Nineteenth-century European history has been relatively unpopular among university courses for some time and old-fashioned diplomatic history particularly so. Nineteenth-century Habsburg diplomatic history is taught practically nowhere today and there are very few reliable books on the subject. Fortunately, until now students have had available the excellent works of Roy Bridge to fall back on, particularly his From Sadowa to Sarajevo. The Foreign Policy of Austria-Hungary, 1866–1914 (London and Boston, 1972) and his The Habsburg Monarchy among the Great Powers, 1815–1918 (Oxford, 1990). Yet there are signs that Habsburg diplomatic history is once again being written by a new and rather outstanding generation of historians. The year 2013 saw the publication of Miroslav Šedivý’s outstanding 1,033-page study, Metternich, The Great Powers and The Eastern Question (Pilsen, 2013), which used the diplomatic archives of all the great powers and many of the German states to construct a beautifully written, clear account of a major European diplomatic problem from the start of the Greek revolt to the end of the Mehmet Ali crises.

Now Walter Rauscher has produced two volumes on Habsburg diplomacy from 1866 to 1914 with introductory sections covering the period from 1815. Altogether his account covers 1,012 pages, and just like Šedivý, he has used the British, German, Italian, Swiss, and French archives as well as those of various German states, not to mention relevant ones in Budapest, Prague, and elsewhere. He also knows all the secondary literature—his very impressive bibliography covers ninety-five pages—while he quotes from relevant newspapers from a variety of countries when and where it is appropriate. He covers internal and external factors impinging on Habsburg diplomacy and is well aware of all the relevant constitutional constraints. He writes exceedingly well and constructs a narrative that carries the reader very easily from chapter to chapter. His last chapter on the July Crisis reads like the conclusion of a detective novel and is one of the best accounts of that crisis that I have read. Although Rauscher correctly blames Vienna and Belgrade for the outbreak of war and sees that Vienna was never going to allow the opportunity to crush Serbia militarily to slip away, he nonetheless shows how efforts to preserve peace were still being made and how even the Austrians and Russians were communicating in a civilized fashion right up to the outbreak of hostilities. He is also very good indeed at quoting directly from documents at key moments. Here, for example, is Tisza telling Francis Joseph on 7 July that “Serbia in my opinion must be given the means to avoid war albeit by a severe diplomatic defeat” (864), while William II on reading the reply of Serbia to Vienna's ultimatum, scribbled the following: “A brilliant achievement for a response time of only 48 hours! That is more than could have been expected. A great moral success for Vienna!; but any ground for war disappears therefore and Giesl should have remained quietly in Belgrade. I would never have ordered mobilisation under these circumstances!” (879). I had never seen William's reaction quoted before. The other chapters of the two volumes are equally readable and impressive, while the introductory ones cover the period up to 1866 very well. I was thoroughly impressed by Raucher's two volumes and my only complaint is that there was no real conclusion at the end covering the period 1866–1914 as a whole. Both volumes should certainly be translated into English.

After reading his books I was happy to reflect that nineteenth-century Habsburg history can now boast two excellent historians who are first-class diplomatic specialists, capable of working in multiple archives and fashioning their findings into fluent historical narratives. The future of Habsburg historical studies seems assured.