Liberal Imperialism in Germany: Expansionism and Nationalism, 1848-1884 9780857450524

Table of contents :
CONTENTS
Figures
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction
Part I: A Liberal Empire for a Liberal Nation
1. National Unifi cation and Overseas Expansion at the Frankfurt National Assembly, 1848–1849
2. Mythopoesis—Imperialism as Nationalism
Part II: Liberal Imperialism in the “Post-Liberal” Era
3. Informal Empire and Private Sector Imperialism, 1849–1884
4. Bürgerlich Agency and the World of the Verein, 1849–1884
5. Bismarck and the Sociopolitical Context of the Colonial “Umschwung”
Part III: Th e Texts of Imperialism
6. Expansionist Agitation after 1849
7. Geography and Anthropology in the Service of Imperialism
8. Popular Culture and the Transmission of Imperialist Values
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Liberal Imperialism in Germany

Monographs in German History Volume 1

Volume 13

Osthandel and Ostpolitik: German Foreign Trade Policies in Eastern Europe from Bismarck to Adenauer

The Crisis of the German Left: The PDS, Stalinism and the Global Economy

Mark Spaulding

Volume 14

Volume 2

A Question of Priorities: Democratic Reform and Economic Recovery in Postwar Germany

“Conservative Revolutionaries”: Protestant and Catholic Churches in Germany After Radical Political Change in the 1990s

Rebecca Boehling

Barbara Thériault

Volume 3

Volume 15

From Recovery to Catastrophe: Municipal Stabilization and Political Crisis in Weimar Germany

Modernizing Bavaria: The Politics of Franz Josef Strauss and the CSU, 1949–1969

Ben Lieberman

Volume 16

Volume 4

Sex,Thugs and Rock ‘N’ Roll. Teenage Rebels in Cold-War East Germany

Nazism in Central Germany: The Brownshirts in ‘Red’ Saxony

Peter Thompson

Mark Milosch

Mark Fenemore

Christian W. Szejnmann

Volume 17

Volume 5

A Single Communal Faith? The German Right from Conservatism to National Socialism

Citizens and Aliens: Foreigners and the Law in Britain and the German States, 1789–1870

Thomas Rohrämer

Andreas Fahrmeir

Volume 18

Volume 6

Poems in Steel: National Socialism and the Politics of Inventing from Weimar to Bonn

Selling the Economic Miracle: Economic Reconstruction and Politics In West Germany, 1949–1957

Kees Gispen

Mark E. Spicka

Volume 7

Volume 19

“Aryanisation” in Hamburg

Between Tradition and Modernity: Aby Warburg and Art in Hamburg’s Public Realm 1896-1918

Frank Bajohr Volume 8

The Politics of Education: Teachers and School Reform in Weimar Germany

Mark A. Russell

Marjorie Lamberti

Cultures of Abortion in Weimar Germany

Volume 9

Cornelie Usborne

The Ambivalent Alliance: Konrad Adenauer, the CDU/CSU, and the West, 1949–1966

Volume 21

Ronald J. Granieri Volume 10

The Price of Exclusion: Ethnicity, National Identity, and the Decline of German Liberalism, 1898–1933 E. Kurlander Volume 11

Volume 20

Environmental Organizations in Modern Germany: Hardy Survivors in the Twentieth Century and Beyond William T. Markham Volume 22

The Changing Faces of Citizenship: Integration and Mobilization Among Ethnic Minorities in Germany

Recasting West German Elites: Higher Civil Servants, Business Leaders, and Physicians in Hesse between Nazism and Democracy, 1945–1955

Joyce Marie Mushaben

Michael R. Hayse

Matthew P. Fitzpatrick

Volume 12

The Creation of the Modern German Army: General Walther Reinhardt and the Weimar Republic, 1914–1930 William Mulligan

Volume 23

Liberal Imperialism in Germany: Expansionism and Nationalism, 1848–1884

LIBERAL IMPERIALISM IN GERMANY Expansionism and Nationalism, 1848–1884


Matthew P. Fitzpatrick

Berghahn Books New York • Oxford

Published in 2008 by

Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com ©2008 Matthew P. Fitzpatrick

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fitzpatrick, Matthew P. Liberal imperialism in Germany : expansionism and nationalism, 1848–1884 / Matthew P. Fitzpatrick — 1st hardcover ed. p. cm. — (Monographs in German history ; v. 23) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-84545-520-0 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Germany—History—1848–1870. 2. Germany—History—1871– 3. Imperialism— History—19th century. 4. Liberalism—Germany—History—19th century. I. Title. DD203.F58 2008 320.540943'09034—dc22

2008020326

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Printed in the United States on acid-free paper

978-1-84545-520-0 hardcover

“… Die germanische Rasse ist von der Vorsehung bestimmt, die Weltherrschaft zu führen. Sie ist physisch und geistig vor allen andern bevorzugt, und die halbe Erde ist ihr fast unterthan. England, Amerika, Deutschland, das sind die drei Zweige des mächtigen germanischen Baumes, der auf den Hochebenen Asiens gekeimt, im Herzen Europas Wurzel getrieben hat, und unter dessen Schatten einst die ganze Erde ruhen wird.” —“Die deutsche Seemannsschule in Hamburg in ihrer Bedeutung für die Zukunfts-Marine Deutschlands.” Wochen-Blatt des Nationalvereins (WB), No. 23, 7 Sept. 1865. p.183.

“Das Bedürfnis nach einem stets ausgedehnteren Absatz für ihre Produkte jagt die Bourgeoisie über die ganze Erdkugel. Überall muß sie sich einnisten, überall anbauen, überall Verbindungen herstellen.” —K Marx, F Engels. Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei. 1848.

CONTENTS

Figures Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction

viii ix x 1

Part I: A Liberal Empire for a Liberal Nation

1. National Unification and Overseas Expansion at the Frankfurt National Assembly, 1848–1849

27

2. Mythopoesis—Imperialism as Nationalism

50

Part II: Liberal Imperialism in the “Post-Liberal” Era 3. Informal Empire and Private Sector Imperialism, 1849–1884

75

4. Bürgerlich Agency and the World of the Verein, 1849–1884

101

5. Bismarck and the Sociopolitical Context of the Colonial “Umschwung”

116

Part III: The Texts of Imperialism 6. Expansionist Agitation after 1849

135

7. Geography and Anthropology in the Service of Imperialism

160

8. Popular Culture and the Transmission of Imperialist Values

177

Conclusion Bibliography Index

205 212 234

FIGURES

Figure A. Frankfurter Latern. 1 December 1860.

25

Figure 1.1. Martial doodlings from a Naval Committee meeting.

36

Figure B. Alte und neue Zeit. Kladderadatsch, 25 August 1861.

73

Figure 5.1 Die Gartenlaube, No. 49, 1884.

117

Figure C. “Das gefährliche Kind.” Kladderadatsch 7, 5 February 1854.

133

Figure 8.1. Die Gartenlaube, No. 44, 1868.

185

Figure 8.2. Die Gartenlaube, No. 12, 1856.

186

Figure 8.3. Die Gartenlaube, No. 12, 1856.

186

Figure 8.4. Die Gartenlaube, No. 12, 1856.

187

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

There are numerous people who assisted me throughout this project and who deserve my heartfelt thanks. To begin with, thank you to those in the School of History at UNSW who assisted me in my time there, notably Günter Minnerup, John Milfull, Nevenko Bartulin, Susie Protschky, Sally Cove, and Sacha Davis for their help in creating a scholarly critical mass in the field of European Studies. Although I arrived there only late in the project, I would also like to thank the staff and students of my current home in the Department of History, Flinders University, Adelaide for their interest and support. I would also like to acknowledge the comments and advice offered by Hartmut Pogge von Strandmann, John Breuilly, Horst Gründer, Geoff Eley, Frank Lorenz Müller, Volker Berghahn, Dirk Moses, Andrew Bonnell, Bradley Naranch, Holger Winkler, Maria Nicholls, Carole Hunter, and Pamela Katsch, who read and/or commented upon parts or the whole of this work in its various stages. Naturally, the errors, inconsistencies, and flaws that remain are my own. Translations are my own unless otherwise noted and in the case of difficult to locate primary sources I have endeavored to include the original in the notes. The financial support offered by the School of History at the University of New South Wales as well as the generous support of the German DAAD have contributed materially to my ability to complete any research whatsoever, whilst the helpful staff at the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz and Berlin, the Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin, the Staatsarchiv Hamburg, the Niedersächsisches Staatsarchiv in Wolfenbüttel, and the Institut für Zeitungsforschung in Dortmund have ensured that I have had something about which to write. I would also like to acknowledge Stephan Bialas for initiating me into the bewildering world of Sütterlin. To my parents, family, and friends who have been supportive of my work and who have patiently listened to me think aloud on the subject on numerous occasions, thank you. The contents of some of these chapters have appeared in a different form in German History and German Studies Review. Thanks are due to these publications for permission to reprint some of the material included here from “A Fall from Grace? National Unity and the Search for Naval Power and Colonial Possessions 1848–1884,” German History 25(2), 2007, and “Narrating Empire: Die Gartenlaube and Germany’s Nineteenth–Century Liberal Expansionism,” German Studies Review, 30(1), 2007. This work is dedicated with love to my wife, Natasha Grundy, and our children, Ethan and Saskia.

ABBREVIATIONS

BA

Bundesarchiv

CEH

Central European History

DDP

Deutsche Demokratische Partei

DG

Die Gartenlaube

DKG

Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft

DKZ

Deutsche Kolonialzeitung

DNVP

Deutschnationale Volkspartei

DVP

Deutsche Volkspartei

GstA PK

Geheimes Staatsarchiv, Preußischer Kulturbesitz

IMT

International Military Tribunal

JMH

Journal of Modern History

Korag

Koloniale Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft

Mitteilungen

Mitteilungen aus Justus Perthes’ geographischer Anstalt über wichtige neue Erforschungen auf dem Gesammtgebiete der Geographie

NSDAP

Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei

NsSA

Niedersachsisches Staatsarchiv

RKB

Reichskolonialbund

StA Hamburg

Staatsarchiv Hamburg

SPD

Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands

WB

Wochen-Blatt des Nationalvereins

WS

Wochenschrift des Nationalvereins

INTRODUCTION


I

n the provocative conclusion to his 1944 Raleigh Lecture on the events of 1848, Sir Lewis Namier commented that, save for the self-justificatory mythologizing of latter-day liberals, and the timely intervention of the forces of political reaction, the expansionist desires of the Frankfurt Assembly of 1848 might have properly served as a template for the NSDAP. Citing the Russian radical Alexander Herzen, Namier claimed that “the first free word uttered after centuries of silence,” by Germany’s liberals, “was in opposition to the weak and oppressed nationalities.”1 Namier was, of course, discussing Central Europe, and in particular the treatment of the Poles and the Czechs. He also contained his critique on this occasion to 1848 and in particular to the Frankfurt National Assembly. Nevertheless, the view that Germany’s nineteenth century liberals were not entirely content with their “little Germany” (kleindeutsch) solution as a final delineation of the limits of national power is an idea that is worth pursuing, not merely in reviewing liberal views of Central Europe during 1848/49, but also their perception of the place of a liberal German nation in the wider world throughout the nineteenth century; that is, their role as a liberal imperial power commensurate with the liberal imperialist exemplar state par excellence, Britain. Despite Namier’s bold but illuminating intervention, the linkage between liberalism and the desire for empire in the history of German nation-building remains underwritten and indeed remains contentious, with most scholars overlooking the historical significance and legacy of nineteenth century imperialism. For most of Germany’s historians, the importance, even the existence of a specifically liberal nineteenth century imperialism remains dubious. For example, midway through the second volume of his magisterial study of German history, Thomas Nipperdey embarked upon his explanation of German colonial history. Somewhat apologetically, he announced, “The discussion must briefly turn to the colonies.”2 What followed was a three and a quarter page Notes for this section begin on page 17.

2 | Introduction

sketch of the nature of German rule in the African colonies, the sole theme of which was that Germany’s colonial history was a short-lived, largely unimportant era in the history of the German nation. Neither particularly successful nor unsuccessful when seen against the background of the experience of other, more dynamic colonial powers such as Britain and France, for Nipperdey, Germany’s colonies lay well outside of the main narrative of German history, as an insignificant political experiment devoid of social origins or historical effects. In 1975, Wolfgang J. Mommsen described imperialism as a late nineteenth century phenomenon that marked “liberalism’s fall from grace.” German liberals, he claimed, had allowed “the alienation of the liberal ideal through imperialist ideology …”3 during the 1880s as they came to “orient their societal ideals on those of the aristocratic upper class…”4 According to Mommsen, apart from the idiosyncratic and largely isolated works of Friedrich List, there was no significant broader liberal imperialist tradition in Germany until the 1880s, with a pro-imperialist liberal political position not clearly articulated until the late 1870s. After twenty intervening years of scholarship, Mommsen continued to hold the view that liberal imperialism was a movement with shallow roots, stating in his 1993 magnum opus that, “during the period of the hegemony of National Liberalism from 1867 until 1879, colonial agitation did not actually play a particularly meaningful roll.”5 For Lothar Gall, German colonialism was an expression of “the new nationalism” of the 1880s, which, seemingly without context or origins, gripped European countries, as they struggled for “a leading position in the world state system of the future.”6 Correctly positing economic considerations, such as the need for primary materials and new markets for surplus German production as one of the motivations for state-driven German expansionism in the post–1884 era, Gall nevertheless failed to offer any explanatory mechanism that could illustrate where these evidently pro-imperialist business considerations came from and how the pressure they exerted came to force a reversal of German government policy. Germany’s nineteenth century imperialism remains, for Gall, a late-nineteenth century phenomenon that marked the emergence of expansionist pressures within Germany, rather than the culmination of them. Similarly, Klaus Hildebrand, in his detailed study of German foreign policy, gave short shrift to the notion that colonial imperialism was a form of political utterance and praxis with deep roots within German society. Pointing to the refusal of the Reichstag to accept Bismarck’s proposal of a Samoan colony in 1880, Hildebrand simply shrugged, “Colonial thought … was hardly broadly popular.”7 In his shorter survey of German foreign policy between the Reichsgründung and World War One, Hildebrand dismissed Germany’s nineteenth century overseas imperialism as “Bismarcks Kolonialpolitik.”8 For Hildebrand, early German imperialism amounted to no more than a momentary political tactic employed by Bismarck in 1884 to isolate Britain in Europe and to ensure English dependence on Germany in its ongoing political contest with France for European hegemony. As such, colonialism’s importance had passed as early as March 1885, with the

Introduction | 3

following thirty years of colonial imperialism simply an incidental legacy of Bismarck’s earlier complex game of continental diplomatic chess. Hildebrand’s conviction that colonies were a political device in the hands of Bismarck necessarily excluded any deeper historical account of the origins and significance of German colonial policy, and while he offered an account of Bismarck’s interest in colonies, Hildebrand’s analysis does not allow for an explanation of the preexisting social resonances of colonial imperialism to which Bismarck sought to appeal. Other historians, such as Hans-Ulrich Wehler,9 Klaus Bade,10 and Hans Fenske,11 have perhaps more seriously engaged with Germany’s early expansionist past, while colonial specialists such as Horst Gründer,12 Helmut Bley,13 Horst Drechsler,14 Gesine Krüger,15 and Jürgen Zimmerer16 have also contributed serious work to the field. However, within German language scholarship, until recently, the writing of histories of nineteenth century colonialism and imperialism has been viewed as something of a historiographical cul-de-sac, with its contribution seen as extraneous to a dominant analytical paradigm that privileges a linear, Europe-oriented history of the German nation. Similarly, recent English-speaking historiography had also paid little serious attention to the domestic context of the colonial period. The most notable exceptions to this is the work of Hartmut Pogge von Strandmann,17 AJP Taylor’s short diplomacy-based book on the subject,18 the more recent work of Franz Lorenz Müller,19 and Lora Wildenthal’s study of the gendered nature of German imperialist experiences and imaginings.20 Under the rubric of cultural studies, a more literary inspired body of work has found prominence in both English and German, in the works of Susanne Zantop,21 John K Noyes,22 Pascal Grosse,23 Joachim Zeller,24 Ulrich van der Heyden,25 and Birthe Kundrus,26 whose monographs, anthologies, and articles demonstrate a methodological preference for a deconstruction of the scientific and literary texts and material traces of German imperialism, in an attempt to reveal the internal tensions, the racializing theoretics, and cultural encoding evident in imperialist utterances and practices. Ensconced within the thematically and stylistically dynamic genre of postcolonial studies, their work has made significant inroads into the understanding of German expansionism’s broader cultural resonances, before, during, and after the years of liberal imperialism. With the exception of perhaps Wehler, Pogge von Strandmann, AJP Taylor, and Bade, none of the older school of historians of Germany’s colonies have attempted to view German colonialism as a part of the broader patterns of German history emerging during the nineteenth century. Colonialism, and its superordinate imperialism, as sustained social phenomena (as opposed to Bismarckian caprice or cynical short term Realpolitik), have been excised, explained away or simply overlooked in works dealing with nineteenth century German history. This intrinsically Eurocentric analytical paradigm forgets that the history “created” through the various processes of imperialism derived solely from, and was therefore essential to, not only the history of the imperialist nation itself, but also the specific historical agents that coalesced to bring about an explicitly national-

4 | Introduction

ist drive to empire. The dominant historiographical model similarly overlooks the simple logic that a national history of a colonizing power and the history of the imperialism stemming from that power must primarily be seen as the study of selfconsciously cultivated, autochthonous social and cultural processes whose origins lie, not in any need within the indigenous cultures of the colonial “periphery,” but in the material and discursive conditions that arose through the construction and definition of the European nation-state. Imperialism as a European, and in this instance, German, enterprise must be viewed as a concerted and purposive contribution to the creation of material wealth and international power for the nation, as well as to the identity formation of the nation precisely as an imperialist power. As Frantz Fanon has pointed out, imperialism, while enacted in the lands of the non-European “periphery,” finds its locus of meaning firmly within the prevailing discursive and social conditions of the European imperial center: The settler makes history and is conscious of making it. And because he constantly refers to the history of his mother country, he clearly indicates that he himself is the extension of that mother country. Thus the history which he [sic] writes is not the history of the country which he plunders but the history of his own nation…27

