Habsburg Encounters with Native America - Familiar Strangers?

The central European lands of the Habsburg monarchy have long shared an intertwined past with the Indigenous inhabitants of the Americas.

Presented here for the first time, the newly published volume Habsburg Encounters with Native America (CEU Press, 2025) sheds light on the rich and diverse legacies of the myriad encounters between Habsburg subjects and Indigenous communities across North and South America. Challenging assumptions that confine such interactions to Western European empires, the contributors trace how Indigenous American cultures were represented, debated, and engaged with across the polyglot territories of the Habsburg monarchy—from imperial courts and Christian missions to nationalist newspapers, ethnographic museums, and political movements.

The volume spans five centuries and a wide range of sources to illuminate how Native America figured in Central European worldviews—sometimes through direct encounters, often leading to layered mediations shaped by religion, empire, and shifting notions of race and sovereignty. Moving beyond clichéd images drawn from German popular fiction such as the novels of Karl May and the well-worn fascination with “noble savages,” this book launch reveals a history of cultural exchange, misinterpretation, admiration, and even alliances between the peoples of both regions.

It invites us to rethink the Habsburg world not as isolated from the Americas, but as intricately and at times intimately connected with them. Join us as we uncover the entangled histories of these two worlds—and the surprising legacies they have left behind.

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.

Markéta Křížová is Professor of Ibero-American Studies at Charles University, Prague. Her research involves the history of overseas expansion, migrations and cultural transfers.

Michael Burri teaches in German Studies at Haverford College and is editor of the Journal of Austrian-American History. His current research focuses on cultural diplomacy and the state in Austria.

Julia Secklehner is Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at Constructor University, Bremen (2024-2025) where she researches networks of modernist women photographers in Central Europe. She is also an affiliate of Masaryk University, Brno where she focuses on folk cultures and modernity.

Marija Živković graduated in history and ethnography and cultural anthropology from the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Zagreb. She works as a museum advisor responsible for the collection of non-European cultures at the Ethnographic Museum in Zagreb.

Robbie Richardson is Assistant Professor of English at Princeton University, and author of The Savage and Modern Self: North American Indians in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture (2018). He is a citizen of Pabineau Mi’gmaq First Nation.

The event will be held in English.
To participate in the event, all guests need a valid museum ticket.
Participation is free for annual ticket holders, Weltmuseum Wien Friends, Patrons, Members and Ambassadors as well as ICOM members and holders of the Kulturpass.
Registration:  online
Meeting point: WMW Forum