emperor’s subjects felt ‘better the devil we know’.
There was much to be said for the supranational
solution which the Habsburg Monarchy repre-
sented. Multinational states break apart when the
central power is weakened beyond the point of
recovery. This did not happen in the Habsburg
Empire until 1915. In defeated Russia, Lenin
and Trotsky were able to restore the authority
of the central power through civil war, but no
such Habsburg recovery was possible in 1918.
Nevertheless, it took four years of devastating war
to break Habsburg power and the cohesion of the
Monarchy.
It has frequently been claimed that central
power had been eroded half a century earlier with
the constitutional settlement of 1867. But the
settlement stood the test of time when judged by
central European standards. The greatest threat
to the Monarchy was Hungarian independence.
After 1867 there was no longer a serious possi-
bility of this. The extensive rights which the
Magyars were granted in the historic kingdom of
Hungary reconciled them to the unity of the
empire under the personal link of the emperor-
king. For the Magyars the continuation of the
empire meant that the entire power of the
Monarchy was available to defend their position
against external and internal enemies.
The settlement of 1867 granted to each half of
the empire its own government with control of
internal affairs; this included, importantly, powers
to decide what rights were to be conceded to the
other nationalities living within the jurisdiction of
the kingdom of Hungary and Cis-Leithania, as the
Austrian half of the empire was officially called.
But the central power of the empire remained
strong and real after 1867. Finance, foreign affairs
and military matters remained the responsibility of
the imperial ministries in Vienna, whose ministers
were chosen by the emperor. The emperor was
commander-in-chief of the imperial army. In
another important way this unique imperial con-
stitution actually strengthened central power. The
democratic constitutional trend of the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries could not be entirely
halted in the empire. But franchise concessions
were granted for the separate parliaments sitting in
Vienna and Budapest. In Austria the year 1907
saw the introduction of manhood suffrage. The
Magyars refused to accept any substantial reforms.
But the Hungarian parliament exercised much
more real power over the Hungarian government
than the Austrian over the Austrian govern-
ment. There existed no parliament for the empire
as a whole that could influence or control the
crucially important joint imperial ministries.
Indirect parliamentary influence was in theory
provided for by the system of the ‘delegations’,
representatives of the Austrian and Hungarian
parliaments meeting separately and together (in
theory) to deal with questions affecting the joint
ministries. In practice, what concerned the dele-
gations mainly was finance, customs, commercial
policy and the contributions to the common
budget to be paid by Austria and by Hungary.
These questions were settled, after much wran-
gling based on obvious self-interest, for ten years
at a time. The emperor’s ‘reserved’ powers in
foreign and military affairs remained virtually
absolute through his choice of ministers and
refusal to take notice of any parliamentary disap-
proval. His power would not have been so com-
pletely preserved in the twentieth century, and
with it a strong central power, but for the dualism
of the empire and, therefore, the absence of a
single imperial parliament. Consequently, imper-
ial policies in war and foreign affairs were con-
ducted by just a handful of men. These included
the heads of the three joint ministries, with the
minister of foreign affairs presiding; on important
occasions the prime minister of Hungary, who
had a constitutional right to be consulted on
questions of foreign policy, and other ministers
were invited to join in the discussion.
Among some of the Slavs, dualism was seen as
a device for excluding the Slav majority from
their rightful and equal place in the empire. By
dividing the empire, the Magyars and Germans48 SOCIAL CHANGE AND NATIONAL RIVALRY IN EUROPE, 1900–14
Austria-Hungary’s population
(in millions)1900 191046.9 52.4