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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.
List of contents
- Introduction: The Habsburg Monarchy as a Fiscal-Military State
- 1: HAMISH SCOTT: The Austrian Fiscal-Military State in International Perspective
- 2: GUY ROWLANDS: The Fiscal-Military Constitution of Bourbon France in Comparative Perspective
- 3: PETER H. WILSON: The European Fiscal-Military System and the Habsburg Monarchy
- 4: ISTVÁN KENYERES AND GÉZA PÁLFFY: Hungarian Border Defence and the Habsburg Financial and Military Transformation in the 16th Century
- 5: THOMAS WINKELBAUER: The General War Commissariat: A Neglected Pivot of the Habsburg Fiscal-Military State
- 6: ANDRÁS OROSS: Magnates and Military Contracting in Hungary after 1648
- 7: JI`RÍ DAVID: Fiscal-Military Exigency and Authority in 17th-Century Moravia
- 8: PETR MA¿A: Negotiating Fiscal-Military Coordination: Provincial Tax Quotas for the Habsburg Army 1648-1748
- 9: PETER RAUSCHER: The Holy Roman Empire and the Habsburg Fiscal-Military System c. 1606-1806
- 10: HORST CARL: Noble Enterprisers: Regimental Proprietorship in the Habsburg Army
- 11: VERONIKA HYDEN-HANSCHO: Habsburg War Finance and Noble Credit-Brokerage in the Southern Netherlands under Charles VI
- 12: WILLIAM D. GODSEY: The Rise of a Sustainable Public Debt in the 18th-Century Habsburg Monarchy
- 13: ILYA BERKOVICH: Conscription in the Habsburg Monarchy 1740-92
- 14: PATRICK SWOBODA: Free Money for War? Wartime Subsidies and the 18th-Century Habsburg Monarchy
- 15: ORSOLYA SZAKÁLY: The 'Business of War' in Hungary: Saltpetre Contracting during the Napoleonic Period
About the author
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.
Summary
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.
Additional text
This rich volume...it will certainly become an important point of reference for future teaching and research on Austria and its fiscal-military constitution.
