Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T04:41:48.108Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Ethnic boxes: the unintended consequences of Habsburg bureaucratic classification

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Rok Stergar Open the ORCID record for Rok Stergar [Opens in a new window]  and
Tamara Scheer Open the ORCID record for Tamara Scheer [Opens in a new window]
Rok Stergar*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Tamara Scheer
Affiliation:
Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Historical Social Science, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria Institute for East European History, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

The classificatory efforts that accompanied the modernization of the Habsburg state inadvertently helped establish, promote, and perpetuate national categories of identification, often contrary to the intentions of the Habsburg bureaucracy. The state did not create nations, but its classification of languages made available some ethnolinguistic identity categories that nationalists used to make political claims. The institutionalization of these categories also made them more relevant, especially as nationalist movements simultaneously worked toward the same goal. Yet identification with a nation did not follow an algorithmic logic, in the beginning of the twentieth century, sometimes earlier, various nationalisms could undoubtedly mobilize large numbers of people in Austria-Hungary, but people still had agency and nationness remained contingent and situational.

Keywords

nationalismHabsburg EmpirebureaucracyclassificationCentral Europe
Type
Research Article
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 46 , Issue 4: Special Section: Classification , July 2018 , pp. 575 - 591
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 The Authors

References

Allmayer-Beck, Johann Christoph. 1987. “Die bewaffnete Macht in Staat und Gesellschaft.” In Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, edited by Adam Wandruszka and Peter Urbanitsch, Vol. 5, Die bewaffnete Macht, 1–141. Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften.Google Scholar
Almasy, Karin. 2014a. Wie aus Marburgern “Slowenen” und “Deutsche” wurden: ein Beispiel zur beginnenden nationalen Differenzierung in Zentraleuropa zwischen 1848 und 1861. Bad Radkersburg: Artikel-VII-Kulturverein für Steiermark, Pavelhaus.Google Scholar
Almasy, Karin. 2014b. “Die erste nationale Differenzierung in der Schule: Maribor zwischen 1848 und 1861.” In Stiki in sovplivanja med srediscem in obrobjem: Medkulturne literarnovedne študile, edited by Zalaznik, Mira Miladinovic and Zigon, Tanja, 129–143. Ljubljana: Znanstvena založba Filozofske fakultete.Google Scholar
Anderson, Benedict. 2006. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Revised ed. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Berecz, Ágoston. 2013. The Politics of Early Language Teaching: Hungarian in the Primary Schools of the Late Dual Monarchy. Budapest: CEU Press.Google Scholar
Billig, Michael. 1995. Banal Nationalism. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Bjork, James. 2008. Neither German nor Pole: Catholicism and National Indifference in a Central European Borderland. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Bjork, James, Kamusella, Tomasz, Wilson, Tom, and Novikov, Anna. 2016. Creating Nationality in Central Europe, 1880–1950: Modernity, Violence and Belonging in Upper Silesia. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Brix, Emil. 1982. Die Umgangssprachen in Altösterreich zwischen Agitation und Assimilation: Die Sprachenstatistik in den Zisleitheinischen Volkszählungen 1880 bis 1910. Vienna: Böhlau.Google Scholar
Brubaker, Rogers. 1996. Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Brubaker, Rogers. 2006. Ethnicity without Groups. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Bruckmüller, Ernst. 1999. “Patriotismus und Geschichtsunterricht: Lehrpläne und Lehrbücher als Instrumente eines übernationalen Gesamtstaatsbewußtseins in den Gymnasien der späten Habsburgermonarchie.” In Vilfanov zbornik: Pravo – zgodovina – narod = Recht – Geschichte – Nation, edited by Bruckmüller, Ernst and Rajšp, Vincenc, 511–530. Ljubljana: Založba ZRC.Google Scholar