Within Germany, the excising of nineteenth century imperialism from national historiography, as critiqued here by Fanon, could be said to be a post World War II phenomenon. Previously, the intrinsically European considerations underwriting the domination of the non-European world by European nations were far better understood, particularly by those who sought to further the imperialist ideal. “The fate of Europe is mirrored in the fate of Africa,” wrote Germany’s Arthur Dix in 1932, arguing for the return of Germany’s colonies. “The world political position of the Europeans … has found a visible expression in their African position since the division of Africa …”28 Yet despite such earlier appreciations of the link between imperialism and the construction of the German nation-state, historians have been slow to fully integrate Germany’s pre-Nazi imperialism into their narratives of German nation-building and the construction of German national identity, seeing in it only an historical dead end of little more than curiosity value. Methodologically, this is simply an error of writing history “nunc pro tunc.”29 The marginalization, not to say quarantining, from historiography of the importance and impact of imperialism on the imperialist state, perhaps a product of post World War II attempts to construct liberalism as a meta-narrative free of the taint of imperialism,30 is of course not exclusive to the domain of German historiography, but has until recently been a dominant feature of much European historiography, as Edward Said noted: The asymmetry is striking. In one instance, we assume that the better part of history in colonial territories was a function of the imperial intervention; in the other, there is an equally obstinate assumption that colonial eccentric to the cultural activities of the great metropolitan cultures.31

Introduction | 5

The treatment of early German imperialism as an essentially marginal affair is an example of an “asymmetrical” methodology: a methodology that risks, indeed favors, the overlooking of a crucial current of nineteenth century sociopolitical development that was, at the time, perceived as playing a critical role in the development of a united, economically progressive, and politically liberal Germany. Yet to diminish the role of mid nineteenth century colonial imperialism, as historians such as Nipperdey and Mommsen have done, is to inscribe a post World War II teleology into nineteenth and early twentieth century events—that is, to see German colonial imperialism, an important early manifestation of German imperialism and liberal national identity, as an historical dead end half a century before it was to become one. Similarly, viewing nineteenth century imperialist discourse as an outgrowth of late nineteenth century politics is to misunderstand the deep-rootedness of German imperialist sentiment, particularly amongst Germany’s ascendant liberals, or in terms of social strata, Germany’s mercantile Wirtschaftsbürgertum and its complement, the educated Bildungsbürgertum. Just as the railway engine was to be for the middle classes “the hearse that conveyed the nobility to the graveyard,”32 so too colonies and the navy were viewed as integral to the rise of a thoroughly bürgerlich Germany. Given the centrality of expansionism to liberal notions of the nation-state, a new approach to German imperialism is required, one that attempts to integrate German imperialism into its broader historical context and to situate it at the heart of the sociopolitical debates of the era in which it arose. According to this model, an understanding of German imperialist discourse and praxis becomes central to an understanding of liberal attempts at narrating, or providing a discursive underpinning to, an emerging nationalist sensibility and a resultant political project of nation-building. Furthermore, with imperialism understood as lying at the core of the liberal narration of the German nation-state, and as having been strategically posited by liberals as an apolitical totalizing, superordinate discourse of “German-ness,” an understanding emerges of why the political entity “Germany,” defined as an imperialist liberal nation, was opposed by those adhering to explanatory metanarratives rivaling this liberal version of nationhood. That is, a historiographical model informed by an understanding of the central role played by imperialism in nineteenth century Germany illuminates the nature of the clash between the liberal nationalist-imperialist meta-narrative and other, mutually exclusive visions of what was or could be meant by the signifier “Deutschtum.” Rather than postulate colonialism and imperialism more broadly, as an historical accident, or at best a contingent byproduct of other, more important, decision-making processes, early German imperialism can be revealed as the important and serious nation-building undertaking that it was seen as being at the time, both by those liberals who campaigned for an active imperialist strategy and by those other conservative, socialist, and Catholic Germans who opposed the imperialist and nationalist projects of an emergent liberalism.33

6 | Introduction

Such an empire-centered approach has emerged in the historiography of other European nations, as the work of the Subaltern Studies group and other postcolonial history practitioners has percolated through the discipline. Robert Young, for example, drawing upon the insights of Edward Said’s Culture and Imperialism,34 has recommended just such an imperialism focused approach for the study of British history, stating that, “… colonialism, in the British example, was not simply a marginal activity on the edges of English civilization, but fundamental in its own cultural self-representation.”35 Catherine Hall and Jennifer Pitts, in their respective monographs, have gone on to demonstrate this ably.36 Similarly, new work on the French and their colonies is pointing to the same conclusion, namely that colonies were instrumental in the (re)inscription of identity in the metropole.37 Admittedly, nineteenth century German imperialism, when compared against the British form (upon which it was self-consciously modeled), remained modest in its actual physical and temporal scope. Yet, in terms of its effects upon and place within cultural, and indeed, political self-representation prior to, during, and after the colonial era, imperialism played a nonetheless crucial role within German liberalism as a means of proclaiming a sense of modernity and national cohesion. As such, Young’s preferred form of historiography has much to recommend itself to the analysis of the German past. In employing a postcolonial methodology for the study of the German past, the question then arises: how central was imperialism to German culture, society, and politics in the nineteenth century? Wilhelm Roscher, writing in 1885, stated that, “In the affairs of the Reichstag as in electioneering, in newspaper articles as in conversations in the community the colonial question now plays a key role.”38 For decades previous to this statement, liberal Germans, including Roscher, had been laying the theoretical groundwork for this explosion in interest in German colonial imperialism. Complementing this growing textual assertion of imperialism were the actions of Germany’s educated and mercantile upper middle classes, who had established a certain facticity to German colonial claims via an imperialism from below, through their penetration of extra European lands and by the establishing of trading outposts and private sector colonies across the globe. Similarly, the aspiring lower and middle orders had steadily voted with their feet, settling abroad in these colonies and those of other European powers as a means of reaching the social position and attaining the wealth that they felt was denied them in Germany. Spanning from the Vormärz era through to the Berlin Conference on Africa, as a constituent discourse within the liberal Weltanschauung, or more precisely, meta-narrative, imperialism had come to be seen as integral to the liberal idea of German nationhood. The notion of a German colonial empire and imperialist power, both as an end in itself and as a nation-building strategy, had been established in the works of such liberals as Hans Christoph von Gagern, Friedrich List, and Wilhelm Roscher. It was enacted throughout the years of liberalism’s political retreat by individuals such as Hermann Blumenau and Johann Sturz, and organizations such as the Hamburger Kolonisationsverein (Hamburg Colonization

Introduction | 7

Association), and famously reinvigorated by Friedrich Fabri in the late 1870s. Similarly, the establishment of an expansionist foreign policy was one of the few points of near universal agreement at the 1848/49 Frankfurt National Assembly, while active naval and expansionist foreign policies were central planks in the policy position of the Nationalverein (National Association) during the 1860s. In the cultural sphere, novelists such as Friedrich Gerstäcker, magazines such as Die Gartenlaube, and the social scientists dominating the disciplines of geography and anthropology consistently defended imperialism’s key place within the liberal worldview between 1848 and 1884. The history of early German imperialism and that of German liberalism were remarkably intertwined, yet the major English language surveys of German liberalism, Dieter Langewiesche’s Liberalism in Germany and James Sheehan’s German Liberalism in the Nineteenth Century,39 have underplayed to the point of omission the role played by imperialism in the formulation of not only a liberal identity, but of a liberal national ideal. Following more traditional politico-chronological formats, these works appear unaware of the interplay between liberalism and imperialist theorizing. Other historians, seeking to briefly address the issue of liberal imperialism in order to put the issue to rest, have played a semantic game, insisting either that the German liberals were imperialists, but not really liberals, or that they were indeed liberals, but that their actions were not really those of imperialists.40 Either way, most historians of German liberalism, following Mommsen’s lead, have claimed that imperialism and its political instrumentality were strictly limited to the post–1884 era. Langewiesche is again exemplary here, explicitly affirming Mommsen’s view in his assertion that, “A nationalism that had transformed itself into imperialism had no place within a liberal politics of integration.”41 The dominant analytical paradigm has presented German liberal imperialism as having had shallow roots and as having been an impossibility, until German liberals had “capitulated” to a darker, more conservative agenda, betraying their core beliefs in the process of becoming a captive Bismarckian party.42 As Lothar Gall has pointed out,43 much of this type of work has revolved around the construction of abstract, ideal types of both “liberalism” and “imperialism” against which the thoughts and actions of Germany’s liberals might be measured, so as to demonstrate an (inevitable) inability to meet the standards of a purely notional, ideal typical liberalism.44 According to this model, liberals could not be imperialists, as liberalism and imperialism were, by their very definitions, polar opposites. The following seeks to refute this view. Of course, Germany’s liberals could not simply impose their expansionist vision upon the German nation, and of course, there did exist alternate discursive strands—even within liberalism itself—that appeared to not view imperialism as the most pressing element of their identity, particularly after the split between the National Liberals and the Progressive Liberals that saw the issues of pragmatism and constitutionality dominate intra-liberal debate, often at the expense of previous sources of agreement between the two liberal wings.45 However, as liberalism’s oldest and more pervasive manifestation, German nationalist-liberalism

8 | Introduction

(especially as seen at the 1848 Frankfurt Nationalversammlung, amongst the Nationalverein and, in its most apparent post–1871 manifestation, amidst the Nationalliberalen) clearly sought to link the parallel discourses of imperialism and nationalism, throughout the nineteenth century, as a means of foregrounding them as consciously chosen signifiers of liberalism’s ability to overcome particularist objections to a posited liberal nation-state. This injection by liberals of the emblematic and symbolically resonant discourse of imperialism into the debate over national identity was instrumental in the liberals’ attempts to legitimize their claim to social, cultural, and political hegemony. Through the forging of a state that was congruent with the tropes and principles of a nationalist-liberal meta-narrative,46 during an era in which “the problem of German identity [remained] unsolved,”47 German liberals, via the deployment of an expansionist foreign policy, attempted to create a political and cultural movement that, whilst formed in the crucible of liberalism, could be accepted by those who more naturally represented the constituency of other rival narrations of German nationhood.48 Yet, this should not be seen as a cynical “invention of tradition”49 used by liberals to dazzle, divert, and deflect adherents to rival political and religious metanarratives. The proponents of liberal imperialism did not, as some have argued, merely assert an invented brand of imperialist nationalism as a superficial political maneuver aimed at bamboozling political rivals during times of crisis.50 To the contrary, it is apparent that the loudest cries for a forward German foreign policy came at times, such as 1848, in which German liberals were enjoying the political ascendancy, as Namier suggested with regard to Central Europe.51 As members of a proposed “national community,” albeit one that they were attempting to imagine and shape in their own imperialist image, German liberals understood the importance of not only being involved in the shaping of the shared cultural imaginings and understandings implicit in the narration of the German nation, but also of being accepted as the hegemonic or official voice of nationalist utterance. Once that was achieved, other narrations of the forms of political unity could be branded as unpatriotic, heretical, deviant or simply wrong, thereby reinforcing the liberal cultural hegemony and consolidating the political and material ascendancy of Germany’s Bürgertum. As well as being perceived by liberals, who believed they were imitating the English model,52 as integral to the concept of liberal rule, imperialist nationalism held out the tactical possibility of the material and political consolidation of liberal control over the German nation-state. This process of self-positioning, of becoming the dominant enunciators of the national direction in order to secure and perpetuate political hegemony via the state, has been alluded to by Gilles Deleuze: … the apparatus of the State is a concrete assemblage which realizes the machine of overcoding society … This machine in its turn is thus not the State itself, it is the abstract machine which organizes the dominant utterances and the established order of a society, the dominant languages and knowledge, conformist actions and feelings, the segments which prevail over others.53

Introduction | 9

That is, in order that they might exercise political and economic dominance, liberals had to first combat and eventually subsume alternative discursive renderings of “Deutschtum” within their own explanatory meta-narrative. This has been described as a process of “capture,”54 which involves a harnessing of the concerns of social segments outside of a particular, discrete discourse community, via the appeal to a nominally superordinate discourse, in order to broaden what would otherwise be seen as a partisan discourse, so as to demonstrate its applicability to all social segments. In the case of German liberal imperialism, Germany’s ascendant middle classes attempted, through their theorizing, praxis, and popular culture representations of their project, to demonstrate the universality of the benefits of an imperialist nationalism. Just as the building of a nation-state was a central tenet of German liberalism, the assertion of an imperialist foreign policy was a crucial part of this nationalist discourse. Nationalism, as liberalism’s vehicle for the establishment of hegemony over social and political organization, underwritten by the mythopoeic power of imperialist discourse, was proffered as a totalizing meta-narrative superseding all other narrations of the German nation, whether Catholic, socialist or, in particular, that of the agrarian conservatives, in whose hands lay “the ultimate control of the state-machine” historically.55 The forms of praxis it engendered were to be enacted and materialized through a new, national polity that was indeed to be the “concrete assemblage” of an intrinsically liberal encoding of German society. It is this process of “capture,” and the way in which liberals sought to establish liberal imperialism as the hegemonic discourse of political rule within a posited national entity called “Germany,” that is the concern of this study. As such, it is a study of both German cultural and political history, which seeks to demonstrate not only a continuity within liberal imperialist discourse stretching from 1848 until 1884, but also to demonstrate that, through this component of nationalist discourse, the edifice of liberal identity came to rest upon the availability of a colonial realm that was perceived as a discursive and material space in which the idea of “Germany” could be established through the prosecution of an imperialist foreign policy. Concerned with the discourse of imperialism rather than its practice, this study does not intend to chart the actual years of German colonialism, which have become the subject of increasingly sophisticated analysis in recent years.56 Rather, this study will outline the construction and maintenance of an imperialist topos in both the political and cultural spheres precisely in those years in which Germany did not have a colonial empire, so as to demonstrate the way in which the idea of and desire for empire interacted with the broader political agenda of Germany’s liberals. Although in the years 1884–1918, the actual German colonies played a demonstrable political and material role, both in terms of what they offered and what they failed to offer, in the ostensibly “pre-colonial” era, theories of and plans for German colonialism on a grand scale were themselves central to the nation-building project of liberals.57 As both the symbol and guarantor of an

10 | Introduction

ascribed future prosperity and an expanded role in the world, imperialist theory and praxis, marked by naval expansion and private colonial possessions, became a site for the elaboration of the more general expansionist and militarist tendencies present in German liberalism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.58 With Germany’s colonies variously envisaged by liberals as encompassing the entirety of South America, much of Southern Africa, a large portion of China, and the islands of the Pacific, it is difficult to characterize these plans as modest and unimportant side projects unrelated to the liberals’ understanding of Germany’s future role in the world. That the actual scope and role of nineteenth century German imperialism was, for liberals, an eventual disappointment has served to obscure the centrality of expansionism and colonialism to German liberalism during that period when Germany did not have state-run colonies, but believed they would when the time of liberal rule finally arrived. It would be false to assert that the ultimate modesty of Germany’s overseas empire meant that German liberal imperialists had planned for such a modest empire. Their original, far bolder plans deserve serious attention if the history of liberalism is to be properly understood. This desire and drive for empire, rather than the management of an actual empire or the broader, intricate history of German liberalism in toto, constitutes the study of this book. Further issues discussed will be the way in which imperialism was proffered as a discursive vehicle for nationalist-liberalism as it sought to supplant socialism, conservatism, and Catholicism as rival meta-narratives, through the breadth of resonance of imperialism’s putative material and demographic outcomes. This linkage between imperialism, understood as a national Weltaufgabe, and liberal nation-building, it will be argued, is most visible precisely during that period in which the distracting variable of the fortunes of actual imperialist rule was not a factor. Equally as important as the liberals’ deployment of “nationhood”—garnered from their perception of a notional British model59—as their preferred manifestation of the state, is the fact that their project to establish absolute hegemony over the state was never fully successful. Even as bourgeois cultural forms and politics appeared to have attained some semblance of dominance in the postunification era,60 this ascendancy was continuously undermined by both internal liberal division and the tenacity of the proponents of rival meta-narratives, who continuously reformulated their positions in response to increasing liberal dominance and in so doing, diluted the extent to which liberalism’s political dominance was absolute. However, while the failure of German liberalism to construct a totalizing or monolithic national identity from imperialist discourse was partially due to the refusal of conservatism, political Catholicism, and socialism to accept liberalism’s preeminence as a privileged “encoder” of social and political meaning for the state, it was also due to the existence of a gap between the limitless possibilities afforded by unbridled liberal and imperialist theorizing, and the politically and materially constrained conduct of liberal and imperialist forms of praxis. There was

Introduction | 11

no “final moment,” even when German colonies had been established, in which liberal imperialists could proclaim their definitive triumph, with their national meta-narrative becoming synonymous with the entirety of German national selfperception, as expressed through both culture and politics. Liberals were never entirely successful in definitively positioning their discursive and material priorities as consubstantial with a depoliticized “national” agenda with which all would naturally agree. Although able to insinuate a large portion of their political agenda into national politics, liberals, partially through internal divisions and partially as a result of the activities of their rivals, were never able to fully capture the German state and their claims to rule continued to be contested. This translated into a certain instability in the deliverance of material and political benefits for German liberals via the means of national politics. With the relatively stable liberal discourse of imperialist nationalism constantly and necessarily decanted through the unstable, superordinate contest between conflicting models of governance and social organization, itself a reflection of the evolving material conditions in which this contest was situated and reproduced, a continuous modification of the liberal notion of what imperialism could mean for the German nation and how it should be carried out was necessitated. Hence, a debate existed between National Liberals and the Progressive Liberals, for example, over whether imperialism should or could be conducted through the state, or, given the uneven results in working toward liberal goals via statist means, whether civil society and the private sector might not produce more favorable imperialist outcomes, at least in the short to medium term—until liberal hegemony could be realized. Yet, this political unevenness never required the giving up of the bedrock conviction that imperialism was integral to the future of a liberal German nation-state. In part, this helps explain that what was understood at various times as constituting an imperialist project became in the long term a sprawling set of ideas that at times competed and at other times were viewed as perfectly compatible. Far from mutually inconsistent, both Weltpolitik and Lebensraum stemmed from an overarching liberal imperialism that variously looked to trading colonies, “inner” (Eastern) colonization, independent and private sector settler colonization, statedirected settler colonization, assisted and protected emigration, naval power, and missionary activity, as less competing than complementary forms of the expansionist goal. The minute shifts in how these variant forms of imperialist praxis were posited over time defy any theoretical or schematic formulation,61 grounded as they were in the contingencies of political happenstance and the personal preferences of the individual imperialist theorist or practitioner. To map this uneven terrain, recourse to empirical research is necessary. What can, however, be said is that with each theorist or practitioner delineating anew the parameters of a nascent liberal Germany’s international power, the resonance of imperialism was enhanced, rather than diminished, as a robust, combative, teleologically driven discourse that articulated a range of future national modalities within an umbrella category of “imperialist liberal nation.” It is partly the flexibility afforded

12 | Introduction

by this apparently heterodox cacophony of options within German imperialist discourse itself, as wide ranging expressions of liberalism’s imperialist nationalism, that enabled it to compete so effectively against rival meta-narratives. Stable in terms of the commonality and durability of the central identifying tropes of the discourse, its relative fluidity in terms of the precise complexion of the various suggestions for its actual implementation made it difficult for rivals to attack it in its entirety.62 This heterodoxy in the forms of nineteenth century German liberal imperialism requires detailed charting, in order to demonstrate that, firstly, far from beginning with Bismarck’s telegram to South African Consul Lippert on the 24th of April 1884, German imperialism had its origins in the very roots of the nineteenth century liberal nationalist agenda.63 Secondly, it is necessary to illustrate the fact that, despite this apparent heterodoxy, the multifarious manifestations of imperialism, whether statist or non-statist, coalesced to comprise, in material terms, a foreign policy direction that would bind the lands of the colonial periphery to the political, economic, and cultural requirements and priorities of a united, industrialized, capitalist Germany. Culturally speaking, in so doing, imperialism simultaneously incorporated and defined these lands as a site, not necessarily for the moral or material betterment of indigenous peoples, but for the processes necessitated by the unfolding of a distinctively liberal conception of German statehood as coterminous with nationalism, capitalism, and a hypertrophic expansionism. * * * * * With regard to conceptualizations of nations and nationalism, Ernest Gellner’s insight that nations are in essence modern phenomena is yet to be convincingly refuted. Similarly, the statement that “it is nationalism that engenders nations, and not the other way round”64 constitutes a cornerstone to this study. Nations (and Germany in particular) should not be considered as autochthonous outgrowths of a landscape and timeless heritage, whose vitality lies dormant until summonsed by history.65 Rather, groups, who for a variety of reasons see their interests as being best served by their existence, call nations into being through selfconsciously “nationalist” endeavors.66 Without being utterly random formations, nations are nonetheless consciously contrived entities, which, as John Breuilly has argued, arise both as “a matter of contingency and part of a more general pattern of development.”67 As Ernst Renan and postcolonial theorists such as Homi Bhabha have argued, these nations are often based on the obligation to forget past and present social ruptures, differences and divides rather than any profound, totalizing or nation necessitating bond.68 In Germany, where liberal exhortations for a nation-state stemmed from discernible material interests generated by modernization—interests that had a limited, even negative impact on other segments of German society—both the contingency of the nation-state’s actual contours69 and the obligation to forget social and material differences within the nation were especially pronounced.

