In this interesting and clearly written study, Laurence Cole analyzes the interplay between military culture and popular patriotism in late imperial Austria, focusing on hero cults and military veteran associations. He evaluates the Cisleithanian experience of societal militarization between 1848 and 1914 in the comparative context of other European countries. Cole also reveals long-ruling Emperor Francis Joseph's vigorous promotion of military culture as central to dynastic power and government policy from the beginning of his reign in December 1848. Structured around six chronological and thematic chapters, the arguments in this “new military history” draw on a wide array of archival and printed primary materials as well as numerous secondary sources.

The first chapter focuses on creating and displaying patriotism. Cole demonstrates how the imperial capital set the tone for Habsburg military culture. He addresses the dynasty's role in the development of this culture from 1649, generally considered the birth year of the monarchy's standing army, through the rule of Francis Joseph, who, for example, upheld the nineteenth-century trend of the military to act as a basis for integration into the social elite. The author analyzes the military's imprint on Vienna's post-1848 built environment in numerous post-1848 architectural projects, including a large new arsenal and equestrian statues on the Heldenplatz. Cole pivots in the second chapter to discuss how one integrating figure, the military hero—Bohemian-born Field Marshal Radetzky—came to symbolize patriotism, often in monumental form, in various cities of the monarchy. The field marshal also appeared in literature as “Father Radetzky.”

In the third chapter, Cole addresses the growth of the military veterans’ movements in Cisleithanian Austria as a means of evaluating military culture at the local level. He writes that the principle of universal military conscription, introduced in 1868, was generally accepted. In contrast to the predominantly German officer corps, the conscript army's composition mirrored the monarchy's ethnic composition (117). Groups of veterans began forming in the wake of the Napoleonic wars. These groups required that members display the same willingness to obey and do one's duty expected of active soldiers. Although members offered loyal support to the monarchy, this semi-military sphere of civilian society was also autonomous, as attempts after the mid-1890s to unify these groups into an overarching federation revealed.

The fourth and fifth chapters are case studies of Trentino, in Italian-speaking Tyrol, and Trieste, the Habsburgs’ multiethnic, multi-confessional port city on the Adriatic, and the surrounding littoral. Cole analyzes the veterans’ associations in Trentino to show how they created a local “community of loyalty,” showing the central role veterans’ associations played in the increased politicization of military culture in Trentino before 1914. Among the most important veteran activities was commemoration of the dead, which permitted them to honor fallen comrades while also being recognized for their own patriotic contributions. Annual rituals and public activities also offered the chance to demonstrate imperial loyalty and mobilize public patriotic sentiment (188). About 1900, the scale of veterans’ activities intensified, with their ceremonial and patriotic roles in official celebrations and state holidays becoming increasingly pronounced. Cole points out that discourses and practices associated with veterans’ activities in the littoral helped sharpen the distinctions that civil and military officials increasingly made between “loyal” and “disloyal” members of the population. These distinctions were already in place following the Bosnian crisis of 1908. They would play an important role in the treatment of the civilian population that paralleled the creation of the “warfare” state beginning in August 1914.

In the last chapter Cole analyzes the failed attempts to create a pan-Cisleithanian veterans’ association (the Austrian Imperial Federation of Military Veterans). These attempts were part of the response to the incendiary political situation in the wake of the extension of suffrage in 1895 and the announcement of the Badeni language ordinances in 1897. State authorities’ efforts failed for reasons having nothing to do with patriotism: Many veterans feared the loss of independent control over their activities; they wanted to concentrate on mutual insurance; or they simply did not want to pay an extra contribution to join the official organization. Partisan intervention, however, further politicized military culture in which members of the veterans’ movement were increasingly asserting national interests, and anti-militarism was expressed elsewhere in society (275).

Cole concludes that there were limits to patriotic mobilization. In some cases, military culture sharpened national antagonisms. However, while the level of support for the war varied in 1914, the great majority of the conscripts met their obligations and veterans reported for duty. While irredentist volunteers had great propaganda value after 1918, they had little military impact during wartime. The author explains that while popular appropriation of military culture played a centripetal role before 1914, as the war dragged on, increasingly absolutist Habsburg wartime policy, with its ever-narrower definition of loyalty/disloyalty, alienated possible sympathizers, and revealed the ruling elite's loss of faith in its own peoples, rather than the reverse (322).

Well-researched, nicely illustrated, including useful maps and tables, this “new military history” will be of wide interest, attracting the attention of Habsburg historians, as well as historians of modern Europe and military historians.