The Life and Death of States: The Habsburg Empire and the Transformation of Modern Sovereignty

“This talk (in hybrid format) will introduce the main arguments of my forthcoming book, The Life and Death of States, that explores the place of the Habsburg Monarchy in a world of empires. It shows, first, how the empire’s complex, composite legal form spurred new theories of sovereignty and philosophies of legal knowledge in German-language jurisprudence. It then turns to legal debates surrounding the empire’s collapse in 1918, showing how debates over “old” states and “new” states prefigured those that accompanied the global dissolution of empires after World War Two.” (Natasha Wheatley)