the problems of the multiethnic empire, not in the least because of favouritism towards the Hungarians, Magyarization and them blocking further reforms.

Now, this led to widespread discontent and a collapse looks inevitable in retrospect with the Austrian Germans and the Hungarians composing a mere 44% of A-H's population. Is it possible that if the Empire is weaker that other minorities will be granted co-ruler status in the Ausgleich, perhaps leading to a (con)federal structure for the Empire in the long run? Perhaps the Czechs could do, making it a Triple Monarchy. IIRC, they were the third largest ethnicity behind the Austrians and Hungarians. Perhaps the PoD could be a worse revolution in 1848 or a worse defeat at the hands of Prussia in 1866.

Ideas, thoughts?
 
Actually it would probably more likely if the Empire, or at least the Monarchy as an institution, was stronger. Franz Joseph wanted, about the time that the Ausgleich was first being discussed, to enact a similar plan for Bohemia and Slavonia/Croatia. However the Reactionaries in Vienna and the Magyar nobility would have none of that and successfully rebuffed the idea.
 
the Austrian Germans and the Hungarians composing a mere 44% of A-H's population
That seems a very high percentage of overlords for an empire. People like the British, Romans and Persians managed with a much smaller proportion.

The trick that the A-Hs were unable to maintain was convincing the subjects that they were born to be ruled. I will admit admit though that was going to be difficult after the French had spread their poison of republicanism throughout Europe.
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
Neither the Magyars nor the German Austrians saw it as a good idea to increase the influence of the Slavs. The Magyars had their own compromise with the Croats (can't remember what it was called), that allowed the Croats to speak Croatian in the Hungarian parliament when questions regarding Croatia- Slavonia was discussed, of course other minorities on the Hungarian half was subjects for heavy Magyarization. Bohemia was of course a hot topic on the Vienna side, where the Czechs came up with that funny idea that it was not a German country.
 

Deleted member 1487

Well there is always the federated model:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_of_Greater_Austria
Though it didn't come about until 1906. IMHO one would need to kill the higher Hungarian nobility for this to work and probably Franz Josef too. The emperor was a doddering fool that did not have the will to do what was necessary to save the empire. Basically it would mean crushing the Hungarian nobility to allow for necessary reforms that would benefit the empire and the majority of the Hungarian population too. Between 1890-1900 1 million Magyar peasants left the country for the US because of the repressive policies of their own leadership that kept the country in a state of feudalism where the top 5% owned 80% of the industry and land. They wanted to Magyarize the entire population in their half of the empire, but in the process drove out the very population that they needed to maintain their chauvanistic control over the country. In fact 1/3-1/2 of the middle class in Hungary were Jews, Germans, or other minorities because the other sections of the population were not allowed to accumulate capital or be educated to a greater degree.

Indeed, it is very interesting to see what happened during the 1918 revolution:
http://www.zum.de/whkmla/region/eceurope/hungary191821.html
The Hungarian nobility under Tisza declared independence only to fall to the land redistribution and assassinations of the socialists that learned not to trust them in any political role.
 
That seems a very high percentage of overlords for an empire. People like the British, Romans and Persians managed with a much smaller proportion.

The trick that the A-Hs were unable to maintain was convincing the subjects that they were born to be ruled. I will admit admit though that was going to be difficult after the French had spread their poison of republicanism throughout Europe.

Well, there are differences between those Empires and Austria-Hungary. For instance, nationalism in most parts of the world didn't get off the ground until the 19th and 20th centuries so the Romans and Persians didn't have to deal with that. And sub-Saharan Africa was still very socially (and otherwise) backward compared to Europe* and divided between feuding tribes which enabled the British Empire (and the French, Belgians etc.) to divide and rule between them. Organized resistance there with a united 'black' nationalism started much later.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire was dealing with mostly well-educated Europeans who were aware of their equality to the Austrians and Hungarians, were very nationalistic, were unified with their own cultures and languages, were organized and able to voice their opinions well and fight together and therefore wanted a say. Giving the Czechs autonomy or even co-ruler status would make ruling the Empire much easier and I suppose the Austrians could set it up as the Kingdom of Bohemia tied in personal union to the Habsurg crown. It had existed well into the 19th century under Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria, making it a resurrection. IIRC, the Czechs composed another 13% of the A-H's population, giving the ruling groups a more comfortable majority of 57%.

*Note: I am NOT a racist. Denying the relative tribalism and social backwardness in 19th century Africa is not political correctness. Even today many African countries are burdened by feuding and backwardness (see the Congo for example).
 
Well, there are differences between those Empires and Austria-Hungary. For instance, nationalism in most parts of the world didn't get off the ground until the 19th and 20th centuries so the Romans and Persians didn't have to deal with that. And sub-Saharan Africa was still very socially (and otherwise) backward compared to Europe* and divided between feuding tribes which enabled the British Empire (and the French, Belgians etc.) to divide and rule between them. Organized resistance there with a united 'black' nationalism started much later.

