The French have done a good job in stamping out many minority languages. See Nice/Savoy
What could Austria Hungary could of done to fix its Over Diversity and National instability in its Ethnic army, and government.
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People tend to forget that the British and French empires were just as imperialistic as the Germans were. The main difference was that their subjugation was principally of nonwhite people.
France don't stamp minority language, they stomp over dialects of French than even have no writing form. except of course Flemish, the Occitan language don't existed, you have 5, 6 or 7 different dialects (linguists don't even agree) in Southern France and it was spoken by illiterate peasants while the upper class spoke it only to be understand by the maid or the gardener.
Savoy and Nice lower classes both spoke a dialect close to the official French, while the upper classes were speaking French from hundred of years.
Austria forced the use of German over population who spoke Italians, Slovene, Czech, Polish or Ruthenian, while Hungary forced the use of Hungarian over population sepaking Slovak, Ruthenian, Rumanian or Croat. None of these languages have something in common with the official language of Austrian or Hungarian parts of the Empire.
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Correct, Austria had not been able to bring its full weight to bear on Hungary. However, that was set to change as the Italian campaign is winding down and the other revolts* are already squashed before any Russian soldier sets foot on Austrian soil.
Two decades later, while Hungary was still militarily occupied and not providing man power, Austria would deploy over 400,000 against the Prussians and Italians, and that's not including the forces garrisoning Hungary. Austria really wasn't tapped for manpower in 1849.
*on the subject of the Czech and Polish revolts, they caused Vienna far less trouble than Hungary's national minorities created for Budapest during the Hungarian revolution.
Except the ones that weren't, like the Carlist Wars, First Schleswig War, the Crimean War, or the American Civil War which I previously referenced.
Having had this conversation with you before, see article 19.
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The British and French aren’t good examples because their minorities were subject minorities that they were able to actually oppress into line. Colonial populations don’t count because they were beaten down colonials and even then they eventually escaped once the metropole’s power weakened. The exception being the English whom were able to power share with the Scottish in a manner similar to the Austro-Hungarian compromise. But even then the English outnumbered and dominated the Scots to an extent that wasn’t possible in A-H regardless of Scottish over-representation.
Yes. That was mostly after the Austro-Hungarian compromise which allowed the Hungarians to initiate harsh magyarisation within their half of the empire because the Austrians didn’t want to foot the bill of occupying Transleithania. Which happened because the Hungarian Revolution was devastating enough that it both encouraged other minority nationalist revolutions (which often ended up competing with each other) but also required Russian aid to completely crush. Perhaps the Austrians could’ve ended the revolution by themselves but that would’ve costed them more money and blood to do so.
The Hungarians get villainised for their magyarisation policies which absolutely did ostracise the other minorities of the empire but that was because they were powerful enough to force Austria into compromising with them and letting them have power. Such was the power sharing agreement they made. I’d go so far as to say part of the reason for the intensity of Magyarisation came from how unpopular the compromise was with the Hungarians.
Had Austria not compromised with the Hungarians it would’ve more closely resembled the Ottomans at the end of the 19th century. Because the occupation of Hungary was getting expensive and the Austrians were spending insane percentages of their budget just servicing debt. Arguably a default could’ve been a good thing but it would’ve come with terms that would’ve impaired Austrian sovereignty just as Ottoman default in the late 19th century impaired their sovereignty.
You’d need the Austrians to support the other minorities of the empire preemptively to crush the Hungarians but the Hungarians revolted because of the attempt to impose absolutist centralisation within the Crown of st Stephan which would’ve been required to do the kinds of reforms suggested.
Though saying all this I genuinely think Austria-Hungary was more stable than people tend to make out and the ultimate source of the instability didn’t necessarily come from its diversity per se. Both the Ottomans and the Austro-Hungarians saw their minorities as a threat which caused them to become threats. Or I suppose more the Hungarians there really.
That's just super-Belgium, down to the split between regional and community governments. I can already see it before my eyes, at least seventeen governments, it'd have been glorious!
And well did raising everyone from their unstable empire go?
This answers my question.
No Italian Influence? No Coast? No Crackow? No Tyrol?And well did raising everyone from their unstable empire go?
This answers my question.
