Croats and Serbs in the history of the Habsburg empire: conservative view of the first third of the 19th century in the works of Joseph von Hormayr

Abstract

The paper deals with images of non-Germanic ethnic communities in the Habsburg empire conservative historiography in the first three decades of the 19th century, based on Croatian and Serbian cases. The author chose the works of Joseph von Hormayr, who was known as the Austrian conservative activist and politician. He was the one to present the officially accepted understanding of the Austrian and Habsburg imperial history during that period. The sources which are chosen as the subject of analysis are the following works by Joseph von Hormayr: “The Austrian Plutarch”, “The Inner Austrian Army under command of archduke John during the 1809 war in Tyrol, Italy and Hungary”, “Small Fatherland History” and “General contemporary history from the death of Frederick the Great to the Second Parisian treaty”. These works were aimed to promote the official view of the history of Austria and the Habsburg empire in general and were designed to demonstrate the concept of “Austrian” as a “sum of achievements” belonging to all ethnic communities branded as “the family of peoples”. All these elements appeared in the context of officially adopted conservative ideology and were meant to preserve and foster centralization in the Empire alongside with the loyalty towards the emperor Francis I in both Austro-German and non-Germanic communities. Serbs and Croats were the southern Slavic peoples, which had the most detailed images in Hormayr’s works. The images of these communities appeared in narratives describing the struggle against “Turkish menace” and maintaining the historical memory of it, as well as on images of Serbs and Croats participating in the Napoleonic wars. The author concludes that military narratives were dominating in forming the images of Serbs and Croats in the Habsburg empire. The struggle against Ottoman and Napoleonic expansion were united into a single historical line demonstrating Croats and Serbs as members of “the family of peoples” obtaining the same rights as the Austro-German and other non-Germanic communities under the Habsburg reign. Both the chosen images, the medievalist cultural patterns and the concepts developed by the Austrian conservative ideologists and politicians in the early 19th century followed this pattern.