🔴 **The forging of countries**

"_The nobilities of the Habsburg-ruled kingdoms – of diverse ethnic and linguistic origins – had strong and well-developed conceptions of belonging to a common nation. So strong, in fact, that they resisted incorporation into the kind of centralised absolutist states characteristic of 18th-century Europe. The Habsburg Monarchy was nearly torn apart by the pressures of such policies pursued by Joseph II, who rescinded most of them on his deathbed in 1790._"

🔗 **https://aeon.co/essays/the-myth-of-civic-vs-ethnic-nationhood-in-europe-east-and-west**

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