It was built through unification of Germans, and preventing Austria and france from Influencing them
Austria Hunagry was mainly Just Austria, and thrown in Hungary for some stability, and I presume you know about their shard in the ass which is the powderkeg
Sure a military solution if it come to that will not really make the hungian happy and fall in love with the Empire...on the other hand let them doing the OTL show neither and while you are right that they are hardly the only problem they are also the first and biggest stone at the moment so unless you resolve that in some manner you can begin any real change...and btw one of the reason why in the hungarian parlamient there was little fight for the right of the minorities it's maybe due to the fact that the franchise was around 6% till 1918 and a lot of minorities (plus the poor regardless of ethnicity as usual) were a little underrepresented
Another problem I have with the military "solution" is that its propagated by many on this site as a perfectly normal and viable alternate.
When i read about Wilhelm II of Germany talking about using the military to disperse with the Reichstag I think he was an autochratic idiot. When I read that the military was ready to do this Im horrified and think the military should have been brought under civilian control. I cant even imagine the military marching on the capital on the say so of the head of the state in any modern western country - be it an a*hole with or without a crown. The very idea is repulsive to me. I dare hope that most democratic minded people in the west are similar to me in this regard. In every occassion in recent history when someone decides to use the military against the elected representatives of the people my sympathies lay always on the side of pairlament - again I think im not alone in this. I hate the current goverment of my country (Hungary and Orbán). One of my most fervent hopes is that I will live to see his fall - but I would regard a military coup one of the few things that would near certainly make the siutation even worse.
There seems to be but one exception to this rule - at least on this site. The K.u.K and the hungarian government. The hungarian government - as is often brought up when this topic arises - was elected by but only about 6% of the populace (lets ignore the fact that at the outbreak of the war the most active debate and most likely development was a widening of the suffrage) pointing out the weak legitimacy of the government. The populace of Hungary on the eve of WWI was about 20 million - meaning 6% to be about 1,2 million people. This is the number the hungarian government was legitimately representing. The army that should coup it? It was controlled by and a tool of the Emperor / King. How many people have elected the Emperor / King in Hungary? About 160 thousend - the austrian army led by Haynau that attacked the hungarian revolution. If we are generous we could add the about 190 thousend russian troops as well that crushed it.
And yet here we had a legitimate government, that many here would have liked to see couped by the army, because it refused to do that what it was never really asked to do. How are these people different to Wilhelm II - wanting to send in the troops to disperse with the representatives of the people because they are proving difficult?
When the german army proposed the same to Wilhelm II the outcry was that the army should be under civilian control. Here the hungarian government is condemned for not founding an army that it had no control over, that has made it known that it was perfectly willing to be used against it, made plans to do so, and trying to create an army responsible to them.
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the two posts below are two cmpltly different matters
Reading this thread is weird, it's like someone came over from a meme subreddit.
When one thought of political violence at the time one thought of France.
When one thought of ethnic violence at the time one thought of Russia.
And when one thought of military ethno-religious seccessionism one thought of the Ottomans.
When you have to go back 70 years to 1848 to support a narrative or prove a point you have a bit of a problem as that is far too removed in time to betruly relevant to the then present.
When one thought of political violence at the time one thought of France.
When one thought of ethnic violence at the time one thought of Russia.
And when one thought of military ethno-religious seccessionism one thought of the Ottomans.
When you have to go back 70 years to 1848 to support a narrative or prove a point you have a bit of a problem as that is far too removed in time to betruly relevant to the then present.
well forget it, I meant the russian influences in the baltics caused further instability
Again with a map that shows nothing. Worse, a map that would be completely undone a few years later when an Austrian-led multinational army cracked France open like an egg.And well did raising everyone from their unstable empire go?
This answers my question.
Indeed. Ancien Regime Austria was nothing if not resilient. No matter how many times it lost to the French in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, it was always able to assemble an army and come back for another round.
This was no longer the case by the A-H era though. Look at the 1859 war with France and Sardinia, lasting 2.5 months, and the 1866 war with Prussia, lasting a month and immediately followed by concessions to the Hungarians that Austria had been resisting for 17 years. Contrast that with the contemporaneous Crimean War, lasting almost two and a half years before a more resilient power finally conceded defeat.