*Note: I am NOT a racist. Denying the relative tribalism and social backwardness in 19th century Africa is not political correctness. Even today many African countries are burdened by feuding and backwardness (see the Congo for example).

The real point is the technological gap. There were African states with large-scale identities, but they were so hopeless behind in technological terms ("backward" is a relative thing: there had been great advances in an African context since 1800) that the European powers could destroy them easily. Then the European powers played them off and exploited them, creating much of the "tribalism and backwardness". It was simply a matter of technology and education. An empire which is all metropole has to educate its people and invest in their lands to prosper (and Britain had much earlier problems with Ireland, a metropolitan territory), but the Anglo-French overseas model was an exploitive one.

You're essential point is valid, but it has various common misconceptions about African history mixed in.


The Austro-Hungarian Empire was dealing with mostly well-educated Europeans who were aware of their equality to the Austrians and Hungarians, were very nationalistic, were unified with their own cultures and languages, were organized and able to voice their opinions well and fight together and therefore wanted a say. Giving the Czechs autonomy or even co-ruler status would make ruling the Empire much easier and I suppose the Austrians could set it up as the Kingdom of Bohemia tied in personal union to the Habsurg crown. It had existed well into the 19th century under Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria, making it a resurrection. IIRC, the Czechs composed another 13% of the A-H's population, giving the ruling groups a more comfortable majority of 57%.

There were some serious attempts to go through with this almost from 1867 onwards. The benefits were obvious, but the triicky issue was German popular nationalism. In the pre-Italian War Germanisation era, all government officials in Czechia needed to know German. Nothing else was required. The upshot was that German was known to every educated Czech, but most of the Germans (concentrated in the recently re-Czechified towns and the Sudetenland) didn't know Czech. This meant that any change from the status quo, even the seeming compromise of requiring both languages, would actually weight the system in favour of Czechs, who were already bilingual (whereas requiring either language was impractical in a bilingual country, and requiring Czech would have given the Germans fatal conniptions). This wouldn't have been at all unreasonable in a Czech state, but it generated outrage among the German community within whatever Austria-Hungary was (the Berlin government also picked up on the issue to attract nationalist support and increase influence over Austria) and so a triple-monarchy never made it through despite several attempts by the Vienna government.
 

Vitruvius

Donor
There were some serious attempts to go through with this almost from 1867 onwards. The benefits were obvious, but the triicky issue was German popular nationalism. In the pre-Italian War Germanisation era, all government officials in Czechia needed to know German. Nothing else was required. The upshot was that German was known to every educated Czech, but most of the Germans (concentrated in the recently re-Czechified towns and the Sudetenland) didn't know Czech. This meant that any change from the status quo, even the seeming compromise of requiring both languages, would actually weight the system in favour of Czechs, who were already bilingual (whereas requiring either language was impractical in a bilingual country, and requiring Czech would have given the Germans fatal conniptions). This wouldn't have been at all unreasonable in a Czech state, but it generated outrage among the German community within whatever Austria-Hungary was (the Berlin government also picked up on the issue to attract nationalist support and increase influence over Austria) and so a triple-monarchy never made it through despite several attempts by the Vienna government.

You beat me to it. This was the real reason that the idea of a Triple Monarchy failed despite several serious attempts to come to some accommodation for Bohemian autonomy. The other thing to consider vis a vis the Empire's myriad other ethnic groups is the difference between so called historical peoples and non-historical peoples. Historical peoples like the Hungarians, the Germans the Croats and the Czechs (caveat previously mentioned) had historical states that could be traced back about 1000 years give or take. The Slovenians are a good example of a non-historical people. They had no tradition of autonomy in a national sense (excepting perhaps vaguely Karantania) and were instead spread across three different crown lands (Carniola, Carinthia and Styria).

The Federal Proposal for a United States of Austria would have overturned almost all these traditional power structures and so was really a dead letter. Hungary in particular is the greatest stumbling block. The Hungarian state experienced massive growth after the Augsliech (owing largely to its previous underdevelopment) and as has been noticed conducted an extensive program of Magyarization. Ironically the two most successfully converted groups were the Jews (Israeli-Hungarians in the parlance of the time) and the Germans. The Slovaks to a lesser more forced extent and the Romanians and Serbs hardly at all. The other advantage that Hungary had was that Hungarians after a few decades of this came very close (depending on the census metric) to constituting a majority in Hungary as opposed to the German population of Cisleithania which was much smaller relative to the Czechs, Italians, Poles, Ruthenians, Slovenes and Croats that made up that half of the Empire. Indeed its official name "The Kingdoms and States represented in the Imperial Council" implies its rather agglomerated nature and is far more susceptible to a Federal arrangement than Hungary. So if you could get bilingual Germans and somehow crush the Hungarian nobility and there fore the historical -not national- Hungarian state (the Lands of the Holy Crown of St Stephen) a real federal structure could have been possible.
 
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