Estates and their assemblies in the Habsburg Monarchy

The project aims at reconsidering the history of the estates` assemblies in the Habsburg monarchy in a period in which historians have rarely stressed their significance. Following the impulses of the recent debate about "absolutism" and inspired by the research on provincial administration in Western Europe (especially in France), it will seek to challenge the simplistic image of estates in the period after the Habsburgs reshaped the Austrian and Bohemian elites, and to reduce the widening gap between our knowledge about this issue in Western Europe on the one side, and in the Habsburg monarchy on the other. After the recent reconsideration of the Habsburg courts deeply changed our understanding of the central power, an innovative re-examination of provincial power structures is needed in order to suggest a more balanced picture of the early modern Habsburg state and the emergence of central authority in this area. The main goal of the project is to undertake comparative research on the diets and to produce a study (written in German or English) that would (a) put the estates of the Habsburg monarchy "on the map" of European research for the sake of the debate on "absolutism", (b) encourage further exploration of the topic in an international and comparative perspective, and (c) provide researchers with a database of participants in the diets. The conceptual starting point is the notion of "composite monarchy". Successfully used in the history of East- Central Europe within the last years, it provides an innovative framework that will be combined with the comparative approach as both an "eye-opener" and a key for a better understanding of the diversities and similarities of the territories. The research will embrace seven "core" hereditary lands (Lower and Upper Austria, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, Bohemia, Moravia). The comparability is guaranteed by their basic structural similarity and administrative connection. The comparison will benefit from their different traditions and long-term fates. Finally, the understanding of the estates-ruler relationship, influenced by the oversimplifying dualistic model with its many implications, should be reconsidered. Instead of viewing the estates as a more or less homogenous group, by nature oppositional to the ruler, the project should help to elaborate a more complex model that would cede more relevance to their motivations, internal divisions and affinities between them and the crown. The project will have a twofold agenda: the prosopographical analysis of attending members of estates, and the inner working of the assemblies (ritual, language and speech habits). Since there has been hardly any investigation of these issues, the project will rely on the research in provincial archives, focusing protocols of the assemblies that, surprisingly, have barely been used by researchers. In planning the schedule, advantage of my prior research on the diets of Bohemia and Moravia can be taken (15 % of the data already collected). Thus, the research can primarily be focused on the Austrian provinces. Essential to the successful execution of the project will be the co- operation of specialists at the scientific institutions in Vienna, which will be the natural base for the research.