Introduction | 13

It is the attempt to overcome this contingency and these differences, via the construction of a seemingly coherent, totalizing narrative of “nationhood,” upon which all could agree, that is alluded to in the phrase “nationalist discourse.” Those that viewed themselves as sharing a specific identifying aspect of culture or economic purpose, as in the case of Germany’s liberals, and who continuously manipulated and modified the significance of this shared identifier, via their interaction with one another (and with external others that negatively defined their identity), in order to proffer this shared identifier as a precondition for belonging to an idealized nation-state (whether one partially preexisting as post–1866, post-Mainlinie Germany arguably was, or one that was yet to be delineated), can be said to have been involved in the assemblage and maintenance of a nationalist discourse. Nationalism then is the attempt to assert the preeminence of (pragmatically, but nevertheless contingently) selected strands of regional geography, economics or (usually linguistically defined) culture as the most important in the realization of an aggregate identity.70 In the case of Germany, it can be seen as a deliberate, tactical conflation by liberals of a peculiarly liberal identity with the identity of the entire polity. The liberal project was to ensure that these strands of nationalist identification were (at least tacitly) accepted as being of sufficient importance to allow the populace to accede to being organized and ruled in their name. In this sense, nationalist rule was to require at least a nominally popular aspect in so far as the dominant element of society must not actively reject the discursive edifice that was to constitute the organizing principles of the nation. As August Ludwig von Rochau71 and Antonio Gramsci72 have pointed out, when government ceased to reflect a hegemonic communal identity that reflects the material conditions of the state, the only recourse is to coercion, with its concomitant long term instability and ultimate unsustainability. The model of German nationalism offered here is one in which social and material power was diffused amongst old and new social forces; but where nationalist pressures were concentrated specifically within the ascendant middle classes and articulated through political liberalism. The liberal formulation of nationalism was underpinned by the discourse of imperialism, which acted as liberalism’s central mythopoeic engine, both as an envisioned foreign policy program and as a domestic gesture of nascent liberal material power. This mythos of imperialism was the discursive embodiment of German liberals’ attempt to define national identity through reference to the German mastery of alterity that stretched at least from the 1840s until well beyond the beginnings of statist imperialism in the 1880s. It is worth pointing out that the inextricable links between Germany’s liberal nationalism and liberal imperialism were largely a product of the double-edged example of British liberalism, which had seamlessly blended the two concepts.73 Just as British constitutionalism, its status as a Rechtsstaat, and its outwardly directed trade economy were objects of admiration, so too were its naval power and imperial possessions, which were viewed by German liberals as underpinning

14 | Introduction

Britain’s political and economic successes. The equation between colonies supported by an irresistible naval power and the affluence and political ascendancy of the liberal middle classes was a seductive one for German liberals, who sought to reproduce this success in their own country. However, this attempt to import the British path to modernity was also tinged with a strong competitive spirit that simultaneously viewed British successes as directly affecting Germany’s chances at achieving them herself. With every colony Britain adopted, German liberals saw themselves as increasingly locked out of the extra-European world. German admiration for Britain’s global role and prosperity was riddled with envy, and the notion of competition bore the seeds of earnest rivalry, and even hostility. It was all of these conflicting attitudes and influences that German liberals brought to their nation-building task. Yet to be answered is the question of in what way the emergence of nationalism was a distinctly modern state of affairs. Broadly speaking, it was its interconnectedness with the disruption caused to the traditional social patterns of agrarian society by nascent industrialization that sees it as essential modern. As the processes of modernization in the early to mid nineteenth century pitted new, proto-industrial modes of production against an agrarian sector under enormous strain,74 a concomitant social and cultural redefinition occurred, in which “rival cultures [were] struggling to capture the souls of men.”75 Earlier demographic and labor patterns were replaced with competing forms, as social dislocation and distress accompanied the agrarian crisis.76 Simultaneously, social identities were altered, as an increasingly self-conscious bourgeoisie and an embryonic proletariat began to emerge.77 German politics too became a “striking juxtaposition of old and new,”78 as Germany moved toward what Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl declared in 1851 to be “bürgerliche Gesellschaft.”79 This social change, engendered by a nascent modernity, confounded the utilization of political power as executed in earlier states and necessarily gave rise to new forms of political organization. The notion of the state as a political entity that was the personal possession of a sovereign gave way to that of the “bureaucratic state”80 and eventually to that of a nation as an “imagined community,” whose self-image was continuously reiterated through print media, as theorized by Benedict Anderson,81 as well as through the self-consciously patriotic practices of civil society.82 In terms of origins, the frames of reference for the new nationstate were drawn from the social logic underpinning the emerging, visibly oppositional, middle class, and predominantly liberal elements of society.83 Part of this process of forging a distinctly national identity (as opposed to the regional, confessional, class or gender identity that the national was meant to supersede) included the delineation of a national mission that gave the national community a sense of teleological importance. It is in this respect that German liberal imperialism can be seen as of historical significance, as the proffered vehicle of liberal Germany’s unifying national teleology. As Geoff Eley has convincingly argued, and both the Bielefeld and Frankfurt investigations into the nature of, and relationship between, Germany’s Bürgertum

Introduction | 15

and liberalism have illustrated,84 there can be no immediate correlation made between liberalism as a political form and the bourgeoisie as a social class.85 However, some of the problems of discussing the two in unison can be partially alleviated by disentangling from the concept of “liberalism” those ideal type abstractions that both Eley and Lothar Gall have argued are essentially undesirable ossifications of an intrinsically fluid discourse,86 and it is arguable that there remains room for an analysis that demonstrates lines of overlap and commonality between the two. If German liberalism is viewed in terms of the evident and professed actions and motivations of self-confessed German “liberals,” enacting policy according to their material interests on the one hand and the dictates of compromise necessitated by the political process on the other, without the imposition of an overly schematized conceptual edifice, a clearer picture of liberalism emerges, as a concrete political assemblage, realized by groups of engaged individuals who individually and collectively claimed “liberalism” for themselves; a liberalism that did in fact maintain an affinity with the material, cultural, and political objectives of the Wirtschaftsbürgertum.87 There is, as David Blackbourn has argued, “… good reason to talk of German bourgeois liberalism,” as the product of a relationship between bourgeois material interests, socio-cultural norms, and liberal politics.88 Clearly, liberalism—or for that matter numerous liberalisms—had sprouted and changed between 1848 and 1884, and it becomes difficult to trace a single necessary condition to which all self-professed liberals adhered, as commitments to such things as free trade and protectionism came and went, and as liberalism underwent a seismic shift during its transformation from an oppositional movement to a governing force.89 What is interesting, however, is the frequency with which expansionist politics were positioned as central to a liberal Weltanschauung over the course of the nineteenth century by Germany’s Wirtschaftsbürgertum, as the British-inspired linkages between international trade, imperialism, national and individual prosperity, and liberal political hegemony were increasingly perceived as irrefutable. Yet the Wirtschaftsbürgertum were not the sole constituent element of liberalism’s social base, nor was their political role in liberal politics always a determinant one. As Eley has further argued,90 the educated bourgeoisie, the “professoriate” that comprised the Bildungsbürgertum, played a pivotal role in the delineation and enacting of liberal culture and politics. As that section of liberal society professionally engaged in the elaboration and transmission of culture, their role in furthering liberal aims cannot be overestimated, particularly when assessing the gradual processes leading to the liberal cultural hegemony that was a precondition for the construction of Riehl’s bürgerliche Gesellschaft. Although not completely coextensive with liberalism as a movement, Germany’s Wirtschaftsbürgertum and its Bildungsbürgertum comprise the two sectors of liberal German society scrutinized by this study,91 in order to demonstrate the relatively harmonious relationship between the two when it came to the issue of an expansionist national foreign policy. Imperialism, as an integrative discourse uniting the disparate elements comprising liberal circles, operated throughout the nineteenth century as

16 | Introduction

a (not always successful) means of overcoming differing liberal perspectives on issues such as free trade and protectionism, the role of Prussia, and the shape of the German nation. Coupled with nationalism, imperialism was proffered as a point of unity, firstly for German liberals and secondly for the nation that they were attempting to forge. In terms of la longue durée, Germany’s era of actual state-sanctioned overseas imperialism appears at a glance to be one of the great dead ends of history. Spanning barely thirty years and influencing a mere handful of regions, Germany was always very much a second tier colonial power. As such, it is not difficult to overemphasize the material importance of Germany’s state-run colonies. However, imperialism was experienced, at least vicariously, through texts and political discussion by a far greater part of the German population, before, during, and after Germany was actually engaged in colonizing activities, than were actually involved in its mechanics. Furthermore, those involved in imperialist projects belonged to a privileged social milieu able to exercise a great degree of influence over the affairs of the entire nation. Herein lay the historical importance of German imperialism and its texts for German society, as a topos or site through which the domestic contestation of identity, cultural hegemony, and politico-material dominance could be pursued. Without arguing the absurdity that Germany’s actual colonies and events which occurred there were immaterial to German colonialism, for many Germans, and particularly for many liberal Germans, colonial undertakings and a German naval capacity were significant as much for their domestic symbolic resonances, their congruence with a liberal imagery of rule and its correspondence to the vision of a modern, industrial, and worldly Germany as for any material benefits that might accrue from their establishment. A German imperialist foreign policy meant more than mere “prestige”—it was a deep-seated founding symbol of the liberal German nation and its arrival into the world. It is this that is meant by the notion of liberal imperialism’s mythopoeic function. An investigation into the teleological underpinning of the texts of imperialism necessitates an understanding of the social context within which these texts appeared. An assumption of this study is that the teleology and central tropes of German imperialist discourse both reflected and profoundly affected the material and political facts of the era in which they were situated, in particular with regard to liberal concerns regarding the nature of the “German national mission.” As such, imperialist discourse was only partially oneiric, being affected by and having an effect upon the material world in which it came to be situated. That is, the narratives of German imperialism were both firmly embedded in the sociopolitical fabric of their temporal context, as well as able to operate as active agents in its transformation.92 During the pre-colonial era, literary and non-literary texts, political discussions, and private colonial initiatives were instrumental in the transformation of relatively amorphous strands of imperialist discourse into broader social realities—such as the eventual political enacting of imperialism and anti-imperialism, liberalism and anti-liberalism.

Introduction | 17

This contextualizing of texts and political discussions, while hardly an innovation, is approached here somewhat differently from the usual means employed by Germany’s historians, in that it uses, at least partially, the insights afforded by postcolonial studies. Narratives about external, and, from the European perspective, peripheral lands have been studied so as to illustrate the intrinsically domestic preoccupations operating within them. Put simply, the importance of deconstructing these texts, ostensibly about the external world, lies in their construction of social meaning within Germany, which is important not merely for nineteenth century German colonists or those interested in the seemingly antiquarian issue of colonial policy in the nineteenth century, but for all historians interested in the role of an objectified alterity in the forging of a liberal German nation. In instrumentalizing imperialist discourse and action, German liberals attempted to satiate what Horst Gründer has described as a nationalist Identitätssehnsucht93 via the discourse and praxis of empire. As such, liberal imperialism saw the institutionalization of imperial Herrschaft (represented as benevolent stewardship or education of “lesser peoples”) as opposed to language frontiers and tradition as the foremost identifiers of German identity. Increasingly, German identity was delineated with reference to a colonial alterity,94 as represented through the texts of a burgeoning imperialist literature and defined in relation to the broader “civilizing” mission of Europeans. As an effective discursive means of supporting the hegemony of the liberal formulation of the nation-state, and as the embodiment of the nationalist-liberal meta-narrative and epistemology of rule, imperialist discourse reveals far more than a series of individual ponderings over peripheral parcels of land in Africa, America, Asia, and the Pacific. The colonies themselves have been perceived as a marginal part of German territory; however, the texts and discussions they engendered and the discursive space they occupied spoke far above their material weight, in so far as they provided a national discourse of imperialism that was instrumental in the ascendancy of German liberalism. The politico-cultural ascendancy of liberalism was inextricably linked to the process of embourgeoisement undergone by nineteenth century German society. In turn, this process was at least partially a product of the liberal objectification of a colonial alterity.

Notes 1. L. Namier. 1848: The Revolution of the Intellectuals. Oxford University Press, London, 1962. pp. 123–24. 2. T. Nipperdey. Deutsche Geschichte 1866–1918. Vol II—Machtstaat vor der Demokratie. Verlag CH Beck, München, 1992. p. 286ff. 3. WJ Mommsen. “Wandlungen der Liberalen Idee im Zeitalter des Imperialismus.” In K. Holl & G. List. (eds) Liberalismus und imperialistischer Staat. Der Imperialismus als Problem liberaler

18 | Introduction

4. 5.

6.

7. 8.

9. 10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

Parteien in Deutschland 1890–1914. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen, 1975. p. 110. In the same volume, Lothar Gall criticized the “theological” overtones of Mommsen’s characterization, as well as commenting on the even stronger formulation of the issue in the original paper in which Mommsen presented the idea. See L. Gall. “Sündenfall des Liberalen Denkens oder Krise der bürgerlich-liberalen Bewegung? Zum Verhältnis von Liberalismus und Imperialismus in Deutschland.” In K. Holl & G. List. Liberalismus und imperialistischer Staat. pp. 148–49, 156. n.5. WJ Mommsen. “Wandlungen der liberalen Idee.” pp. 109ff., 119. WJ Mommsen. Geschichte Deutschlands. Vol. 17, Part 1. Das Ringen um den nationalen Staat. Die Gründung und der innere Ausbau des Deutschen Reiches unter Otto von Bismarck 1850 bis 1890. Propyläen Verlag, Berlin, 1993. p. 508. L. Gall. Europa auf dem Weg in die Moderne, 1850–1890. R. Oldenbourg Verlag, München, 1997. pp. 94ff. A more subtle approach to German imperialism can be at least partially detected in some of Gall’s earlier works. See for example L. Gall. “Sündenfall des liberalen Denkens.” L. Gall. “Liberalismus und Auswärtige Politik.” In K. Hildebrand & R. Pommerin, (eds). Deutsche Frage und europäisches Gleichgewicht. Böhlau Verlag, Köln, 1985. K. Hildebrand. Das Vergangene Reich: Deutsche Außenpolitik von Bismarck bis Hitler 1871– 1945. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart, 1995. p. 87. K. Hildebrand. Deutsche Außenpolitik 1871–1918. Enzyklopädie Deutscher Geschichte Vol 2. R. Oldenbourg Verlag, München, 1989. pp. 15–16. This notion of “Bismarck’s colonialism” has made its way into contemporary, popular accounts of German colonialism. See for example the focus on Bismarckian politics in “Die Peitsche des Bändigers.” In Der Spiegel, 12.3.2004. p. 104. The critical work here is of course HU Wehler. Bismarck und der Imperialismus. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln, 1969. For a detailed discussion, see below. K. Bade. Friedrich Fabri und der Imperialismus in der Bismarckzeit: Revolution, Depression, Expansion. Atlantis Verlag, Freiburg, 1975. K. Bade. “Die ‘Zweite Reichsgründung’ in Übersee: Imperiale Visionen, Kolonialbewegung und Kolonialpolitik in der Bismarckzeit,” in A. Birke & G. Heydemann, eds. Die Herausforderung des europäischen Staatensystems: Nationale Ideologie und staatliches Interesse zwischen Restauration und Imperialismus. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen, 1989. H. Fenske. “Imperialistische Tendenzen in Deutschland vor 1866: Auswanderung, überseeische Bestrebungen, Weltmachtträume.” Historisches Jahrbuch 97/98, 1978. pp. 336–83. H. Fenske. “Ungeduldige Zuschauer: Die Deutschen und die europäische Expansion 1815–1880” in W. Reinhard, ed. Imperialistische Kontinuität und nationale Ungeduld im 19. Jahrhundert. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt a.M., 1991. H. Fenske. Preußentum und Liberalismus. Verlag JH Roll, Dettelbach, 2002. H. Gründer. Geschichte der deutschen Kolonien. Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn, 1985. H. Gründer. ‘Da und dort ein junges Deutschland gründen’: Rassismus, Kolonien und koloniale Gedanke vom 16. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert. Deutsche Taschenbuch Verlag, München, 1999. H. Bley. Namibia under German Rule. Lit Verlag, Hamberg, 1996. H. Bley. “Der Traum vom Reich? Rechtsradikalismus als Antwort auf gescheiterte Illusionen im Deutschen Kaiserreich 1900–1918.” In B. Kundrus, ed. Phantasiereich: Zur Kulturgeschichte des deutschen Kolonialismus. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt a.M., 2003. H. Drechsler. Südwestafrika unter deutscher Kolonialherrschaft. Der Kampf der Herero und Nama gegen den deutschen Imperialismus. Akadamie-Verlag Berlin, 1966. H. Drechsler. Südwestafrika unter deutscher Kolonialherrschaft. Die großen Land- und Minengesellschaften. Akadamie-Verlag, Stuttgart, 1996. G. Krüger. Kriegsbewältigung und Geschichtsbewußtsein: Realität, Deutung und Verarbeitung des deutschen Kolonialkriegs in Namibia 1904 bis 1907. Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, Göttingen, 1999.

