Empires on the edge: the Habsburg monarchy and the American Revolution, 1763-1789

Abstract

Throughout 2013 the governments of the Austrian Republic and United States of America celebrated the 175th anniversary of diplomatic relations between them. This date marks the accreditation of ambassadors in 1838 but obscures the sixty-year prehistory, begun when the first American envoy reached Vienna in 1778. The Habsburg Monarchy became the last European Great Power to recognise the United States, but the reasons behind this also have eighteenth-century origins. The United States and the successor states to the Habsburg Monarchy, therefore, share a much longer, more complex and deeply entangled history stretching back to the American Revolution. This dissertation focuses on how and why attempts to formalise relations failed between these two states in the revolutionary and post-revolutionary period, something which, until now, has received little historical attention. This dissertation uncovers a neglected but illuminating story of US-Habsburg relations between 1763- 1789. In doing so it demonstrates the evolving nature of early modern diplomacy and the wider international struggle of the American founding. In both regards, this dissertation argues the economic motivation of economic agents and the role of personalities were the new and instrumental factors. What follows is a new history of the broader, much deeper impact of the American Revolution and the transatlantic entanglements of the Habsburg Monarchy. A history of a relationship which looks beyond ‘desk diplomacy’ and towards a more holistic interpretation of the attempted relations between unlikely states. To this end, this dissertation relies upon a broad base of archival material from personal papers to quantative data from both sides of the Atlantic.