Enemy Aliens,Deportees,Refugees: Internment Practices in the Habsburg Empire,1914–1918

Abstract

Enemy Aliens, Deportees, Refugees: Internment Practices in the Habsburg Empire, 1914–1918

This article explores both the historiography and history of civilian internment in the Habsburg Monarchy between 1914 and 1918, with particular emphasis on the Austrian half of the empire (Cisleithania). It is often assumed that Austro-Hungarian policies towards enemy civilians and «enemies within» were simply a milder variant of a common pattern of intolerant behaviour by belligerent states towards aliens, national outsiders and other minority groups during modern wars. But this assumption is misleading, and Habsburg policies have much to tell us both about the collapse of the Monarchy in 1917/1918 and about the relationship between empirebuilding, ethnic nationalism and the pursuit of military security in border regions more generally.