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Austria-Hungary
The Habsburg dual monarchy of a dozen nations, dissolved at the end of World War I
Austria-Hungary was one monarch ruling two states, each with its own parliament and prime minister, sharing an army, a foreign ministry and a customs union. From 1867 to 1918, Franz Joseph and then Charles reigned as emperor of Austria in Vienna and king of Hungary in Budapest over more than 50 million people who spoke a dozen major languages. That made the monarchy the largest state in Europe by area after Russia, and a long experiment in governing many nationalities under one crown. Its capitals, coffeehouses, railways and opera houses still define the look of central Europe, and the borders drawn at its breakup in 1918 and 1919 remain largely in place.
The monarchy filled the Danube basin and the arc of the Carpathian Mountains. The Austrian half, known as Cisleithania, curved from Bohemia and Moravia through the Alpine lands and the Adriatic coast of Istria and Dalmatia to Galicia and Bukovina beyond the Carpathians. The Hungarian half, Transleithania, held the Great Hungarian Plain, Transylvania, present-day Slovakia and Croatia-Slavonia. Bosnia and Herzegovina, occupied in 1878 and annexed in 1908, was administered jointly, and the port of Trieste gave the empire its main outlet to the sea. In 1914 it covered about 676,600 square kilometers. Its territory now lies in Austria, Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and in parts of Poland, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Montenegro and Italy.
The Habsburgs had gathered crowns across central Europe since the Middle Ages, and after Austria lost a war with Prussia in 1866 they reached the Compromise of 1867 with Hungarian leaders, creating the dual monarchy. Rapid industrialization followed in Bohemia, Vienna and Budapest, while Czechs, Poles, Croats, Serbs, Romanians, Slovaks and Ukrainians pressed for greater rights, with mixed results. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, led Austria-Hungary to declare war on Serbia, opening World War I. Military defeat and national revolutions dissolved the monarchy in October and November 1918, and the treaties of Saint-Germain and Trianon fixed new borders. Successor states included Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, the forerunner of Yugoslavia, while Poland, Romania and Italy gained territory.