The Habsburg Monarchy has already been described as an essentially dynastic state. Indeed, some historians deny that this assortment of territories merits the title of 'state' at all.1
Maria Theresa, who became Archduchess of Austria in 1740, was also the sovereign of a number of other 'hereditary lands' in what are today's Slovenia and northern Italy, as well as queen of Hungary and Bohemia. Her father had been Emperor Charles VI of the Holy Roman Empire, one title which his daughter, as a woman, could not inherit. Instead, after a disputed interlude, the imperial dignity was conferred on Maria Theresa's husband in 1745 and remained with the Habsburgs until 1806. Finally, the dynasty ruled the Austrian Netherlands (today's Belgium) and the north Italian duchies of Milan, Mantua and Parma. The total population of the Monarchy, in 1740, was less than 14 million.2
The problem in ruling this hotchpotch was that the machinery of government was replicated many times over. Each Land or realm had its own laws and institutions, and above all its own diet, in which the estates, or prominent social classes, were represented. Such basic functions of government as the maintenance of order, the administration of justice and the collection of revenue were performed at this local level; there was no central government in this sense. The Monarchy had an 'ordinary' income derived from its own landed property, from indirect taxes on consumption and from customs. Money for an army, and for waging war, counted as 'extraordinary' income and had to be voted by the diet of each Land as a 'contribution'. In the reign of Charles VI both the Bohemian and Hungarian diets, whose taxable wealth was the most substantial, had agreed to fix the amount of their contributions, thereby guaranteeing the Monarchy something like a regular income. Anything beyond that still had literally to be negotiated between monarch and diet, and in the other hereditary lands the contribution was not even fixed.
In such circumstances the Monarchy's ability to play the role of a great power had always been subject to serious limitations. Habsburg rulers sought to obviate their dependence on the diets by increasing 'ordinary' revenue. Previous reigns had been notable for a conscious effort to implement the principles of cameralism, encouraging industry and foreign trade, and promoting the repopulation of Hungary, devastated by the Turkish wars. Charles VI made appreciable improvements in infrastructure, with the building of roads linking the interior with the Adriatic.
Yet there was a point beyond which the Monarchy seemed unable or even unwilling to go in modernising its diverse realms. Despite cameralist reforms there was little large-scale industry, agriculture remained primitive and the revenue base problematic. The Habsburgs themselves accepted the decentralised structure of the Monarchy. Charles VI is famous for spending much of his reign negotiating the Pragmatic Sanction, a recognition of his daughter's right to succeed him, with each of the diets, in tacit recognition of their separate status. With Charles's death in October 1740, however, the Monarchy received the clearest possible warning of the consequences of a failure to modernise. Maria Theresa's succession was the signal for an assault on its very existence.
World History