Introduction | 19

16. J. Zimmerer. Deutsche Herrschaft über Afrikaner: Staatlicher Machtanspruch und Wirklichkeit im kolonialen Namibia. Lit Verlag, Münster, 2002. 17. H. Pogge von Strandmann. “Domestic Origins of Germany’s Colonial Expansion under Bismarck.” Past and Present 42(1), 1969. pp. 140–59. H. Pogge von Strandmann. “Imperialism and Revisionism in Interwar Germany” in WJ Mommsen & J. Osterhammel, (eds). Imperialism and After: Continuities and Discontinuities. Allen & Unwin, London, 1986. H. Pogge von Strandmann. “Consequences of the Foundation of the German Empire: Colonial Expansion and the Process of Political-Economic Rationalization” in S. Förster, WJ Mommsen & R. Robinson. (eds) Bismarck, Europe and Africa: The Berlin Africa Conference 1884–1885 and the Onset of Partition. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1988. pp. 105ff. 18. AJP Taylor. Germany’s First Bid for Colonies 1884–1885: A Move in Bismarck’s European Policy. WW Norton & Co., New York, 1970. 19. FL Müller. “Imperialist Ambitions in Vormärz and Revolutionary Germany: the Agitation for German Settlement Colonies Overseas, 1840–1849.” In German History Vol 7(3), 1999. pp. 346–68. For his earlier, important German language work, see FL Müller. “Der Traum von der Weltmacht. Imperialistische Ziele in der deutschen Nationalbewegung von der Rheinkrise bis zum Ende der Paulskirche.” Jahrbuch der Hambach Gesellschaft, 6 (1996/97). pp. 99–183. 20. L. Wildenthal. German Women for Empire, 1884–1945. Duke University Press, London, 2001. L. Wildenthal. “The Place of Colonialism in the Writing and Teaching of Modern German History.” In European Studies Journal 16(2), 1999. pp. 37–68. 21. S. Zantop. Colonial Fantasies: Conquest, Family and Nation in Pre-colonial Germany, 1770– 1870. Duke University Press, Durham, 1997. S. Friedrichsmayer, S. Lennox & S. Zantop, (eds). The Imperialist Imagination: German Colonialism and its Legacy. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1998. 22. JK Noyes. “Commerce, colonialism and the globalization of action in late Enlightenment Germany.” Postcolonial Studies. 9(1) 2006. pp. 81–98. Interestingly, this entire issue of Postcolonial Studies was devoted to the theoretical antecedents to empire in Germany. 23. P. Grosse. Kolonialismus, Eugenik und Bürgerliche Gesellschaft in Deutschland, 1850–1918. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt a.M. 2000. 24. J. Zeller. Kolonialdenkmäler und Geschichtsbewußtsein. Eine Untersuchung der kolonialdeutschen Erinnerungskultur. IKO—Verlag für Interkulturelle Kommunikation, Frankfurt a.M., 2000. 25. U. van der Heyden & J. Zeller. Macht und Anteil an der Weltherrschaft. Berlin und der deutsche Kolonialismus. Unrast, Münster, 2005. U. van der Heyden & J. Zeller. Kolonialmetropole Berlin. Einen Spurensuche. Berlin Edition, Berlin, 2002. 26. B. Kundrus, (ed). Phantasiereich: Zur Kulturgeschichte des deutschen Kolonialismus. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt a.M., 2003. B. Kundrus. Moderne Imperialisten: Das Kaiserreich im Spiegel seiner Kolonien. Böhlau Verlag, Köln, 2003. 27. F. Fanon. The Wretched of the Earth. (trans. C. Farrington). Macgibbon & Kee, London, 1965. p. 41. Also cited in R. Young. White Mythologies: Writing History and the West. Routledge, London, 1993. p. 120. 28. A. Dix. Weltkrise und Kolonialpolitik: Die Zukunft zweier Erdteile. Paul Neff Verlag, Berlin, 1932. p. 309. The concept of viewing and mirroring here is important in a Lacanian sense, illustrating as it does the extent to which an empire was seen as an external site from which an asserted national self-image could be reflected back to Europe. 29. See DH Fisher. Historians’ Fallacies: Towards a Logic of Historical Thought. Harper & Row, New York, 1970. p. 135. Fisher evocatively defines this methodological error as “the mistaken idea that the proper way to do history is to prune away the dead branches of the past, and to preserve the green buds and twigs which have grown into the dark forest of our contemporary world.” 30. On the historians’ contribution to post–1945 nation-building, see WJ Mommsen. “The Return to the Western Tradition. German Historiography since 1945.” German Historical Institute,

20 | Introduction

31. 32.

33.

34. 35. 36.

37. 38. 39. 40.

41.

42. 43.

Washington DC, Occasional Paper 4, quoted in G. Minnerup. “Review Article: Postmodernism and German History.” Debatte, Vol 11 (2), 2003. p. 209. Of his generation, Mommsen wrote, “They were guided by the conviction that the new Germany could survive only if the conventional authoritarian and anti-liberal interpretation of German history were to give way to a new democratic past. Among this generation, there was little doubt that historiography had a definite political function to fill, and that the option of taking refuge in objective historical scholarship that was aloof from present-day politics was not open to them.” E. Said. Culture and Imperialism. Vintage, London, 1994. p. 35. Quoted in HJ Kaye’s introduction to VG Kiernan. Imperialism and its Contradictions. Routledge, New York, 1995. Friedrich Harkort, as paraphrased by David Blackbourn in D. Blackbourn, R. Evans. The German Bourgeoisie: Essays on the Social History of the German Middle Class from the Late Eighteenth to the Early Twentieth Century. Routledge, London, 1991. pp. 12–13. In this context, see Michael Gross’s The War Against Catholicism. Liberalism and the AntiCatholic Imagination in Nineteenth Century Germany. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 2004. E. Said. Culture and Imperialism. Vintage, London, 1994. R. Young. White Mythologies. p. 174. C. Hall. Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination 1830–1867. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2002. J. Pitts. A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Liberal Imperialism in Britain and France. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2005. See also Uday Singh Mehta’s Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth Century British Liberal Thought. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1999. This approach has not been universally admired. See for example B. Porter. The Absent-Minded Imperialists. Empire, Society and Culture in Britain. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005. See for example. J. Sessions. Making Colonial France: Culture, National Identity and the Colonization of Algeria, 1830–1851. Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 2005. W. Roscher & R. Fannasch. Kolonien, Kolonialpolitik und Auswanderung. Dritte verbesserte. CF Winter’sche Verlagshandlung, Leipzig, 1885. See Vorrede, p. 1. D. Langewiesche. Liberalism in Germany. J. Sheehan. German Liberalism in the Nineteenth Century. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1978. See for example Imanuel Geiss’ concept of the Kompromißcharakter of the Kaiserreich, in which the German liberals are unable to become fully liberal as a result of the persistence of aristocratic elements. I. Geiss “sozialstruktur und imperialistische Dispositionen im zweiten deutschen Kaiserreich” in K. Holl & G. List (eds). Liberalismus und imperialistischer Staat. p. 45. See also Mommsen’s notion of the Feudalisierung of the German Bürgertum in WJ Mommsen. “Wandlungen der liberalen Idee.” p. 119. Along the same lines is Peter MenckeGlückert’s contribution, “Wilhelminischer Liberalismus aus aktueller Sicht.” pp. 35–39. As an example of the case for “liberals but not imperialists,” see H.G. Zmarzlik’s claim that “Wer dem Liberalismus nachfragt, um seine Potentiale historisch zu messen, darf ihn demnach nicht zu nahe mit dem Imperialismus zusammenbringen. Er muß ihn vielmehr zurückführen auf umfassendere Zusammenhänge, die hier mit dem Begriff “Modernisierung” eingeführt worden sind.” H.G. Zmarzlik. “Das Kaiserreich als Einbahnstrasse?” p. 70. For a reiteration of the “feudalised liberals’ thesis,” see the recently published dissertation of one of Mommsen’s students, H.J. Tober. Deutscher Liberalismus und Sozialpolitik in der Ära des Wilhelminismus: Anschauungen der liberalen Parteien im parlamentarischen Entscheidungsprozeß und in der öffentlichen Diskussion. Matthiesen Verlag, Husum, 1999. p.38. D. Langewiesche. “German Liberalism in the Second Empire, 1871–1914” in KH Jarausch & LE Jones, eds. In Search of a Liberal Germany: Studies in the History of German Liberalism from 1789 to the Present. Berg, New York, 1990. p. 229. Hence WJ Mommsen’s notion of a “Sündenfall des Liberalismus.” L. Gall. “‘Sündenfall’” des liberalen Denkens oder Krise der bürgerlich-liberalen Bewegung?” in K. Holl & G. List. Liberalismus und imperialistischer Staat. pp. 148–58.

Introduction | 21

44. Thus Mommsen’s “Verfremdung der liberalen Idee durch die imperialistische Ideologie.” Mommsen. “Wandlungen der liberalen Idee.” p. 110. 45. On the opposition of the Linksliberalen to colonialism, see for example S. Zucker. Ludwig Bamberger: German Liberal Politician and Social Critic, 1823–1899. University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, 1975. pp. 180ff. Usefully, Zucker positions Left Liberal dissent on the issue as stemming from a belief that German imperialism was best left to the private sector. The issue between the National Liberals and the Left Liberals was therefore more a dispute about private sector versus state conducted expansionism, rather than between anti- and pro-expansion liberals. See esp. Zucker. p.183. This dispute might best be explained as a desire amongst progressive liberals to keep imperialism temporarily quarantined in the private sector until it could be achieved without Bismarck in a truly liberal political environment. 46. This was recognized by the early biographer of Miquel, Hans Herzfeld, when he wrote, “Zugleich hielt man im liberalen Lager doch die Hoffnung fest, daß auf dem Boden der neuen Einheit der allmähliche Sieg des liberalen Gedankens notwendig erfolgen werde.” H. Herzfeld. Johannes von Miquel: Sein Anteil am Ausbau des Deutschen Reiches bis zur Jahrhundertwende. Vol I. Meyersche Hofbuchhandlung, Detmold, 1938. p. 45. 47. J. Sheehan. German History 1770–1866. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1989. p. 836. 48. Although in a later time period, this is at least partially evinced by J.P. Short’s account of Leipzig workers reading imperialist texts rather than socialist literature. See JP Short. “Everyman’s Colonial Library: Imperialism and Working-Class Readers in Leipzig, 1890–1914.” German History 21(4), 2003. pp. 445–75. 49. E. Hobsbawm & T. Ranger, eds. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983. 50. See for example HU Wehler, Bismarck und der Imperialismus, and his idea that liberals, along with conservatives, used imperialism as a means of diverting socialist pressures. Instead of seeing imperialism in terms of a cynical Ablenkung, it should be more properly seen in terms of combative Konkurrenzkampf. 51. L. Namier. 1848. pp. 123–24. 52. L. Namier. 1848. p. 32. 53. G. Deleuze. Dialogues. Trans. Hugh Tomlinson. Columbia University Press, New York, 1987. p. 129. 54. S. Newman. “War on the State: Stirner’s and Deleuze’s Anarchism.” Anarchist Studies Vol 9(2), 2001. p. 151. 55. L. Namier. 1848. p. 31. 56. See in particular, the recent works of J. Zimmerer and B. Kundrus, who have charted both the articulation of colonialism and the slippages between official imperialist discourse and its implementation. J. Zimmerer. Deutsche Herrschaft über Afrikaner. B. Kundrus. Moderne Imperialisten. 57. Contra HA Winkler. Liberalismus und Antiliberalismus. Studien zur politischen Sozialgeschichte des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen, 1979. p. 57. Winkler argues that the terms nationalism and imperialism are largely mutually exclusive. His example of the British case is largely unconvinving in the light of more recent scholarship. See C. Hall. Civilising Subjects. See also J. Pitts. A Turn to Empire; D. Armitage. The Ideological Origins of the British Empire. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000. 58. The emerging literature points to the importance of military assertiveness to German nationalism and nationalist-liberals. See FL Müller. “The Spectre of a People in Arms: The Prussian Government and the Militarisation of German Nationalism, 1859–1864.” English Historical Review CXXII (495), 2007. pp. 82–104. D. Langewiesche. “Nation, Nationalismus, Nationalstaat: Forschungsstand und Forschungsperspektiven.” Neue Politische Literatur 40, 1995. pp. 190–236. See also M. Kittel. “Abschied vom Völkerfrühling? National- und Außenpolitische Vorstellungen im konstitutionellen Liberalismus 1848/49.” Historische Zeitschrift 275 (2002). pp. 333–83. N. Buschmann. Einkreisung und Waffenbruderschaft. Die öffentliche Deutung von

22 | Introduction

59. 60. 61.

62.

63.

64. 65.

66.

67. 68. 69. 70.

71. 72. 73.

74. 75. 76. 77.

Krieg und Nation in Deutschland 1850–1871. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen, 2003. A. Biefang. Politisches Bürgertum in Deutschland 1857–1868: Nationale Organisationen und Eliten. Droste, Düsseldorf, 1994. It is important to note that despite this research on German assertiveness, the link to colonial imperialism remains underdeveloped. D. Blackbourn. The Long Nineteenth Century. A History of Germany, 1780–1914. Fontana Press, London, 1997. p. 130. As per Geoff Eley. See for example G. Eley. “Society and Politics in Bismarckian Germany.” German History. 15(1), 1997. pp. 101–132, esp. pp. 131ff. Contra WD Smith. The Ideological Origins of Nazi Imperialism. Oxford University Press, New York, 1986. This intellectual terrain can most certainly be mapped and explained, but not reduced to a schematic and ideologically determined subdivision of nineteenth and twentieth century imperialist theory. Categories such as “Weltpolitik” and “Lebensraum” were not so much competing imperialisms as divergent, but linked branches of imperialism. The exaggerated differentiation between the two has perhaps more to do with a post-World War II desire to place a degree of intellectual distance between a Europe-focused imperialism and overseas imperialism, both of which liberals entertained seriously throughout the nineteenth century. The variety of projects described as “imperialist” should make it clear that the definition of imperialism used here includes those forms of “informal empire” discussed in J. Gallagher & R. Robinson. “The Imperialism of Free Trade.” Economic History Review. 2nd Series, 6(1), 1953. pp. 1–15. Bismarck’s telegram to Lippert read, “Nach Mitteilungen des Herrn Lüderitz zweifeln die Kolonialbehörden, ob seine Erwerbungen nördlich des Oranseflusses auf deutschen Schutz Anspruch haben. Sie wollen amtlich erklären, daß er und seine Niederlassungen unter dem Schutze des Reiches stehen.” Cited in F. Linde. Bismarck: Größe und Grenze seines Reiches. Dieterich’schen Verlagsbuchhandlung, Leipzig, 1939. p. 348. E. Gellner. Nations and Nationalism. Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, 1983. p. 55. For an illustration of this point, see Hagen Schulze’s Gibt es überhaupt eine deutsche Geschichte? Siedler, Berlin, 1989. For radically different ends, Schulze demonstrates the heterogeneity and instability of the constructed nation. Hence Hagen Schulze’s “Nationalbewegung.” H. Schulze. Der Weg zum Nationalstaat. Die deutsche Nationalbewegung vom 18. Jahrhundert bis zur Reichsgründung. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, München, 1985. p. 2. J. Breuilly. The Formation of the First German Nation-State, 1800–1871. Macmillan, London, 1996. p. 2. Breuilly holds that the German nation preceded German nationalism. H. Bhabha. “DissemiNation.” In HK Bhabha, ed. Nation and Narration. Routledge, London, 1990. pp. 310–11. J. Breuilly. Formation of the First German Nation-State. p. 11. Craig Calhoun suggests as much, in his argument that “we treat nationalism first as a discursive formation.” C. Calhoun. Nationalism. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1997. p. 22. LA von Rochau. Grundsätze der Realpolitik. Verlag Ullstein, Frankfurt a.M., 1972. pp. 32–33. See in particular his theory of the power of “die öffentliche Meinung.” On Gramsci and hegemony, see TR Bates. “Gramsci and the Theory of Hegemony.” Journal of the History of Ideas 36(2), 1975. pp. 351–66. C. Hall. Civilising Subjects.. See also J. Pitts. A Turn to Empire, D. Armitage. Ideological Origins. For an interesting comparison between the English and German cases in a later period, see S. Neitzel. Weltmacht oder Untergang. Die Weltreichslehre im Zeitalter des Imperialismus. Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn, 1999. D. Blackbourn. The Long Nineteenth Century. pp.112–17. C. Calhoun. Nationalism. p. 40. D. Blackbourn. The Long Nineteenth Century. pp. 120–21. D. Blackbourn. The Long Nineteenth Century. pp. 118–120.

Introduction | 23

78. 79. 80. 81.

82. 83.

84.

85. 86.

87.

88.

89.

90. 91. 92.

