This article considers the function of twenty-two hand-colored prints of mathematical instruments in Tycho Brahe's Astronomiae instauratae mechanica (Instruments of the renewed astronomy; 1598), a hand-painted presentation treatise dedicated to Emperor Rudolf II and conferred on a network of individuals connected to the imperial court in Prague. Although the accompanying text communicates the instruments’ use and composition, the images demand close inspection because they articulate Brahe's observationally driven astronomy. They do so through structured, repeated, and consecutive representations; through expanded viewer access, achieved by adhering to multiple perspectives; through the juxtaposition of colors, which focuses attention on the heads of the instruments (the part that does the measuring); and through the use of gold paint, which emphasizes the head and brings to mind the very metallic nature of the instruments. Much like an astronomer taking multiple measurements of cosmological phenomena, these images allow viewers and readers, as they leaf through the pages of the treatise, to become virtual participants in Brahe's instauration of astronomy.

This article discusses discourses of Czech tourism on the Eastern Adriatic coast between the turn of the twentieth century and the 1930s using the Czech resorts in Baška on Krk Island and Kupari near Dubrovnik as case studies. The author argues that the ideological foundation of this type of tourism was a narrative of proximity between the Czechs and their fellow Slav Croatians. At the same time, the practice of Czech tourism was characterized by a pattern of cultural paternalism and economic exploitation toward the local population. It thus became a pseudo-colonial enterprise that distorted the Czech national myth of democracy, rationalism, and cosmopolitanism. Nevertheless, tourism still contributed to cultural mediation between Czechs and South Slavs. This article illustrates that point by highlighting the commemoration of the Yugoslav playwright Ivo Vojnović by Czech tourists in the 1930s.

If scholarly articles could have intricate subtitles, as did treatises published long ago, the heading of this essay would be much longer. The larger scheme of things into which the career of Václav Eusebius z Lobkovic, head of the Habsburg government from 1669 to 1674, fits is armed service and nobility. Assuming that the latter was synonymous with what Marc Bloch called the “seignorial” class—i. e., Central Europe's dominant or ruling social group prior to the industrial epoch—one may argue that for more than a millennium, from Merovingian times onward, a symbiotic, if fluid and complex, relationship existed between the waging of war and the establishment of that control over land which constituted the tangible foundation for noble power and authority.

One of the ironies of the Revolution of 1848 in Austria is that one of the most attacked institutions, the Roman Catholic Church, was able to draw the most benefit from the revolutionary upheaval. By the time Cardinal-Archbishop Eduard Milde returned to his palace in the Wollzeile from his safe mountain retreat, the dreaded Katzenmusik (mock serenading) had died down and it was clear that real social reform, not to speak of social revolution, was dead as well. Along the way, however, Catholic agitators, including Catholic priests, had learned how to use the revolution to further their own purposes.

In his classic analysis of state building by the Austrian Habsburgs in early modern Central Europe, R. J. W. Evans argues that the dynasty's eventual success in asserting its will over a conglomerate of separate, coherent territories with time-honored claims to political liberties followed the sometimes troubled trajectory of crown-aristocratic relations. The cultural impetus for political centralization was the mix of reform within the Catholic Church and counterreform measures taken against powerful Protestant subjects among the nobles and civic elites. By the 1650s the ability of Habsburg officials in Vienna to govern effectively the dynasty's various holdings rested firmly on a dyarchy of the ruling house and regional nobles who shared a common baroque Catholic faith and an investment in a system of court patronage that fostered collaboration rather than resistance in the far-flung empire.

Warren F. Kuehl's list of United States and Canadian doctoral dissertations in history is an important American bibliographical reference work which no historian can afford to neglect. Yet, scholars of the history of the Habsburg monarchy find it difficult to make effective use of this valuable bibliography, for the bulk of the entries which are of potential interest to specialists in the field are listed under numerous subdivisions and are not consolidated under appropriate headings in the topical index. For instance, numerous dissertations dealing with nineteenth-century alliances, with multilateral negotiations involving the Austrian empire, such as the Congresses of Vienna, Paris, and Berlin, or with the diplomatic relations of the Habsburg monarchy and the Austrian Republic with neighboring states are listed under such diverse headings as “Eastern Question,” “Europe, Diplomacy,” “Alliance System and Concert of Europe,” or “Near East.” While most scholars use library catalogs largely for finding works written by particular authors, those who peruse dissertation lists are more often interested in ascertaining what has been written on specific topics.