| Austro-Hungary Empire is a typical multi-ethnic continental empire from the middle 19th century to the early 20th century in Europe. With its predecessor, the Austrian Empire (in 1867 renamed as the Austro-Hungary Empire), It has been long viewed as an important geopolitical power as Europe necessity. Its main geopolitical meaning is based on two ideas:one is to maintain the balance of power among the European powers, and the second is a buffer zone between European Christian world and the Islamic Ottoman Empire.Compared with other great powers in European, multi-ethnic composition of the empire is unique, which determines its taking the governance of national relationship as the primary objective of the empire. Particularity reflects the ethnic composition in two points:First, any ethnic composition, compared with the same period of the other great powers of Europe, does not have a population which is more than a quarter of total population of the empire, that is to say the empire does not have a dominant ethnic group; second,60% of the population belong to the cross-border or transnational nations, they have close political, economic and cultural ties with nation-states outside of their empire. Ethnic composition determines the fragility and instability of the empire social structure.After the early 19th century, the national movements occured in the Empire was directly resulted in the change of social relations. In a long time, the majority of the national movements is moderate, and their goals are to achieve some forms of ethnic autonomy by democratic reforms in political structures. The main features of the national movement is reflected in three aspects. One is the weak ethnic-based nation against the strong ones, fighting for equal rights and for obtaining ethnic autonomous status and the transformation of the political structure of the empire. The second is that the movement is the bottom-up development, directly or indirectly, to oppose totalitarianism and the feudal ruling class of the old system. Third, the development of the national movement has turned to political goals inherently from cultural targets. National Movement embodies a variety of social conflicts such as the interest conflicts between the central and local regions, between different social classes and groups as well as between urban and rural areas. But the inherent contradictions in this process is that strong ethnic groups always wants to maintain its existing interests, unwilling to share interests with disadvantaged ethnic groups. The contradictory relationships between the ethnic groups will gradually be irreversible, leading to the structure of social relations within the Empire tends to be dispersion and secession in development.Empire is actually faced with the dual challenges and threats within the national movement and irredentism beyond Empire. The Complexity of ethnic relationship in empire makes it become the most difficult problems among all the problems faced by the imperial government. The Ethnic relationship ran through all fields such as the imperial politics, economy and culture, which is not only the main thread of the imperial governance. For the different characteristics of different regions and ethnic groups, the Empire has taken diverse paths and ethnic relations strategy in governance. There are imbalances of direct and indirect control in the regional level, the governance structure makes Empire prominent fragmented in governance, assimilation, segmentation, and overlap in the no-regional level, such as economy, election and cultural In the tactics of dealing with ethnic problems, the Empire has taken to draw, repress, and drive a wedge. Different tactics are for different ethnics, intended to cause inter-ethnic conflicts and confrontations, eliminate the possibility of their cooperation to reduce the national movements which caused the empire pressure. But after growing up under the influence of national culture and national revival movements, different language groups in the empire became modern nations in the true sense and a new national identity gradually replaced the imperial identity, which laid the ideological establishment of the nation-state foundation.The reasons of failure of nationality-relationship governance of the empire lie in the conservative ideas of the monarch and aristocracy. This idea is the continuation of Kautsky and Metternich thoughts to maintain the status quo. Although the Empire depended on the minds of maintaining the status quo in the European Big Powers Relationships Governance, which for quite a long time established a position in the imperial powers of the European diplomatic stage. The idea in the country was implemented as a tool of ethnic groups relationship governance, which were not suited to the liberal ideas of the times and People’s sovereignty. Hungarian and the Germanic ethnic groups were viewed as to maintain the internal balance of the pillar, rather than force the nation to break the balance between the two. The beneficial attempt at reform of the Empire also failed because of the opposition of interest group or class, and its prosperity and stability on the surface can’t cover up the inner complicated social contradiction. After the edification of the Renaissance movement of the nation culture and the refinement of the national movement, Empire in different language groups in the Empire became the real modern nations, the Empire identity were gradually replaced by the new identity-national identity, which laid the ideological basis for the