Authors

Stephanie Truskowski¹;  ¹ University of Notre Dame, United States

Discussion

In December of 1862, there was a rumor in the streets and the Greek patriotic press: Emperor Franz Joseph was secretly funneling money into the country with the purpose of restoring his Wittelsbach cousin to the throne. Otto had not abdicated, though he had fled the country, and Austria surely wanted to maintain its influence on the Greek economy. This persistent conspiracy theory, though only partially founded in fact, shows that Austrian imperial policy towards the Balkans was tied to both the dynastic image and familial connections.
Austria was in a particular position diplomatically in relation to the Kingdom of Greece, since it was not one of the guarantors who had participated in the London Conference in 1832. Thus, its inroads for direct influence were limited, and it was nominally a neutral state. Though there were economic interests at play both in mainland Greece and the Ionian islands, Austria was formally one of the least involved Great Powers in Greece. Yet, it was Austrian officials who were targeted with violence and suspicion by both the revolutionary masses and the provisional government. The awareness of this fact among the Great Powers, as evidenced by Lord Russel’s quip that the Greeks blame the Austrians for their situation suggests that only analyzing formal diplomatic structures does not account for all the dynamics at work.
This paper analyzes the question of Austrian influence in Greece from both the perspective of the Greek imagination and the perspective of the conduct of the Austrian foreign ministry. I argue that the Austrian foreign ministry and the dynasty both understood the importance of keeping Greece within their sphere of influence, and that maintaining personal ties was one form of soft power. Though the Revolutionary characterization of Otto as a Habsburg agent was hyperbolic, Austria could count on dynastic closeness as a boon. This, I argue, appears in the records of the Austrian diplomats and ministers as the unanswered question of whether to intercede in the deliberations on candidates for the Greek throne. These tensions were also intimately intwined with the British suggestion to nominate Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian to the throne of Greece based on his governing experience and interest in the Eastern Mediterranean, which had to contend with the tensions of Great Power politics, public sentiment, and the image of the Habsburg dynasty in the Balkans. This proposition was the culmination of the question of direct and indirect Habsburg dynastic influence.