It would be oversimplification to the point of error to say that the history of Europe is the history of the rivalry between the Habsburgs and the Hohenzollern. Such a proposition ignores the Bourbons and the Plantagenets, the Stuarts and the Windsors.
The Habsburgs may, however, claim the significance of having reigned and otherwise exerted influence over a longer span of time and over a greater area of territory than any of these other royal families.
The founder of the dynasty is generally understood to be Count Radbot, who constructed a castle in Switzerland around the year 1020. The genealogy of the family goes back several generations earlier, but with Radbot begins the name and the claim to various titles.
The last official claim of the family to power ended with World War I, but even so, the current Prince of Liechtenstein, Hans-Adam II, has Habsburg elements in his bloodline. So, to this day, the Habsburgs are ruling Europe.
This dynasty has over a millennium of accumulated reign.
The territories over which the Habsburgs ruled changed constantly over the course of that millennium. When they emerged onto the world stage, the map of Europe had none of the modern nation-states which now determine it. Instead, it was a patchwork quilt of many smaller kingdoms. The Habsburgs built empires by collecting those kingdoms into alliances of various types.
At times, the Habsburg have ruled in part or in whole regions which we now identify as Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Ukraine, Slovenia, Slovakia, Hungary, Austria, Serbia, Portugal, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and others.
As the Habsburg lands expanded and contracted over the centuries, the most famous Habsburg empire was the Holy Roman Empire (HRE), which they ruled from 1415 until its demise in 1806.
The HRE was a loose coalition: the emperor did not have the absolute powers of the earlier Roman emperors or of the later French absolutist monarchs. He could implement his policies only by achieving a consensus among the ‘Electors,’ a group of princes called the Kurfürsten, of whom there were six.
After the HRE, the Habsburg exerted their influence via the Austro-Hungarian Empire. That they maintained a dynastic rule well into the industrial age made them anachronistic, as historian Alan John Percivale Taylor writes:
The Empire of the Habsburgs which was dissolved in 1918 had a unique character, out of time and out of place. Metternich, a European from the Rhineland, felt that the Habsburg Empire did not belong in Europe. “Asia,” he said, “begins at the Landstrasse” - the road out of Vienna to the east. Francis Joseph was conscious that he belonged to the wrong century. He told Theodore Roosevelt: “You see in me the last monarch of the old school.”
The nature of the Habsburg Dynasty sheds light on a twenty-first century concern. Some political scientists have wondered what the world would look like if the nation-state, in our modern understanding of the term, was not the defining unit of the globe.
The world of the Habsburgs was not structured by the nation-state, and the Habsburgs were not the least bit nationalistic. In fact, they were opposed to nationalism. The Habsburgs were not Austrian, Spanish, or German; they were not Hungarian, Bohemian, or Czech. They were simply the Habsburgs. They were not identified by any particular language, culture, or geographical region.
The Habsburgs were identified by their bloodline, and their business was the dynasty. They were not interested in establishing or sustaining any particular territory or culture. They were interested in maintaining themselves.
To this end, their dominion was known primarily not by names like ‘Austria’ or ‘Spain,’ but rather simply ‘the lands of the Habsburgs,’ as A.J.P. Taylor writes:
The collection of territories ruled over by the House of Habsburg never found a settled description. Their broad lines were determined in 1526, when Ferdinand, possessing already a variety of titles as ruler of the Alpine-Germanic lands, became King of Bohemia and King of Hungary: yet for almost three hundred years they had no common name. They were “the lands of the House of Habsburg” or “the lands of the [Holy Roman] Emperor.” Between 1740 and 1745, when the imperial title passed out of Habsburg hands, Maria Theresa could only call herself “Queen of Hungary,” yet her empire was certainly not the Hungarian Empire. In 1804, Francis II, the last Holy Roman Emperor, saw his imperial title threatened by Napoleon and invented for himself the title of “Emperor of Austria.” This, too, was a dynamic name; the Empire was the Empire of the House of Austria, not the Empire of the Austrians. In 1867 the nation of Hungary established its claim to the partnership with the Emperor; and the Empire became “Austria-Hungary.” The non-Hungarian lands remained without a name until the end.
Those who wonder about how the world would look after the demise of the concept of the nation-state might consider how the world looked prior to the rise of the nation-state. A world without a nation-state is the world of the Habsburgs, and the rise of the nation-state was the fall of the Habsburgs.
The Habsburgs were a world-historical force. Those nations not directly shaped by the dynasty were nonetheless indirectly shaped by it: England and Scandinavia, for example.
Yet most of the Europe was directly shaped by the Habsburgs, and their imprint remains to this day on the continent, and with it, on civilization as a whole. It is difficult to overstate the lingering influence of the Habsburgs up to the present time. Where their influence fades, it is often the case that civilization and humanity itself also fade.
To be sure, the Habsburgs were not perfect. Their courts were filled with intrigue, deception, power brokering, manipulation, and a host of other sins. Yet they remain a high point of human civilization, and as such, a reminder that humanity at its very best is still deeply flawed.
Without sycophancy it can be said that the Habsburgs were great and their reign glorious.
