The classificatory efforts that accompanied the modernization of the Habsburg state inadvertently helped establish, promote, and perpetuate national categories of identification, often contrary to the intentions of the Habsburg bureaucracy. The state did not create nations, but its classification of languages made available some ethnolinguistic identity categories that nationalists used to make political claims. The institutionalization of these categories also made them more relevant, especially as nationalist movements simultaneously worked toward the same goal. Yet identification with a nation did not follow an algorithmic logic, in the beginning of the twentieth century, sometimes earlier, various nationalisms could undoubtedly mobilize large numbers of people in Austria–Hungary, but people still had agency and nation-ness remained contingent and situational.

This book seeks to approach language diversity in multi-ethnic communities of the Habsburg Empire by focusing critically on the urban-rural divide and the importance of status for multilingual competence and language diversity in local governments, schools, the army, and the urban public sphere. Its aim is to offer the first comprehensive overview of language diversity for the entire territory of the Habsburg Monarchy, placing emphasis on the experiences and encounters at urban frontiers and the linguistic policies and practices in transition.Language diversity and linguistic competence-and more specific phenomena such as multilingualism and polyglossia-are a defining characteristic of the contemporary world, and yet are often considered to be historically incomparable and unique. With reference to global linguistic changes that made it impossible for state apparatuses, global businesses, and other supranational networks to exist without linguistic competence in multiple languages, sociolinguistics have even coined the term "the new linguistic order." 1 Its study is currently a booming field: apart from the solid body of research in contemporary linguistics, the study of multilingualism boasts several internationally reputed journals, for instance, International Journal of Multilingualism (Taylor & Francis/Routledge) and Critical Multilingualism Studies (University of Arizona), to name but two. There is also a wealth of publications on linguistic competence, "the new linguistic order," contemporary language and education policy, and material culture. 2Within the broader historical discussion on language diversity and multilingualism, a number of states and empires are often singled out in which language competences were essential for the smooth and successful running of state operations over longer periods of time. 3 The Habsburg Empire occupies a somewhat privileged place on this list. For example, contradicting the gist and tone of some of the recent studies of multilingualism in the contemporary world that tend to stress the uniqueness of the contemporary experience and presumably the unique impossibility of the contemporary world to function without such practices, Rosita

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