Escaping a Prison of Peoples? 100 Years after the Collapse of the Habsburg Empire

Recorded November 19, 2018. This public lecture is presented by
Mark Cornwall, Professor of European History, University of
Southampton. This year marks the centenary of the dissolution of
the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a monarchy whose disappearance from
the European map transformed the history of the twentieth century.
At a time when the UK is planning to exit from another
multi-national European body, this talk will revisit the reasons
why different peoples decided to exit the Habsburg Empire and
create independent states at the end of the First World War. What
expectations guided the idealists who created the new Czechoslovak
and Yugoslav states? Certainly, in the years that followed, the
hopes of many were quickly deflated as new borders and identities
sprang up. It leads us to ask, in retrospect, to what extent the
Habsburg Empire can be considered a ‘prison of peoples.’ Or should
we follow those like the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig who viewed
the Habsburg Empire with great nostalgia, a cosmopolitan experiment
with much to teach us? This lecture is part of the 1918 and the New
Europe lecture series. Learn more at:
https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/