The Habsburg monarchy was never a major sea power, and for most of its four centuries of existence it had no substantial navy at all. Especially before the nineteenth century the history of Habsburg naval armaments, therefore, is of little interest to the military specialist and more significant as a footnote to the domestic political history of the monarchy. At no time was this more the case than during the reign of Maria Theresa (1740–1780). From a military point of view the naval projects of this period could furnish, at best, the plot of an opera buffa, but from an administrative and economic point of view they highlight some of the most fundamental problems of enlightened absolutism in Austria.