D. Blackbourn. The Long Nineteenth Century. p. 120. Quoted in J. Sheehan. German History. pp. 793–94. D. Blackbourn. The Long Nineteenth Century. pp. 98–99. B. Anderson. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. Verso Books, London, 1983. pp 15–16. On the role of print capitalism in Germany, see the discussion of Die Gartenlaube below. D. Blackbourn. The Long Nineteenth Century. pp. 124–25. On the role of the Nationalverein, see Chapter Four. D. Blackbourn. The Long Nineteenth Century. p. 130. See also G. Eley on the “embourgeoisement” of Wilhelmine Germany as an example of a change in the way in which an industrializing society “imagined,” or rather presented itself. G. Eley. From Unification to Nazism: Reinterpreting the German Past. Allen & Unwin, Boston, 1986. p. 11. On the two competing research projects, see especially J. Sperber. “Bürger, Bürgertum, Bürgerlichkeit, Bürgerliche Gesellschaft: Studies of the (Upper) Middle Class and Its Sociocultural World.” JMH 69 (2), 1997. pp. 271–97. See also Celia Applegate’s book review of some of the results of Gall’s Frankfurt project in JMH 71(2), 1999. pp. 492–96. D. Blackbourn & G. Eley. The Peculiarities of German History. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1984. pp. 75ff. Eley points to the way in which liberalism as a political discourse was mediated by the disparate social and economic priorities of its adherents. Peculiarities of German History. p. 77. Lothar Gall has similarly remonstrated against the tendency of historians to measure liberals against the theoretical construct “liberalism” precisely as a means of pointing out their deficiencies without reference to the context within which liberals, as historical agents, were situated. L. Gall. “Sündenfall des liberalen Denkens.” p. 148. H. Kiesewetter. “Economic Preconditions for Germany’s Nation-Building in the Nineteenth Century.” In H. Schulze. Nation-Building in Central Europe. Berg, Leamington Spa, 1987. pp. 81–105. As Kiesewetter makes clear, this is not an argument for the economic necessity of liberal nationalism, in the manner that Helmut Böhme has argued for (Deutschlands Weg zur Großmacht. Studien zum Verhältnis von Wirtschaft und Staat während der Reichsgründungszeit 1848–1881. Köln, 1966. pp. 249–50). Rather, it is an argument that posits political, cultural, and material conditions as favoring a liberalism that was nationalist in nature. See also H. Seier’s statement that a “gewissene Affinität zwischen ‘bürgerlich’ und ‘liberal’ ist auch hinfort noch auszugehen.” In “Liberalismus und Bürgertum im Mitteleuropa 1850–1880. Forschung und Literatur seit 1970.” In L. Gall. Bürgertum und bürgerlich-liberale Bewegung im Mitteleuropa seit dem 18. Jahrhundert. R. Oldenbourg Verlag, München, 1997. p. 228. D. Blackbourn. “The German Bourgeoisie: An Introduction.” In D. Blackbourn & RJ Evans, (eds). The German Bourgeoisie: Essays on the Social History of the German Middle Class from the late Eighteenth to the early Twentieth Century. Routledge, London, 1991. p. 18. D. Blackbourn. “The German Bourgeoisie.” p. 21. See also A. Biefang. Politisches Bürgertum in Deutschland. On the problem of the varying interpretations of the terms liberalism and Bürgerlichkeit see J. Kocka. “Bürgertum und bürgerliche Gesellschaft im 19, Jahrhundert. Europäische Entwicklungen und deutsche Eigenarten.” In J. Kocka, (ed). Bürgertum im 19. Jahrhundert. Deutschland in europäischen Vergleich. (Vol I). Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, München, 1988. J. Sperber. “Bürger,Bürgertum, Bürgerlichkeit, Bürgerliche Gesellschaft: Studies of the (Upper) Middle Class and its Sociocultural World.” Journal of Modern History 69 (June 1997). pp. 271–97. See also J. Leonhard. Liberalismus. Zur historischen Semantik eines europäischen Deutungsmusters. Oldenbourg, München, 2001. Eley. Peculiarities of German History. p. 76. This is in accordance with Sheehan’s view of the composition of Germany’s liberal parties. See German Liberalism. pp. 80–83. This approach owes much to the medievalist Gabrielle Spiegel, who has described it as a search for the “social logic” of texts. She has argued for “seeing textuality as both arising from and

24 | Introduction

constitutive of social life, which it seeks to endow with meaning.” G. Spiegel. “History, Historicism and the Social Logic of the Text in the Middle Ages.” Speculum 65 (1990). p. 85. This is also in line with Edward Said’s theory that “texts are worldly, to some degree they are events, and even when they appear to deny it, they are nevertheless a part of the social world, human life.” E. Said. The World, the Text and the Critic. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1983. p. 4. 93. H. Gründer. Geschichte der deutschen Kolonien. Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn, 1985. p. 30. 94. B. Kundrus. Moderne Imperialisten. p. 16–17.

PART I

A LIBERAL EMPIRE FOR A LIBERAL NATION

Figure A. Frankfurter Latern. 1 December 1860. Source: WA Coupe. German Political Satires. Vol. II. p. 20.

Chapter 1

NATIONAL UNIFICATION AND OVERSEAS EXPANSION AT THE FRANKFURT NATIONAL ASSEMBLY, 1848–1849


Contrary to the idea that imperialism was a late nineteenth century deviation

from liberalism’s true ideals,1 German liberals had, by 1848, reached a broad consensus that expansionism was an integral part of liberal foreign policy and of liberal national identity. Competing with conservative, Catholic, and socialist envisionings of Germany, the liberals of the 1848 period drew upon the heterogeneous imperialist theoretics of the previous two decades in order to assemble an imperialist foreign policy agenda, as a form of demarcation between themselves and the advocates of competing meta-narratives of German statehood. That this demarcation was necessary was a result of the general fluidity in the typologies of German statehood proffered by rival meta-narratives of the as yet unsubstantiated concept of “Germany.” As Brian Vick has recently argued, in the revolutionary period, the various prototypical formulations of nationhood within the German speaking regions of Europe had by no means coalesced around a single, consolidated doctrine or ideology that could be spoken of as a unified concept of “German nationalism.”2 Instead, as a contested field, the discourse of German national identity came to be situated not only within the clash of radically democratic, liberal, and conservative Germans, but also within the context of an intra-liberal debate and the broader contestations for political, economic, and cultural hegemony being fought out in Central Europe between Prussia and the Habsburg Empire, as well as in the states of the “third Germany” that, to a greater or lesser extent, fell into their competing spheres of influence. Notes for this section begin on page 43.

28 | Liberal Imperialism in Germany

Explicit in the textual products and political discourse of the liberal bourgeoisie of the 1840s was the view that expansionism offered a mechanism for constructing, uniting, and identifying a new liberal German nation. Similarly, expansionism was viewed in part as an answer to, rather than a deflection of, the so-called “Sozialfrage”—what was to be done to address the needs of those who had experienced the social dislocation brought about by Germany’s move away from a rural economy and toward an urban, industrial social model? Importantly, it was seen neither as an opportunity to divert the populace away from the social problems inherent in the shift to modernity, nor an attempt to have Germans believe that the social question did not exist or that it was of lesser importance. Rather, it was an attempt to solve these problems via what was seen as a valid use of economic and social planning.3 This form of justification for an expansionist foreign policy was already a liberal commonplace by 1848. As an overly verbose Johann Tellkampf bemoaned the lack of German colonies at the Frankfurt National Assembly in Frankfurt’s St. Paul’s Church, Assembly President Heinrich von Gagern testily complained that Tellkampf was expostulating on a subject already well understood by the assembled delegates. The Frankfurt Assembly, von Gagern proclaimed, was already well aware of the argument for a policy of state-channelled emigration, courtesy of a corpus of pro-colonial literature predating the Assembly. Books, he asserted, had been written on the subject for over twenty years.4 As such, the honorable gentleman was clearly wasting the Assembly’s time with his recapitulation of their contents and yet another rehearsal of the pro-colonial position. The Vormärz works to which von Gagern referred, as Alexandra Lübcke has argued, belonged to German pro-colonial theorists who had attempted to nationalize and thereby control emigration, so that it could be directed and planned in accordance with the material and social interests of a unified German nation.5 In these early stages of establishing the discursive parameters of German imperialism, colonial theorists came to elide the burgeoning discourses of nationalism and imperialism. Pre–1848 works, such as those of Heinrich von Gagern’s father, Hans Christoph von Gagern, as well as those of Friedrich List and Hermann Blumenau,6 had helped build a corpus of literature exhorting Germans to unite and create a colonial empire, stressing the complementary nature of the two projects. Many liberals of this period, when discussing the necessity of the nation-state, couched their arguments in terms of the need to expand overseas as a means of alleviating internal population pressures, just as Hermann Blumenau’s editor Johann Wappäus had done when he commented that, “It appears that the time is drawing nearer, when the planned guiding of German emigration will be perceived as a national affair.”7 However, as important as the early textual renderings of imperialism were, the first concrete political steps toward imperialism came with the incorporation of imperialist longings into the nation-building undertaking of the 1848 Frankfurt Nationalversammlung, at which, amongst other business such as the construction of a national constitution and the delineation of powers and national borders,

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motions pertaining to the construction and maintenance of a naval fleet as well as the systematic direction and protection of emigration were debated and passed by overwhelming majorities that transcended factional lines. The historical importance of this early bürgerlich imperialism in the establishing of a long-term expansionist current within German liberalism is worth stressing. Highlighting its long-term effects, Gustav Stresemann later said of early German liberalism and its imperialist policies that they moved an entire generation of liberals, including the young Stresemann, into supporting an expansionist foreign policy. For Germany’s future liberal leaders, liberalism, as defined for them by the Paulskirche debates, was to be “the champion of the German fleet, of German unity, and of German greatness.”8 Confirming this understanding of liberalism as innately expansionist, the record of the 1848 Frankfurt National Assembly reveals the first truly national presentation by German liberals of imperialism as an overt political agenda to be realized through the efforts of a liberal, national government. If the discussions that took place in Frankfurt in 1848/49 are anything to go by, the Assembly’s largely liberal politicians viewed the issues of directed emigration and the related issue of bolstering Germany’s military presence around the world as urgent priorities. With its creation of a national navy, together with its discussion of establishing overseas settler and trade colonies for German emigrants, the Assembly could be seen as having asserted a distinctively liberal foreign policy, whose character could, without exaggeration, be described as imperialist. Even given the additional agreement of the Café Milani’s reformist conservatives, who comprised approximately six percent of the Assembly, and the Donnersberg Hof ’s radical democrats, who comprised approximately seven percent of the Assembly, the expansionist foreign policy formulated in Frankfurt can with justification be seen as policy that met with the approval of an overwhelmingly liberal body—as a policy that represented common ground between “constitutionalist liberals” and “democratic liberals.”9 Yet this liberal imperialism, it must be said, has not been monolithically ignored by historians. That the deliberations of the Nationalversammlung were based upon a perceived need amongst German liberals for an expansionist foreign and naval policy has already been demonstrated by Frank Lorenz Müller in a study that has pointed to Vormärz manifestations of imperialist agitation, particularly as found in the national liberal organ the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung.10 Müller’s argument, although seemingly modest in its scope, stands as an implicit critique of Wolfgang Mommsen’s twin erroneous views that colonial theorizing began in the 1870s11 and that imperialist tendencies and liberalism were necessarily incompatible.12 It has also convincingly demonstrated that, for Germany’s liberals, much of their early interest in issues such as international trade and national unity were inextricably linked to their desire for overseas dominions,13 and that, as such, the dating of the beginnings of a strong interest in colonial imperialism belongs more properly to the 1840s.14

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Hans Fenske has also contributed a number of studies devoted to early liberal imperialism, which point to German liberalism’s precocious expansionist foreign policy,15 while Ernst Rudolf Huber, in his monumental study of German constitutional history, has also succinctly pointed out that: The naval passions of the German bürgerlich movement had its deeper sense and rationale. The strivings for maritime trade and global trade also led in the age of mercantile imperialism (whose practitioners were not the traditional feudal and military upper class, but the ascendant middle class society) to a striving in Germany for maritime prestige and global prestige.16

The notions of prestige at stake were those pertaining to a newly emerging liberal nation attempting to assert its national credentials, both internally and externally, by enacting a corpus of foreign policy options whose symbolic resonances would be mistaken by no one. As these historians have made clear, quite apart from any material benefits that German liberals hoped would accrue to the proposed fledgling nation, liberal imperial sentiment was at its core a method of speaking both to Germans and other global powers about what sort of German nation was emerging. Colonial imperialism was in this sense a form of nationalist utterance, as well as a set of practices rooted in the material necessities of the rapidly globalizing European economy. It would be nonsense to postulate that the 1848 Assembly was a product of the German liberal middle classes’ longing for a colonial empire. Clearly the primary reasons for the Frankfurt Assembly lay in the broader, domestic political and economic balance of power, and the desire of Germany’s ascendant middle classes to attain a level of political participation commensurate with their economic and social success.17 Nevertheless, these same middle classes, in this premier forum of their views, did offer a glimpse of their own preferred foreign policy options and priorities. In so far as their views predated, by some thirty-three years, the construction of the German state they were attempting to build, these views can reasonably be said to represent a founding vision of a future liberal Germany’s foreign policy and its perceived place in the world. What can be said of this vision is that, for the Paulskirche assembly, the construction of a naval fleet capable of defending Germany’s coastline was seen as a major priority. With Northern Germany under the threat of Danish naval blockades at the time of the debates, naval power was a question of acute importance. Yet it would be an error to see the desire of the Nationalversammlung for a naval fleet exclusively in terms of the war with Denmark and the linked question of Schleswig-Holstein.18 Rather, the protection of Germany’s mercantile presence in the wider world, a desire for colonial possessions, and a perceived need for a German destination for German emigration were similarly critical considerations for the assembly members, as the discussions over the establishment of a German fleet and over emigration make clear. In this context, a fleet was seen as a necessary force guaranteeing not only Germany’s unity, but also its expansion and power.

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In terms of political symbolism, an imperial Kriegsflotte was seen as symbolic of a powerful, imperial Germany that was a Weltmacht not only commensurate with Britain, but also consciously imitating Britain, through its pursuit of liberalism domestically and expansionism in the wider world. As the most thorough articulation of a plan for a German navy, the influential, commissioned treatise by Prince Heinrich Adalbert of Prussia became the basis for discussions in Frankfurt. Adalbert’s plan, endorsed by the Frankfurt Assembly’s naval committee, delineated both the primary objectives and the actual dimensions of the proposed fleet in a manner that met with the full support of the Nationalversammlung.19 Demonstrating a commitment to the concept of a fleet as a means and a symbol of national unity, Adalbert’s discussion began with some remarks on the recent conflict with Denmark, and more importantly, pointed out the unanimity of opinion behind a naval fleet: United Germany wants to strongly protect the integrity of its states, to have its flag respected, to see its trade thrive once again and in the future to count for something on the seas. As such, the entire nation unanimously desires a German navy, which must be German, entirely German—a true representative of the reborn unity of the Fatherland.20

Having spelled out this national support in an argument that operated as a means of nationalizing the significance of a navy, Adalbert offered three different models for its establishment: a navy capable of mere coastal defense, a navy with offensive capabilities capable of defending German trade abroad, and an independent navy—meaning a navy of the “first rank,” commensurate with those of Germany’s largest rivals Britain, France, and Russia, and able to act decisively wherever necessary.21 Ostensibly impartial in his presentation of the three differing levels of naval engagement, Adalbert gave some hint of his maximalist preferences, arguing that if Germany did indeed become the “fourth first-rank sea power,” it would enable Germany “to play a large role on the seas, a role worthy of its position in Europe.”22 On the question of whether it was within the capacity of a central German government to construct and man such a naval force, Adalbert asserted that it was.23 As a model for discussions within the Naval Committee that dealt with Germany’s naval capacity at the Frankfurt Nationalversammlung,24 Adalbert’s treatise demonstrated not only an immediate concern with the contemporary crisis with Denmark, but also hinted at further foreign policy options for Germany, even countenancing the notion of a future naval alliance with Denmark and Sweden, aimed at Russia.25 Although he focused largely upon the European context (as seen through his positing of Danzig as the most suitable location for the primary naval station for geographic and geopolitical reasons,26 and his conclusion that it was likely that any naval conflict would take place in European waters), Adalbert nonetheless understood that naval battles located in Europe would inevitably have global repercussions, deciding as they would Germany’s capacity to secure and expand its global trade network and safeguard the interests of Germans

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abroad.27 In this expansion of the significance of intra-European conflict into the larger world, the essence of the assembly’s own argument for naval expansionism can be seen. As Adalbert himself correctly asserted, there was, at least amongst international trade minded liberal circles, a great deal of unanimity about the necessity of a German fleet, and this was reflected in the discussions that took place at the Frankfurt Nationalversammlung. Although the history of the assembly has largely been cast in terms of divisions and the emergence of irreconcilable factions, whose gradual ossification undermined the founding spirit of the assembly,28 with regard to an active imperial policy as a means of unifying the nation, the assembly was one vote from unanimous in its acceptance of a vigorous naval policy, whose cornerstone would be a German fleet. Only the fleet’s contours and funding became issues for debate. This overwhelming support strongly suggests that the Assembly delegates, irrespective of whether they actively voiced their support or not, were unified in their belief that a future German nation would be in need of a fleet.29 That the creation of a fleet with a global reach would signify Germany’s unity was similarly not contested by any of those present, with the fleet seen as being “a true child of the to-be-founded liberal and democratic German nation-state,” as Jörg Duppler has argued.30 Despite the breadth of opinion represented at the assembly, despite the factional disputes, political distance, and regional differences between the assembly’s reform conservatives, the “constitutionalist liberals,” and its radical, universal suffragist “democratic liberals,”31 only a single member of the assembly, Hermann Grubert of Breslau, voted against the establishment of a national naval fleet.32 Interestingly, despite his opposition to the fleet, even Grubert recognized the potency of a navy as a symbol of national unity, even as he critiqued it, arguing that “The German fleet should be … the first sign of the unity of Germany.”33 With the exception of Grubert, the entire assembly voted for the proposal, as put to the assembly by the Naval Committee (Marine-Ausschuß ): The National Assembly decides that it is to arrange the sum of six million talers for the purpose of founding the German navy, the use and control of which the to-be-built central government of the National Assembly will be responsible…

The acceptance of the proposal was met with a general cry of “Bravo.”34 The debate preceding the vote had laid out the conceptual framework within which the fleet was envisaged and spelled out in detail how the aim of establishing a liberal German nation could be furthered by the strengthening of Germany’s international economic and military position through a forward foreign policy. Importantly, this debate was not limited to the essentially Europe-centered theorizing of Adalbert, but rather built upon his plan as the basis of a gradually emerging liberal expansionist foreign policy. These expansionist themes were concisely summarized in the contribution to the debate made by Johann Tellkampf, a member of the Center-Left Württem-

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berger Hof faction who would later go on to be a member of the post-unification National Liberal party.35 Tellkampf rightly acknowledged that the war with Denmark was a consideration in the construction of a fleet; however, he argued that the matter did not simply end there. Rather, the fleet would enhance Germany’s foreign trade position through both the bellicose gunboat diplomacy and the imposition of colonies that it would enable: However it is not merely the present war that we must have before our eyes. A fleet is also incredibly important in times of peace. I would like to point out that without the protection of a fleet we will find it far more difficult to obtain and maintain trade contracts than if we had one. We have seen it everywhere that other nations obtain far more favorable terms when it comes to trade contracts as soon as their envoys are sent to the harbors of those lands where their flag is already known and respected … A fleet is also required for the removal of trade tariffs and for the establishment and maintenance of a colony … if we have a fleet, we will thereby open up for ourselves once more sales to overseas lands.36

