Maria Theresa

22 Oct, 2020 940 History of Europe

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Maria Theresa (1717-1780) who inherited the Austrian throne in 1740 at the age of 23. Her neighbours circled like wolves and, within two months, Frederick the Great had seized one of her most prized lands, Silesia, exploiting her vulnerability. Yet over the next forty years through political reforms, alliances and marriages, she built Austria up into a formidable power, and she would do whatever it took to save the souls of her Catholic subjects, with a rigidity and intolerance that Joseph II, her son and heir, could not wait to challenge.

Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

  • Catriona Seth 5 episodes
    Marshal Foch Professor of French Literature at the University of Oxford
  • Martyn Rady 2 episodes
    Professor of Central European History at University College London
  • Thomas Biskup 2 episodes
    Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Hull

Reading list

  • Joseph II, vol. 1: In the Shadow of Maria Theresa 1741-1780
    Derek Beales (Cambridge University Press, 1987)
  • Enlightenment and Reform in Eighteenth-Century Europe
    Derek Beales (Tauris, 2005)
  • Maria Theresa
    Edward Crankshaw (Bloomsbury, 2012) Google Books →
  • Maria Theresa 1717-1780: Strategist, Mother, Reformer
    Elfriede Iby, Martin Mitschlechner, Werner Telesko and Karl Vocelka (eds.) (Amalthea, 2017) Google Books →
  • The Habsburg Monarchy 1618-1918
    Charles Ingrao (Cambridge University Press, 3rd edition, 2019) Google Books →
  • Maria Theresa and the House of Austria
    C. A. Macartney (Hodder, 1974) Google Books →
  • The Habsburgs: Rise and Fall of a World Empire
    Martyn Rady (Allen Lane, 2020)
  • Maria Theresia: Die Kaiserin in ihrer Zeit. Eine Biographie
    Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger (Beck, 2017) Google Books →
  • Briefe der Kaiserin Maria Theresia an ihre Kinder und Freunde
    Alfred von Arneth (Wilhelm Braumuller, 1881) Google Books →
  • Maria Theresia: neue Perspektiven der Forschung/Maria Theresa: new research perspectives/Marie Therese: nouvelles approches de recherche
    Thomas Wallnig, Elisabeth Lobenwein, Franz-Stefan Seitschek and Vanda Anastacio (eds.) (Verlag Dr Dieter Winkler, 2017) Google Books →

Related episodes


Programme ID: m000nlyv

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000nlyv

Auto-category: 943.06 (Austria - Maria Theresa, 1740-1780)

Hello (First sentence from this episode) Hello, when Maria Theresa inherited the Austrian throne in 1740 at the age of 23, her neighbours circled her, seeing a chance to bite into that great empire.