762-767

The divisions of European land in the 19th century left patchwork nations were comprised of either divided states (such as the German Confederation) or disjointed cultures (such as the Habsburg Empire of Austria-Hungary). While the nations were divided in both of these cases, the difference between cultural and geographical division is significant and produces considerably different outcomes. Geographical division, such as in the case of the German Confederation (which was broken into 38 individual states), inspired the creation of a united German identity, and, consequently, a united German nation. To contrast, the cultural division of the Habsburg Empire proved to be its weakness. The empire was attempting to bridge the opposing cultures of Austria and Hungary, a unification which was threatened by Hungarian Kossuth in 1848 and would have successfully broken the ties between Austria-Hungary had it not been for Russian intervention in 1849 which ended the Hungarian revolt. Instead of acknowledging the blatant cultural division between Austria and Hungary, the Habsburg Empire struggled to just barely hold itself together, creating the allusion of a united Austria-Hungary through shared legal institutions in order to avoid the reality that the cultural divide was too powerful to maintain a unified empire.