Abstract
This article traces how processes of physical displacement (and its corollary, re-emplacement) have emerged during multiple periods and in distant locales associated with the history and legacy of the Habsburg Empire. It focuses on an eighteenth-century Turkish garden made from Field Marshal Gideon Ernst von Laudon’s spoils of war on the outskirts of Vienna. Utilizing Anthony Vidler’s concept of “warped space,” the article explores Laudon’s garden as an exemplary form of imperial space. It then proceeds to argue that imperial capitalism continued to produce warped spaces based on processes of displacement and dispossession, using the example of the short-lived Austro-Hungarian concession in Tianjin. In doing so, the article argues for an understanding of imperial subjectivity that takes into account the built space of empire.
