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U.S.-Habsburg Relations from 1815 to the Paris Peace Conference.
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From Apalachicola to Wilkes-Barre: Austria(-Hungary) and Its Consulates in the United States of America, 1820–1917
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 February 2009
Extract
Little is known today of the relations between the Habsburg monarchy and the United States, or even about the millions of Habsburg subjects who emigrated to America and participated in virtually every stage of its westward expansion. We are particularly ignorant of the extensive consular system that the imperial government maintained for nearly a century before the dissolution of Austria-Hungary at the end of the Great War.1 Given the largely administrative nature of consular relations, it is not surprising that scholars have not delved deeply into the archival records. Nonetheless, in addition to a substantial cache of colorful anecdotes and less riveting administrative minutiae, the records of the Habsburg consular system in the United States offer a fresh vantage point for examining the interests and concerns of the monarchy's ruling elite and the structural challenges that limited its effectiveness during the four-decade career of Austria-Hungary.
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References
1 This study is part of a larger research project into the history of the 725 consulates that the Habsburg rulers maintained worldwide between 1718 and 1918. On the Austrian (Austro-Hungarian) consulates in Canada,Google Scholarsee Rudolf, Agstner, From Halifax to Vancouver: Austria(-Hungary) and Her Consular and Diplomatic Presence in Canada,1855–2005, Schriftenreihe der Landesverteidigungsakademie, 12/2005 (Vienna, 2005);Google ScholarAgstner, , “The Establishment of Imperial Austrian Consulates in Canada, 1850–1914,” OeCulture no. 2 (2000): 3, 10;Google ScholarAgstner, , “Austro-Hungarian Emigration to British Columbia and the I. & R. Austro-Hungarian Consulate Vancouver,” OeCulture no. 1 (2003): 5–6, 13;Google Scholar and Agstner, , “Das k.u.k. Konsulat Winnipeg (Manitoba, Kanada) 1909–1914,” Rot-Weiss-Rot. Das Magazin für Auslandsösterreicher (hereafter cited as RWR) no. 4 (2000): 12–13.Google Scholar
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27 Ibid.
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53 Breaking off relations at this stage was unnecessary, as the United States declared war on Austria-Hungary only on 7 December 1917. It has to be recalled, however, that Germany broke off relations with Italy when the latter declared war on Austria-Hungary on 23 May 1915. It was only on 23 August 1916 that Italy declared war on Germany. By 1917, the US presence in Austria-Hungary had grown to include an embassy in Vienna, consulates general in Vienna and Budapest, consulates in Prague, Karlsbad (Karlovy Vary), Reichenberg (Liberec), Trieste, and Fiume—where a then unknown Fiorello H. La Guardia had started his career as US consular agent—as well as a consular agency in Haida (Novy Bor), a village of 300 inhabitants in the district of Boehmisch-Leipa.Google Scholar
54 The figures for Canada were, in 1900: two honorary consulates (Halifax, Montreal), one honorary vice consulate (St. John), and one honorary consular agency (Port of Picton).Google Scholar
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