¹ Musil, Robert, The Man Without Qualities, Vol. 1, trans. Pike, Burton (New York: Vintage Books, 1996), 28Google Scholar.

² See Zantop, Susanne, Colonial Fantasies: Conquest, Family, and Nation in Precolonial Germany, 1770-1870 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997)Google Scholar. On the German case, Andrew Zimmerman has written compellingly. Zimmerman, Andrew, Anthropology and Antihumanism in Imperial Germany (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zimmerman, Andrew, “‘What Do You Really Want in German East Africa, Herr Professor?’ Counterinsurgency and the Science Effect in Colonial Tanzania,” in Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 48, No. 2 (Apr., 2006), 419-461CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zimmerman, Andrew, “A German Alabama in Africa: The Tuskegee Expedition to German Togo and the Transnational Origins of West African Cotton Growers,” in The American Historical Review, Vol. 110, No. 5 (December, 2005), 1362-1398CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The Habsburgs would never actually procure an overseas empire, but historians have examined the role colonial fantasy nevertheless played in its domestic and international affairs. Sauer, Walter, “Habsburg Colonial: Austria-Hungary's Role in European Overseas Expansion Reconsidered,” in Austrian Studies, Vol. 20 (2012), 5-23CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Loidl, Simon, “Colonialism through Emigration: Publications and Activities of the Österreichisch-Ungarische Kolonialgesellschaft (1894-1918),” in Austrian Studies, Vol. 20 (2012), 161-175CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Frank, Alison, “The Children of the Desert and the Laws of the Sea: Austria, Great Britain, the Ottoman Empire and the Mediterranean Slave Trade in the Nineteenth Century” American Historical Review, Vol. 117, 2 (April 2012), 410-444CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gerald Colloseus, “Ein österreichisches Schicksal? Analyse von Kolonialprojekten am Beispiel der Mission Tegetthoffs und Heuglins ins Rote Meer 1857/58,” (Ph.D. diss., Universität Wien, 2008); Bach, Ulrich E., Tropics of Vienna: Colonial Utopias of the Habsburg Empire (New York: Berghahn Books, 2016)Google Scholar.

³ Some scholars have productively compared the similarities and differences between the overseas empires more common in Western Europe and the continental empires common in Central and Eastern Europe. For instance, Lenny A. Ureña Valerio has explored how German overseas colonialism resonated with its Polish borderland in her Colonial Fantasies: Imperial Realities. Race Science and the Making of Polishness on the Fringes of the German Empire, 1840-1920 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2019). Alison Frank has also insightfully discussed this relationship, arguing that the Habsburg Monarchy was torn “between terrestrial and maritime understandings of empire.” See Frank, Alison, “Continental and Maritime Empires in an Age of Global Commerce,” in East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 25, No. 4 (November, 2011), 783CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴ Among these is David G.L. Weiss and Gerd Schilddorfer's pathbreaking study Die Novara: Österreichs Traum von der Weltmacht (Wien: Amalthea, 2010). Renate Basch-Ritter, Die Weltumsegelung der Novara 1857-1859 (Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 2008). Weiss/Schilddorfer, and Basch-Ritter offer excellent overviews of the expedition. Also, Christa Knellwolf King's chapter, “The Novara Expedition and the Imperialist Messages of Exploration Literature,” in Stories of Empire: Narrative Strategies for the Legitimation of an Imperial World Order, ed. Christa Knellwolf King and Margarete Rubik (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2009), 157-176. Stephen A. Walsh “Liberalism at High Latitudes: The Politics of Polar Exploration in the Habsburg Monarchy,” Austrian History Yearbook (2016), 89-106. In the Russian imperial context, Ryan Tucker Jones has covered expeditions to the North Pacific such as the “Second Kamchatka Expedition” and the “Billing's Expedition” in his excellent monograph Empire of Extinction: Russians and the North Pacific's Strange Beasts of the Sea, 1741-1867 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). These expeditions are striking for the connections Jones draws between European ideas of Empire and the European practice of natural history and early forms of environmental science.

