The Great War #1: The Last Catholic Power, Part I
The Habsburg's 19th century crisis explodes
The Protestants had won modernity. Austria stood alone. By 1900, Protestant powers were ascendant, confident, and attracting migrants from Catholic Europe. The United States, the British Empire, and Germany ranked as the world’s most developed and best-educated countries, with American economic and industrial power superior to the UK, Germany, and France combined. Yet that was not the whole of Catholic troubles. By 1914, Spain and Portugal were has-been powers. The Spanish Empire was already on life support following the loss of its American colonies in the early 19th century; the Spanish-American War of 1898 was the epitaph of the empire that began with Columbus discovering the New World.
