070170 FS Research Seminar (2014W)

The research seminar will provide a fresh look at state and administration of the neoabsolutist era. We will start with a discussion of recently published literature on this important period of Austrian history, in which political participation was limited, media strongly controlled, while impulses for modernization and integration of economy, infrastructure, and administration were given.
Participants should approach this complex dynamics of modernization and restauration through archival work. The focus will be on the papers of Alexander Bach which are deposited at the Austrian State Archives. In studying Bach's papers, we will look particularly at the organization of state and administration, the organization of municipalities, economic policy, and infrastructure development.