⁵ For an excellent overview of the rise of Austrian democracy see Boyer, John W., Austria: 1867-1955 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Carl E. Schorske has also observed that “The era of political ascendancy of the liberal middle class in Austria, begun later than elsewhere in western Europe, entered earlier than elsewhere into deep crisis.” Schorske, Carl E., Fin-De-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York: Vintage Books, 1981)Google Scholar, xxvi. For a nuanced discussion of Habsburg liberalism see Judson, Pieter M., Exclusive Revolutionaries: Liberal Politics, Social Experience, and National Identity in the Austrian Empire, 1848-1914 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶ Historians of Central Europe have long argued that the German bourgeoisie, barred from any meaningful role in politics turned to artistic pursuits. Others have suggested that the bourgeoisie simply invested more eagerly in commerce and industrial capital. Still others have suggested that, blocked from politics, some liberals poured their talents and energies into the professionalizing social and natural sciences. In the Habsburg Empire, for instance, a new orientation toward educational reform in the 1850s signaled the ascent of liberal-scientific values. Schorske, Carl E., Fin-De-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York: Vintage Books, 1981)Google Scholar; especially “Chapter VI: The Transformation of the Garden,” 279-321. On the role of education policy and its relationship to an emerging Habsburg middle class see Cohen, Gary B., Education and Middle-Class Society in Imperial Austria, 1848-1918 (Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷ John W. Boyer, Austria: 1867-1955, 50.

⁸ In his pathbreaking work Arno J. Mayer evocatively suggests that the “old elites excelled at selectively ingesting adapting, and assimilating new ideas and practices without seriously endangering their traditional status, temperament, and outlook. Whatever the dilution and cheapening of nobility, it was gradual and benign.” Mayer, Arno J., The Persistence of the Old Regime: Europe to the Great War (New York: Pantheon Books), 13Google Scholar. But while Mayer's account tends to reinforce an old historiographical problem – that either liberalism or the aristocracy triumphed (and the other failed) – historians of the Habsburg Empire have come to see this relationship as fundamentally entwined and neither entirely antagonistic nor entirely agreeable. Pieter M. Judson, Exclusive Revolutionaries, especially chapter 3, 69-115.

⁹ The seminal work on backwardness is Gerschenkron, Alexander, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective: A Book of Essays (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1962)Google Scholar. Subsequent scholarship has successfully challenged Gerschenkron's theories of modernization. As far back as 1984, David Good wrote a compelling revisionist economic history of the Habsburg Empire overcoming the widespread notion at the time that the empire was a resolute economic failure. Good, David F., The Economic Rise of the Habsburg Empire, 1750-1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984)Google Scholar. Even still, the Habsburg state had racked up considerable debts in the 1850s both through costly modernization projects and military mobilizations and was widely considered “backward” by many of its contemporaries. It is appropriate, then, that scholars have turned to the subjective perception of backwardness. I use the concept in precisely this subjective sense. Accusations of backwardness made for mobilizing politics in mid-19^th-century Habsburg Europe and the widespread impression that Austria was “behind” or “backward” (subjective or otherwise) is itself a relevant historical phenomenon that needs accounting for. See Janos, Andrew C., in The Politics of Backwardness in Hungary, 1825-1945 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982)Google Scholar; Wolff, Larry Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Boyer, Austria, 69.

¹¹ On the gradual and piecemeal constitutional reforms that occurred in the Empire from 1848 until 1867 see Boyer, Austria, especially 40-111.

¹² In her famous Origins of Totalitarianism, for instance, Hannah Arendt was already arguing that “The members of the new colonial societies and imperialist leagues felt ‘far removed from the strife of parties,’ and the farther away they moved the stronger their belief that they ‘represented only a national purpose.’” Arendt, Hannah, Origins of Totalitarianism (Orlando: Harcourt, 1968), p. 154Google Scholar.

¹³ Stephen A. Walsh, “Liberalism at High Latitudes,” 106.

¹⁴ Ferdinand Hochstetter, “Expedition der k.k. Fregatte ‘Novara’: 1. Vor der Abreise,” Wiener Zeitung, May 18, 1857, 450.

¹⁵ Ferdinand Hochstetter.

¹⁶ David G.L. Weiss and Gerd Schilddorfer, Die Novara, 145.

¹⁷ Fletcher, John, “Karl Scherzer and the Visit of the ‘Novara’ to Sydney, 1858” in Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, Vol. 71, No. 3, (1985), 189Google Scholar.

¹⁸ According to Ferdinand Hochstetter there were 8 officers, 4 doctors, 1 mechanic, 14 marine corps cadets, and 1 chaplain on board. There were 317 enlisted men: 234 boatswains, deckhands, and cabin boys. 7 musicians, 33 infantrymen; 14 artillerymen, 16 carpenters, 2 cooks, 2 dining masters, and 9 private servants. With the scientific commission that makes for a total crew compliment of 351. Ferdinand Hochstetter, Wiener Zeitung, May 18, 1857.