Bruckmüller, Ernst. 2003. “Zur Entstehung der kulturellen Differenz: Fragmentarische Überlegungen zum Verhältnis von Nationalbewusstsein und Grundschulbildung im alten Österreich.” In Focus Austria: Vom Vielvölkerreich zum EU-Staat: Festschrift für Alfred Ableitinger, edited by Beer, Siegfried, 164–179. Graz: Institut für Geschichte der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz.Google Scholar
Bruckmüller, Ernst. 2007. “Patriotic and National Myths: National Consciousness and Elementary School Education in Imperial Austria.” In The Limits of Loyalty: Imperial Symbolism, Popular Allegiances, and State Patriotism in the Late Habsburg Monarchy, edited by Cole, Laurence and Unowsky, Daniel L., 11–35. New York: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Bureau der k.k. Statistischen Zentralkommission. 1912. Die Ergebnisse der Volkszählung vom 31. Dezember 1910 in den im Reichsrate vertretenen Königreichen und Ländern. Vol. 1, Die Summarischen Ergebnisse der Volkszählung. Vienna: Gerold.Google Scholar
Clewing, Konrad. 2001. Staatlichkeit und nationale Identitätsbildung: Dalmatien in Vormärz und Revolution. Munich: Oldenbourg.Google Scholar
Cohen, Gary B. 2006. The Politics of Ethnic Survival: Germans in Prague, 1861–1914. 2nd ed. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press.Google Scholar
Cohen, Gary B. 2007. “Nationalist Politics and the Dynamics of State and Civil Society in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1867–1914.” Central European History 40 (2): 241–278.Google Scholar
Cole, Laurence. 2000. “Für Gott, Kaiser und Vaterland”: Nationale Identität der deutschsprachigen Bevölkerung Tirols 1860–1914. Frankfurt: Campus.Google Scholar
Cole, Laurence. 2011. “Differentiation or Indifference? Changing Perspectives on National Identification in the Austrian Half of the Habsburg Monarchy.” In Nationhood from Below: Europe in the Long 19th Century, edited by Ginderachter, Maarten Van and en, Marnix Bey, 96–119. Basingstoke: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Cole, Laurence. 2014. Military Culture and Popular Patriotism in Late Imperial Austria. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Darnton, Robert. 1984. The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
István, Deák. 1992. Beyond Nationalism: A Social and Political History of the Habsburg Officer Corps, 1848–1918. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Domej, Theodor. 2006. “Ethnische Struktur, Sprachverhalten und Politisierung des Ethnos am Dreiländereck.” In Das österreichisch-italienisch-slovenische Dreiländereck: Ursachen und Folgen der nationalstaatlichen Dreiteilung einer Region, edited by Bahovec, Tina and Domej, Theodor, 137–196. Klagenfurt: Hermagoras/Mohorjeva.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1970. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Gal, Susan. 2011. “Polyglot Nationalism: Alternative Perspectives on Language in 19th Century Hungary.” Langage et société 136:31–54.Google Scholar
Göderle, Wolfgang. 2016. “Administration, Science, and the State: The 1869 Population Census in Austria-Hungary.” Austrian History Yearbook 47:61–88.Google Scholar
Göderle, Wolfgang, et al. 2014. “Vom Ort der Dinge: Bruno Latours ‘räumliche Inskriptionen’ am Beispiel des Zensus der späten Habsburgermonarchie.” In Räume und Dinge: Kulturwissenschaftliche Perspektiven, edited by Pfaffenthaler, Manfred, 299–321. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag.Google Scholar
Gross, Mirjana. 1981. “On the Integration of the Croatian Nation: A Case Study in Nation Building.” East European Quarterly 15 (2): 209–225.Google Scholar
Himka, John-Paul. 1988. Galician Villagers and the Ukrainian National Movement in the 19th Century. London: Macmillan Press.Google Scholar
Hirsch, Francine. 2005. Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Hosler, Joachim. 2006. Von Krain zu Slowenien: Die Anfänge der nationalen Differenzierungsprozesse in Krain und der Untersteiermark von der Aufklärung bis zur Revolution 1768 bis 1848. Munich: R. Oldenbourg.Google Scholar
Hroch, Miroslav. 1985. Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe: A Comparative Analysis of the Social Composition of Patriotic Groups Among the Smaller European Nations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Jesenšek, Marko. 2015. Poglavja iz zgodovine vzhodnostajerskega jezika [Chapters from the History of the East Styrian Language]. Maribor: Mednarodna založba Oddelka za slovanske jezike in književnosti, Filozofska fakulteta.Google Scholar
