The multi national Habsburg empire has never lost its fascination since its fall in 1918. This book shows how the Habsburg peoples experienced the same social, economic and political processes as most other Europeans, in ways that cast interesting light on these processes from both the European and the Habsburg angle. Opposing views that the national problem was therefore subordinate to underlying socio economic backwardness, the author argues for the inextricable entanglement of the two themes, as nationalism emerged from a process of social mobilisation which threatened the position of dominant Austro Germans and Magyars.