Austria-Hungary

[Gangerolf]

Kind of like the whites in southern africa..

[Blaupanzer]

Originally posted by Gangerolf
Kind of like the whites in southern africa..

The two situations are not analogous. The Hungarians went from pretending they shared power with Austria to having lot of people of their nationality in countries other than the one they ruled. The post-war communist revolution and rule by Bela Kuhn didn't help either.

Using a Civ analogy, in SA, the whites went from ruling in all civic lines to only ruling in the economic lines.

[Buck Birdseed]

Originally posted by Gangerolf
Kind of like the whites in southern africa..

With a couple of exceptions, yes. The Rhodesians and South Africans also pushed their rule as far as it could go...

The differences mostly involve the fact that there was no systematic differentiation - the policy was of assimilation, not division. Turkish oppression in Kurdistan would be a better analogy, though at the time that kind of thing was more common and accepted.

(Another analogy, of course, would be the treatment of Hungarians in the newly-formed states after Trianon... )

[molly bloom]

The Habsburg elite had been papering over the cracks since Metternich's time.

( Emperor Ferdinand:

"Tell the people that I agree to everything." )


They were granted a reprieve after the crushing of the 1848 revolutions, but only through the creation of the Dual Monarchy, and only through constantly playing off ethnic groups against each other- Germans against Czechs in the government and bureaucracy (especially in industrialzing Bohemia, which led to great resentment amongst Germans who had to learn Czech), Magyars against Croats and Italians and Rumanians and Serbs, Polish nobility against Ruthenians/Ukrainians and so on.


It would prove impossible to satisfy the nationalist or political aspirations of all the separate ethnic groups, or assign equal privileges to all ( extension of the franchise did not achieve this).

[Imran Siddiqui]

I don't think there was a way to save the A-H Empire. Too many ethnic groups that were unhappy at the way things were going and wanted greater say in things. Eventually it would have fallen no matter what.