In this volume, Clemens Ruthner, assistant professor at the Department of Germanic Studies, Trinity College Dublin, deals with traces of colonialism and colonialist thought that came to the fore in the policies, intellectual discourses, and literature(s) of the late Austro-Hungarian Empire. The central question of Ruthner's book is whether the Habsburg monarchy fits the description of a colonial power—if not in its actions, then in societal views of the Other as well as in the subconscious of the intelligentsia, travelers, and others. His approach is in the vein of Frederick Cooper's Colonialism in Question, which reminds us of the importance of a specific era's “structures, values, and understandings” for modern colonialism (Berkeley, 2007).

Ruthner's monograph is divided into three main segments: the first part (A) provides an overview of colonial and postcolonial research discourses relevant to the history of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Following a short and, one might say, somewhat superficial survey of colonialism's possible definitions, the main part of this chapter is dedicated to the importance of images that are ascribed to the Other (with references to Edward Said's Orientalism, Maria Todorova's Balkanism, etc.). This is, of course, closely tied to the existence of stereotypes, and in a very precise way Ruthner provides precious insights into the theories of Walter Lippmann, Henri Tajfel, and other scholars.

The second main chapter (B) is dedicated to three examples of “colonial desire” in Austro-Hungarian literary works (111). In a quite refreshing approach, Ruthner selects texts by Franz Grillparzer, Peter Altenberg, and Alfred Kubin. While being well known, these authors have not figured too prominently in research on the literary use of colonial stereotypes. Grillparzer's play Das Goldene Vließ premiered in 1821 and could be seen as a somewhat controversial choice because its parallels with Austro-Hungarian history are not as obvious as in the other two examples. Yet its inclusion becomes more understandable when seen through the lens of postcolonial or subaltern studies (and, following in the footsteps of Gayatri Spivak, we could ask ourselves: “Can Medea speak?”). The most striking case study deals with Altenberg's Ashantee (Berlin, 1897), a novel based on the writer's experiences of (and fantasies about) the 1896 ethnographical exhibition of African villagers in Vienna. This “perverse cultural medium” and “virtual reality” (154) serves as background to the European middle-aged male's view of Africans (and, more specifically, young African women). While Altenberg remains critical of European racism and colonialism, he clearly infantilizes and eroticizes the African Other. Taking this ambivalence into account, Ruthner states that one can characterize Ashantee as “document as well as opponent of contemporary colonial imperialism” (166). While Altenberg's text focuses on non-European persons on display in an imperial capital, Alfred Kubin's Die andere Seite (Munich, 1909) is set primarily in the capital of a fantastic Traumreich. Located in Central Asia, this dystopian empire could easily be understood as allegory of the Habsburg state (k.u.k. Staatsallegorie). While Ruthner refrains from giving a definite interpretation of Kubin's text, the close examination provides fascinating insights into the complexity of this little-known novel.

In the third part of the book (C), the focus shifts toward strategic and political realities of Habsburg history by way of a case study on Bosnia and Herzegovina, a Kronland occupied in 1878 and annexed in 1908. Even so, Ruthner continues primarily to track the cultural, literary, and psychological specifics of the Habsburg “civilizing mission” in the Balkans, a task he excels in by combining historical contextualization and philological interpretation. The author states that Bosnia and Herzegovina were occupied twice: militarily as well as semantically (“nicht nur militärisch, sondern auch in einem semantischen Sinn,” 239). Before turning to Austro-Hungarian discourses on the occupation and administration of the Kronland, Ruthner takes a closer look at two battles of the 1878 campaign: Maglaj and Sarajevo. Despite incurring a relatively low number of casualties, Maglaj was discursively turned into the most important signifier for the alleged treachery and cruelty of “insurgents” resisting the Habsburg occupation. A concise subchapter then deals with the post-1878 “recoding” of Balkan cities and landscapes (as exemplified in egodocuments and travelogs on the town of Konjic). Ruthner shows how the outsiders’ cultural narratives did not aim at describing the realities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but instead served as reassurance for Austria-Hungary's hegemonic culture(s). In literary and public discourses during the four decades of Habsburg rule, ethnoreligious groups—their Volkscharakter, societal hierarchies, gender, and architecture—were transformed in different ways and to different extents; even so, we must always have to be aware of using an overly simplified dichotomy of rulers and ruled, “der Zivilisierten gegen die Barbaren” (Michael Hochgeschwender).

Ruthner concludes that nineteenth-century Austro-Hungarian discourses and literary texts quite often contained colonial motifs and “krypto-koloniale Phantasien,” resilient myths to the contrary notwithstanding (317). While Bosnia and Herzegovina provide the most obvious examples, one could also think of regions like Galicia as (geographical) spaces of quasicolonialism. More importantly, however, Ruthner shows that—without overseas colonies—“replacement colonialism” thrived in Austria-Hungary, which can be meaningfully examined by looking at the imago of the Other in literary documents embedded in the empire's specific historical context. While there are a number of inconsistencies regarding the spelling of terms and some of the author's remarks could have been formulated in a more comprehensible way, Ruthner offers a most welcome addition to interdisciplinary scholarship at the nexus of history, philology, and postcolonial studies.