Why did the Austrian Habsburgs fail to implement absolutism as the French had done?
What will be an ideal response?
The major problem facing Leopold I and other Habsburg rulers is that the population of their lands was quite heterogeneous, encompassing Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia. Leopold was never able to implement the type of national unity that was seen in France because the nobility in the Habsburg lands was considerably stronger than in France, and maintained a degree of self-rule, particularly in the Hungarian Diet. Further, there was competition within the German states from the Hohenzollern dynasty and the buildup of the Prussian state. Another unifying factor in France was the state-endorsed focus on Catholicism. This could not be imposed in the Habsburg lands because, even though there was a large contingency of Catholics in the southern German lands, there was still the maintenance of a large Protestant community, which prevented unification. Finally, the long tradition of the electorate within the Holy Roman Empire and subsequent states did not allow for a vertical structuring of the dependent nobility that France had.
You might also like to view...
The conflict between Israel and Palestine is primarily over ________
A) freedom of religion B) territory C) economic control D) balance of power
What year did prohibition go into effect?
A) 1916 B) 1919 C) 1926 D) 1933
The most important argument that southern defenders of slavery used against northern abolitionists was
A) Africans willingly accepted slavery. B) the North was poor because there was no slavery in that region. C) slave life was better than the lives of northern industrial workers. D) slavery was not that widespread in the South.
By 1871, all of the following are correct about Great Britain except
A. it had a functioning two-party system for fifty years. B. both political parties supported legislation to expand the right to vote. C. the largest political party was the Labour Party. D. both political parties were dominated by a ruling class of aristocratic landowners often involved in industrial and financial activities and upper-middle-class business people. E. Queen Victoria was the long-reigning monarch.