An Empire that
existed over a hundred years ago. It formed in 1867 at the collapse of the
Austrian Empire and collapsed due to ethnic tensions in
World War I in 1918. In consisted of the Austrian half of the empire, which was mostly German speaking, and the predominately Hungarian speaking half of the empire. It is often called "The Dual Monarchy" because of it's Austrian royals and Hungarian royals. It was a European powerhouse which was a key player in European politics in the late 19th century. In the early 1900's, the empire annexed Bosnia which had a high population of ethnic Serbs. This led to tensions with Serbia, which led to
World War I, during which the empire collapsed due to internal revolutions by the empire's ethnic minorities. Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Hungary were created from the empire's territories, while Poland, Romania, Italy, and Yugoslavia gained lands from the collapse of the empire. The empire was doomed to failure from the moment it was created because of the many ethnic groups in constant struggle for representation. The empire's collapse is often incorrectly attributed to
World War I, but it really collapsed due to internal revolts which the empire, already weak from war, could not defeat. The war, if anything, accelerated the demise of the empire, it didn't cause it.
