ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Habsburg measures towards enemy aliens with special emphasis on confinement and internment. From August 1914, internment were also introduced as an administrative measure for some enemy aliens resident in the Austrian interior. Although the treatment of Austro-Hungarian civilians abroad had some impact on Habsburg policies towards enemy aliens, particularly British and French nationals, the most important drivers behind internment decisions stemmed from conditions inside the empire. State administrators deliberately targeted resident aliens who were deemed to be at risk of destitution and saw their internment as a useful safeguard against the dangers of pauperism. In the decades leading up to 1914, the Habsburg Empire had been relatively liberal in its approach to inward migration. The chapter conclude with the wartime Habsburg Monarchy made its own distinctive contribution to the incarceration of enemy aliens, a contribution which also cast a dark shadow over the policies adopted by successor states towards alien populations after 1918.
