Austrian colonial policy

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From the Adriatic port of Trieste , the Austrian East India Trading Company had already started to make colonial acquisitions overseas in 1776. Later expeditions of the 19th century (like that of the frigate Novara ) also began in Trieste.

The Austrian colonial policy describes the efforts of the Habsburg monarchy to acquire colonies in the second half of the 18th century . During this period, the Habsburgs competed with similar aspirations from Denmark , Portugal , Spain , Great Britain, and the Netherlands . Their colonial policy could be compared with that of Brandenburg-Prussia or Courland in terms of scope, effectiveness and ultimate failure .

East Indian trade company in Trieste

William Bolts' share of the East Indian Trading Company

The carrier of the Austrian colonial endeavors was the East India trading company founded by Archduchess Maria Theresa in Trieste , which was declared a free port in 1719 . From 1776 their ships sailed under the flag of the Holy Roman Empire , which was ruled by the Austrian Habsburgs , and under the command of the Dutchman William Bolts, who had previously worked for the British East India Company .

East Africa

In March 1777 the ships of the trading company reached Delagoa Bay (today Maputo Bay , Mozambique ) on the southeast coast of Africa and acquired the port of the area previously abandoned by the Dutch East India Company from a leader of the residents . A small fortification with ten men was built and declared an Austrian colony before the ships sailed on towards India. In 1781 the bay was lost to Portugal.

In 1783, the adventurer Moritz Benjowski proposed to the Viennese court to conquer Madagascar under the Austrian flag, but received no financial or military support for his undertaking other than benevolent words.

South asia

Location of the Nicobar Islands (red) in the Bay of Bengal

The Ostend Company ( Austrian Netherlands ) first established trading factories in Bengal as early as 1719 , but the company was dissolved in 1731 under Dutch and British pressure.

Although Denmark had made claims to the Nicobar Islands , the ships of the Trieste trading company acquired some Nicobar Islands ( Nancowry , Camorta , Trinket , Katchal and Teressa , named after Maria Theresa) from the locals in 1778 and declared them to be Austrian crown colonies. New trading houses were built on the Indian Malabar coast . Six Austrians were initially left behind as posts on the Nicobar Islands.

End of colonial politics

Austrian trade, naval and colonial flags (until 1786)

In 1783, Maria Theresa's successor, Emperor Joseph II , dissolved the Trieste trading company under pressure from the naval powers and in the absence of a comparable naval fleet needed to protect the colonies . The last halting and difficult trade due to strong foreign competition was discontinued. In 1784 and 1785, Austria also formally left its claims to the Nicobars to the states of Denmark and Great Britain. Portugal had meanwhile occupied the base in Delagoa Bay.

Conceptual criticism

Concession areas in Tientsin

Whether the Delagoa Bay and the four Nicobar Islands were actually colonies comparable to the other sea powers or trading companies is controversial in view of their brief rule and marginal presence. At least it was not a question of private non-governmental property or pure trading factories. The use of the term “colony” for the later status of Bosnia-Herzegovina , northern Italy or the foreign possessions of the Austrian Habsburgs that did not belong directly to the empire is considerably more complicated .

The Austrian Netherlands , although part of the Reich territory until 1795, seems to have been seen by Vienna after the dissolution of the Ostend Company more as a potential exchange object than as an integral part of the domestic power - as does Milan, which also no longer belong to the Empire, or Tuscany . Nevertheless, after 1815 Emperor Franz I endeavored to permanently connect Lombardy and Veneto with the other countries of the Austrian Empire . (After the Sardinian War , Emperor Franz Joseph I had to cede Lombardy to France or Piedmont instead in 1859. The French Empress Eugénie is said to have urged her husband Napoleon III at that time to compensate Austria for Lombardy with Egypt, whereupon the rumor arose that a French squadron had already been sent to Egypt for this purpose, but the French emperor could not award lands he did not own, nor could Austria have maintained an overseas colony without a strong navy against the rivalry of England. For similar reasons Austria did not participate the French intervention in Mexico , with which Eugénie wished to compensate Austria for Veneto.)

The Ottoman provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, occupied in 1878 and then placed under the military administration of Austria-Hungary in accordance with the agreements of the Berlin Congress , were still nominally under the sovereignty of the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. After the formal annexation and the associated incorporation into the Austro-Hungarian monarchy , Bosnia-Herzegovina was not subordinate to either of the two parts of the empire, but was administered via the common finance ministry.

Later expeditions

In the second half of the 19th century, the Austrian Navy again undertook a number of voyages of discovery to the North Pole ( Franz-Josef-Land ) and Southeast Asia ( Borneo ), which also served to explore colonial expansion possibilities. However, the associated Austrian gunboat policy did not lead to success. After participating in the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion , Austria-Hungary owned an approximately 60 hectare concession area in the Chinese city of Tianjin (outdated: Tientsin ) between 1901 and 1917 .

See also

literature

  • Verlag Ploetz (Ed.): Ploetz. Large illustrated world history in 8 volumes. Volume 6: The non-European world until 1945 . Freiburg / Würzburg 1984, p. 175.
  • Dietmar Stübler: Italy 1789 to the present , page 18. Akademie-Verlag Berlin 1987
  • Alexander Randa: Austria overseas. Herold, Vienna 1966.
  • Walter Sauer : Habsburg Colonial: Austria-Hungary's Role in European Overseas Expansion Reconsidered . In: Austrian Studies, Vol. 20, Colonial Austria: Austria and the Overseas (2012), pp. 5–23, JSTOR .
  • Walter Sauer (ed.): Kuk kolonial: Habsburg Monarchy and European rule in Africa . 2nd unchanged edition; Vienna, Cologne, Weimar: Böhlau, 2007. ISBN 978-3205993575 .
  • Franz Kotrba: kuk in East Africa: The Habsburg Monarchy in the “Scramble for East Africa” (= studies on southern Africa, 13th). Vienna: Documentation and Cooperation Center Southern Africa (SADOCC), 2015. ISBN 9783901446153 .
  • Stefan Meisterle: The colonial East India policy of the Viennese court in the years 1775–1785 . In: Wiener Geschichtsblätter, 62/4 (2007), pp. 17–29.
  • Stefan Meisterle: Our Delagoa Bay. The kk branch on the Moçambique coast . In: INDABA 54/07, pp. 20-24.
  • Stefan Meisterle: From Coblon to Delagoa: The colonial activities of the Habsburg monarchy in the East Indies . Dissertation, University of Vienna: 2014. Digitized version provided by University of Vienna .
  • Gerald Schlag: Colonial plans of Austria-Hungary in East Africa in the 19th century . In: Adventure East Africa. The share of Austria-Hungary in the exploration of East Africa , ed. v. Office of the Burgenland Provincial Government (Eisenstadt, 1988), pp. 171–186.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ E. A. Reinhardt: Napoleon the Third and Eugenie - tragic comedy of an empire , pages 240 and 260f. Fischer Verlag, Berlin 1930

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