Commentary: Making and Remaking the Habsburg Monarchy

Abstract

Thereis something in a historianthat loves wreckage. I am confident that scientists will one day identify a gene on our chromosomes that predisposes us to destruction. As a young graduate student, I listened in rapt attention as Lawrence Stone mesmerized our seminar describing the one opportunity he had in wartime to “sack a house.” Most of us, however, sublimate these illicit desires, and the urge to destroy only becomes evident in our scholarship. Following Gibbon and Huizinga, we relish the study of decay and decline. Humor aside, R. J. W. Evans was well aware of this instinct as he beganThe Making of the Habsburg Monarchywith a simple but profound observation, “Many historians, in a dozen languages, have sought to explain why the Habsburg Monarchy declined and fell; none has ever seriously investigated the causes of its rise.”