Tellkampf also spelled out the more commonly understood complementary “intellectual benefits” of an active foreign policy, citing the well-known English example as a demonstration of how naval progress, international engagement, and liberal social and political freedoms went hand in hand: However gentlemen, there is not only the material advantages, there is also the intellectual, higher one that we can secure through our fleet. History shows us, that intellectual progress has most quickly and most healthily unfolded everywhere that trade with other peoples was the easiest and safest, that it was the trading peoples of the ancient and modern times that developed and ruled themselves politically in the most free manner. The sea, that ever-moving element, tolerates no stagnation in either social or political life … A nation stays perpetually young and powerful through the fresh magnificent sea life. This is also the reason why England has always stayed so free.37

Both materially and intellectually, Tellkampf argued, Germany could move toward an enriched and sociopolitically freer existence, through the simple measure of becoming a naval power capable of trading with and colonizing the world as the English had. Summarizing his position in a manner that brought forth cries of “Very good” and “Bravo” from the assembly, Tellkampf linked the themes of naval capacity with those of political liberalization, national strength, and national unity: The necessary financial outlay for a fleet, as large as it is, is much less than the indicated advantages for our material prosperity and for our political strength and freedom. By granting the proposed funds we give the world through our deeds the clearest proof that the unity of Germany is a reality.38

During the debate, similar sentiments were expressed by a number of members, who saw in naval activity both a field of action in which the energies of the German people could be profitably engaged as well as an expression of Ger-

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man unity and nationhood. For many in the assembly, the existence of a fleet represented an act of “propaganda by deed,” whereby the largely theoretical imperial desires of Vormärz liberals could be realized. As well as its patently powerpolitical dimension, the grounding of a “German” fleet contained for liberals such as Tellkampf an important rhetorico-discursive dimension, aimed at persuading both “Germans” and the larger world that, as a liberal nation, Germany did what all successful liberal nations could do—protect and expand their material interests abroad via a navy that could intervene where necessary. An imperial fleet had the role of convincing the German-speaking populace of central Europe that were being fashioned into a nation that they were “Germans,” and that being German entailed being a trading, seafaring, colonizing nation not unlike England. This helps to explain the large number of appeals to national unity that abounded during the fleet debate. One such appeal was made by Edgar Ross of Hamburg, the Vice-President of the Naval committee and member of the reform conservative Café Milani and Casino factions, who, like Tellkampf, later went on to become a member of the National Liberal party between 1867 and 1871, and who continued his interest in Germany’s seafaring capacity well into the 1870s.39 His contribution to the debate was in essence an attempt to arrive at the goal of building a new, unified nation-state through the establishment of an imperial fleet: “The committee has stepped before the Assembly with the first deed that should show that the German nation is not simply to be discussed philosophically but is to be understood as being determined in trade.”40 Similar sentiments were expressed by Joseph Radowitz, also a member of the Naval Committee and Café Milani faction.41 Radowitz saw the work of the Assembly as being the creation of a fleet as a symbol of national unity and cultural and economic strength: We wish to establish the unity of Germany. There is no sign for this unity that announces this decision inside and outside of Germany to the same degree as the creation of a German fleet … The creation of the fleet is not merely a military question, a commercial question but overwhelmingly a national question.42

Summarizing the debate moments before the overwhelmingly affirmative vote, Radowitz pointed to the near unanimity of opinion held by the Assembly: Regarding the necessity of Germany obtaining a navy, I have heard only a single naysaying voice. I assume that regarding this no doubt remains in general in both directions: with regard to the material necessity and the higher moral importance.43

The interrelationship between a German fleet and an expansionist foreign policy was evident throughout the debate over the navy. Whether discussing the contemporary war with Denmark, the desire for a robust protection of German trade and emigrants, or the utility of a fleet as a tool for the establishment of colonies, each speaker not only understood the broader goal of enabling Germany

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to assert its interests abroad, but that the creation of such a capacity had enormous potential as a symbol of Germany’s “arrival” as a great and united power commensurate with its neighbors. The potential benefits to be accrued from the liberals’ imperialist naval policy were seen as overwhelming and as flowing to the entire German nation.44 Inside of the Assembly’s Naval Committee itself, the interconnectedness of the pragmatic utility and the symbolic significance of a naval fleet were also discussed. For example, at the Committee meeting of 6 October 1848, with Prussian Trade Minister Duckwitz also in attendance, the committee debated the possibility of the various naval vessels of the individual German states flying a single Kriegsflagge and mercantile vessels flying the Handelsflagge of a unified Germany. Duckwitz, although positive about the notion of a national fleet,45 saw it as needing more time until all states had uniform maritime laws. At this point, Deputy Committee Chairman Edgar Roß from Hamburg, a Casino faction delegate and future National Liberal,46 protested on symbolic grounds.47 The flag, Roß argued, should be the immediate symbol of a national central government, under which Germany could gain its rightful “Anerkenntniß ” across the globe, just as France had done. As such, Germany could not wait for such legal niceties.48 Roß’s point about the symbolic resonances of a truly German naval flag was readily agreed upon; however, the Committee finally agreed with Duckwitz that nationalist symbolism and legislation needed to be congruent in order to avoid unwanted international controversies. As such, it was agreed that the emotive symbolism of the flag required the type of support that could only be provided by a codified and uniform body of national maritime legislation, which was as yet to be formulated by the Nationalversammlung. Duckwitz’s pragmatic insight proved justified in 1849, when the British government explicitly stated that it would not recognize a German naval flag before a German nation actually existed.49 That the fleet was a powerful symbol of national strength and unity was also grasped by the liberal public watching the proceedings from outside of the National Assembly, with various citizens and citizen committees lobbying Assembly members and offering their contribution to the debate. The Kiel branch of the Hamburg Marine-Congresse proclaimed “an established German navy would be an eternally present witness to its unity …”50 Another pamphlet issued by “a German officer” asserted that “Germany will take up the position that is worthy of it,”51 while another explained that it was now understood that “the German Fatherland should be a united and strong one” and to that end it required a unifying navy.52 Yet another put the matter as follows: When we in the present day not only hear and read about but are also almost daily witnesses to how rich and poor, old and young throng, everyone with their contribution, their small donation for the building of a German fleet placed on the altar of the common German Fatherland, then we must increasingly feel elevated in renown, with the hope of a great and beautiful future that stands before us, and in this almost wondrous national consciousness, we recognize the surest guarantee of a great and united Germany.53

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The number and nature of the various contributions, suggestions, and petitions received by the naval committee demonstrate the immense breadth of appeal enjoyed by the Assembly’s attempt to create a truly national navy. In reviewing the correspondence of the Naval Committee,54 what becomes clear is the extent to which the support and funding of the fleet was articulated by the politically aware German public as a national task, with naval associations quickly spreading throughout the German-speaking states and abroad,55 with private citizens vigorous in their appeals to establish a navy capable of asserting Germany’s position abroad. These associations and citizens were often generous in their financial support of the fleet,56 pledging contributions in accordance with their Figure 1.1. Martial doodlings means as well as sending numerous pro-naval from a Naval Committee meetpetitions signed by association members and ing, BA Koblenz. DB51: 393. other citizens. 46 Protokoll. It is perhaps worth noting that it is impossible to apply any Wehlerite notions of a prophylactic social imperialism to the imperialist agitations of the period of the Frankfurt National Assembly. In fact, the desire to establish a navy and colonies stemmed not from a fearful attempt by politically weak and economically vulnerable liberals to install a politico-economic “safety valve” that would weaken the position of a radicalized working class polity through a diversional project of national prestige.57 Rather, liberals saw an imperialist foreign policy precisely as an expression of liberal strength and nationalist confidence, as a way of assisting those elements of society that had lost ground in the leap into a capitalist modernity. Far from a denial of or diversion from the Sozialfrage, colonies were seen as an attempt to solve the problem, so as to further the material progress of all elements of German society, including the proletariat, not within a “conservative utopia,” but a German state congruent with the liberals’ nationalist meta-narrative. This is evident both in the actual speeches delivered by the members of the Assembly and the general tenor of paternal concern for the fate of Germany’s emigrants. Within liberal circles, colonies in particular were seen as a means to further the welfare of the poorest elements in German society, offering a means of social mobility and an escape route for those who had seen their social position drastically eroded by Germany’s rapid industrialization and urbanization processes.58 Contemporaneous pamphlets also spelled out, in quasi-Malthusian terms, the view that Germany was suffering from the “disease” of poverty, which could only be cured through a program of emigration.59 Plans to this effect were many and

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varied, with the Dresden Gewerbe-Verein releasing an article explaining how the establishment of a national bank could enable adequate funding for a navy and the establishment of inner resettlement programs and overseas trading colonies that would assure Germany of its rightful Machtstellung, whilst assisting the poorest elements of German society.60 Similarly, the contribution of Friederich Hundeshagen also concentrated on the benefits that the poorest elements of Germany could derive from an active national naval and colonial policy, as well as pointing out the power dividend for the nation itself: … through the establishment of a German navy it becomes possible to assume a suitable position against neighboring and overseas nations, and to direct and protect emigration.61 The founding of such an establishment through the German navy, where German capital will find suitable investments in distant German territories, we would greet with joy. It would increase our maritime travel, and prevent the emigration of German capital to foreign possessions, where it would raise the wealth of foreign nations. So we conclude with the wish that the central government will free the nation from the pressure of a poor tax through the emigration and settling of excess labor, as well as helping the welfare of the nation through the establishment of colonies.62

The Gesellschaft für nationale Auswanderung und Colonisation, zu Stuttgart spelled out in a supplement to the Schwäbischen Merkur that it too saw colonization as an answer to the Sozialfrage, proclaiming that it saw its main purpose as being the: … establishment of self-sufficient German settlements in foreign lands through the diversion of the surplus population and their settlement in free colonies, in which the German nationality will be strictly protected and fostered, in order to make them sources of support and markets for the Motherland.63

The Colonisations-Verein of Hamburg also posited the assistance of Germany’s poor as one of their primary tasks, claiming “through colonisation alone is it possible to direct the poor emigrants.” The management of poor emigrants was of course seen as a means of supporting German industry and international trade through the supply of raw materials and colonial markets; however, it primarily amounted to a poverty eradication measure.64 These individuals and associations viewed colonization and a strong navy as ensuring a series of positive outcomes for the new German nation—the assistance of the nation’s poor, the utilization of the “surplus labor power” latent in the ranks of the poor to the advantage of German industry, and the positioning, both economically and militarily, of Germany amidst the ranks of the foremost world powers. Despite some misgivings on the far Left of the Nationalversammlung about the economic burden a fleet might possibly impose upon the poor,65 there was scarcely a single member that did not recognize the imperial fleet as a way of signaling both to its citizens and the world the ability of a liberal Germany to look after its people abroad. Rather than an anti-socialist safety valve,

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the building of a fleet was the opening act of a paternalist state imperialism that was viewed by its advocates as an anti-pauperism measure, as an expansion of Germany’s domestic economy, as a symbolic assertion of the nation’s ability to protect Germany’s globalizing mercantile power, and as a forthright projection of German military strength aimed at warning off possible imperialist rivals. As Klaus Bade has repeatedly argued, this view of emigration as playing a major role in the alleviation of the poverty that accompanied the rise of the modern industrialized economy overseen by the Wirtschaftsbürgertum was one of the most pressing concerns within mid nineteenth century Germany.66 For their part, German proletarian and peasant emigrants certainly seemed to agree with the liberal analysis of the solution, seeing in emigration the prospect of socioeconomic betterment, as recent regional studies have shown.67 However, German liberals, as the key stakeholders in the new, internationalizing German economy were also keen to solve one of its more apparent shortcomings—its propensity to consign large segments of Germany’s peasant and working classes to pauperism. Without a mechanism for the alleviation of domestic poverty, German liberalism would find itself unable to overcome one of industrial capitalism’s more obvious negative externalities. Poverty and social displacement represented a structural problem that liberalism, as a totalizing meta-narrative seeking to order German society in accordance with its own tenets, set about correcting through imperialism. With liberalism’s totalizing claims in mind, it is hardly surprising that, as Renate Vollmer has remarked, “[i]n the 1840s the concerns of the middle classes regarding the proletariat and pauperism and suggestions regarding the so-called ‘social question’ were broadly discussed.”68 As a perceived test of their vision of Germany, German liberals applied themselves to the question of poverty and came up with the solution of not just emigration as a means of “dumping” surplus proletarians anywhere in the world but Germany, but “directed emigration”—a solution that entailed, (depending upon the theorist), official or unofficial German overseas possessions, that would ensure the retention of the emigrating “human capital” within the larger, internationalized German economy. The proletariat, in liberal imperialist politics, represented not so much a threat as an under utilized resource. Within the context of the debate in the Paulskirche over German emigration, the question of what happened to Germans once they left Europe also included a discussion of the desirability of German colonies, as Müller has pointed out.69 Once again, Johann Tellkampf was active in the debate, demanding the protection of even previous generations of German emigrants, not only on humanitarian grounds, but also as a means of exerting German influence over American politics. Having pointed out that if Germany’s emigrants had all gone to a single destination, Germany would already have a colonial empire of its own,70 Tellkampf went on to note that German emigrants in North America received voting privileges after five years, and as such, he explained, if the some four million Germans in America were looked after by their government, they could use

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their votes to influence the American democracy for the benefit of Germany and create in America a situation in which real power could be exerted on behalf of Germany’s exporters: If we were to now extend our German emigrants protection, we would win the adoration of all emigrants; they would then be more favorably disposed toward supporting trading regulations that were equally advantageous to North America and Germany through their votes. As we unfortunately do not have any colonies, this would be for our nation a use for emigration that is not to be overlooked.71

Tellkampf ’s views on the utility of a nation’s own colonies as a destination for its emigrants were unambiguous—colonies offered not only a potential boon to German trade, but also an answer to the poverty question, as a means of social mobility for Germany’s poor. Referring to the British example (and anticipating the plot of Hans Grimm’s Volk Ohne Raum by some eighty years72), he explained that: … the youth overseas, in the colonies, in the to-be-cultivated lands, find free room for the development of their energy, that possibly could have been ruined by the overpopulated Fatherland. Overseas these energies are developed and a free, worthwhile field of activity is offered, along with the way to prosperity and respectability.73

As mentioned, Tellkampf ’s attempts to discuss at length the problems associated with emigration and the lack of a colonial destination were interrupted by Assembly President Heinrich von Gagern on the behalf of an impatient Assembly, which was, Gagern claimed, already adequately informed on the subject. Undeterred, Tellkampf went on to explain the effect of poorly coordinated emigration on the nation’s emigrants, causing von Gagern to exclaim, “Mr Tellkampf, books have been written about this for more than twenty years.”74 Gagern’s impatience betrays the familiarity of the intellectual terrain to liberal Germans. The State, so the argument ran, had seemingly neglected to protect its citizens abroad and had failed to offer them a German colony within which to settle. This had already had a negative impact both on these citizens and on Germany itself. The Assembly should, therefore, afford Germany’s citizens living in the colonies of other nations the protection of the German State, in lieu of or until such time as there existed German colonies. By dwelling on these well-rehearsed facts, Tellkampf was, in von Gagern’s eyes, simply wasting the Assembly’s time. Everyone knew of Germany’s colonial deficiencies and the effect of State neglect on emigrants, rendering such preaching to the converted redundant.75 In fact, the Assembly’s President, Heinrich von Gagern, was in a perfect position to declaim on the breadth of the Vormärz literature the necessity of a German policy of liberal imperialism, with his father the colonial propagandist Hans Christoph von Gagern having already contributed three works of his own to the corpus76—works that Heinrich von Gagern had critiqued some years earlier.77 Judging by his correspondence with his father, Heinrich von Gagern had

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by 1844, if not as early as 1841, delineated a coherent position on Germany’s imperialist future; namely that in the foreseeable future, a state-led, national imperialist policy was admittedly difficult to envisage,78 but that it was most certainly desirable, particularly as a means of assuring an enduring connection between Germany and its emigrants. Not only desirable, it was also seen as perfectly justifiable to rule over “almost unpopulated” lands where the population had not reached the status of a coherent nation with a (presumably recorded) history of which they could be “more or less proud.”79 In the intervening four years, what had of course changed was that the desired colonial empire was now an entirely feasible enterprise, courtesy of the National Assembly over which von Gagern presided. The Assembly’s President was of course not the only deputy present to have a background in pro-colonial agitation, with Johann Gustav Droysen having expressed his view in 1844 that a Brazilian colony was perhaps Germany’s best imperial prospect. Discussing his decision to write on “the advisability and practicality of German colonisation,” Droysen declared in a letter of November 1844 that, “Brazil must and will become the best surrogate colony for Germany.”80 As Müller has pointed out, further debate on the question of emigration took place in March of 1849,81 by which time patience was fast running out for those hoping that the Assembly would decide on a colonial policy. The decision of the committee in charge of drafting the emigration legislation to treat the question of establishing German colonies at a later date82 was met with hostility by some members, who viewed the issues of emigration and colonial imperialism as both urgent and inextricably linked. To demonstrate the breadth of the concern of the inadequacy of the proposed legislation, three examples may be used. From the right, Franz Joseph Buß of the reform conservative Café Milani faction83 stated his reasons for opposition to the bill as stemming not from a belief that the interests of emigrants should not be protected, but rather from a belief that this bill was not sufficient to do so.84 Reminding the Assembly of colonialism’s welfarist dimension, Buß rejected the bill as missing the heart of the question: It is a transportation law and no more … however the great question, the large part of the matter, the care for the removal of rampant mass poverty from Germany, and in particular from certain regions, is completely forgotten … I view the question of emigration in its practical sense as a question of public poverty relief.85

Buß’ proffered means of ensuring that the German nation’s handling of emigration met the appropriate standards of humanitarianism was mentioned at the end of his speech: Of the higher sense of emigration in terms of the establishment of colonies … I will remain silent due to the agitation of the Assembly. However something must be done for emigrants, both for the propertied and the poor.86

