Österreich und der Immerwährende Reichstag. Studien zur Klientelpolitik und Parteibildung (1745–1763) by Michael Rohrschneider

Abstract

Reviewed by: Österreich und der Immerwährende Reichstag. Studien zur Klientelpolitik und Parteibildung (1745–1763) by Michael Rohrschneider Chris Thornhill Österreich und der Immerwährende Reichstag. Studien zur Klientelpolitik und Parteibildung (1745–1763). By Michael Rohrschneider. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014. Pp. 395. Cloth €69.99. ISBN 978-3525360798. This book develops a number of quite distinctive approaches to the high-level and medium-level politics of the Holy Roman Empire in the middle decades of the eighteenth century, focused on the period usually associated with the consolidation of the Austro-Prussian dualist system and the Seven Years' War. In its most obvious political-historical implications, the central claim proposed throughout this book is that contemporary historical research is still adversely affected by the legacy of nationalist historiography from the nineteenth and earlier twentieth century (13–14). As a result of this tradition, current historical writing on central Europe fails to adequately [End Page 415] appreciate the political significance of the Holy Roman Empire and its constitutional organs—especially the Reichstag in Regensburg—in the decades close to the end of its existence. Accordingly, the author claims that it is now essential to move away from the common, dismissive idea that, by the eighteenth century, the Reich had its constitutional fulcrum in a rather "sleepy Imperial Diet"; instead, he urges us to view the diet as the center of an active empire (304), defined by deeply contested loyalties and a highly conflictual system of political competition. Such statements are of course not entirely unique—but they do not become less valid through their reassertion. It is clearly vital for any understanding of early modern Europe that we observe the empire as a persistently powerful state structure. The author is thus to be commended for his skillful determination to emphasize the enduring importance of the imperial diet, which is portrayed here, quite rightly, as a distinctively constructed form of statehood. The central claims of the book are supported by a series of rather more unusual arguments and observations as the author constructs a nuanced and original understanding of the eighteenth-century political marketplace to emphasize the significance of the institutional apparatus of the empire. In so doing, he provides historical information that contributes in important ways to the general history of the eighteenth century. Moreover, he offers important sociological insights into the basic structures of government in the later early modern period, focusing on different dimensions of political interaction, both formal and informal. Generally, the author is interested in examining and explaining the day-to-day "micropolitics" of the empire (271). He uses this term to designate the mass of processes deployed for the ongoing stabilization of the empire's social foundations. In them, on many social levels, members of the imperial faction pursued "the consolidation of supporters and the mobilization of their own followers" (157) and, in particular, the "consolidation of a firm group of supporters amongst the imperial estates" (243). From the perspective of micropolitics, such mobilization was enacted through fluid networks of personal exchanges, reflecting a constant "interaction of formal and informal structures and processes" (157). This micropolitical focus leads to a number of very important constructions and observations. First, the author develops this approach by expanding his previous research on the history of diplomacy, and by examining diplomatic exchanges and communicative practices as part of core political activities at the Reichstag. In this respect, Rohrschneider draws attention to the intensification of the politics of media and public communication in the empire in the eighteenth century, and he observes the formation and steering of political opinions as a key object of political contest (208). Second, he explains how the empire was shaped by the evolution of a complex web of "clientelist and patronage relations" (99), based partly in the trading of influence and partly in the distribution of resources, which were designed to sustain the legitimacy of imperial policy and to maximize support for the imperial party. On [End Page 416] these separate grounds, the author claims that the Reichstag in Regensburg formed a sui generis "universe of communication" (30), in which immediate diplomatic and personal relations were central to the construction and exercise of political power. In...