In The Twilight Of Empire Count Alois Lexa Von Aehrenthal 1854 1912

Count Aehrenthal, Austro-Hungarian foreign minister (1906-1912), is well-known to diplomatic historian for the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908. Solomon Wank"s biography, the first since 1917, shows that Aehrenthal"s life and work transcend diplomatic history and illuminate critical problems threatening the viability of the Habsburg Monarchy. Wank focuses on the inseparable connection between foreign and internal affairs in Aehrenthal"s thinking, his involvement in domestic politics, his attempt to transform the office of the foreign minister into that of an imperial chancellor, his grand scheme of constitutional reform to solve the South Slav problem within the empire, and his personality. The work is based on unpublished documents in Austrian and Czech archives, as well as recently published correspondence with Habsburg diplomats and aristocratic relatives and friends, and with his parents. Volume I covers the history of the Aehrenthal family, Aehrenthal"s early years and education, his personality and political outlook, his diplomatic career and his involvement in domestic politics from 1878 to the eve of appointment as foreign minister.

Count Alois Lexa von Aehrenthal (1854-1912) was the most important Austro-Hungarian diplomat in the period before the First World War. Volume Two of Solomon Wank's brilliant biography covers Aehrenthal's years as foreign minister from 1906 until his death in 1912. This includes the dramatic events of the Bosnian annexation crisis in 1908/09 when Aehrenthal brought Europe to the brink of war until he retreated from the precipice once he recognized the abyss.

This is a study of the early writings of Virginio Gayda (1885-1944), a talented but amoral Italian journalist whose career spanned two world wars. A keen observer, prolific writer and propagandist during his stint as the newspaper La Stampa’s special correspondent in Habsburg Vienna, Gayda lent his considerable skills to promote an aggressive foreign policy. No one did more than he to poison relations between the Italian and Yugoslav peoples. His is the story of a respected journalist who chose an ultranationalist path to fascism and international fame. Not uninfluenced by rank careerism and material reward he forsook his roots to embrace the antisemitic “race” laws of 1938 and Italy’s disastrous partnership with Nazi Germany.

The well-respected historian Manfried Rauchensteiner analyses the outbreak of World War I, Emperor Franz Joseph's role in the conflict, and how the various nationalities of the Habsburg Monarchy reacted to the disintegration of this 640-yearold empire in 1918. After Archduke Franz Ferdinand"s assassination in Sarajevo in 1914, war was inevitable. Emperor Franz Joseph intended it, and everyone in Vienna expected it. How the war began and how Austria-Hungary managed to avoid capitulation only weeks later with the help of German troops reads like a thriller. Manfried Rauchensteiner"s book is based on decades of research and is a fascinating read to the very end, even though the final outcome, the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy, is already known. Originally published in German in 2013 by Böhlau, this standard work is now available in English.

The Encyclopedia of Diplomacy is a complete and authoritative 4-volume compendium of the most important events, people and terms associated with diplomacy and international relations from ancient times to the present, from a global perspective. An invaluable resource for anyone interested in diplomacy, its history and the relations between states Includes newer areas of scholarship such as the role of non-state organizations, including the UN and Médecins Sans Frontières, and the exercise of soft power, as well as issues of globalization and climate change Provides clear, concise information on the most important events, people, and terms associated with diplomacy and international relations in an A-Z format All entries are rigorously peer reviewed to ensure the highest quality of scholarship Provides a platform to introduce unfamiliar terms and concepts to students engaging with the literature of the field for the first time

“Jenkins’ rare combination of psychological theorizing and archival research in several countries and time periods yields a fascinating new take on the central question of when states over-estimate or under-estimate others’ resolve. The biases that leaders and elites fall prey to appear to vary with their emotional states and senses of well-being, factors that most scholars have ignored.”—Robert Jervis, author of How Statesmen Think This groundbreaking book explains how the happiness levels of leaders, politicians and diplomats affect their assessments of the resolve of their state’s adversaries and allies. Its innovative methodology includes case studies of the origins of twelve wars with Anglo-American involvement from 1853 to 2003 and the psycholinguistic text mining of the British Hansard and the U.S. Congressional Record. /div

Every time that something happened in Austria after 1918, the country was under observation: as German-Austria, the First Republic, the Corporative State, the Alpine and Danubian Gaue of the Greater German Reich, the Second Republic – right up to the present day. People looked, heard and generally did not keep silent, and this has not changed. As though Austria were still the same testing ground for the end of the world that Karl Kraus described it as. A gripping and varied overview of Austrian history over the last 100 years.

A new interpretation of the Sarajevo assassination and the origins of World War I that places focus on the Balkans and the prewar period. The story has so often been told: Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Habsburg Empire, was shot dead on June 28, 1914, in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo. Thirty days later, the Archduke's uncle, Emperor Franz Joseph, declared war on the Kingdom of Serbia, producing the chain reaction of European powers entering the First World War. In Misfire, Paul Miller-Melamed narrates the history of the Sarajevo assassination and the origins of World War I from the perspective of the Balkans. Rather than focusing on the bang of assassin Gavrilo Princip's gun or reinforcing the mythology that has arisen around this act, Miller-Melamed embeds the incident in the longer-term conditions of the Balkans that gave rise to the political murder. He thus illuminates the centrality of the Bosnian Crisis and the Balkan Wars of the early twentieth century to European power politics, while explaining how Serbs, Bosnians, and Habsburg leaders negotiated their positions in an increasingly dangerous geopolitical environment. Despite the absence of evidence tying official Serbia to the assassination conspiracy, Miller-Melamed shows how it spiraled into a diplomatic crisis that European statesmen proved unable to resolve peacefully. Contrasting the vast disproportionality between a single deadly act and an act of war that would leave ten million dead, Misfire contends that the real causes for the world war lie in "civilized" Europe rather than the endlessly discussed political murder.