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Following Buß was Friedrich Schulz, from the leftist Westendhall faction,87 whose contribution in its vision of Germany’s imperial future demonstrated the overlapping nature of seemingly divergent expansionist strategies. In a lengthy speech, Schulz expressed his opinion that the question of emigration and colonies were linked; that the question of colonies was an urgent one; that colonization could just as easily be undertaken to Germany’s southeast as in America; and indeed, that both arenas for German imperialism were equally desirable: On the great ocean a powerful, ruling New Germany can blossom, which will significantly strengthen the natural friendship with the United States. However if we do not hurry, we will also come to Western America too late, at least for extensive settlement which might be in a position to exercise an independent influence … Emigration is going almost entirely to the far West, however there are other settlement lands on our closest border, to the East and South-East of the Fatherland which in the near future could become of great significance, as the committee report to my joy has recognized … There on our border is our Texas, our Mexico … I hope that the Foreign Office, as soon as relations allow, will come to an understanding with the Austrian government about a regulated system of colonization for the Danube regions.88

The Viennese Johann Jacob Herz, following Schulz as a speaker to the emigration bill, virtually picked up where Schulz left off in his affirmation of an imperial mission in the East, declaring that “Moldavia and Wallachia are some of the most beautiful and fertile lands in the European states … such lands are certainly before all others suitable for colonization …”89 These examples not only illustrate the breadth of pro-colonial sentiment within the Assembly, they also serve to refute the historiographical assumption that the desire for overseas colonies and so-called “inner colonization,” which was actually Eastern or South Eastern expansion, stemmed from two ideologically opposed movements whose social basis were quite distinct from one another;90 however, at this stage, the two were seen as being in no way mutually exclusive.91 In fact, at this time both were variant forms of the same liberal expansionism, as Lewis Namier’s discussion of the Czech question at the Nationalversammlung made clear,92 distinguished only by the fact that those espousing eastern colonization were more likely to be großdeutsch as opposed to kleindeutsch nationalists.93 Similarly, it has also been assumed that both of these settlement programs were somehow intrinsically “reactionary,” in that they were attempts to support the endangered German peasantry.94 Yet it seems a misuse of the term “reactionary” to denote a process whereby the urban and rural poor were to be internationalized and instrumentalized for the purposes of supplying German industry with the raw materials it would need in order to transform Germany into an industrialized power following the British path to modernity, a process in which the same poor were to be (at least theoretically) afforded a degree of social mobility unobtainable in Germany. As a solution to the twin problems of poverty engendered by modernization and the need for an industrialized Germany to obtain inexpensive

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access to the raw materials, colonization, as discussed in Frankfurt, was clearly viewed as part of a modernizing agenda that itself was an expression of German liberalism’s confidence in a united, industrial, and commercial German nation. More likely than notions of a dewy-eyed attempt at saving the peasantry, it could be argued that for German liberals, colonialism offered a convenient way of “outsourcing” the rural and urban poor in a way that remained profitable for German industry and trade. Colonization was perceived as a part of the economic and social transition required for capitalist modernization and globalization. Pro-colonial sentiments were shared by many in the Assembly, which passed not only the emigration bill, but also the amendments that made reference to subsequent preparations for a German colonial project.95 Both in terms of the parameters of the debate and the actual bill itself, the issues of emigration and the perceived need for Germany colonies were acknowledged to be linked issues that could be addressed by the simple expedient of undertaking an assertive imperialist line in foreign policy. Liberal politicians and numerous civil society associations supported an imperialist foreign policy, not only because an expansionist foreign policy lay in their material interests, but also because this policy best approximated their conceptualization of the German state as a power that could claim parity with the other major European liberal imperialist nations of Britain and France. In terms of other, endogenous pressures, the liberals of the Nationalversammlung were asserting a vision of the German nation-state that rivaled conservative, Catholic, and socialist envisionings of German statehood and their perception of a future German Weltaufgabe. Unsurprisingly, the liberals of the 1848 period drew upon the heterogeneous liberal imperialist theoretics of the previous two decades. As a policy direction able to transcend the internal fissures between kleindeutsch and großdeutsch nationalists, Listian protectionists and free traders, monarchist and democratic liberals, an imperialist foreign policy agenda operated as a means of asserting the rapidly internationalizing material interests and domestic social and political interests of bürgerlich Germany. In imperialism, liberals found a politics that portrayed them to both themselves and others as a broad, unified church worthy of their unifying task, through the establishment of solid discursive lines of demarcation between themselves and the advocates of other versions of German statehood. Explicit in the textual production and political discourse of the liberal bourgeoisie of the 1840s was the view that expansionism offered a mechanism for constructing, uniting, and identifying a new liberal German nation. Taken together, the debates over a German navy and over the regulation of emigration represented a solidification of prevailing liberal ideas concerning a united Germany’s place in the world. With each vote relating to a broadening of the scope of the German state’s capacities throughout the world ending in an overwhelming endorsement of an active foreign policy—garnered from large majorities that transcended factional lines—the Frankfurt National Assembly offered the German public a vision of a future liberal Germany—a vision of an expansionist Germany

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with an active navy interceding on the behalf of its citizens, colonies, and business interests around the globe. That these visions did not come to immediate fruition due to the change of political circumstances is no reason to believe that “all of this imperialism … went for nought when the revolution failed in 1849.”96 Rather, expansionism maintained a steady profile amongst liberal circles well after their political ascendancy at the national level was stymied, largely due to the fact that the liberal vision of modernity, of Germany as an industrialized trading nation, came to more closely approximate the material conditions experienced by those representing the various permutations of German liberalism. The problems that imperialism was designed to address did not abate with the ebbing political fortunes of the National Assembly. As such, imperialism continued to be not only discussed, but also enacted after 1849, even in the face of governmental opposition, because material and social conditions, as perceived through the lens of the liberals’ nationalist meta-narrative, required imperialist discourse as the theoretical basis for a future national praxis. The failure of statist measures led not to an end to liberal imperialism, but to an imperialism from below.

Notes 1. WJ Mommsen. “Wandlungen der liberalen Idee.” p. 109ff. 2. BE Vick. Defining Germany: The 1848 Frankfurt Parliamentarians and National Identity. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2002. pp. 1–3. 3. This solution was eventually termed “social imperialism,” which, it should be pointed out, is not the same as Hans Ulrich Wehler’s use of the term. See G. Eley. “Defining Social Imperialism: Use and Abuse of an Idea.” Social History 3, October 1976. pp. 265–90. 4. F. Wigard, ed. Reden für die deutsche Nation. Stenographischer Bericht über die Verhandlungen der deutschen constituirenden Nationalversammlung zu Frankfurt aM. Sauerländer, Frankfurt a.M., 1848. Vol. II. p. 1057. 5. A. Lübcke. “Welch ein Unterschied aber zwischen Europa und hier…” Diskurstheoretische Überlegungen zu Nation, Auswanderung und kultureller Geschlechteridentität anhand von Briefen deutscher Chileauswanderinnen des 19. Jahrhunderts. Frankfurt a.M., 2003. pp. 75–78. See also S. Zantop’s notion of a “nationalist-colonialist ideology.” Colonial Fantasies. Conquest, Family, and Nation in Pre-colonial Germany, 1770–1870. Duke University Press, Durham, 1997. p. 8. 6 . See Chapter Two. 7. JE Wappäus. “Vorwort.” In H. Blumenau. Deutsche Auswanderung und Colonisation. Verlag der JC Hinrichs’schen Buchhandlung, Leipzig, 1846. p. iv. Quoted in A. Lübcke. Welch ein Unterschied. pp. 75–76. See also HC von Gagern. Fernerer Versuch, politische Ideen zu berichtigen. Vol. III. Der Deutschen Auswanderung. Gebrüdern Wilmans, Frankfurt a.M., 1817. 8. G. Stresemann. “A Fragment of Autobiography.” In E. Sutton, ed. Gustav Stresemann. His Diaries, Letters and Papers. Vol I. Macmillan & Co., London, 1935. p. 5. See also p. 13: Stresemann’s enthusiasm for naval expansion and colonialism was such that he was warned against speaking too much about the subject when he ran for the Reichstag at the age of twenty-nine. 9. On the composition of the Nationalversammlung, see W. Siemann. The German Revolution of 1848–49. Trans. C. Banerji. Macmillan, London, 1998. pp. 123–26, 191.

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10. FL Müller. “Imperialist Ambitions in Vormärz and Revolutionary Germany.” See also FL Müller. “Der Traum von der Weltmacht.” 11. WJ Mommsen. Imperialismus: Seine geistigen, politischen und wirtschaftlichen Grundlagen. Hamburg, 1977. p. 110. 12. WJ Mommsen. “Wandlungen.” p. 109ff. 13. FL Müller. “Imperialist Ambitions.” pp. 346–47. 14. Where Müller’s otherwise convincing thesis and the present work differ is with Müller’s notion that liberal imperialism somehow became a dormant or mererly rhetorical force after 1849 until it was resurrected again in the 1880s and 1890s. As the discussion following this chapter makes clear, liberal political organizations and individuals were still interested in naval and colonial politics in the 1860s. See FL Müller. “Imperialist Ambitions.” p. 366–67. FL Müller. “Der Traum von der Weltmacht.” pp. 164–65. 15. H. Fenske. “Imperialistische Tendenzen.” H. Fenske. “Ungeduldige Zuschauer.” H. Fenske. Preußentum und Liberalismus. pp. 379–428. 16. ER Huber. Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte seit 1789: Vol II—Der Kampf um Einheit und Freiheit 1830 bis 1850. W. Kohlhammer Verlag, Stuttgart, 1960. pp. 655–56. 17. A detailed discussion of the causes of the 1848 revolutions is beyond the scope of this study. For further information, see WJ Mommsen. 1848—Die ungewollte Revolution: Die revolutionären Bewegungen in Europa 1830–1849. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt a.M., 1998; or HU Wehler. Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte—Vol II—Von der Reformära bis zur industriellen und politischen “Doppelrevolution” 1815–1845/49. CH Beck, München, 1989. W. Siemann. The German Revolution of 1848–49. Trans. C. Banerji. Macmillan, London, 1998. HJ Hahn. The 1848 Revolutions in German-Speaking Europe. Longman, Harlow, 2001. 18. Contra WJ Mommsen. 1848. pp. 230–31. As with all pre–1880s forms of liberal imperialism, Mommsen has attempted to explain away the enthusiasm for a German imperial fleet in terms of a momentary lapse of political judgement with no long term precedent or implications. By focusing on the war with Denmark as the sole cause of naval enthusiasm, Mommsen implied that with the passing of the war, the moment of imperialist enthusiasm had passed and German liberalism was able to concentrate once again on its “deeper” historical purpose of German unification. This approach neatly substituted the (long term, domestic, and liberal) social logic of imperialism with the (immediate, external, that is, Danish) catalyst and ignored the material and social imperatives that led to the inclusion of imperialism in the 1848 project to create a strong Germany. 19. Preußen v. Adalbert. Denkschrift über die Bildung einer deutschen Kriegsflotte. Verlag der Riegel’schen Buchhandlung, Potsdam, 1848. On the Nationversammlung support for Adalbert’s plan, see J. Duppler. Prinz Adalbert von Preußen: Gründer der deutschen Marine. Verlag ES Mittler & Sohn, Herford, 1986. p. 49. 20. Adalbert. Denkschrift. p. 4. “Das einige Deutschland will aber die Integrität seiner Länder kräftig geschützt, seine Flagge geachtet, seinen Handel wieder blühend sehen und künftighin auch auf dem Meere etwas gelten. Die gesammte Nation begehrt daher einstimmig eine deutsche Kriegsmarine; denn deutsch ganz deutsch muss sie sein—eine ächte Representantin der wiedergeborenen Einheit des Vaterlande…” 21. Adalbert. Denkschrift. p. 5. 22. Adalbert. Denkschrift. p. 27. “[E]ine große Rolle auf dem Meere zu spielen, eine Rolle, die seiner Stellung in Europa würdig ware.” 23. Adalbert. Denkschrift. p. 30. 24. A pithy illustration of the role played by Adalbert in the proposing of ideas for a national fleet can be seen in the November (5th and 7th) correspondence between the Prussian trade minister Duckwitz and Committee chairman Gevekoht, in which the applicability of Adalbert’s ideas was discussed. See DB 407: 577. BA Koblenz. 25. Adalbert. Denkschrift. p. 34. 26. Adalbert. Denkschrift. pp. 34–35.

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27. Adalbert. Denkschrift. pp. 27–29. 28. See for example D. Langewiesche. Liberalism. pp. 39–47. And J. Sheehan. German Liberalism. pp. 59–61. 29. P. Heinsius. “Anfänge der Deutschen Marine” in W. Hubatsch, (ed). Die erste deutsche Flotte, 1848–1853. Bonn, 1981. p. 18. 30. J. Duppler. Prinz Adalbert. p. 49. 31. This characterization of the split between the Frankfurt deputies is drawn from W. Siemann. The German Revolution of 1848–49. p. 126. 32. R. Koch, (ed). Die Frankfurter Nationalversammlung 1848/9: Ein Handlexicon der Abgeordneten der deutschen verfassungsgebenden Reichsversammlung. Frankfurt, 1989. p. 193. Grubert’s stance was in contrast to the more than fifty other members of the Leftist Donnersberg faction, all of who voted for the construction of a German national fleet. 33. F. Wigard. Sten.Ber. Vol I. p. 314. “Die Flotte soll … das erste Zeichen der Einheit Deutschlands sein.” 34. F. Wigard. Sten.Ber. Vol I. pp. 318–19. “Beschließt die Nationalversammlung, daß die Bundesversammlung zu veranlassen sei, die Summe von 6 Millionen Thalen zum Zweck der Begründung eines Anfangs für die deutsche Marine, über deren Verwendung und Vertretung die zu bildende provisorische Centralgewalt der Nationalversammlung verantwortlich sein wird …” 35. R. Koch. Frankfurter Nationalversammlung. p. 399. HH Best & W. Weege. Biographisches Handbuch der Abgeordneten der Frankfurter Nationalversammlung 1848/49. Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf, 1998. pp. 334–35. 36. F. Wigard. Sten.Ber. Vol. I. p. 309. “Aber es ist nicht allein der gegenwärtige Krieg, den wir vor Augen haben müssen. Eine Flotte ist auch höchst wichtig zur Zeit des Friedens. Ich erlaube mir darauf aufmerksam zu machen, daß ohne den Schutz einer Flotte wir viel schwieriger Handelsverträge schließen und aufrecht erhalten können, als mit derselben. Wir haben es überall gesehen, daß andere Nationen, wenn es sich um Handelsverträge handelte, viel günstigere Bedingungen bekamen, sobald sie ihre Gesandten in einem ihrer Kriegschiffe nach den Häfen jener Länder schickten, wo ihre Flagge bereits bekannt und geachtet war … Auch zur Beseitigung des Sundzolls und zur Erwerbung und Erhaltung einer Colonie ist eine Flotte erforderlich … Wenn wir also eine Flotte haben, so werden wir vermittelt derselben uns wieder Absatz nach den überseeischen Ländern, eröffnen.” 37. F. Wigard. Sten.Ber. Vol I. p. 309. “Aber, meine Herrn, es giebt nicht allein materielle Vortheile, es giebt geistige, höhere, die wir durch die Flotte uns sichern. Die Geschichte zeigt uns, daß geistiger Fortschritt überall da am schnellsten und gesundesten sich entfaltete, wo der Verkehr mit andern Völkern am leichtesten und gesichersten war, daß handeltreibende Völker der alten und der neuen Zeit es waren, wo neben der Civilisation das freieste politische Leben sich entwickelte und herrschte. Es leidet das Meer, dieß bewegliche Element, keine Stagnation weder im socialen, noch im politischen Leben. … Es bleibt durch das frische magnißvolle Seeleben ein Volk stets jung und kräftig. Es ist dieses auch einer der Gründe, weshalb sich England stets so frei erhalten hat.” 38. F. Wigard. Sten.Ber. Vol I. p. 309. “Es sind, also die für eine Flotte erforderlichen Geldmittel, so bedeutend sie sind, doch geringer, als die angedeuteten Vortheile für unserer materielles Wohlergehen und für politische Kraft und Freiheit. Wir geben durch die Bewilligung der beantragten Mittel der Welt durch die That den klarsten Beweis, daß die Einigkeit Deutschlands eine Wahrheit ist.” 39. R. Koch. Frankfurter. p. 345. 40. F. Wigard. Sten.Ber. Vol. I. p. 313. “Der Ausschuß ist vor die Versammlung mit der ersten That getreten, welche bekunden soll, daß das deutsche Volk nicht bloß philosophisch zu räsonnieren, sondern auch im Handel entschlossen zu sein versteht.” 41. R. Koch. Frankfurter Nationalversammlung. p. 321. 42. F. Wigard. Sten.Ber. Vol. I. p. 251. “Wir wollen die Einheit Deutschland’s gründen; es gibt kein Zeichen für diese Einheit, daß in dem Maaße innerhalb Deutschland’s und außerhalb

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43.

44.

45.

46. 47. 48. 49.

50.

51. 52. 53.

54. 55.

