A Summary Afterword

Abstract

The administrative machinery and military prowess of the Habsburg empire, especially during its first two centuries, were far more imposing on paper than in practice. More subtle strategies kept the empire in place. One was the dynasty’s readiness to cooperate with local elites, a skill cultivated in all of Europe’s pre-modern and modern empires. The Habsburg imperial enterprise grew, indeed flourished, from the sixteenth to the middle of the eighteenth centuries in good part because the dynasty persuaded the lay aristocracy and high clergy of its lands that the house of Austria had something to offer them: the continuation of their many social, economic, and political privileges. For their part, the Habsburgs had a crucial stake in the natural and human resources that nobles and their ecclesiastical counterparts traditionally controlled.