Description
By (author) Wheatley, Natasha
:
An intellectual history of sovereignty that reveals how the Habsburg Empire became a crucible for our contemporary world order
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. The Life and Death of States 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.
Natasha Wheatley 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. Wheatley explores how the Central European experience opens a unique perspective on a pivotal legal fiction—the supposed juridical immortality of states.
A sweeping work of intellectual history, The Life and Death of States 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.
Review quote:
“Winner of the Felicia Krishna Hensel Book Award, International Studies Association”
Review quote:
“A New Statesman Book of the Year”
Review quote:
“Honorable Mention for the Robert L Jervis and Paul W Schroeder Best Book Award, International History and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association”
Review quote:
“Honorable Mention for the Morris D. Forkosch Book Prize, Journal of the History of Ideas”
Review quote:
“Shortlisted for the Laura Shannon Prize, Nanovic Institute for European Studies”
Review quote:
“Winner of the ICON-S Book Prize, International Society of Public Law”
Review quote:
“[Natasha Wheatley] has a penchant for metaphor and an inventive flair that make her legal histories come alive. . . . Wheatley has accomplished something far more consequential. She traces the legal history of statehood and self-determination to a new origin point in Central Europe, to the ashes of the Habsburg Empire—the ”ghost in the machine” of international law. Her book is an impressive account of the challenges that legal thinkers of Hans Kelsen’s generation faced in describing the cataclysmic changes of their time.”
—Linda Kinstler, New York Review of Books
Review quote:
“Path-breaking and field-defining. . . . It is a testament to Wheatley that she catalogues and engages with the many directions the theorization of sovereignty took in the waning days of the Austro-Hungarian empire and its immediate aftermath. Reconstructing this rich intellectual world, she pierces the sovereign state’s static and immutable image in order to reveal the remarkable political fluidity and theoretical ingenuity involved in its construction.”
—Adom Getachew, H-Diplo
Review quote:
“A richly rewarding book. . . . Wheatley gracefully unpacks the complicated constitutional issues faced by inhabitants of the Habsburg monarchy.”
Review quote:
“A really fascinating read.”
—Justin Kempf, Democracy Paradox
Review quote:
“A valuable contribution to the extensive, and growing, historiography concerning
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.