{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Keen On America","title":"Episode 1605: Why the Habsburg Empire is as much a guide to our 21st Century Future as our 19th Century Past","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":2514,"description":"Episode 1605: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Natasha Wheatley, the author of THE LIFE AND DEATH OF STATES, about the Central Europe and the transformation of modern sovereignty from empire to democracyAssistant Professor of History at Princeton, Natasha Wheatley is an historian of modern European and international history, with broad interests in intellectual and legal history, Central Europe, and the history of international law. Her book The Life and Death of States: Central Europe and the Transformation of Modern Sovereignty was published by Princeton University Press in spring 2023. It recovers Habsburg Central Europe as a crucible for modern statehood and modern legal thought. The radical mismatch between theories of singular sovereignty and the empire’s plural, layered legal order pushed politicians as well as scholars like Hans Kelsen toward bold new conceptions of the state and the nature of law. The book follows a recurring set of questions about the juridical birth, death, and survival of states through the creative experiments of Austro-Hungarian constitutional order and into the domain of international law following the empire’s collapse in 1918. Tracing the problem of states-in-time from the mid-19th century through to the mid-20th, it presents an unfamiliar pre-history of the international law of decolonization, as well as new ways of understanding Central Europe in the world. Wheatley has published research on multiple facets of the interwar international order—including the League of Nations, the mandates system, and the minorities regime—in Past & Present and elsewhere. Her interest in methodology, historical epistemology, and the philosophy of history has led to essays in History and Theory and the edited volume Power and Time. Her article “Spectral Legal Personality in Interwar International Law” received the Surrency Prize from the American Society for Legal History in 2018. Her chapter “Legal Pluralism as Temporal Pluralism” was...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/bCpvkYgrorWYCv4ujOodZ7o-xqCKvQH-YHlEI5E7zpw/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS83NDM2/MGJjOTYyNjBkYzJi/ZDVhMTUwZDgwMWE3/ZDk3OS5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}