The question of whether diverse or homogenous political communities better serve humantity has been passionately debated ever since we became political animals. These debates carried particularly high stakes in the ethnically diverse ans socially stratified Habsburg Empire. Nineteenth-century nationalists believed that people who shared a nationality should live and govern themselves on a common territory. Some were also liberals or social democrats, committed to the principle of equality. But how could liberal nationalists reconcile these principles with the reality that multiple nationalities often coexisted within the same space??

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This presentation looks at how ethnic diversity challanged liberal and social democratic ideas in the late Habsburg Empire and during its breakup. How did individuals and communities articulate their own sense of belongings - and challange that of others? I will guide the audience through the Habsburg lands to meet workers who spoke different languages, Austrian and Hungarian political thinkers and politicians, Jews from Upper Hungary and Transylvania, and everyday Hungarians struggling to make sense of a shared world in times of transition.

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