Habsburg Monarchy as a Fiscal-Military State - (Proceedings of the British Academy) by William D Godsey (Hardcover)

About the Book

Renders greater precision and depth to the concept of the fiscal-military state and applies it to the Habsburg Monarchy, one of early modern Europe's foremost war machines. It systematically integrates the problems of armed conflict and foreign competition into perceptions of society and government in the Monarchy ruled from Vienna.

Book Synopsis

Bringing together a team of leading international experts to examine the impact of the rise and expansion of a large standing army on government and society over nearly two centuries, this themed volume provides the first major analysis of the Habsburg Monarchy as a fiscal-military state. This volumes offers a broadly comparative perspective on the Habsburg Monarchy, with particular attention to the United Kingdom and France, but also the wider international system. The contributors spotlight a range of structures, practices, and historical actors that sustained the Habsburg Monarchy as a leading fiscal-military power, including the recruitment of the common soldier, the enrolment of officers, military economy, borrowing and public credit, taxation, the provincial Estates and diets, noble brokers and contractors, and landowners. This volume not only provides a new perspective on vast areas of early modern Europe - the Monarchy encompassed in whole or part no fewer than 14 current states - but also offers an internationally accessible framework for future research.

Review Quotes

"Nevertheless, this is an invaluable and important collection, making available to an Anglophone audience some of the best contemporary work on the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy between 1648 and 1815 and contributing enormously to the continuing discussion of that polity and of the fiscal military state." -- Christopher Storrs, University of St. Andrews, Bibliographical records

"Nevertheless, this is an invaluable and important collection, making available to an Anglophone audience some of the best contemporary work on the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy between 1648 and 1815 and contributing enormously to the continuing discussion of that polity and of the fiscal military state." -- Christopher Storrs, University of St. Andrews, Bibliographical records

"This is an invaluable and important collection." -- Christopher Storrs, International Journal of Military History and Historiography

"The concept of the Fiscal-Military State (hereafter FMS) posits major changes in the character of the European state after about 1650...the agenda for the book at hand: to include the monarchy into an ongoing discussion and to sharpen the concept of the FMS." -- James D. Tracy, University of Minnesota (Emeritus), Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

"This rich volume...it will certainly become an important point of reference for future teaching and research on Austria and its fiscal-military constitution." -- Anke Fischer-Kattner, German Historical Institute London Bulletin

About the Author

William D. Godsey, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Petr Maťa, Austrian Academy of Sciences

William D. Godsey is a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Habsburg and Balkan Studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. His most recent book is The Sinews of Habsburg Power: Lower Austria in a Fiscal-Military State 1650-1820 (Oxford, 2018), which won the Arenberg European History Prize 2018 and the Barbara Jelavich Book Prize Honorable Mention 2019. He co-edited Das Haus Arenberg und die Habsburgermonarchie: Eine transterritoriale Adelsfamilie zwischen Fürstendienst und Eigenständigkeit (16.-20. Jahrhundert) (Regensburg, 2019). He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Petr Maťa is a Research Associate at the Institute for Habsburg and Balkan Studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Having earned his PhD at the Charles University in Prague in 2005, he began his academic career in Vienna with the Lise Meitner-Fellowship. He has lectured in history at the University of Vienna since 2008 and was EURIAS-Fellow at CEU in Budapest 2012/2013. His areas of study include the history of the provincial Estates, nobilities and administration in the early modern Habsburg Monarchy. He is a co-editor and co-author of the Verwaltungsgeschichte der Habsburgermonarchie in der Frühen Neuzeit (1500-1800) (volume 1 appeared in Vienna, 2019). He is currently preparing his Habilitationsschrift comparing the provincial diets in the Bohemian and Austrian lands for publication.