The Habsburgs

The Habsburgs (2020) – Martyn Rady

Penguin | ISBN: 9780141987200 | Condition: As New

Sold by Crappy Old Books – Where Keeping It in the Family Became a Foreign Policy, and Europe Spent Six Centuries Trying to Work Out Who Owned What.

There are families who argue over the inheritance of a semi-detached house, a collection of commemorative teaspoons and Aunt Doris’s slightly suspicious jewellery. And then there were the Habsburgs, who managed to turn the ordinary business of marriage, inheritance and family disagreement into one of the most extraordinary political enterprises in European history.

For centuries, the Habsburg dynasty accumulated kingdoms, principalities, imperial titles and territories with the enthusiasm of a particularly obsessive property collector. At various points their possessions stretched across much of Europe and into the Americas, producing an empire so complicated that even its own administrators occasionally struggled to explain precisely what belonged to whom.

In The Habsburgs, historian Martyn Rady takes readers on a magnificent journey through the rise, dominance and eventual collapse of one of history’s most astonishing ruling families.

And what a family.

There were emperors, kings, queens, archdukes, saints, soldiers, eccentrics and enough dynastic marriages to keep Europe’s genealogists permanently employed. There were also rather unfortunate consequences to the family’s determination to preserve its inheritance through carefully arranged marriages, not least the famously pronounced Habsburg jaw, which became something of an unofficial family trademark.

Most families pass down the silverware. The Habsburgs passed down half of Europe and an increasingly distinctive chin.

Rady traces the dynasty from its medieval beginnings through its emergence as a major European power, exploring the personalities, ambitions and political arrangements that enabled the family to survive wars, revolutions, religious conflicts and the occasional catastrophic succession crisis.

The Habsburg genius lay partly in their ability to acquire through marriage what other rulers attempted to obtain through warfare. This did not mean they avoided wars, of course. Quite the opposite. Once they had acquired an assortment of territories, defending them often required armies, diplomacy and tremendous quantities of borrowed money.

Running an empire, it turns out, is considerably more expensive than acquiring one.

The book explores the dynasty’s role in the Holy Roman Empire, the Reformation, the conflicts of early modern Europe and the extraordinary multinational structure of the Austrian monarchy. It also follows the Habsburgs into the nineteenth century, when nationalism, industrialisation and political upheaval increasingly threatened a system founded upon dynastic loyalty and inherited authority.

Eventually came the First World War, the collapse of Austria-Hungary in 1918 and the rather awkward discovery that the modern world was losing patience with hereditary emperors.

One of Rady’s great strengths is his ability to explain an immensely complicated history without reducing it to an endless procession of moustaches, military campaigns and people called Charles, Ferdinand or Leopold.

He reveals how the Habsburgs developed an elaborate imperial identity, drawing upon religion, ceremony, mythology and political imagination to maintain authority over peoples who frequently spoke different languages, followed different traditions and disagreed about almost everything.

Condition: As New. This Penguin edition is offered in As New condition, making it a particularly attractive copy for readers who appreciate their European history without the accompanying evidence of somebody else’s biscuit consumption.

An absorbing, entertaining and authoritative history for anyone interested in European royalty, political power, dynastic ambition and the extraordinary persistence of a family that somehow managed to turn matrimonial arrangements into continental domination.

Available from Crappy Old Books, where we have no imperial ambitions, possess no hereditary claim to the Austrian throne and are perfectly content to sell the book rather than annex a neighbouring province.

Six centuries of power, intrigue, marriage and magnificent political complications.

Proof that family businesses can become extremely successful, provided nobody objects to the occasional emperor.

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