engleski

The Diet in Bruck an der Mur (1578) and the Estates on the Croatian, Slavonian and Kanisian Military Border

Based largely on the unpublished sources the authoress compared the functioning of the Inner-Austrian and the Croatian-Slavonian Estates challenged by the Ottoman penetration in the period of the 'state making.' Focusing to the second half of the 16th century, the authoress reconstructed the emergence of the military administration that was created and maintained by the Inner-Austrian Estates and the Archduke and implemented to the Croatian-Slavonian Military Border. The Military Border was at the time an integral part of the Croatian-Slavonian Kingdom. The mentioned processes were examined in a wider context of the Hungarian Kingdom and the Austrian Hereditary Lands. The general Inner-Austrian Diet in Bruck (1578) was symbolic for this period. It formalized and institutionalized a number of processes that were evident from the beginning of the century, especially in the defense domain. Through fierce political and religious fights with the Archduke, the Inner-Austrian Estates improved their overall political and military influence in their Lands and the wider region. They managed to establish and administer a defence system in front of their own Lands. The Inner-Austrian military authorities took the initiative in the Military Border, promoting the militarization and ex-territorialization of the Military Border from the Croatian-Slavonian Kingdom, a processes that finished more than a century later. Financially exhausted and directly endangered by the Ottomans, the Croatian and Slavonian Estates were not able to make better use of their remaining resources and to create a constructive negotiating position with regard to the Inner-Austrians. Being mainly concerned with the preservation of their privileges in a situation that required new solutions as an answer to various threats, the Croatian and Slavonian Estates were gradually loosing their power on the account of this conservative orientation. They were militarily and politically marginalized in the region, starting to protest more strongly only from the beginning of the 17th century.

Bruck an der Mur; Croatian-Slavonian Kingdom; Military Border; Inner-Austria; Early Modern Period; institutional history; military history

Rad je ka0 predavanje prezentiran na skupu The Empires of Central and Eastern Europe. Mechanisms of Intergration and Subjection (16th-20th century), održanom od 05.-12.09.2004. na Jagelonskom sveučilištu, Krakov, Poljska.