Title: Habsburg Encounters with Native America
Subtitle: Familiar Strangers
Editors: Jonathan Singerton; Marketa Krizova; Michael Burri
Price: € 134,00 excl. VAT
ISBN: 9789048571802
Format: Hardback
Number of pages: 324
Language: English
Publication date: 20 - 06 - 2025
Dimensions: 15.6 x 23.4 cm
Categories: Cultural Studies; Heritage and Memory Studies; International Relations
Discipline: History, Art History, and Archaeology
Imprint: CEU Press
Also available as: eBook PDF - € 0,00

Table of Contents

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Anton Treuer (Bemidji State University) - Foreword
Jonathan Singerton, Markéta Krízová and Michael Burri - Re-encountering Native America from the Habsburg Lands
1. James R. Adams (Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian) - The Royal Fifth and the Rights of Indians: Charles V and His Display of Mexican Material Culture
2. Alexander McCargar (University of Vienna) - Plumes of Power: The Native American in Habsburg Festival Culture before 1700
3. Bernd Hausberger (The College of Mexico) - Jesuit Missionaries from Central European Territories in Northwestern New Spain, 1680-1767
4. Ildikó Sz. Kristóf (Hungarian Academy of Sciences) - “People of the Devil” – “People of Achilles”: The Representation of Native America in Religious Practice, Translations and Collections in Hungary, 1670-1840
5. Markéta Krízová (Charles University of Prague) - Neither red enough nor fierce enough: The Construction of Native Americans in Nineteenth Century Czech Culture
6. Csaba Lévai (University of Debrecen) - “Poor Indians! Strangers in your own land!” The attitude of a Hungarian traveller towards Native Americans in Jacksonian America
7. Jonathan Singerton (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) - Myriad Missions: Native Americans and the Leopoldine Society
8. Michael Burri (Haverford College) - Reencountering Trade Legacies, Indigenous Histories, and the Early Leopoldine Society Circle in the Vienna Weltmuseum
9. Marija Zivkovic (Ethnographic Museum Zagreb) - The Seljan Brothers, Native Americans, and the Ethnographic Museum in Zagreb
10. Florian Ambach and Maximilian Gröber (University of Innsbruck) - Staged Representation: The Perception of Native Americans, "Ethnological Expositions," and Wild West Shows in the German-Speaking Austro-Hungarian Press, 1870–1918
11. Michael P. Taylor (Brigham Young University) - “Rothäute von Heute”: Deskaheh’s Petition for Recognized Indigenous Sovereignty at the End of the Austro-Hungarian Empire
12. Julia Secklehner (Masaryk University) - Who are the “Indians“? Hans Larwin and the Visualization of the Roma and American Indians in Interwar Austrian Popular Art and Visual Culture
13. György Toth (University of Stirling) - Richard Erdoes, Red Power’s Ally
Robbie Richardson (Princeton University) - Afterword - The Kunstkammer as Contact Zone: Understanding Indigenous Objects and Histories in Habsburg Collections

Reviews and Features

“Fascinating series of essays examining how Central Europeans imagined and deployed their encounter with Native American culture from the imperial age of Charles V to the present; a collection that opens entirely new ground on a longue durée of trans-Atlantic encounter between the Habsburg lands and the indigenous cultures of North America.”
—Howard Louthan, Professor of History at the University of Minnesota and Director Emeritus of the Center for Austria Studies

“This volume opens a door into the past, revealing historical encounters between Native Americans and the Austrian Empire. The essays in this collection allow us to discover historical interactions between Native Americans and Central Europeans at the time of the Habsburg Empire. A unique glimpse into the world of the Habsburg Empire and its relations with Native Americans. Discover European encounters with Native Americans in the Habsburg Empire. The essays in this book give life to historical interactions between Native Americans, central and eastern Europeans. A fascinating voyage through the early encounters between Native Americans and the Habsburg Empire. Travel into the unique world of the Habsburg Empire and discover its relations with Native Americans.”
—Carlo Krieger, Institut Grand Ducal of Luxembourg and former Ambassador to Brazil of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg

“This volume shows in an impressive way how the encounter between people from the Habsburg Empire and Native Americans was characterised by fascination and sincere interest. It reveals the complex relationship between appreciation, imagination, cultural appropriation and violence.”
—Claudia Augustat, Curator of South American Collections at the Weltmuseum Wien

Habsburg Encounters with Native America

Familiar Strangers

The central European lands of the Habsburg monarchy have long shared an intertwined past with the Indigenous inhabitants of the Americas. This volume focuses on the process of encountering these peoples as a continual action across several centuries that has produced numerous and varied instances of cultural dialogues, perspectives, and understandings. Moreover, this central European element is something that has not been considered in its own right before now and has been overshadowed by the focus on a wider Germanic fascination for Indigenous cultures. Breaking away from this wider narrative allows us not only to recover a more distinct historical connection but also uncovers the particular dynamics of direct and indirect contact between Indigenous worlds and that of the Habsburg monarchy.

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Editors

Jonathan Singerton

Jonathan Singerton is Assistant Professor of Global Political History at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in The Netherlands. His research focuses on the worldwide connections of the Habsburg lands in the early modern and modern eras. His first book, The American Revolution and the Habsburg Monarchy, appeared in 2022 and he currently serves as the chief editor of a forthcoming Oxford Handbook focused on global Habsburg history.

Marketa Krizova

Markéta Krízová is Professor of Ibero-American Studies at Charles University, Prague. Her research involves the history of overseas expansion, migrations and cultural transfers. Among her publications can be mentioned M. Krízová and J. Malecková (eds.), Central Europe and the Non-European World in the Long 19th Century, 2022.

Michael Burri

Michael Burri teaches in German Studies at Haverford College, is editor of the Journal of Austrian-American History, and the former President of the Austrian Studies Association (2021-2023). He has published on Austrian and Swiss film, and his articles have appeared in German Studies Review, Austrian History Yearbook, Journal of Austrian Studies, and New German Critique. His review essays and opinion pieces have appeared in leading Czech and American dailies, including Lidové noviny, Dnes, and The Washington Post. He is currently completing a book project on cultural diplomacy and the state in Austria.