How did the Habsburg Empire Survive?

Finished by the First World War and buried under the nation states that succeeded it, the Habsburg monarchy had survived for centuries despite its obvious faultlines. What held it together?

Habsburg statutes removed from Budapest’s Heroes Square after the Second World War with Franz Joseph in the foreground, 1990. Fortepan / Katalin Erdei.

‘Historians were quick to write it off’

R.J.W. Evans is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Oxford

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