¹⁹ Reinhard Johler, “The Invention of the Multicultural Museum in the Late Nineteenth Century: Ethnography and the Presentation of Cultural Diversity in Central Europe,” Austrian History Yearbook (April, 2015), 56.

²⁰ Ferdinand v. Hochstetter's Gesammelte Reise-Berichte von der Erdumsegelung der Fregatte “Novara,” 1857-1859 (Wien: Eduard Hölzel, 1885), v.

²¹ David G.L. Weiss and Gerd Schilddorfer, Die Novara, 53.

²² John Fletcher, “Karl Scherzer and the Visit of the ‘Novara’ To Sydney, 1858,” 190.

²³ Christa Knellwolf King notes that Scherzer's “libertarian background made him receptive to the struggles for freedom of fellow humans while his visions for a civilized world position him as an archetypal protagonist in the imperial power game of the nineteenth century.” She continues, “[H]is career is also hinged on a major contradiction, stemming from his background as oppositional activist, on the one hand, and establishment figure, on the other.” Christa Knellwolf King, “The Novara Expedition and the Imperialist Messages of Exploration Literature,” 173.

²⁴ Quoted in Joan Haslip, The Crown of Mexico: Maximilian and his Empress Carlota (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), 34.

²⁵ David G.L. Weiss and Gerd Schilddorfer, 145.

²⁶ David G.L. Weiss and Gerd Schilddorfer, 53.

²⁷ David G.L. Weiss and Gerd Schilddorfer, 53.

²⁸ At least until the Battle of Königgrätz in 1866, many German-speaking Austrian liberals envisioned a single and unified nation-state for all the German-speaking peoples of Central Europe: a Großdeutschland. As Christa Knellwolf King notes, Scherzer himself “was an ardent supporter of a German-Austrian union. So much so that he utilizes the Novara account to argue for the advantages of economic and military cooperation but also to vent nationalistic propaganda.” Christa Knellwolf King, 164.

²⁹ Karl von Scherzer, Reise der oesterreichischen Fregatte Novara um die Erde in den Jahren 1857, 1858, 1859 unter den Befehlen des Commodore B. von Wüllerstorf-Urbair: beschreibender Theil, Vol 1. (Wein: Druck und Verlag von Carl Gerold's Sohn, 1861), 2-3. While the official purpose of the expedition was naval training, all involved were grateful that Archduke Maximilian – the Commander and Chief of the Navy – saw value in the expedition's secondary scientific and commercial benefits. Members and backers of the venture said as much at a celebratory gathering for the Imperial Geographical Society on March 6, 1860. See Mittheilungen der kaiserlich-königlichen Geographischen Gesellschaft: Hauptteil (1860), “Versammlung am 6. März 1860,” p. 78.

³⁰ Ferdinand Hochstetter, Wiener Zeitung, May 18, 1857. A testament to the expedition's liberal aims though, some cannons were removed to make room for scientific instruments.

³¹ Mittheilungen der kaiserlich-königlichen Geographischen Gesellschaft (1857), “Versammlung am 7. April 1857,” p. 130.

³² Members of the Habsburg officialdom secretly sanctioned the commercial and colonial aspects of the expedition, even if they did not explicitly order Wüllerstorf-Urbair to seize territory. See Sauer, Walter, “Schwarz-Gelb in Afrika: Habsburgermonarchie in koloniale Frage,” in k.u.k. kolonial: Habsburgermonarchie und europäische Herrschaft in Afrika, ed. Walter, by Sauer (Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 2002), p. 48Google Scholar.

³³ Ryan Tucker Jones describes similar multi-purpose expeditions in the North Pacific context in his Empire of Extinction. He shows how naturalists contributed to imperial knowledge that reinforced Russian Empire in the far east and established new commercial prospects. See Chapters 3 and 5, pp. 102-137; 170-195.

³⁴ Mittheilungen der kaiserlich-königlichen Geographischen Gesellschaft: Hauptteil (1860), 81. The commander of the expedition – Commodore Wüllerstorf-Urbair – echoed Bruck's comments at the celebration, observing that Germans, Hungarians, Czechs (Böhmen), and Italians embarked with the Novara and worked toward the common goal. Also on page 81.

³⁵ Wilhelm von Tegetthoff would go on to become a very famous Austrian naval hero and was credited with victories over Danish and Italian forces in 1864 and 1866 respectively. In 1868 he was appointed chief of the Austro-Hungarian Navy and even held a seat in the upper house of the Cisleithania parliament where he voted reliably with liberals. Testifying to his liberal sympathies and credentials, Tegetthoff introduced various educational and administrative reforms to the Navy when he was at its head. For Tegetthoff's biography see Stephen A. Walsh, “Liberalism at High Latitudes,” 100-101.

