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The Holy Roman Empire and the Habsburg Dynasty
 Voltaire once remarked that the Holy Roman Empire “was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire”. If this is at all accurate, how did this phenomenon arise, and how did it last, albeit in fits and starts, for 1000 years?
When Napoleon ended the Empire in 1806, the Habsburg Dynasty continued for another century until its demise at the end of World War I, and in many ways that demise epitomised the drastically changed European scene – and world scene – which emerged from that devastating war.
This course will explore the fortunes of this central fact of European history, with particular emphasis on the period from 1500 to 1918, and how that empire encapsulated what is meant by “old Europe”.
Term 1: Charlemagne and the Carolingian Dynasty
Term 2: Otto the Great and his Successors
 Term 3: Maximilian I, Charles V, and the Reformation Period
Term 4: Last Days and Termination; the Austro-Hungarian Empire
[This page is under construction]
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