Petr Mat'a

Historians have rarely stressed the significance of the estates and provincial diets in the Habsburg monarchy after the Thirty Years War. My project aims to reconsider the history of such institutions in this period. I will focus on several turning points in the history of Habsburg finances between 1620 and 1740 to show how estates responded to new fiscal challenges. In contrast to ongoing projects based on case studies, I have adopted a comparative perspective. The territorial scope of my project embraces what can be called the “core” hereditary provinces (Bohemia, Moravia, Lower and Upper Austria, Styria, Carinthia and Carniola). Chronologically, the research has focused on the more than century-long “blank” period between two major crises of the Habsburg monarchy.

So far, my comparative research on the estates has followed a threefold agenda: (i) their social composition; (ii) the inner working of diets; (iii) internal divisions. During the EURIAS fellowship, I will be enabled to complete the picture by illuminating concrete bargaining procedures in the matter of taxation. My research has revealed striking varieties between the provinces under examination with regard to the degree of autonomy enjoyed by the respective estates; varieties so far overshadowed by the simplistic absolutism-paradigm as well as by the lack of comparative examination. What remains to be done is to establish whether the bargaining with the crown in the matter of taxation followed the same pattern, leaving the estates in the Northern provinces less resistant to royal demands. Surprisingly enough, this kind of careful comparative analysis has never been attempted before. In order to achieve this goal, I will focus on several turning points in the history of Habsburg finances to show how estates responded to new fiscal challenges.

The monograph is intended to fill a conspicuous gap in our understanding of the Habsburg monarchy as both an emerging fiscal-military state and as a political system based on mutual but highly asymmetric collaboration between the central power and the provincial elites.