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The Life and Death of States: Central Europe and the Transformation of Modern Sovereignty

Online ISBN:
9780691244082
Print ISBN:
9780691244075
Publisher:
Princeton University Press
Book

The Life and Death of States: Central Europe and the Transformation of Modern Sovereignty

Natasha Wheatley
Natasha Wheatley
Princeton University
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Published online:
23 May 2024
Published in print:
13 June 2023
Online ISBN:
9780691244082
Print ISBN:
9780691244075
Publisher:
Princeton University Press

Abstract

Sprawled across the heartlands of Europe, the Habsburg Empire resisted all the standard theories of singular sovereignty. The 1848 revolutions sparked decades of heady constitutional experimentation that pushed the very concept of “the state” to its limits. This intricate multinational polity became a hothouse for public law and legal philosophy and spawned ideas that still shape our understanding of the sovereign state today. This book traces the history of sovereignty over one hundred tumultuous years, explaining how a regime of nation-states theoretically equal under international law emerged from the ashes of a dynastic empire. The book shows how a new sort of experimentation began when the First World War brought the Habsburg Empire crashing down: the making of new states. Habsburg lands then became a laboratory for postimperial sovereignty and a new international order, and the results would echo through global debates about decolonization for decades to come. The book explores how the Central European experience opens a unique perspective on a pivotal legal fiction—the supposed juridical immortality of states. It offers a penetrating and original analysis of the relationship between sovereignty and time, illustrating how the many deaths and precarious lives of the region's states expose the tension between the law's need for continuity and history's volatility.

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