Institut für die Erforschung der Habsburgermonarchie und des Balkanraumes der ÖAW: Project “Dynastic Continuity in an Age of Crisis? The Habsburgs in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1792–1815)” (Web)

Time: 13.-14.11.2025
Venue: Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna
Proposals by: 15.01.2025

In 1810, Napoleon Bonaparte famously married Marie Louise of Austria, daughter of Emperor Francis I. This union symbolized the continuing relevance of dynastic politics in the Napoleonic era, as one of the continent’s youngest dynasties allied itself with one of its oldest in a strategic play of prestige and power. Despite the upheavals of the preceding decades, ruling houses had never truly disappeared from the political landscape. This suggests that dynastic politics remained central to governance and diplomacy across the continent, coexisting with the revolutionary ideals that sought to dismantle the institutional legacy of the Ancien Régime.
In recent decades, historians have shed new light on the dynamics of European dynasties in the pre-modern period. Moving away from a “vertical” analysis focused primarily on male heads of aristocratic families, the “new dynastic history” has emphasized previously overlooked aspects: the roles of non-ruling family members (both male and female), the importance of family networks, and the social and cultural construction of dynasties. This new perspective reveals a far more complex picture of dynasties as political and social entities, beyond the mere succession of rulers. However, this historiographical shift has barely affected the study of European dynasties during the Age of Revolutions. Traditionally, the historical focus has been on political, social, and economic change, with dynastic families often viewed as struggling to keep pace with the challenges that arose from revolutions, such as republicanism and nationalism. The processes of democratization and bureaucratization are sometimes assumed to have made dynasties superfluous relics of a bygone era. More recently, the strengthened European monarchies that emerged from the revolutionary era have been drawing scholarly attention, but this has hardly extended to the issue of dynasty. Read more … (PDF)