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• Ethnic/religious groups of Habsburg Empire
• Historical breakup of Yugoslavia ('91-'09)
• Muslim populations in European countries
• History of Christianization of Europe
• Soviet Union, Communist influence
• Map of European ethnic groups
• Map of Fascism in Europe (1922-75)
• History of Islamic conquest in Europe
• Religions & ethnic groups in Russia
• Detailed map of French colonization
• Detailed map of British colonization
• Napoleon's conquests & legacy
• Ethnic & religious map of pre-Nazi Poland

--MORE & NON-ENGLISH--



• Pecs, Hungary: collision point between
Muslim and Christian empires

• Auschwitz and Birkenau
• Poland's resistance to Nazis in pictures
• Muhammad cartoon crisis in pictures
• Stalin's private summer home
• Ravenna: capital of Gothic empire
• Czar Nicholas II's Ukrainian palace
• European traditional cultural costumes
• Inside the Vatican, house of all wealth
• Banknotes/currencies of Europe
• Croatia's Dubrovnik, untarnished gem

--MORE & NON-ENGLISH--

• Islamic Mujahidin vs. Christian Spain
• Poland-Lithuania vs. Teutonic Order
• Nevskiy's Russia vs. German Crusaders
• Prussia vs. France (Nazi Propaganda)
• Libya: Europe will soon be Islamic
• Ivan the Terrible vs. Muslim Tatars
• Soviet Propaganda: Defeat of Germany  

--MORE & NON-ENGLISH--

An analysis of Mussolini's 1938 racialist legislation
The disastrous effects of Soviet collectivization on Kazakhstan
Changing meaning of Italian identity under Fascist rule
Yugoslavia's independent break from East and West
The Galicians: the Celts of Spain
The modern Macedonian Slavs and Alexander the Great
• An argument for the Romanians' links to ancient Dacians
• Mussolini's Italian death camp for Jews, Slovenes, and Marxists
• The disappeared Jews of Hungary and the Arrow Cross regime
• The Gypsies in history and today, Europe's public enemy
• History of Jihad in Chechnya vs. Russians
• History of the Muslim Tatars in Eastern Europe
• Post-WWII expulsion of 10 million ethnic German civilians
• Ethnic & religious history of Serbs, Croats, & Bosnians
• Breakaway states and independence movements in Europe
• The ancient Germanic Runic alphabet and Runestones
• Teutonic Order and their 800-year legacy in Eastern Europe
• 460-year struggle for Albanian homeland, and 540 for Kosovo
• 2,800-year-old white mummies of China, bringers of Buddhism?
• Alexander the Great's Greek descendents in Pakistan?
• Visual History of Yugoslavia and its breakup (1918-2008)

 

--MORE & NON-ENGLISH--

 

Ethnic & linguistic maps of the Austria-Hungarian Empire
by James Mayfield (Chairman, European Heritage Library)

Print this Article        About the Author        Bibliography/Sources

This article offers exclusive maps and history of the Habsburg Austrian, and later Austria-Hungarian Empire from the conception of the unified German duchy of Austria in 976 until the merger of Austria and Hungary to resist Islamic invasion after 1526, all until the collapse of 1918. The maps are scanned from the masterpiece historical monograph A History of the Habsburg Empire 1526-1918, by Robert A. Kann.

Map of Austrian Expansion (976-1918)

The below map shows the expansion of the early "Austrian" state (Austria was a province of the German Holy Roman Empire with its own regional dynasty) into an independent power when the Habsburg family expelled the occupying Czech (Bohemian) armies, and ultimately into a power virtually unparalleled in all of Europe that eventually exterted influence over every corner of the globe. Aside from maps of political expansion, also included are maps charting the linguistic, ethnic, and religious minorities of this massive and diverse empire. The Habsburg family was so globally influential that it even, by extension, controlled Spain and all of its colonial holdings in the Americas. The Habsburg empire was unique in that it only directly controlled a far smaller empire than the global one over which it exerted ceremonial dominance. This massive empire, one of many cultures and races but habitually under intensely unequal ethnic German social stratification, defined the cultural, architectural, religious, and political evolution of all of the Balkans and most of Central Europe for over 400 years. It was a reign of very uneasy alliances, as the empire's different races consistently struggled against the superior status of the Germans, until the Hungarians (the second-most powerful group) were given supposedly equal status after a massive revolution in 1848. The might of the Habsburgs was also sent into decline by Napoleon and especially the nation-building Prussians who were unifying Germany after 1866, when the dominance and prestige of the empire was forever eclipsed. The whole empire came to an end after World War I, largely because most of the empire had no interest in going to die in history's bloodiest war for the hated German authorities. As a result, the whole face of the world was reshaped when the war ended, as the Slavs, Hungarians, Ukrainians, and Czechs all seized the chance to become new ethnic-based nations.


Click the below map of the historical evolution of the empire to enlarge.

 

Austria-Hungarian Empire Province Map

The below map shows the regional territorial polities of the Austrian, then Austria-Hungarian Empires at the greatest extent of the unified state (preceding World War I)

Click the below map to enlarge.

