State, Regions, and Borders: Single Market Formation and Labor Migration in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1750-1918
Author(s)
Komlosy, Andrea
Abstract
Discusses the position of the Habsburg monarchy within the capitalist world-system. The empire is interpreted as a semi periphery of a world-system emerging in northwest Europe, and also conceived as a distinctive world-economy. The focus here is on internal borders as a means of analyzing different regions and the disparities between them. The internal borders within the Habsburg monarchy were the objects of much public discussion in the period under consideration. A border’s most important function is not that of closure and exclusion, but its capacity to establish interrelationships between one region and another, and to combine resources without removing inequalities between regions.
