House of Habsburg: References & Edit History

For the English-language reader, the most comprehensive introduction to the subject remains William Coxe, History of the House of Austria, 3rd ed., 4 vol. (1847–53, reprinted 1901–05), an oft-neglected work covering Habsburg history from 1218 to 1848. Adam Wandruszka, The House of Habsburg: Six Hundred Years of a European Dynasty (1964, reprinted 1975; originally published in German, 1956), covers this same period in a brief but authoritative manner. Pieter M. Judson, The Habsburg Empire (2016), is an engaging survey.

One of the best works on the early years of the Habsburg dynasty is Robert J.W. Evans, The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1550–1700 (1979, reissued 1985). Works in English on the Habsburgs in the 19th and 20th centuries vary in scope and in quality. C.A. Macartney, The Habsburg Empire, 1790–1918 (1968, reprinted with corrections, 1971), also available in a condensed, more accessible version, The House of Austria: The Later Phase, 1790–1918 (1978), provides a masterly survey by an expert. A.J.P. Taylor, The Habsburg Monarchy, 1809–1918: A History of the Austrian Empire and Austria-Hungary, new ed. (1948, reprinted 1976), is rather severely critical of the dynasty’s failings.

Other studies include Dorothy Gies McGuigan, The Habsburgs (1966); Victor L. Tapié, The Rise and Fall of the Habsburg Monarchy (1971; originally published in French, 1969); Hugh Trevor-Roper, Princes and Artists: Patronage and Ideology at Four Habsburg Courts, 1517–1633 (1976, reissued 1991), an illustrated study; Robert A. Kann, A History of the Habsburg Empire, 1526–1918 (1974); John Lynch, Spain Under the Habsburgs, 2 vol., 2nd ed. (1981); and Andrew Wheatcroft, The Habsburgs: Embodying Empire (1995, reissued 2004).

Edward Crankshaw, The Fall of the House of Habsburg (1963, reprinted 1983), together with his lavishly illustrated The Habsburgs: Portrait of a Dynasty (1971), makes a brilliant and easily readable vindication of the last emperor. Arthur J. May, The Hapsburg Monarchy, 1867–1914 (1960), is fair and scholarly, with a good bibliography, and is continued in his The Passing of the Hapsburg Monarchy, 1914–1918, 2 vol. (1966). Z.A.B. Zeman, The Breakup of the Habsburg Empire, 1914–1918 (1961, reprinted 1977), gives a just account of a subject usually misrepresented. Additional studies of the fall of the Habsburg dynasty include Oscar Jászi, The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy (1929, reissued 1961); Alan Sked, The Decline and Fall of the Habsburg Empire, 1815–1918 (1989); and Alan Warwick Palmer, Twilight of the Habsburgs: The Life and Times of Emperor Francis Joseph (1994).

Genealogical detail is available in Walther Merz, Die Habsburg (1896), which contains 19 tables; and Michel Dugast Rouillé, Les Maisons souveraines de l’Autriche, Babenberg, Habsbourg, (Habsbourg-d’Espagne), Habsbourg-Lorraine, (Lorraine) (1967), also well-tabulated and with illustrations. Discussions of physical heredity are found in John Langdon-Davies, Carlos, the King Who Would Not Die (also published as Carlos, the Bewitched, 1963).

There have been several good studies of economic development during the Habsburg reign. David F. Good, The Economic Rise of the Habsburg Empire, 1750–1914 (1984), is a solid survey. More advanced students may examine John Komlos, The Habsburg Monarchy as a Customs Union: Economic Development in Austria-Hungary in the Nineteenth Century (1983). Also worthy of inspection is John Komlos (ed.), Economic Development in the Habsburg Monarchy in the Nineteenth Century: Essays (1983). International relations and Habsburg foreign policy are the subjects of H.G. Koenigsberger, The Habsburgs and Europe, 1516–1660 (1971); F.R. Bridge, The Habsburg Monarchy Among the Great Powers, 1815–1918 (1990); and Samuel R. Williamson, Jr., Austria-Hungary and the Origins of the First World War (1991).