Conference: ‘The Collapse of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires: Patterns and Legacies’, Vienna

A conference held at the Institute for East European History, University of Vienna, will examine the social and political causes for the collapse of two of the Central Powers.

The conference is being organised by the University of Utah, the Ludwig Boltzmann-Institute for Social Science History, and the Institute for East European History at the University of Vienna, and will be held at the latter on the 16th – 17th January 2014.

The immediate and long-term implications of the processes of imperial dissolution through a set of theoretically guided and empirically based questions will be considered.

The University of Utah will publish the papers presented as an edited volume following a peer-review process.

Key questions

The conference will focus on six key questions:

1. What is an empire and what is a nation-state?

2. How do empires collapse?

3. Did the collapse of Ottoman and Austria-Hungarian Empires lead to nationalistic sentiments or was growing nationalism a cause for the empires’ collapse?

4) How did the Ottoman and Austria-Hungarian Empires respond to the crises?

5) What is the immediate and far-reaching legacy of the collapse of empires?

6) To what extent is it possible to avoid writing history from the vantage point of modern nation-states that emerged after the collapse of imperial orders?

A full programme for the conference is available at the University of Vienna website here.

Contact

Michaela Strauss

Institute for East European History

michaela.strauss@univie.ac.at

Source: University of Vienna website

Images courtesy of the University of Vienna website

Posted by: Daniel Barry, Centenary News