Natasha Wheatley, „The Life and Death of States: Central Europe and the Transformation of Modern Sovereignty“
An intellectual history of sovereignty that reveals how the Habsburg Empire became a crucible for our contemporary world order
Sprawled across the heartlands of Europe, the Habsburg Empire resisted all the standard theories of singular sovereignty. The 1848 revolutions sparked decades of heady constitutional experimentation that pushed the very concept of “the state” to its limits. This intricate multinational polity became a hothouse for public law and legal philosophy and spawned ideas that still shape our understanding of the sovereign state today. The Life and Death of States traces the history of sovereignty over one hundred tumultuous years, explaining how a regime of nation-states theoretically equal under international law emerged from the ashes of a dynastic empire.
Natasha Wheatley shows how a new sort of experimentation began when the First World War brought the Habsburg Empire crashing down: the making of new states. Habsburg lands then became a laboratory for postimperial sovereignty and a new international order, and the results would echo through global debates about decolonization for decades to come. Wheatley explores how the Central European experience opens a unique perspective on a pivotal legal fiction—the supposed juridical immortality of states.
A sweeping work of intellectual history, The Life and Death of States offers a penetrating and original analysis of the relationship between sovereignty and time, illustrating how the many deaths and precarious lives of the region’s states expose the tension between the law’s need for continuity and history’s volatility.
Natasha Wheatley is assistant professor of history at Princeton University. She is the coeditor of Remaking Central Europe: The League of Nations and the Former Habsburg Lands and Power and Time: Temporalities in Conflict and the Making of History. Her writing has appeared in Past & Present and the London Review of Books.
“A really fascinating read.”—Justin Kempf, Democracy Paradox
“A valuable contribution to the extensive, and growing, historiography concerning the origins of the modern state. While others have concentrated on non-Western or Western European countries to reach their conclusions about the evolution of modern politics, Wheatley’s case study breaks new ground in its analysis of an especially difficult case, the Austrian Empire after the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867.”—Choice
“A richly rewarding book. . . . Wheatley gracefully unpacks the complicated constitutional issues faced by inhabitants of the Habsburg monarchy.”—History Today
“Wheatley invites us to rethink the way political history should be written by taking seriously the legal language in which different protagonists dress their political claims. This powerful and exceptionally erudite book opens an altogether fresh view on the formation of the present global order and also makes very good reading.”—Martti Koskenniemi, fellow of the British Academy and professor emeritus at the University of Helsinki
“In this superb book, Natasha Wheatley investigates aspects of sovereignty that are rarely if ever touched upon: the beginnings and ends of states. By focusing on statehood rather than nationhood, Wheatley finally gives the Habsburg state its deeper importance in modern European and global history.”—Pieter M. Judson, author of The Habsburg Empire: A New History
“Wheatley’s deeply original and important book alters the way we understand the history of European states, sovereignty, and legal thought. A stunning achievement.”—Lauren Benton, Yale University, coauthor of Rage for Order: The British Empire and the Origins of International Law, 1800–1850
“This is an immensely rich work filled with arresting formulations, provocative hypotheses, and a wealth of primary and secondary scholarship. The Life and Death of States will be a paradigm-shifting book for those interested in the intellectual and conceptual history of modern legal and political thought.”—Duncan Kelly, University of Cambridge
Published: Jun 13, 2023
Pages: 424
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691244075/the-life-and-death-of-states