Tackling Empire

The project is led by Lucile Dreidemy and Péter Apor, Senior Research Fellow at the Humanities Research Center in Budapest, and is funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and the Hungarian National Research, Development and Innovation Office.

“Tackling Empire” explores Austria’s and Hungary’s relations with the non-European world in the interwar period. Despite the fact that the periods before 1918 and during the Cold War have been investigated, the relations of these two countries with Africa, Asia, and Latin America between 1918 and 1939 remain largely unexplored. Moreover, the repositioning of Austria and Hungary as post-imperial spaces has rarely been linked to the global crisis of imperialist order and the restructuring of the capitalist world system after World War I. “Tackling Empire” addresses this research gap and seeks to reassess the diplomatic, economic, and cultural connections of Austria and Hungary with the Global peripheries.

Using an actor-centered transnational historical approach, the project focuses on the role of political lobbying groups as well as industrial and commercial networks in the reconfiguration of international relations of both countries. It also examines the role of colonial mentalities and racist stereotypes in these relations Building on cross-border case studies and complementary archival research, the project will explore the circulation of ideas between the two countries, in order to shed light on their entanglements across the new national borders after 1918. The project will contribute to a better understanding of the post-imperial history of Austria and Hungary and enrich debates on post-imperialism in the interwar period more broadly.