The reality of Ottoman rule over a huge swathe of central and south-eastern Europe remains at the heart of the Habsburg experience, but also more broadly as an awkward and confusing issue for all European history. If the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are supposed to represent the triumphant expansion of Europe, with great areas of North and South America cleared providentially for Christian enjoyment, then why in Europe itself is there a similar experience being inflicted on Europeans themselves?