 

Austria-Hungarian Habsburg Empire Ethnic Map

The below map charts the historical ethnic or social groups within the empire at the height of the personal union. The fact that the majority of the empire's inhabitants were not German nor Hungarian, but Slavic exacerbated pan-Slavic nationalist movements that would later result in the merged formation of ethnically-based Yugoslavia upon the empire's collapse. The multiethnic, multireligious issue of the massive empire caused great conflict among the different populations and religions that eventually led to a gradual liberalization of the empire in the 19th century, as the name change from "Austrian Empire" to "Austria-Hungary" illustrates. The German authorities did not directly oppress other races of the empire, but directly controlled an overwhemingly disproportionate access to politics, commerce, and franchise in the empire. The massive realm vacilated back and forth between partial liberalization to total intolerance. The Jews, for example, often enjoyed great wealth in Vienna despite their greatly inferior and discriminated status, but were free to live (on paper) at one moment and then expelled en masse the next moment due to their disproportionate involvement in liberal revolt or another political crisis. The fact that Catholicism was often seen as the compulsory state religion (the religion of the Hungarians and Austrians) further pushed the Orthodox Slavs into independence efforts. Note that "Magyar" is the native Hungarian word for the Hungarian culture. Note that Rumanians" refers to Romanians of today (often called Vlachs/Wallachs), and that "Szekels" refers to the occupants of what is now Romania, formerly Hungarian Transylvania. Ethnically, the term Szekel has come to refer generally to Hungarian settlers, but may sometimes refer to German colonists there. Note that most of eastern Bosnia is noted here very early in history as being Serb, a conflict that made the Yugoslav Wars quite violent in the war of succession of Republika Srpska, the Serb-majority region of Bosnia siding with Serbia under Milosevic.

Click the below map to enlarge.

 

Religions of the Austria-Hungarian Empire

The below map shows the regional religions in the massive empire at the zenith of the personal union. The fact that Catholicism was often seen as the compulsory state religion (the religion of the Hungarians and Austrians) further pushed the Orthodox Slavs into independence efforts. Note that Uniates is an older term for a type of Unitarian, an all-encompassing and unorganized Protestant movement especially in eastern Hungary and Transylvania that flourished because the strict Catholicism of Hungary was unable to reach Islamic-dominated Transylvania during centuries of Muslim Ottoman rule. Note of course that Muhammadan is an often-offensive term previously used to refer to the Muslims of Bosnia, today comprising some 40% of the total, a result of centuries of harsh Islamic rule and (often) forced conversion en masse. The conflict of different peoples and religions under strict German and Hungarian Catholic rule fueled later dispute and discord that accelerated the collapse of the empire after World War I, and the creation of new and independent Slavic states (Yugoslavia for one).

Click the below map to enlarge.

 

Austria-Hungary in the reunified German Empire

For most of history, there was no independent nation of "Austria". Rather it was originally a peripheral part of Germany (the Holy Roman Empire) expanded by the German emperor Karl the Great (Charlemagne) before it evolved to become its total authority. Nearly all of the Holy Roman Emperors were Germans from Austria. The Austrians always retained their German cultural character. The Habsburg state was not one of cultural mixing and syncretism, but one of German cultural dominance. Its cultural, architectural, and religious mores were compulsorily imposed upon its non-German subjects. As a result, when Germany was being reunified by the Prussian Germans, the Austrians (ethnically German) were greatly involved in recreating the collapsed empire (the First Reich) that was ultimately crafted by Prussia's Bismarck in 1871. After Napoleon was defeated and Europe was completely remapped, an ephemeral attempt at recreating Germany was made in the German Confederation, of which all the Germans were a member (Austria and Germany proper). Competition between the Germans over the evolving nation became typically political, and Prussia and Austria competed for hegemony until the Austrians were overwhemingly obliterated by Prussian militarism in 1866's Austro-Prussian War.

After World War I, when the Austria-Hungarian Empire collapsed, the new nation of Austria hastily sought to merge with Germany. It was denied by the wary Allies. As a result, Austria changed its name to the Republic of German Austria to emphasize its German character. Its politics soon became identical with Germany's far-right, as pan-Germanic racialism and Austro-Fascism became dominant all throughout Austria. Most Austrians sought to join their brothers in Germany, but a reluctant Austrian government refused. As a result, Hitler marched his armies into German Austria in 1938 to cheering crowds and a frightened government. After the war, Austria was forcibly separated from Germany by the Allies and the Soviets. Interestingly, the Austrian state emblem has an eagle with a broken chain on its leg to symbolize its "liberation" from Germany despite the fact that its population was overwhelmingly in approval of the German annexation.

Click the below map to enlarge.

 

 

________________________________________

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

James Mayfield is a historian and the Chairman of the European Heritage Library. I have a Cum Laude BA in History with a Minor in Germanic Studies (language and history), am presently working for my Masters in History, and plan to immediately progress to my PhD Doctorate. I have a special academic interest in Europe's diverse ethnic identities, languages, and cultures, and the political struggles of native European and immigrant minority identities. See my staff entry for more information.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY/SOURCES USED:

The maps are scanned from the magnificent "The Habsburg Empire" by Robert Kann.

 


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