³⁶ Sauer, Walter, “Habsburg Colonial: Austria-Hungary's Role in European Overseas Expansion Reconsidered,” in Austrian Studies, Vol. 20 (2012), 14Google Scholar.

³⁷ Cited in Gerald Colloseus, “Ein österreichisches Schicksal? Analyse von Kolonialprojekten am Beispiel der Mission Tegetthoffs und Heuglins ins Rote Meer 1857/58,” (Ph.D. diss., Universität Wien, 2008), 11.

³⁸ For an overview of the expedition to Socotra see Walter Sauer, “Schwarz-Gelb in Afrika, pp. 49-51.

³⁹ “Ueber den Handel im rothen Meere, in Bezug auf Deutschland,” in Wiener Zeitung, Jan. 17, 1849.

⁴⁰ Huber, Valeska, Channeling Mobilities: Migration and Globalisation in the Suez Canal Region and Beyond, 1869-1914, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴¹ Huber, Channeling Mobilities, 27.

⁴² Walter Sauer, “Schwarz-Gelb in Afrika,” p. 32.

⁴³ Walter Sauer, “Schwarz-Gelb in Afrika,” p. 46.

⁴⁴ Scherzer, Reise der oesterreichischen Fregatte, Vol 2., 53.

⁴⁵ Quoted in David G.L. Weiss and Gerd Schilddorfer, Die Novara, 76.

⁴⁶ On connecting the Habsburg interior to the Adriatic consider Johnson, Alison Frank, Oil Empire: Visions of Prosperity in Austrian Galicia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

⁴⁷ David G.L. Weiss and Gerd Schilddorfer, 73. Scherzer also recognized the potential importance of another Habsburg port – Pola/Pula – describing it as the “Portsmouth of Austria.” Once again, Scherzer eagerly compared Austria to the paradigmatic colonial empire of his day, Great Britain. Karl von Scherzer, Reise der oesterreichischen Fregatte, Vol. 3, 407. For a detailed description of Trieste's importance see Alison Frank, “Continental and Maritime Empires in an Age of Global Commerce,” pp. 779-784.

⁴⁸ Judson, Pieter M., The Habsburg Empire: A New History (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2016), 219Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ Pieter M. Judson, 219; Good, David F., The Economic Rise of the Habsburg Empire, 1750-1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984)Google Scholar, Chapter III.

⁵⁰ Pieter M. Judson, 230; David F. Good, 79-80.

⁵¹ David F. Good, 82.

⁵² David F. Good, 83-84; Pieter M. Judson, 231-233.

⁵³ Ferdinand Hochstetter, “Expedition der k.k. Fregatte ‘Novara’: 16. Point de Galle (Ceylon),” Wiener Zeitung, May 27, 1858, 569.

⁵⁴ Ferdinand Hochstetter.

⁵⁵ “Markt des Lebens,’” Der Humorist, December 25^th, 1856, p. 1339.

⁵⁶ Scherzer, Reise der oesterreichischen Fregatte, Vol. 1., 446.

⁵⁷ For an interesting discussion of the merits and demerits of “ordered” or “wild” nature in the Russian North Pacific see Ryan Tucker Jones, Empire of Extinction, pp. 116-119.

⁵⁸ Edmund Reitlinger, “Vom Markt der Welt,” Neue Freie Presse/Morgenblatt, December 21, 1864.

⁵⁹ Reitlinger.

⁶⁰ Reitlinger.

⁶¹ Reitlinger.

⁶² Reitlinger.

⁶³ One of the strongest advocates for colonialism in German-speaking Central Europe was, of course, Friedrich List who saw in them a means of reaching economic parity with the other Great Powers. In Das Nationale System Der Politisichen Ökonomie, List proposed an expanded German merchant marine and supported the acquisition of colonies. Germany's “surplus population and capital, its spirit of enterprise,” argued List, “finds in colonization an advantageous outlet.” See Friedrich List, National System of Political Economy, trans. G.A. Matile (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1856), p. 351. There is, of course, an extensive and fascinating literature on the topic of German colonialism. See Conrad, Sebastian, Globalisation and the Nation in Imperial Germany, trans. O'Hagan, Sorcha (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)Google Scholar; Müller, Frank Lorenz, “Imperialist Ambitions in Vormärz and Revolutionary Germany: The Agitation for German Settlement Colonies Overseas, 1840-1849,” in German History, Vol. 17, No. 3 (1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the Polish context see Lenny A. Ureña Valerio, Colonial Fantasies: Imperial Realities, especially “Chapter 5,” pp. 148-171.

