Was Austria-Hungary the most benevolent European empire to its subjects?

>Austria
I think you mean AUSTRALIA

No, they were just as oppressive as Russia.
The Austrians saw all the other nations as inferior, even the Hungarians, and for most of its existence the empire crushed any sort of movement for autonomy or preserving of cultural identity.

It was only after being defeated by Prussia that they gave autonomy to Hungary, but only to them and in a way that would pit them against other nations.

The only difference was that is was a bit more economically and socially developed, but even that wasn't as good as people might think. The Eastern parts remained very poor, underdeveloped and illiterate, and you even had something like the Galician famines.
They were also late in building railroads compared to Germany. Even Bohemia had one line in the 1860s.

My nigga

...

Top kek

No, hence the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867.

Yes, but only in comparison to the others.

It was one of the few places where Jews could rise to some of the highest governmental offices.

Cislethania (the part governed by the Emperor) was more tolerant than Translethania (governed by Hungarian parliament)

The Habsburgs by the 20th century were getting tired of governing everything anyway, and that's why Franz Ferdinand (and Rudolf I think, but it seems he killed himself before he could affect much policy) wanted to federalize at best or at least give the Croatians their own crown since a lot of the conflict was caused by the Empire's slavs (not counting poles and czechs) being governed by Hungarians.

Gott erhalte Steven Irwin.
Unser gute Irwin, Steve.

Croatian archaeologist here. All parts that were under Austrian control were taken care of, a lot of (then modern) infrastructure was built, culture preserved, our people rising high in their ranks even as far as ministers. They raised us up in a way, it did some good at least. Take Nikola Tesla for example whose family lived in Austrian part of what is modern Croatia, he was free to go to study to Vienna and become a great man just because of his capability. No discrimination whatsoever.

You could call germanization bad I guess (it failed though), as well as probably us being their subjects providing for the empire in a less fair position, but it wasn't the worst servitude in the history of the world. Croatia was modernized and together with Slovenia it sticks out from the rest of the Balkans by being civilized and closer to the western Catholic Europe.

Parts that were under Hungarian control have history of failed hungarization/magyarization attempts, greedy and unfair management, our successful rebellions against them etc. They left without leaving a trace even in our language. I don't think we actually dislike Hungary, it wasn't even a big deal, that's how much of a failure they were. Unlike Austria, Hungary was never looked up to as something to aspire to be I guess, we always saw them as completely equal to us.

If the Habsburgs were so good, they should have united Croatia into one single autonomous entity entity, not just given it to Hungary. Same for the other nations.

The fact that that young men were able to study in Vienna is largely irrelevant and it seem to indicate that higher education was heavily centralized and that the local university of Zagreb was somehow irrelevant.
It also indicates a brain drain from the outside provinces to Vienna.

The fact that some "good" things happened under the Habsburgs is more of a side effect than their real intention and it doesn't justify the imperial nostalgia I have seen among Croats.

>they should have united Croatia
Not until the end of Austrian rule was that the concept of nation-states started to exist strongly in Europe, so those ideas weren't implemented or even thought to be. I'm still not sure how Croats from Slavonia for example saw Croats in Dalmatia, Croatia proper or Istria before all that, were they similar or not, but due to different rule, system and growing apart for centuries perhaps not so much. Certainly less than some Slavic countries are similar today. In the 19th century nationalism has awoken and with it the idea that people of certain origins, languages and cultures should somehow become one nation and rule over themselves. About that time education was higher, city cultures developed and with it independent thinking and this movement basically invented what will become modern Croatia by scrapping the pieces and bits together, even decided the official language, national myths and so forth. This applies to most European nation, Germany is very much the same. We started to think about ditching old feudal dynasties, alleigences to distant rulers revered as almost deities, that doesn't mean that before that there was this desire to unite. It was different with Serbia, they were far more united and had their own thing going on there once they freed themselves from Turks.
And another reason is purely divide et impera strategy.

They refused to use violence against their subjects and saw themselves above petty ethnic nationalism.

Ferdinand wanted to federalise the empire and make it into autonomous states, he also spoke against the harsh treatment of Serbs and wanted the rule to be benevolent, it was why he went to visit Bosnia the day he got assassinated, he was going to visit the hospitals after the grenade attack.

Serbs fucked everything up.

Literally all nationalist propaganda.

>Austria crushed movement for autonomy.

Austria's refusal to engage its subjects with military is why it had so many movements.

>If the Habsburgs were so good, they should have united Croatia into one single autonomous entity entity, not just given it to Hungary.

Croatia wasn't given the Hungary. When Austria got the throne of Hungary, Croatia was under Kingdom of Hungary.

>he actually fell for the meme

>They refused to use violence against their subjects

but user, thats not true

This. If the Austrians were like the British, French or Spanish the Czechs would be Germanized right now.

MUH PAN-SLAVISM! MUH GREATER SERBIA! NO DON'T GIVE SLAVS MORE AUTONOMY WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! YOU'RE RUINING EVERYTHING FRANZ! FUCK YOU IMMA WE IZ OBILIC N SHEEIT!

I just now realize that's a still of Anakin from Episode II