Kurt Baird

Thesis

Thesis

Fighting for the Habsburgs: Community, Patriotism and the Kaiserlich-königliche Armee during the Wars against France, 1792-1816.

Supervisor: Dr Jasper Heinzen

Research

Research

My research focuses on the military culture of the Kaiserlich-königliche Armee during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, social militarisation, conscription and the effects of military processes and practices on gender, regional identity, peasant society and dynastic loyalty in the Austrian Hereditary Lands.

My PhD project explores the impact war with France had on local communities in Upper and Lower Austria and the links between military culture and wartime popular patriotism from 1788 to 1816. In the process I hope to fill a gap in the history of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars by focusing on the values and attitudes, hopes, fears and desires of ordinary Habsburg subjects and soldiers within the broader context of state sanctioned violence.

Papers and publications

Conference and seminar papers

• ‘What was the Habsburg Monarchy during the time of the French?: The wartime experiences of Subjects and Soldiers in the Austro-Bohemian Lands, 1788-1816.’ What was the Habsburg Monarchy? 16th–20th centuries, Institute for Modern and Contemporary Historical Research, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, October 2020.
• ‘Fighting for the Habsburgs, Realising the Fatherland: Militarised Cultural Encounters in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1788-1816.’ German Historical Society Annual Conference, September 2020.
• ‘Fighting for the Habsburgs in the time of the French: A Rural History of Conscription in the Austro-Bohemian Lands, 1788-1816.’ BSECS Annual Conference 2020, St Hugh's College, Oxford, January 2020.
• ‘The Geography of Violence in the Austro-Bohemian Lands: Subjects, Soldiers and Shifting Social Boundaries, 1788-1817.’Annual PhD History Conference, University of York, October 2019.
• 'Halt ein, Kamerad! Um Gottes willen halt ein! Es ist mein Hauptmann!': The Representation of the Habsburg Common Soldier in Popular Print Culture, 1785-1815.’ CECS Postgraduate Forum, University of York, March 2019.
• ‘Remembering the Characters and Traits of Great Austrians: War and Memory in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1808-1814.’ New Research in Military History 2018 Conference: Myth and Reality, University of Southampton, November 2018.