Habsburg Encounters with Native America

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.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 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.

“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

• List of Figures, Foreword, Introduction: Reencountering Native America from the Habsburg Lands, 1. The Royal Fifth and the Rights of Indians : Charles V and His Display of Mexican Material Culture, 2. Plumes of Power : Depictions of the Native American in Viennese Festival Culture before 1700, 3. Jesuit Missionaries from Central European Territories in Northwestern New Spain, 1680–1767, 4. “People of the Devil”—“People of Achilles” : The Representation of Native America in Religious Practice, Translations, and Collections in Hungary, 1670–1840, 5. Neither Red Enough nor Fierce Enough : The Construction of Native Americans in Nineteenth-Century Czech Culture, 6. “Poor Indians! Strangers in Your Own Land!” : The Attitude of a Hungarian Traveler Towards the Native Americans in Jacksonian America, 7. Myriad Missions: Native Americans and the Leopoldine Society, 8. Reencountering Trade Legacies , Indigenous Histories, and the Early Leopoldine Society Circle in the Vienna Weltmuseum, 9. The Seljan Brothers, Native Americans, and the Ethnographic Museum in Zagreb, 10. Staged Representation : The Perception of Native Americans, “Ethnological Expositions,” and Wild West Shows in the German-Speaking Austro-Hungarian Press (1870–1918), 11. “Rothäute von Heute” : Deskaheh’s Petition for Recognized Indigenous Sovereignty at the End of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, 12. Who Are the Indians? Hans Larwin and the Visualization of the Roma and Native Americans in Interwar Austrian Popular Art and Visual Culture, 13. Richard Erdoes, Red Power’s Ally, Afterword, Index