“The Habsburgs: Embodying Empire”, by Andrew Wheatcroft

446 pages, Viking, ISBN-13: 978-0670854905

The Habsburgs: Embodying Empire by Andrew Wheatcroft covers almost 1000 years – from the year 1020 to 1995 – in less than 300 pages, which feels like an accomplishment in and of itself. But what makes this book distinct from the many, many other books about the Habsburgs is Wheatcroft’s approach: he writes about “the Habsburgs as an entity, considering ‘the dynasty’ in much the same shorthand way that we do ‘the Church’” – that is to say, he looks at images and documents to consider how the Habsburgs viewed themselves and presented themselves to the world. A great example is the portrait of Maximilian I in which, Wheatcroft notes, “nothing…is what it seems”, as the painting features family members who were dead, who had not met, or who lived in different countries. But “the subject is dynasty, with Maximilian at the head of the Domus Austriae, with his posterity”. By examining portraits like this, Wheatcroft reveals the ways the Habsburgs constructed their own image and iconography. Consequently the book is a glorious mishmash of art history and cultural anthropology, but in the form of an accessible historical narrative; its history the way you want it to be written, informative yet entertaining, with lots of interesting details and whacked-out characters. Not that the Habsburgs need help with this: can we talk about Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, who proclaimed himself “Emperor of Mexico” at the urging of Napoleon III? His last words, in 1867, mind you, were “¡Viva México! ¡Viva la Independencia Nacional!” just before he was shot by a Mexican firing squad. Weird, right?

I am sure there are many more thorough looks at the (very long) history of the Habsburgs as rulers in Austria, Spain, the Netherlands, whole swaths of Germany and huge chunks of the world outside of Europe, besides…but for me this book is a great way to start because it chooses to look at the great big glorious picture, the concept of “The Habsburgs” over the details of their dynasty. To me, at least, it was fantastic. I’ll leave you with this quote from the first chapter of the book describing the Battle of Sempach, fought on July 9^th 1386, between Duke Leopold III of Austria and the Old Swiss Confederacy, as an example of the word-pictures painted therein: “In battle those crests would form a rainbow menagerie, of eagles, boars, lions, bulls, bears, hawks, falcons, and eagles, and other more fanciful beasts, like griffins, unicorns, and basilisks. All would come jerkily to life, like some gigantic puppet-play, standing out above the pall of dust kicked up by the hooves of the rider’s horses”. Good stuff, right? (oh, by the way: the battle was a decisive Swiss victory in which Leopold and countless Austrian nobles died and which subsequently led to the loosely allied Swiss Confederation to form a more unified nation and is regarded now as a turning point in the growth of Switzerland). Andrew Wheatcroft’s The Habsburgs: Embodying Empire follows that “rainbow menagerie” through the centuries as it develops into the tightly controlled imagery of the longest ruling dynasty in Europe.