Abstract
The classificatory efforts that accompanied the modernization of the Habsburg state inadvertently helped establish, promote, and perpetuate national categories of identification, often contrary to the intentions of the Habsburg bureaucracy. The state did not create nations, but its classification of languages made available some ethnolinguistic identity categories that nationalists used to make political claims. The institutionalization of these categories also made them more relevant, especially as nationalist movements simultaneously worked toward the same goal. Yet identification with a nation did not follow an algorithmic logic, in the beginning of the twentieth century, sometimes earlier, various nationalisms could undoubtedly mobilize large numbers of people in Austria–Hungary, but people still had agency and nation-ness remained contingent and situational.
Highlights
In the last decade, scholars have argued against an ethnicist interpretation of the formation of modem nations in the Habsburg Empire.' Narratives of the unstoppable development of ethnic groups into nation-states have been questioned and rejected
We argue that the classification efforts that accompanied the modernization of the Habsburg state were key to establishing, promoting, and perpetuating national categories of identification
During the first half of the nineteenth century, the Habsburg state was often involved in the standardization of languages that later provided a basis for the national classification of its inhabitants
Summary
Scholars have argued against an ethnicist interpretation of the formation of modem nations in the Habsburg Empire.' Narratives of the unstoppable development of ethnic groups into nation-states have been questioned and rejected. We argue that the classification efforts that accompanied the modernization of the Habsburg state were key to establishing, promoting, and perpetuating national categories of identification. As arbitrary as the processes might have been, classification and categorization helped pigeonhole the inhabitants of the Habsburg Empire into neat national categories.
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