SUMMARY:

In the Ab Imperio series “Conversation with Author,” Pieter Judson sheds light on the research laboratory behind his revisionist account of the history of the Habsburg Empire (The Habsburg Empire: A New History), which was published by Harvard University Press in 2016. The interview reveals an interesting historiographic situation: at the end of the twentieth century, historians of the Habsburg Empire felt the need to differentiate the empire’s experience from the domineering perspective of the history of the Russian Empire. At the same time, historians who rediscovered the imperial dimension in Russian history followed the ideal type of the Habsburg multinational empire. The major thrust of Judson’s revision of the history of the Habsburg Empire is twofold: first, he aspires to explore the issue of imperial vitality and adaptability in the longue durée perspective by decentering national narratives of the composite Habsburg space and the idiom of inevitable decline of the Habsburg Empire. Second, Judson advances a systematic and symmetric comparison of modern statehood in Europe, in which the Habsburg imperial case does not look exotic. The interview touches on questions of the global and comparative history of empires; the usefulness of a comparative taxonomy of colonial-continental empires; the problem of analytical languages of imperial history and hegemony of a nation-centered imaginary in historical descriptions of empire. Judson discusses political, social, and cultural histories approaches to understanding empire and, finally, his book’s reception in the region.