It wasn't exactly as if they could avoid war, and even if they did, Austria's borders were expanded after the Napoleonic Wars.
Perhaps if the circumstances leading up to the French Revolution were tackled before it happened, then.
For the record, it didn't become A-H until 1867.
For the record, I only refered to it as Austro-Hungary. I never thought that it was called Austro-Hungary in the early 1800's, but whose to say that Hungary wouldn't have achieved autonomy in TTL. I really didn't think we'd be splitting hairs on this.
Yes, because it was so easy to take large chunks of the Ottoman Empire. Coincidentally, they had been trying that for centuries.
Turkey was in decline, and it was losing ground to the Russians north of the Black Sea in the 1850's. The Crimean War drew the interests of France and Britain. A stronger
Austrian Empire may have done better than Bosnia and Herzegovina.
All of those places were ruled by the Ottomans at this time, and the British had heavy interests in most of them.
And may have had a contender in
Austria under different circumstances.
Nationalistic thing? There is no such thing as a "Hapsburg nationality", the whole country is united only by the throne, other than that it is a diverse mess of ethnicities and nationalities.
Who the hell said anything about "Hasburg nationality"?
"Dur-doi. The nationalism of Hapsburggg....ians may prove a problem for
Austrian imperial expansionism. Duhhh."
I was talking about the nationalism in the various regions of the Austrian Empire, like the Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia ect. The pro-slavic dissidents were a problem to the stability of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire.