The Habsburg Monarchy, 1490-1848. Attributes of Empire

The Habsburg monarchy was a singular experiment in diversity within the European continent. By the eighteenth century it stretched from the Austrian Netherlands to the Balkans and southern Poland, and south into Italy. Its subjects spoke a number of languages, and while the social and institutional structure of these lands shared common features, there were also substantial differences among them. Was the Habsburg monarchy therefore an empire like those of Great Britain, France or Spain?
Drawing upon modern theoretical perspectives on European expansion to answer this question, Paula Sutter Fichtner argues that the Habsburg holdings did indeed constitute a form of European imperialism, and that they are best understood in such terms.