Judson, Pieter M. 2005. “Constructing Nationalities in East Central Europe: Introduction.” In Constructing Nationalities in East Central Europe, edited by Judson, Pieter M. and Rozenblit, Marsha, 1–18. New York: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Judson, Pieter M. 2006. Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Judson, Pieter M. 2016. The Habsburg Empire: A New History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Kamusella, Tomasz. 2009. The Politics of Language and Nationalism in Modern Central Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Kamusella, Tomasz. 2016. “The History of the Normative Opposition of ‘Language Versus Dialect’: From Its Graeco-Latin Origin to Central Europe's Ethnolinguistic Nation-States.” Colloquia Humanistica 5:164–188.Google Scholar
Kappus, Elke-Nicole. 2012. “Imperial Ideologies of Peoplehood in Habsburg – An Alternative Approach to Peoples and Nations in Istria.” Annales: Series Historia et Sociologia 12 (2): 321–330.Google Scholar
Kertzer, David I., and Arel, Dominique. 2002. Census and Identity: The Politics of Race, Ethnicity, and Language in National Censuses. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
King, Jeremy. 2001. “The Nationalization of East Central Europe: Ethnicism, Ethnicity, and Beyond.” In Staging the Past: The Politics of Commemoration in Habsburg Central Europe, 1848 to the Present, edited by Bucur, Maria and Wingfield, Nancy M., 112–152. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press.Google Scholar
King, Jeremy. 2002. Budweisers into Czechs and Germans: A Local History of Bohemian Politics, 1848–1948. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Kosi, Jernej. 2013. Kako je nastal slovenski narod: Zacetki slovenskega nacionalnega gibanja v prvi polovici 19. stoletja [How the Slovene Nation was Built: The Beginnings of the Slovene National Movement in the First Half of the 19th Century]. Ljubljana: Sophia.Google Scholar
Kosi, Jernej. 2016. “Evakuacija, beg in namestitev goriško-gradiškega civilnega prebivalstva v avstrijskem zaledju po odprtju Soške fronte: med brezhibno pripravljenimi nacrti in njihovo kaoticno izvedbo.” [Evacuation, Flight, and Settlement of the Civilian Population of the County of Gorizia and Gradisca in the Austrian Hinterland After the Isonzo Front Was Opened: Between Flawless Plans and Their Chaotic Execution.] In Begunci: slovenski begunci s soške fronte, edited by Beguš, Ines and Klavora, Marko, 18–29. Nova Gorica: Goriški muzej Kromberk.Google Scholar
Kosi, Jernej, and Stergar, Rok. 2016. “Kdaj so nastali ‘lubi Slovenci‘? O identitetah v prednacionalni dobi in njihovi domnevni vlogi pri nastanku slovenskega naroda.” [When Did “Dear Slovenes” Come About? Identities in the Pre-National Era and Their Supposed Role in the Establishment of the Slovene Nation.] Zgodovinski casopis 70 (3–4): 458–489.Google Scholar
Kostantaras, Dean. 2016. “Perfecting the Nation: Enlightenment Perspectives on the Coincidence of Linguistic and ‘National’ Refinement.” European Review of History: Revue européenne d'histoire 24 (5): 659–682.Google Scholar
Kuprian, Hermann J. W. 2011. “Flüchtlinge, Evakuierte und die staatliche Fürsorge.” In Tirol und der Erste Weltkrieg, edited by Eisterer, Klaus and Steininger, Rolf, 277–305. Vienna: Studien-Verlag.Google Scholar
Leerssen, Joep. 2006. National Thought in Europe: A Cultural History. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.Google Scholar
Siniša, Maleševic. 2006. Identity as Ideology: Understanding Ethnicity and Nationalism. Basingstoke: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Siniša, Maleševic. 2017. “The Mirage of Balkan Piedmont: State Formation and Serbian Nationalisms in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries.” Nations and Nationalism 23 (1): 129–150.Google Scholar
Maxwell, Alexander. 2006. “Why the Slovak Language has Three Dialects: A Case Study in Historical Perceptual Dialectology.” Austrian History Yearbook 37:141–162.Google Scholar
Maxwell, Alexander. 2009. Choosing Slovakia: Slavic Hungary, the Czechoslovak Language, and Accidental Nationalism. London: I.B. Tauris.Google Scholar
Maxwell, Alexander. 2010. “Typologies and Phases in Nationalism Studies: Hroch's A-B-C Schema as a Basis for Comparative Terminology.” Nationalities Papers 38 (6): 865–880.Google Scholar
Mentzel, Walter. 1995. “Weltkriegsflüchtlinge in Cisleithanien 1914–1918.” In Asylland wider Willen: Flüchtlinge in Österreich im europäischen Kontext seit 1914, edited by Heiss, Gernot and Rathkolb, Oliver, 17–44. Vienna: Jugend and Volk.Google Scholar
