Western Civilization II / Unit 3 WC2 0222 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Reading a Map of the Holy Roman Empire in 1789: Habsburg, Prussian, Polish
The idea
The exam shows a map of Central Europe and asks what it portrays or which state held what. The anchor's map of the Empire in seventeen eighty-nine is the case, and three questions read it: where is the Habsburg mass, where are the Prussian fragments, and what lies east of both. The Empire's border on such a map is the least useful line, because after Westphalia the anchor calls it window dressing.
In practice
Three readings. The Habsburg mass: Austria, Bohemia and Hungary in the southeast, contiguous, the lands the dynasty ruled directly, with Hungary outside the Empire's border. The Prussian fragments: Brandenburg around Berlin, East Prussia outside the Empire to the northeast, which is why the title was King in Prussia rather than King of Brandenburg, and scattered Rhine territories to the west, the unconnected inheritance of sixteen eighteen. East of both: Poland-Lithuania, already partitioned once in seventeen seventy-two by Prussia, Austria and Russia, and gone by seventeen ninety-five; the map's Poland is a state in the act of vanishing. A fourth line, if shown: the Ottoman frontier of sixteen eighty-three along Hungary's south.
Where people slip
Two traps. A map with one solid Prussia is a later century's. And the Empire's outline includes Bohemia but not Hungary or East Prussia, so "inside the Empire" asks which Habsburg and Hohenzollern lands were German.
Your place on the trail
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