Austria, Prussia and Germany, 1806-1871 (Seminar Studies In History) - Tapa blanda

Reseña del editor

In this important new survey of the Austro-Prussian relationship and its impact on Germany, John Breuilly considers Germany's relations with interior and exterior states during the first half of the nineteenth century. Focusing on the rise of nationalism and the causes of political ascendancy, Breuilly follows the struggle over German lands, between France on the one hand and Austria and Prussia on the other. Once Austria and Prussia had managed to wrest supremacy in Germany away from France and reorganised the German lands in 1814-15, the two cooperated for more than three decades in joint control of Germany under Austrian leadership. The second half of the book traces the collapse of this cooperative relationship and its dramatic conclusion in the 1866 war of supremacy, when Prussia decisively defeated Austria. Was Prussia's victory inevitable, or was it an accident? Breuilly weighs up the evidence in masterly fashion and shows how the different approaches reflect above all shifts of interest within historical study.

Contraportada

Prussia and Austria were the two most powerful German states in the nineteenth century, and on their relationship depended the political fate of Germany as a whole. This book considers the changing nature of that relationship from 1806, when Austria and Prussia had been excluded from any influence in the rest of Germany by the power of Napoleon, to 1866 when Prussia defeated Austria in war and took control in north and central Germany, and then went on in 1870-71, having defeated France; to bring the remaining German states under her domination.
Setting that relationship within its German and European contexts, the book:

• provides a narrative of Austro-Prussian relations
• plots the shifts between cooperation and competition
• considers the final phase of conflict which culminated in war
• analyses the strengths and weaknesses of the two states relative to each other