At the beginning of the early modern period, the concept of Europe did not yet exist. Religion, not politics or geography, was the defining criterion. It was Christendom that people referred to – not ...Europe – when they wanted to introduce the concept of burden-sharing. In military terms, differences between Oriental and Occidental empires were less obvious; if anything, the Ottomans seemed to have a head-start in terms of centralization and professionalism. It was not the impact of Ottoman rule as such that created the conditions for “Balkan warfare”. It was the unsettled character of the borders between “East” and “West” that gave rise to a form of low-intensity conflict that might be said to provide a foretaste of what came to be known as Balkan warfare.
Aleksander Petrino (1824-99) was the only Austrian government minister who came from its eastern-most 'crown-land', the Bukovina - the only one without a clear-cut ethnic majority. Ukrainians were ...the biggest group but were massively under-represented among the elites. A sizeable part of the leadership of the Rumanians consisted of Phanariot Greeks, such as Petrino. Austrian politics in the opening phase of constitutionalism during the 1860s was characterized by a cleavage between centralist German Liberals and federalist and Catholic Slavs. Bukovina representatives did not easily fit into either category. Petrino, who also worked assiduously as a lobbyist for railroad companies, initially sided with the German Liberals, then organized a gathering of minorities from different parts of the Austrian half of the Empire, including Italians and Slovenes. It was the decision of this squadrone volante to join the Czech and Polish boycott of the Vienna Parliament in March 1870 that persuaded the Emperor to finally dismiss the German Liberal Bürgerministerium ('Citizens' Ministry').
Graf Egbert Belcredi (18161894) kam aus einer italienischen Familie, wuchs deutschsprachig auf und mischte krftig in der tschechischen Politik seines Heimatlandes Mhren mit. Sein Bruder Richard war ...1866 sterreichischer Ministerprsident gewesen; doch der eigentliche politische Kopf der Familie war Egbert, ein kmpferischer Konservativer, angesiedelt zwischen stndisch-feudalen, bhmisch-staatsrechtlichen und frhen christlichsozialen Strmungen. Als Landedelmann, mit einem Schloss in der Umgebung von Brnn, versuchte er seine Standesgenossen oft vergeblich zu einem strkeren Engagement in ffentlichen Angelegenheiten zu berreden. Diese Edition seiner farbigen, oft bitter-bissigen Tagebucheintragungen wurde von Antonn Ok noch vor 1989 vorbereitet, konnte whrend des kommunistischen Regimes aber nicht verffentlicht werden.
Crown Prince Rudolphs contacts with Georges Clemenceau, the French Radical Party politician (and much later wartime Prime Minister), have often been interpreted as a sign of acute dissatisfaction ...with Austria-Hungary's German alliance. However, a closer look at Rudolphs correspondence with the man who established these contacts, Vienna journalist Moritz Szeps, clearly shows that Rudolph was primarily concerned to further the plans of his father-in-law, King Leopold II of Belgium. Leopold desperately needed the French governments permission to launch a lottery loan for his Congo Free State on the Paris stock exchange. In 18867, Clemenceau seemed a good choice to bring that result about. Moreover, contrary to his later reputation, Clemenceau and the Radicals were at that time opposed to a Russian alliance. Thus, they were not regarded as a force that was particularly dangerous for the Austro-German alliance.
,,Schicksalsjahr", ,,Entscheidungsjahr", ,,Epochenjahr", ,,Ende des alten Europa" - so lauten einschlägige Urteile der Geschichtswissenschaft über die Bedeutung des preußisch-österreichischen Krieges ...von 1866. Ob es sich dabei um einen ,,Bruderkrieg" zweier deutscher Staaten, um einen ,,Bürgerkrieg" oder gar um einen ,,Re-ligionskrieg" mit ,,,schmalkaldischer' Perspektive" ge-handelt hat, gilt hingegen als weniger sicher. Die Autoren fragen nach den Ursachen, dem Ablauf wie auch den Folgen der militärischen Auseinandersetzung. Nach der Analyse der Entscheidungsprozesse, die im Sommer 1866 bei den drei hauptbeteiligten Akteuren Preußen, Österreich und Italien zur Öffnung des Ja-nustempels führten, untersuchen die Autoren, wieso die europäischen Großmächte Russland, Frankreich und Großbritannien eine Politik der bewaffneten Neutralität betrieben. Sie erörtern die Entwicklung und die Charak-teristika des Kriegsgeschehens auf den zentralen Schlachtfeldern von Königgrätz und Custozza. Ab-schließend behandelt er die Konsequenzen des Waf-fenganges für Deutschland und Europa.
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