Empires suppressed nationalist uprisings by enlisting subordinate ethnic groups with land promises

Evidence

In 1845 the nobles and bourgeois of Galicia rose against the Austrians; the latter put down the uprising by mobilising the Ruthenian peasants of the region, promising them land in order to gain their support. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2016

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to divide-and-rule mechanisms in colonial administration and how imperial powers weaponize ethnic cleavages — exactly the scaffolding Islamophobia readings will rely on for how empires manufacture inter-community conflict.
• QUESTION: Which groups received the promised land, and what happened to the nobles’ estates afterward? Worth chasing whether this pattern recurs elsewhere in Habsburg or other imperial practice.