It has been twenty-six years since the publication of the first edition of Charles Ingrao's The Habsburg Monarchy, 1618–1815 (Cambridge, 1994). Since then, Ingrao's book has inspired and influenced two generations of scholars in the field, and it has remained unchallenged as the definitive work on the Habsburg monarchy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in English. No one has attempted to dethrone Ingrao from this position of authority, and accordingly, he took it upon himself to update his work once in 2000 and for a second time in 2019 by integrating a quarter century of new research on the monarchy. It is this most recent update, the third edition, that concerns this review, and, considering the three-decade impact of this book, Charles Ingrao is the Akira Kurosawa of Habsburg history. His original history of the monarchy inspired new scholarship, which in turn caused him to update his history, which inspired new scholarship, and has now caused him to update his history again. Moreover, Steven Beller recently wrote The Habsburg Monarchy 1815–1918 (Cambridge, 2018) as the sequel to Ingrao's work, and the recent updates in the third edition help make these two books companions, creating a three-hundred-year overview of the monarchy's history.

Readers familiar with previous editions of the book will still find many of Ingrao's original arguments, such as the assertion of the Habsburg monarchy as a European necessity, regularly saved by the timely intervention of allies. The book continues to be framed around “great crises” in Habsburg history and reads as a history of how the government handled them. In updating the book, Ingrao included more scholarship on the social and cultural history of the monarchy to help round out a book that focused more on the government's foreign and domestic policies. These additions allow readers to transition better into Beller's book, which focuses more on the society and culture of the monarchy rather than foreign policy.

The addition of new scholarship and the rethinking of various episodes in Habsburg history either amplify Ingrao's original assessments or temper them. There are several examples of this. For one, Charles VI comes off as a much better emperor than he did in previous editions thanks to the new emphases on social, cultural, and economic factors, for which his reign proved to be a boon, rather than his lackluster performance in the realms of foreign policy and government administration. These instances of his inactivity and incompetence are still present, but now Ingrao balances them with Charles's cultural and economic achievements, making his reign less of a disaster for the monarchy as a whole. The emergence of new scholarship on the monarchy during Charles's reign, which had been sorely lacking in 1994, helps explain this change. One can also argue that Ingrao's demonstration in his first edition that many historians chose to work on things other Charles VI simply because the emperor was uninteresting (his recounting of Oswald Redlich's deciphering of Charles's diary was particularly demonstrative of this) highlighted a gaping hole in the field, which scholars have since sought to fill. Overall, most of the Habsburg monarchs with all their virtues, vices, consistencies, and contradictions come across with greater complexity and subtlety than they did in previous editions.

Ingrao noticeably mentions more historians by name throughout the text than he did in previous editions, and these instances go hand in hand with his integration of new scholarship. For example, when covering the efforts to convert the populace to Bohemia following White Mountain, Ingrao explicitly mentions the work of Howard Louthan (Cambridge, 2009) in explaining the methods used by the church and Habsburg authorities in the region. These name-drops are signals to scholars and specialists in the field rather than to the general reading public. Considering the broad audience of the book, such name-dropping is unnecessary, but this is a minor quibble.

The changes in total add more subtlety and detail to the narrative. As the previously mentioned example regarding the reference to Howard Louthan's work shows, the first edition of the book recounts the process of conversion in Bohemia in general terms. The integration of Louthan's scholarship gives the reader a much clearer picture of how the policies of Ferdinand II looked on the ground and affected the daily lives of his subjects. This, in turn, provides greater context for and insight into Leopold I's policies in Hungary. Moving forward to the era of enlightened absolutism, the first edition of the book greatly benefitted from the work of Derek Beales (Cambridge, 1987) and Tim Blanning (London, 1970) on Joseph II and accordingly emphasized the person and work of the emperor. The work of Franz Szabo on Kaunitz (Cambridge, 1994) and other aspects of enlightened absolutism provided Ingrao with material to bring out the effects of these policies in various parts of the narrative.

In conclusion, Ingrao's book gives one a greater appreciation for the domestic policies of Habsburg rulers by showing how they influenced the daily lives of people. This sits well with the first edition's original emphasis on foreign policy giving a more comprehensive view of Habsburg statecraft and grand strategy. One is not left with a cold history of an imperial institution, but rather one gets the sense of the living and breathing organism that was the Habsburg state and the society that was composed around it. The third edition is a grand synthesis of what came before the original work and what came after it, and it firmly ensures that The Habsburg Monarchy, 1618–1815 will be the platform from which a whole new generation will dive into scholarship on the subject, remaining the authoritative text on the Habsburg monarchy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.