⁶⁴ Scherzer, Reise der oesterreichischen Fregatte, Vol 3., 1-2.

⁶⁵ Scherzer, Reise der oesterreichischen Fregatte, Vol. 3., 2.

⁶⁶ Scherzer, Reise der oesterreichischen Fregatte, Vol. 3., 2.

⁶⁷ For a foundational text on the state's role in classically liberal economic policy see Polanyi, Karl, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957)Google Scholar.

⁶⁸ David G.L. Weiss and Gerd Schilddorfer, 28.

⁶⁹ Scherzer, Reise der oesterreichischen Fregatte, Vol. 1., 2-3.

⁷⁰ Edmund Reitlinger, “Vom Markt der Welt.”

⁷¹ Reitlinger. Friedrich List also famously argued that colonies could serve as lucrative export markets for economic upstarts like Germany. See Friedrich List, National System of Political Economy, p. 352.

⁷² “Industrie-Fahrt der ‘Novara,’” Der Humorist, April 6^th, 1857, 2.

⁷³ Friedrich List, 403; Britain as a Model of Modern Society? German Views, ed. Arnd Bauerkämper and Christinae Eisenberg; “Ueber den Handel im rothen Meere, in Bezug auf Deutschland, von einem deutschen Kaufmanne aus Suez,” Wiener Zeitung, January 17, 1849.

⁷⁴ Quoted in Peter Wende, “Models of Britain for Nineteenth-Century Germany,” in Britain as a Model of Modern Society? German Views, ed. Arnd Bauerkämper and Christinae Eisenberg, 38.

⁷⁵ Scherzer, Reise der oesterreichischen Fregatte, Vol. 1., 446.

⁷⁶ Pieter M. Judson, 226.

⁷⁷ Coen, Deborah R., Vienna in the Age of Uncertainty (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007), 66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷⁸ Scherzer, Reise der oesterreichischen Fregatte, Vol. 3., 401.

⁷⁹ Scherzer, Reise der oesterreichischen Fregatte, Vol. 3., 401.

⁸⁰ Karl von Scherzer, Wiener Zeitung/Abendblatt, Feb. 3, 1858, 101.

⁸¹ Scherzer, Wiener Zeitung/Abendblatt.

⁸² Scherzer, Wiener Zeitung/Abendblatt.

⁸³ Scherzer, Wiener Zeitung/Abendblatt. These “treasures” of natural science were eventually offloaded and put on display for a curious Viennese public. See advertisements in Fremden-Blatter, May 5, 1861. Indeed, many of the items procured by the Novara had long and interesting half-lives. For instance, the coca leaves used to isolate the chemical compound cocaine came to Europe in the Novara's hold. Karch's Pathology of Drug Abuse, 5^th Edition, ed. Steven B. Karch and Olaf H. Drummer (London: CRC Press, 2016), 10.

⁸⁴ See Ryan Tucker Jones, Empire of Extinction.

⁸⁵ Scherzer, Wiener Zeitung/Abendblatt, 102.

⁸⁶ On his consular service see Scherzer, Karl von, Smyrna: Mit Besonderer Rücksicht auf die Geographischen, Wirthschaftlichen und Intellectuellen Verhältnisse von Vorder-Kleinasien (Wien: Alfred Hölder, 1873)Google Scholar.

⁸⁷ Edmund Reitlinger, Neue Freie Presse/Morgenblatt, December 21, 1864. Regarding the “icy winds of the North,” Reitlinger was probably referring to the ill-fated Franklin Expedition. Austrian fascination with the Artic would peak with the Tegetthoff Expedition (1872-74), which discovered an archipelago north of Russia and named it Franz Josef Land – after their monarch. See Stephen A. Walsh, “Liberalism at High Latitudes.”

⁸⁸ Reitlinger.

⁸⁹ Reitlinger.

⁹⁰ Susanne Zantop, 6-7.

⁹¹ Christa Knellwolf King, 165.

⁹² Pieter M. Judson, Exclusive Revolutionaries, 10.

⁹³ Boyer, Austria, 49.

⁹⁴ On liberalism's struggles in late-imperial Austria, Carl E. Schorske's famous essay “Politics in a New Key” is, of course, the key text. Carl E. Schorske, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna, 116-180.