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Austria AUSTRIA-HUNGARY TO THE EARLY 1900S
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Figure 4. Austria-Hungary, 1867-1918
The Founding of the Dual Monarchy
Defeat in the Seven Weeks' War demonstrated that Austria was
no longer a great power. Looking to the future, Franz Joseph set
three foreign policy objectives designed to restore Austrian
leadership in Germany: regain great-power status; counter
Prussian moves in southern Germany; and avoid going to war for
the foreseeable future. Because reconciliation with Hungary was a
precondition for regaining great-power status, the new foreign
minister, Friedrich Ferdinand von Beust, became a strong advocate
of bringing the stalemated negotiations with the Hungarians to a
successful conclusion. By the spring of 1867, a compromise had
been reached and was enacted into law by the Hungarian Diet.
The Compromise Ausgleich of 1867 divided the Habsburg Empire
into two separate states with equal rights under a common ruler,
hence the term "Dual Monarchy." Officially, these states were
Hungary and the "Kingdoms and Lands represented in the
Parliament," the latter being an awkward designation necessitated
by the lack of a historical name encompassing all non-Hungarian
lands
(see
fig. 4). Unofficially, the western half was called
either Austria or Cis-Leithania, after the Leitha River, which
separated the two states. The officially accepted name of the
Dual Monarchy was Austria-Hungary, also seen as the AustroHungarian Empire.
The two national governments and their legislatures in Vienna
and Budapest shared a common government consisting of a monarch
with almost unlimited powers in the conduct of foreign and
military affairs, a ministry of foreign affairs, a ministry of
defense, and a finance ministry for diplomatic and military
establishments. In the absence of a shared parliament, discussion
of the empire's common affairs was conducted by parallel meetings
of delegates from the two national legislatures communicating
with each other through written notes. A key topic of these
meetings was the common commercial policy and customs union that
had to be renegotiated every ten years.
The Austrian parliament passed legislation implementing the
Ausgleich in late 1867. This "December Constitution" was the
product of German-speaking Liberals, who were able to dominate
parliament because of a boycott by Czech delegates. The December
Constitution closely followed the constitution of 1849 and placed
no significant restrictions on the emperor with regard to foreign
and military affairs but did add a list of fundamental rights
enjoyed by Austrians. The lower house of the Austrian parliament
was elected through a highly restricted franchise (about 6
percent of the male population). Seats were apportioned both by
province and by curiae, that is, four socioeconomic groups
representing the great landowners, towns, chambers of commerce,
and peasant communities.
By building on the two dominant nationalities in the empire,
German and Hungarian, dualism enabled Austria-Hungary to achieve
relative financial and political stability. It did not, however,
provide a framework for other nationalities, in particular the
Slavs, to achieve equivalent political stature. Indeed, the
Hungarian state used its power to preclude such an outcome.
Hungary interpreted provisions in the Ausgleich as requiring
Austria to retain its basic constitutional structure as a unitary
state, so that any federalist accommodation with the Czechs would
invalidate the Ausgleich and dissolve the Dual Monarchy.
Data as of December 1993
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