What were the main intellectual influences on Max that shaped his moral and political outlook? How did he come by his liberalism?
Did he have much of an influence on later liberal practice, either in Austria or in Mexico?
So....this is at least part of the question at the center of my research, so it's difficult to answer fully in this format, since I'm trying to answer that in 500 pages elsewhere.
But here's my best attempt at a sampling:
One of the problems with talking about liberalism in this period is that it isn't a very well defined ideology. People call themselves liberal, but tend to still diverge on a number of really essential questions about practice and structure. So the influences tend to be various and each individual's understanding of the philosophy will differ based on whether they prioritize rights, structure, economy, etc.
It leads to a lot of accusations in documents I read of fake liberalism or pretend liberalism. Here's a random one I have near the top of my camera roll:
(the writer is talking about the English liberal press not supporting a liberal monarchy in Mexico)
That's all important to keep in mind because Max's liberalism is in some ways his own cocktail of a number of things.
Liberalism sees itself as descended from the Enlightenment's ideas of the natural rights of people. If someone is a citizen of a state, there are rights that state must safeguard.
In Austria, there's a particular tradition of Enlightenment rule embodied by these two figures:
Maria Theresa and especially Joseph II standardized and rationalized the structure of the Habsburg state and crucially created laws protecting civil rights for all citizens. This is the government tradition Max learned through the dynasty. And he deploys it; for example, when he's trying to get his brother to liberalize he'll tell him to act like Maria Theresa (his issues with Joseph require a thorough unpacking that I won't do here).
On the other hand, you have the Enlightenment's emphasis on science and rationality, which is often fused with a politics of rights. The figure who tends to stand for that in the Germanophone world is Alexander von Humboldt. You really get both the science and vehement advocacy in his writings about (then) New Spain. This is why I was excited to find that Max had corresponded with him, though I surely could have guessed that Max read his work voraciously from his interest in botany and the desire to see the New World that he talks about having since he was a teen.
But what the nineteen century adds to the eighteenth century's Enlightenment is constitutionalism and participatory government. But that's not to say they're all Republicans. Most liberals believe fervently in constitutional monarchy.
And that is best embodied in this man:
(one of the four portraits of him I found at Miramare)
If you don't recognize him on sight, that's Leopold I, King of the Belgians. Or "dearest Father" if you're Max. He created the model constitutional monarchy in Belgium, and I cannot fully convey how much of an idol he was to young liberals in the generation after him. Max's correspondence with him is jam-packed with discussions of the key parts of liberalism and constitutionalism.
There is also the element of commerce, which is usually central to thinking about liberalism from more of a post-mercantilist globalizing economy perspective.
And there Max's geographical position matters. He lives his young adult life in Trieste, which is the most important port for commerce with the Balkans, the Ottoman Empire, and North Africa. It also means he shares a social circle with these two men:
Left, Pasquale Revoltella. Right, Karl Ludwig von Bruck. (Both portraits from the Museo Revoltella)
They are both heads at different times of the Austrian Lloyd, which is a semi-governmental semi-autonomous shipping, insurance, and postal company headquartered in Trieste. From them you get a strong belief that the government needs to help provide the infrastructure and investment structure to develop trade and industrialization. This too is part of liberalism, it seeks to make states viable by making them economically viable. I know Max knows them; Revoltella's name is in his guest book many many times and Von Bruck's son Otto was part of Max's entourage for his trip to France and Belgium in 1856.
So without getting into what's in his library, there are some key influences. As for the ways he puts this into practice and legacies....on track to write 500 pages on that.
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