ABSTRACT
Described in classic studies of Habsburg history as a people “without history,” the Slovenian subjects of the Emperor were an overwhelmingly peasant population with no native aristocracy at the start of the nineteenth century. Nor did they have any independent medieval or early modern state to look to as an inheritance in the era of developing nationalism. The existence of the early medieval Slavic state of Karantanija, centered in the Klagenfurt/Celovec basin, remained only as a hazy legend. Yet this seeming historic insignificance was however a blessing in disguise, as the Habsburg authorities remained tolerant, or benignly neglectful of the Slovene cultural renaissance in the first half of the nineteenth century. The ruling Habsburg dynasty in Vienna and the privileged German minority in Slovene-populated lands did not see them as posing any political threat to the integrity of the Empire.
