whole lagged far behind the more advanced west-
ern and northern European nations. Regional
variations were as marked in industrial as in agri-
cultural development. The most successful agricul-
tural parts of the empire were also the most
industrially advanced: upper and lower Austria,
Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia and Hungary
proper. Industrialisation had made little impact in
Galicia, Dalmatia or Transylvania. In 1911, textiles
and clothing, tobacco and foodstuffs, together
with wood, leather and paper accounted for nearly
two-thirds of the Austrian half of the empire’s
industrial output. But imperial policies of free trade
within the empire tended to maintain these
regional differences of progress and backwardness.
On the other hand, it needs to be remembered
that without state aid in the development of the
railways, without good administration and internal
peace and security throughout the empire, the eco-
nomic conditions of the people would have been
far worse than they actually were.
It is remarkable that the empire, beset by so
many problems internally, backward in economic
development and also poor, achieved a high repu-
tation in the arts and was acknowledged to be one
of the great powers of Europe. The Monarchy’s
universities were second to none, the musical, lit-
erary and theatrical life of Vienna, Budapest and
Prague, and the renown of Freud and Liszt and
Strauss, were celebrated throughout the Western
world. The Monarchy’s status as a great power
had been diminished, it is true, but not extin-
guished by defeats in the nineteenth-century con-
tinental wars that created united Italy and
Germany. In 1900 the empire was still considered
one of the foremost military powers of Europe, a
bulwark against the possibility of the Russian or
German dominance of south-eastern Europe. The
territorially large Habsburg Empire was thus a
major element in the pre-1914 European balance
of power whose disappearance, the other powers
felt, would create grave new problems.
Actually the empire’s military capacity was over-
rated. The perennial lack of funds was one reason
for its weakness. Another unique problem was
that it was largely officered by German-speaking
Austrians and a smaller number of Hungarians; the
troops themselves were composed of all the
nationalities and spoke in many languages. Even
worse was the incompetence of the general staff.
Only in the two years before the war of 1914 was
the army increased to a potential wartime strength
of 1.5 million men. Military and economic weak-
ness made the Monarchy’s foreign ministers
cautious and conservative.
There is a shape, logic and consistency to
Habsburg foreign policy in the nineteenth
century with its emphasis on the importance of
tradition and of dynastic rule and its opposition
to nationalism. The loss of the Italian provinces
was therefore seen as a particularly heavy blow.
If the neighbours of the Habsburg Empire,
Romania and Serbia, followed the example of
Piedmont in the wars of Italian unification, justi-
fying their efforts by an appeal to the right of
national self-determination, then the Habsburg
Empire must disintegrate altogether. Serbia cast
in the role of Piedmont was the nightmare vision
that drove the emperor and his ministers to stake
the future of the empire on the field of battle in
July 1914. But they also recognised that the real
threat had not been Piedmont but Piedmont in
alliance with France in 1859 and with Prussia in
1
MULTINATIONAL RUSSIAN AND HABSBURG EMPIRES 51
Austria-Hungary’s production (annual averages)
1900–4 1910–13
Raw-cotton consumption (thousand metric tons) 135.4 (1895–1904) 191.4 (1905–13)
Coal and lignite output (million metric tons) 38.8 50.7
Pig-iron output (thousand metric tons) 1,425.0 2,204.0
Steel output (million metric tons) 1.2 2.46
