Hello Marcus. I just registered today, and have been reading through some topics of interest to me. One of those has always been Austria-Hungary, and also the history of the Habsburg monarchies since 1519.
I have read Taylor's book and I am of the opinion that he brings a mid-twentieth century bias to his historiography. The book was originally published in 1948 and the experience of the recent wars colored much of the history that was written about central Europe. Even before that, C.V. Wedgewood's The Thirty Years War (1939) was heavily influenced by the experience of the Great War and the turmoil and instability of the inter-war years.
Having said that, part of the bias I mentioned is that historians, as a group, had turned away from diplomatic and military history in those times. It became very unfashionable to discuss or write about such things given their recent history. In academic circles, it was not thought that any well adjusted adult should waste his time with these matters. (The tyrrany of the social scientists
)
Taylor was a fine historian, wrote well and had mastery of his sources. However, his 1948 view of central Europeans is skewed by Herr Hitler and WWII. "Hitler learnt everything he knew in Austria," etc. He talks of "Viennese demogogy." Blah, blah. I guess in 1948 he could be excused for that.
The book is a good survey of the political dynamics of the dual monarchy after 1867 and is worth reading for that alone. If Taylor does not treat personalities, I assume it is because he was not writing biography in that title.
Mike
