The last years of the Habsburg Empire have traditionally been seen as a long process of inevitable and terminal decline, and the Empire itself as an outdated, artificial and arthritic construct with neither the flexibility nor the energy for self-renewal. According to this traditional interepretation the wonder is not that it collapsed, but that it managed to hold together for so long. In this important study Alan Sked analyses the latest research on nineteenth-century Habsburg history to confront and revise that view.

Dr Sked argues that the Habsburgs received their main challenge in the revolutionary upheavals of 1848, and, having survived that, the Monarchy thereafter was always a viable one. It came to an end not because it carried within itself the seeds of its own dissolution, but as a direct consequence of Germany's losing the First World War.

Richly detailed, the book studies the political, diplomatic, economic and social history of the Empire in its last century of existence. It is not another narrative account of familiar events, but rather an examination of the various problems that faced the monarchy, and the different ways these have been seen by modern historians.

The historiographical dimension will be of absorbing interest to specialists, but the book itself, which challenges many accepted historical interpretations of nineteenth-century Europe, is designed for a wider readership of students and all those with a serious interest in the history of the age.

Alan Sked is Senior Lecturer in International History at the London School of Economics, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.