ABSTRACT
In the wake of the political defeat of the 1848 Revolutions, the chastened AustrianGerman ‘liberals’ looked to the Habsburg state to carry out the economic ‘antifeudal’ and unifying elements of the ‘liberal’ programme by autocratic means, much as Prussian German ‘liberals’ looked to the Hohenzollern state to do the same within the German Zollverein (Customs Union, established in the 1830s). The ‘liberal’ propertied classes had suffered a real scare in 1848. Having slightly lifted the lid of the ‘Pandora’s box’ of democracy, they had seemingly lost control to ‘radicals’ who wanted to advance beyond limited, orderly and elitist ‘democracy for the rich’ towards a more egalitarian ‘democracy for the masses’, threatening the privileged position and prerogatives of the rich. On further reflection, therefore, ‘repentant liberals’ concluded that it would be far safer to rely on monarchical power and authority to implement vital parts of the ‘liberal’ programme in a more strictly controlled manner (‘from above’). Thus many ‘liberals’ sold out to the dynasty in the belief that they could ‘use’ it to attain important ‘liberal’ objectives. These included: an imperial customs union; the construction of railways; the promotion of industry, banks and joint stock companies; the rule of law (the setting up of a Rechtsstaat); ‘responsible’ quasi-constitutional government; the further suppression of seigneurial privilege; the abolition of the hereditary rights of landlords in local jurisdiction/administration; the erosion of the powers of landlord-dominated provincial Diets; the creation of a more uniform and more unitary state; and the opening of official careers to (mainly bourgeois) ‘talent’.