Moritsch, Andreas. 1991. Vom Ethnos zur Nationalität: Der nationale Differenzierungsprozeβ am Beispiel ausgewählter Orte in Kärnten und im Burgenland. Vienna: Verlag für Geschichte und Politik.Google Scholar
Nemes, Robert. 2016. Another Hungary: The 19th-Century Provinces in Eight Lives. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Norton, Claire. 2007. “Nationalism and the Re-Invention of Early-Modern Identities in the Ottoman-Habsburg Borderlands.” Ethnologia Balkanica 11:79–101.Google Scholar
Orožen, Martina. 1996. Oblikovanje enotnega slovenskega knjižnega jezika v 19. stoletju [The Establishment of the Slovene Literary Language in the 19th Century]. Ljubljana: Znanstveni institut Filozofske fakultete.Google Scholar
Pantelic, Bratislav. 2011. “Memories of a Time Forgotten: The Myth of the Perennial Nation.” Nations and Nationalism 17 (2): 443–464.Google Scholar
Pohlin, Marko. 1768. Kraynska grammatika: Das ist die crainerische Grammatik, oder Kunst die crainerische Sprach regelsrichtig zu reden, und zu schreiben. Laybach: Johann Friedrich Eger.Google Scholar
Scheer, Tamara. 2016. “Habsburg Languages at War: ‘The Linguistic Confusion at the Tower of Babel Couldn't Have Been Much Worse’.” In Languages and the First World War, vol. 1: Languages and the First World War: Communicating in a Transnational War, edited by Declercq, Christophe and Walker, Julian, 62–78. Basingstoke: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Sernec, Josip. 1927. Spomini [Memoirs]. Ljubljana: Tiskovna zadruga.Google Scholar
Shanes, Joshua. 2012. Diaspora Nationalism and Jewish Identity in Habsburg Galicia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Stauter-Halsted, Keely. 2001. The Nation in the Village: The Genesis of Peasant National Identity in Austrian Poland, 1848–1914. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Stergar, Rok. 2012. “L'esercito asburgico come scuola della nazione: Illusione o realtà?” In Minoranze negli imperi: Popoli fra identità nazionale e ideologia imperiale, edited by Mazohl, Brigitte and Pombeni, Paolo, 279–294. Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar
Stourzh, Gerald. 1985. Die Gleichberechtigung der Nationalitäten in der Verfassung und Verwaltung Österreichs 1848–1918. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.Google Scholar
Stourzh, Gerald. 2007. From Vienna to Chicago and Back: Essays on Intellectual History and Political Thought in Europe and America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Struve, Kai. 2005. Bauern und Nation in Galizien: Über Zugehörigkeit und soziale Emanzipation im 19. Jahrhundert. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht.Google Scholar
Struve, Kai. 2014. “Polish Peasants in Eastern Galicia – Indifferent to the Nation or Pillars of Polishness? National Attitudes in the Light of Józef Chałtasiński's Collection of Peasant Youth Memoirs.” Acta Poloniae Historica 109:37–59.Google Scholar
Suny, Ronald Grigor, and Martin, Terry, eds. 2001. A State of Nations: Empire and Nation-Making in the Age of Lenin and Stalin. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Valencic, Vlado. 1974. “Etnicna struktura ljubljanskega prebivalstva po ljudskem štetju 1880.” [The Ethnic Structure of the Inhabitants of Ljubljana-Laibach according to the Census of 1880.] Zgodovinski casopis 28 (3–4): 287–319.Google Scholar
Varga, Balint. 2014. “Multilingualism in Urban Hungary, 1880–1910.” Nationalities Papers 42 (6): 965–980.Google Scholar
Verdery, Katherine. 1983. Transylvanian Villagers: Three Centuries of Political, Economic, and Ethnic Change. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Vocelka, Karl. 2001. Glanz und Untergang der höfischen Welt: Repräsentation, Reform und Reaktion im hahsburgischen Vielvölkerstaat. Vienna: Ueberreuter.Google Scholar
Wingfield, Nancy M. 2007. Flag Wars and Stone Saints: How the Bohemian Lands Became Czech. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Yosmaoglu, Ipek K. 2006. “Counting Bodies, Shaping Souls: The 1903 Census and National Identity in Ottoman Macedonia.” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 38:55–77.Google Scholar
Zahra, Tara. 2008. Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands, 1900–1948. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Zwitter, Fran. 1990. “Linhartova doba, misel in delo.” [Linhart's Age, Thought, and Work.] In O slovenskem narodnem vprašanju, 73–118. Ljubljana: Slovenska matica.Google Scholar