establishment of the nation-state. Although some certain nations in the Empire with sufficient rights of political, economic and social development has high esteemed for the Empire, but the identity does not spread to other nations, on the contrary they took equal rights of nations or built up nation-states as a target.On the problem of identity, before national identity has been widely acknowledged, the Empire identity is one of the important reasons to maintain the longstanding empire, which is the traditional sense of belonging to a centralized system of the highest representative of the monarch’s sense in loyalty and Germanic cultures.The empire subjects also have some degree of pride or satisfaction for the Empire glorious country. But after growing up under the influence of national culture and national revival movements, different language groups in the empire became modern nations in the true sense and a new national identity gradually replaced the imperial identity, which laid the ideological establishment of the nation-state foundation. Some ethnic groups, such as Germans, Magyars, Poland, and those who were not regarded as a separate ethnic Jews had a high degree of identity of the empire, but the identity had not spread to other nations who did not have more equal rights. So the Empire identity existed only in individual ethnic group, the more other ethnic groups put the fight for equal rights or ethnic nation-state as a goal. The national identity had its meaningless of historical progress, which in essence denied the legitimacy of the existence of the Empire. There were antagonistic relationships between the two. Under the impact by the former, the Empire identity was took as rootless grass, unable to parry, which ultimately led the continuation of 400 years old the main internal dynasty to disappear.On the problem of ethnic relations, the Empire on the one hand lacked of long-term national policies system, on the other hand it had adopted a policy of keeping the policy of status quo which tried to go beyond the national question, missing reform opportunities. While before outbreak of World War I the Empire’s economic growth were accelerated and enjoyed cultural prosperity, but the solid internal ethnic conflicts were deteriorated increasingly and the government cannot balance the interests of the ethnic groups, cannot eliminate all kinds of social differences. Ethnic conflicts caused a deep internal crisis. After the outbreak of the war, the empire suffered economic setbacks, at last in support of the Allies and the initiatives of various ethnic groups in the Empire, peaceful disintegration realized. Many New National Independence Countries in Central and Eastern European regions emerged, which is an important symbol of ethnic and cultural diversity of modern European formation.The relationship between ethnic nations is the main factor to affect and determine the historic development of Middle and East Europe. First, the distribution of ethnic groups in the Middle and East Europe regions highly intertwined and geographical location changed unceasingly, its prominent feature in the transition of the ethnic relations is constantly getting rid of vulnerable or dependent ethnic-nation status, which determines the change in the political map of the region along the trajectory of dynasty-Empire-federal-the nation-state toward a smaller body politic direction. Whether the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, or the some secession of the Eastern European nation Commonwealth countries in the 1990s, their common characteristics are inherently in the process of pursuit of national dominance from subordination. Despite the dynastic autocracy and the federal republic institutional differences, the results of unequal relationship strong and weak inter-ethnic nation are the same. Second, as for the Central and Eastern Europe, the diversity rather than uniformity is the trajectory and the law of historical development, multi-cultural coexistence and integration is characteristic of this region, which results the Empire to the big power in culture in the late 19th and early 20th century. Despite a number of integration and separation of the Central and Eastern European history, the ultimate direction is toward diversity. Third, the process from Eastern Europe spreading to the Europe can reveal some fundamental characteristics in EU. After two expansions in 2004 and 2007, the EU stressed "unity in diversity", where "diversity" is the existence of objective reality and "unity" is the top-level design of the heads. Now one of the problems of the integration of Europe is too much emphasis on "unified" democratic deficit, which brought bottleneck constraints of democratic deficit. Integration resolve the lack of identity in the people of Europe nations. From this point, the key determining European developmental direction are the diversity of the member states, rather than the planning by the elites in the unity level. Fourth, equality is not only the cornerstone of dealing with ethnic relations, but also the important foundation of constructing a just and rational new international relations. Fully consideration in the interests and concerns of small nations is very meaningful. Both in EU and in the international society, they are the majority in quantity. If they do not feel the fairness and rationality in the EU and international society, the kind of international relations may not be the direction of various national efforts. |
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