Geschichte als Argument
Arguing with History

Historical State Rights as a Political Key Concept in 19th century Bohemia

Summary/Abstract: Historical state rights are characteristics of a few empires. Legally, they drew on the tradition of former estates’ orders and contained privileges estates or a County with regard to the Emperor. In the second half of the 19th century, however, this legal argument gave way for interpretations that were genuinely political. Historiography has often interpreted this shift as an exclusively nationalist one. Taking the Austrian Bohemian Lands and Czech nationalism as an example, this paper shows how the more complex the discourse was, in which history was transformed into political claims. In the realm of the Habsburg Monarchy, state rights legitimized so different ideas as feudal-estates’ orders, historic federalism or nation states. These political programs had conservative, national-liberal and even democratic implications combined with integrationist or separationist policies.

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