Deutschland’s diesen Beschluß verkündet, als die Schöpfung einer deutscher Flotte … Die Schöpfung der Flotte ist nicht bloß eine militärische Frage, eine commercielle Frage, sondern im höchsten Grade eine nationale Frage.” F. Wigard. Sten.Ber. Vol. I. p. 317. “Ueber die Nothwendigkeit, daß Deutschland eine Kriegsmarine erhalte, habe ich eine einzige verneinende Stimme gehört, ich nehme an, daß hierüber im Allgemeinen kein Zweifel obwaltet, und zwar nach beiden Richtungen hin: in Bezug auf die materielle Nothwendigkeit und auf die weit höhere sittliche Bedeutung.” It was not just in the Paulskirche that the internal and external benefits of a unifying naval policy were understood. Representatives of German industry from Bamberg in June 1848, in one of their naval proposals, spelled this out very clearly: “Deutschland in seiner Zersplitterung wurde bisher von der Industrie Englands beherrscht. Deutschland, einig und kräftig, kann und muß sich dieser Herrschaft entledigen.” The method proposed for this shrugging off of English hegemony was the establishment of a strong naval force and the expansion of the merchant navy. BA, Koblenz. ZSg. 8/9a: 83.3. Duckwitz’s input to the committee was significant and far from obstructionist, as demonstrated not only by his attendance at such committee meetings, but also his theoretical contribution to the committee—for example his 30th of October delineation of the responsibilities and bureaucratic structure of a national naval ministry. See BA, Koblenz. DB 51: 392: i: p. 37ff., DB 51: 407. p. 569ff. “Marine.” HH Best, W. Weege. Biographisches Handbuch. p. 285. BA, Koblenz. DB 51: 392: i: p. 36. “Protokoll der Sitzung des Marineausschusses am 6. Okt. 1848.” BA, Koblenz. DB 51: 392: i: p. 36. BA, Koblenz. DB 53: 15. Heft 15. p. 17. “[W]henever a German Empire shall have been definitively organised and permanently established, the British Government will no doubt according to its general rule in regard to such matters acknowledge the new political body and of course its maritime flag, but … the time for such a step does not seem as yet to have arrived.” (Lord Cowley, 7 July 1849 in relation to the Heligoland incident). BA, Koblenz. ZSg. 9/573. “Denkschrift über die Errichtung einer Deutschen Flotte.” Kiel, May 1848. “[E]ine von Deutschland geschaffene Seemacht würde ein stets gegenwärtiges Zeugniß seiner Einheit seyn…” BA, Koblenz. ZSg. 9/1191. “Deutschland eine Seemacht.” Leipzig, 1848. “Deutschland will die Stelle einnehmen, die seiner würdig ist.” BA, Koblenz. ZSg. 9/5059. p. 6. “Das erste Preußische See-Kanonenboot für die deutsche Kriegsflotte.” Stralsund, 1848. “… das deutsche Vaterland soll ein einiges und starkes sein.” BA, Koblenz. ZSg. 8/36. p. 9. “Deutsche Flotte—Deutscher Kanal.” Schleswig, 1848. “Wenn wir in den gegenwärtigen Tagen nicht nur davon hören und lesen, sondern auch fast täglich Zeugen davon sind, wie Reich und Arm, Alt und Jung sich drängen, jeder ihren Beitrag, ihr Scherflein zur Erbauung einer deutschen Flotte auf den Altar des gemeinsamen deutschen Vaterlandes niederzulegen, dann müssen wir stets von Ruhm uns gehoben fühlen, von der Hoffnung auf eine große und schöne Zukunft, die uns bevorsteht und in diesem fast wunderbaren Volksbewußtsein um so mehr die sichere Gewähr für ein und einiges Deutschland erkennen.” BA, Koblenz. DB 51/394, 395, 396, 406. One interesting example comes from an “Aufruf an alle Deutschen in England,” in which it was asserted that in the face of the call for a naval fleet, “alle politischen Meinungsverschiedenheiten verschwinden und die Begründung eines deutschen Kriegsflotte ist die erste That des zur Einheit wiedergeborenen Deutschland.” Apart from the deployment of this “fleet as unification’s tool” trope was the explanation of the fleet’s necessity, stated as being that Germany’s “Interessen reichen auch über den Ocean hinaus, seine Handelsflagge weht auf alle Meeren … Deutschland bedarf einer Kriegsflotte. Zur Wahrung seiner Ehre, zum Schutze seines Welthandels, zur Aufrechthaltung des Friedens, nicht zum Angriffe und zur Zerstörung muß sie rasch ins Leben treten.” BA, Koblenz. DB 51/395. p. 340.

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56. See for example a proposal for army officers to offer a percentage of their salaries to the establishment of the fleet, based on the officers’ understanding that “ohne Flotte kann Deutschlands Wohlstand und Grösse, und seine Stellung, welche es in europäischen Staatensysteme einzunehmen berechtigt ist, nicht geschaffen, erhalten und befestigt werden.” BA, Koblenz. DB 51/395. Unnumbered. “Aufruf an die Waffen Genossen aller deutscher Stämme.” Authorized by Rittmeister v. Buchholz, July, 1848, Posen. Other proposals included the introduction of a one pfennig tax on all publications (including newspapers) in German states. BA, Koblenz. ZSg 9/575. Eugen v. Breza. “Die Deutsche Kriegs-Marine: Ein Gesetz-Vorschlag.” Breslau, 1848. 57. See Wehler. Bismarck und der Imperialismus. pp. 120–23. 58. See the speech of Franz Josef Buß, later to join the Catholic Centre Party, who explicitly linked the problem of poverty and the solution of colonialism. F. Wigard. Sten.Ber. Vol. VIII. p. 5719. See also the future National Liberal Edgar Roß of Hamburg’s view that an active naval policy would assist in alleviating the problem of unemployment. F. Wigard. Sten.Ber. Vol. I. p. 314. And the future National Liberal Johann Tellkampf ’s view that colonies offered unlimited room for the young to develop their energies. F. Wigard. Sten.Ber. Vol. II. p. 1057. 59. BA, Koblenz. DB 58/176. p. 126. “Vorschlag zur zweckmäßigen Staatsunterstützung der Auswanderung.” 1848. Also to be located as BA, Koblenz. ZSg. 9/771. 60. BA, Koblenz. ZSg. 9/652. p. 2–3, 35–38. The concerns of the pamphlet are somewhat wordily encapsulated in its title: “Hochwichtiges der Gegenwart in Sieben Bildern, betreffend die gegenwärtigen gedrückten Verhältnisse des Mittelstandes, nämlich der Handwerker und Arbeiter, so wie des Handels und aller Gewerbe in Deutschland und wie diesem wichtigen Stand des deutschen Volks geholfen werden kann.” (Mitglied des Gewerbe-Vereins, Dresden), Dresden, 1848. 61. BA, Koblenz. ZSg. 9/1308. p. 1. “Die deutsche Auswanderung als Nationalsache, inbesondere die Auswanderung des Proletariats.” Frankfurt a.M., 1849. “… durch die Gründung einer deutschen Seemacht wird es möglich, den Nachbar—wie den überseeischen Staaten gegenüber eine geeignete Stellung einzunehmen, die Auswanderung zu leiten, sie zu schützen.” 62. BA, Koblenz. ZSg. 9/1308. p. 62–63. “Die Gründung solche Etablissements durch die deutsche Flotte wo deutsches Kapital auf fernen deutschen Territorien eine zweckmäßige Anlage findet, wollen wir mit Freuden begrüßen, sie wird unsere Schifffahrt haben, und der Auswanderung deutscher Kapitale nach fremden Besitzungen, wo sie den Reichthum fremder Nationen erhöhen, vorbeugen. So schließen wir denn mit dem Wunsche, daß die Centralgewalt sowohl die Nation von einer drückenden Armensteuer durch die Auswanderung und Ansiedlung überflüssiger Arbeitskräfte befreien, als auch der Wohlfahrt der Nation durch Anlage von Kolonien entgegen kommen möchte.” 63. BA, Koblenz. DB 58/179. p. 65. Undated Beilage to Schwäbischen Merkur. “… Gründung selbstständiger deutscher Niederlassungen in auswärtigen Ländern durch Ableitung des Ueberflusses der Bevölkerung und Sammlung derselben in freien Ansiedlungen, in welchen die deutsche Nationalität streng bewahrt und gepflegt wird, um sie zu Hülfsquellen und Märkten für das Mutterland zu machen.” See also the “Blatt zur Uebersiedlung Deutscher nach Texas.” DB 58/179. p. 74, which saw the nation’s task in the following terms: “Die Aufgabe der Gegenwart muß es daher seyn, der ärmeren Klasse die Auswanderung und die Begründung eines befriedigenden Wohlstandes möglich zu machen …” Unlike many other colonizing groups, this association saw indirect colonization as a more realistic vessel for German expansionism. 64. BA, Koblenz. DB 1/28. Vol I. pp. 11–12. “Statuten des in Hamberg errichten ColonisationsVerein.” 1849. “… durch Colonisation allein ist es möglich, die armeren Auswanderer zu leiten.” For mercantile benefits see p. 30. 65. Such was the standpoint of the leftist Friedrich Schlöffel. Schlöffel warned of a second revolution to follow the first political one, a revolution of the hungry, who would extract their revenge if they were overtaxed for the establishment of a fleet. See F. Wigard. Vol. I. Sten.Ber. p. 311. 66. KJ Bade. Homo Migrans. Wanderungen aus und nach Deutschland: Erfahrungen und Fragen. Klartext, Essen, 1994. p. 21. See also KJ Bade. “Conclusion: Migration Past and Present—the

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67.

68.

69. 70. 71.

72. 73.

74. 75. 76.

77.

78. 79.

German Experience.” In D. Hoerder & J. Nagler, (eds). People in Transit: German Migrations in Comparative Perspective, 1820–1930. Cambridge University Press, New York, 1995. p. 400. See also KJ Bade & M. Weiner. Migration Past, Migration Future. Germany and the United States. Berghahn Books, Providence, 1997. p. 5. “Transatlantic emigration from nineteenthcentury Germany was primarily a socio-economic mass movement …” R. Mühler. “Colonist Traditions and Nineteenth-Century Emigration from East Elbian Prussia.” In D. Hoerder & J. Nagler, (eds). People in Transit. p. 43. See also A. Lubinski. “Overseas Emigration from Mecklenburg—Strelitz: The Geographic and Social Context.” People in Transit. p. 78. R. Vollmer. Auswanderungspolitik und soziale Frage im 19. Jahrhundert. Staatliche geförderte Auswanderung aus der Berghauptmannschaft Clausthal nach Südaustralien, Nord- und Südamerika 1848–1854. Peter Lang, Frankfurt a.M., 1995. p. 64. FL Müller. “Imperialist Ambitions.” pp. 364–65. F. Wigard. Sten.Ber. Vol. II. p. 1056. F. Wigard. Sten.Ber. Vol. II. p. 1057. “Wenn wir nun unseren deutschen Auswanderern Schutz ertheilen, so werden wir die Liebe aller Ausgewanderten gewinnen; sie werden dann geneigter sein, Handels-Maßregeln, die gleich günstig wären für Nordmerika und für Deutschland, durch den Einfluß ihrer Wahlstimmen zu unterstützen. Dieß wäre für unser Vaterland, da wir leider keine Colonieen haben, ein nicht zu übersehender Nutzen der Auswanderung.” H. Grimm. Volk Ohne Raum. Albert Langen/Georg Müller Verlag, München, 1933. First published in 1926. F. Wigard. Sten.Ber. Vol. II. p. 1057. “… die Jugend im Auslande, in den Colonieen, in den zu cultivirenden Ländern einen freien Spielraum zur Entfaltung ihrer Thatkraft, die möglicherweise dem übervölkerten Vaterlande hätte zum Verderben gereichen können. Das Ausland entwickelt diese Kräfte und bietet ihnen freies, lohnendes Feld der Thätigkeit, und den Weg zu Wohlhabenheit und Ansehen.” F. Wigard. Sten.Ber. Vol. II. p. 1057. “Herr Tellkampf! Darüber sind schon vor zwanzig Jahren Bücher geschrieben wurden.” On the preponderance of pro-imperialist sentiment within liberal circles during the Vormärz era, see FL Müller. “Der Traum von Weltmacht.” pp. 99–183. See for example Hans Christoph von Gagern’s Fernerer Versuch, politische Ideen zu berichtigen III: Der Deutschen Auswanderung. Gebrüdern Wilmans, Frankfurt a.M., 1817. For Hans Christoph von Gagern, see S. v. Senger und Etterlin. Neu-Deutschland in Nordamerika: Massenauswanderung, nationale Gruppenansiedlungen und liberale Kolonialbewegung, 1815–1860. Nomos Verlaggesellschaft, Baden-Baden, 1991. pp. 29ff. P. Wentzcke & W. Klötzer (eds). Deutscher Liberalismus im Vormärz: Heinrich von Gagern, Briefe und Reden 1815–1848. Musterschmidt Verlag, Göttingen, 1959. pp. 243–45, 251, 276–80, 438–39. On the agitation of Hans Christoph v. Gagern, see also FL Müller. “Imperialist Ambitions.” p. 354. P. Wentzcke & W. Klötzer. Deutscher Liberalismus. p. 277. H. von Gagern, in a letter to his father Hans Christoph von Gagern, 18 August 1844, in P. Wentzcke & W. Klötzer. Deutscher Liberalismus. p. 278. “Das Streben nach deutschem Zusammenhang, nach deutschem Einfluß, selbst Übergewicht (wenn es erreicht werden kann) in Kolonien finde ich gerechtfertigt, natürlich, wohltätig, wo noch keine Nation mit Nationalansprüchen existiert, wo eine Bevölkerung im Entstehen erst begriffen ist. Welche zivilisierte Nation auf einen solchen Punkt der Erde, auf solches Vakuum die größte Masse der Bevölkerung liefert und ihr Übergewicht zu begründen weiß, die ist in ihrem Recht, und um so besser, um so glücklicher, wenn dies mit Ausschluß anderer Nationalitäten geschehen könnte. … Solcher ausschließliche Kolonialbesitz wird aber schwerlich den Deutschen beschieden sein.” Gagern went on to nominate areas of North and South America as two realistic possibilities for a German colonial empire.

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80. Letter to Arendt, 18 November 1844. In R. Hübner, ed. Johann Gustav Droysen: Briefwechsel. Vol. I: 1829–1851. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart, 1929. p. 300. “Brasilien muß und wird für Deutschland die beste Stellvertretung der Kolonie worden.” See also FL Müller. “Imperialist Ambition.” p. 366. 81 . FL Müller. “Imperialist Ambitions.” p. 364. 82. F. Wigard. Sten.Ber. Vol. VIII. p. 5710. 83. HH Best, W. Weege. Biographisches Handbuch. p. 112. 84. F. Wigard. Sten.Ber. Vol. VIII. p. 5718. “… ich halte sie nicht für genügend; sie bedürfen großer, wesentlicher Ergänzungen.” 85. F. Wigard. Sten.Ber. Vol. VIII. p. 5719. “Es ist ein Transportgesetz, nicht mehr … aber die große Frage, die große Seite die Sache, die Sorge für die Beseitigung der in Deutschland und namentlich in einzelnen Theilen ungemein aufwuchernden Massenarmuth ist dabei ganz vergessen … Ich betrachte die Auswanderungsfrage in ihrer praktischen Auffassung als eine Frage der öffentlichen Armensorge.” 86. F. Wigard. Sten.Ber. Vol. VIII. p. 5720. “Von der höheren Auffassung der Auswanderung zur Gründung von Colonieen … schweige ich bei der Aufgeregtheit der Versammlung. Aber etwas muß für den Auswanderer, den besitzenden und den armen, geschehen.” 87. HH Best, W. Weege. Biographisches Handbuch. p. 311. 88. F. Wigard. Sten.Ber. Vol. VIII. pp. 5721–22. “Am großen Ocean kann ein mächtiges herrliches Neudeutschland erblühen, welches die natürliche Freundschaft der Vereinigten Staaten mit uns noch bedeutend verstärkt. Aber, wenn wir nicht eilen, kommen wir auch im Westen Amerikas zu spät, wenigstens für umfangreichere Ansiedelungen, welche einen selbständigen Einfluß zu üben vermögen … Die Auswanderung geht fast ausschließlich nach dem fernen Westen; aber es giebt noch Ansiedelungsländer an unserer nächsten Grenze, im Osten und Südosten unseres Vaterlandes, welche in nächster Zeit von großer Bedeutung werden können, wie auch der Ausschußbericht zu meiner Freude anerkennt … Dort an unserer Grenze ist unser Texas, unser Mexico … Ich wünsche, daß das Auswanderungsamt, sobald es die Verhältnisse erlauben, sich mit der österreichischen Regierung über ein geregeltes Colonisationssystem für die Donauländer verständigt.” 89. F. Wigard. Sten.Ber. Vol. VIII. p. 5722. See also p. 5723. “Die Moldau und die Wallachei ist eines der schönsten fruchtbarsten Länder in den europäischen Staaten … ein solches Land ist gewiß vor allen andern zur Colonisation geeignet …” 90. The classic formulation of this is, of course, Woodruff Smith’s The Ideological Origins of Nazi Imperialism. 91. See for example the proposition of the Dresden Gewerbe-Verein to establish both. BA, Koblenz. ZSg. 9/652. 92. L. Namier. 1848. pp. 118ff. 93. Buß, Schulz and the Viennese Herz, the three speakers who in this debate advocated eastern colonization were großdeutsch nationalists. See R. Koch, Frankfurter Nationalversammlung. p. 377, 111. 94. W. Smith. Ideological Origins. p. 25. 95. FL Müller. “Imperialist Ambitions.” p. 365; F. Wigard. Sten.Ber. Vol. VIII. pp. 5720–28. 96. W. Smith. Ideological Origins. p. 26.

Chapter 2

MYTHOPOESIS—IMPERIALISM AS NATIONALISM


As the Frankfurt Assembly’s President Heinrich von Gagern had remarked to Johann Tellkampf, books, treatises, and pamphlets relating to the topic of the German nation abroad had abounded for the twenty years previous to the Nationalversammlung. The liberal press had also taken an interest in imperial affairs, as had German poets, songwriters, and writers of political tracts.1 Sometimes, as was the case with Ernst Moritz Arndt and Georg Herwegh,2 the poets and the politicians were one and the same. However, unlike in the realm of nationalist politics, the creation of textual treatments of German liberal imperialism continued unabated, despite the counterrevolutionary political climate of the 1850s. With German liberals unable to assert their long held goal of becoming a colonial power via the type of national parliamentary politics represented by the Frankfurt National Assembly, German imperialism moved at least partially into the sphere of literature, ensuring both the continuance of the earlier textual interest in a German colonial project, and the spurring of Germany’s Bürgertum into private sector forms of imperialist venture. These texts, far from being a random assortment of theories from the margins, represented a consolidated body of literature marked by a large degree of intertextuality and self-referentiality. Along rehearsed and relatively stable lines of discussion, and employing concepts and rhetorical formulations that spanned half a century, liberal theorists engaged in the transmission of an imperialist culture—a culture that had its origins in the Vormärz era. Apparently heterogeneous in their aims, most imperialist texts of the time in fact employed one or more of the well-established discursive strategies that together constituted the tropes of liberal imperialism.

Notes for this section begin on page 67.

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In order for the textual manifestations of liberal imperialism to be properly understood, the tropes of imperialist discourse require identification and analysis, as a preliminary step toward, firstly, their contextualization and, secondly, the assessment of their simultaneous reflection and construction of social facts.3 These common rhetorical tropes, consolidated throughout the course of the nineteenth century, were continuously and consciously employed in an attempt to gain widespread adherence to national imperialist discourse, and ultimately to the liberal nationalist meta-narrative and its concomitant formulation of the German polity. These often employed rhetorical formulations of imperialist aims were explicit signifiers of the attempt by liberals to gain and consolidate their cultural hegemony at a time of apparent political difficulty, through the building of a broad national consensus behind a particularly liberal vision of German society. The constant enunciation of this vision through a well-established rhetoric of expansionism both nourished the pro-imperialist topos within liberal circles themselves and, more importantly, ensured the maintenance of a national profile for the liberals’ nationalist-expansionist agenda.4 Broadly speaking, these tropes were economic, demographic, political, moral, and nationalist in nature, and were properly tropes, in that they were symbolic as well as literal utterances, as opposed to mere themes for discussion, and in that they were metaphorical manifestations of deeper arguments regarding the nature of the new German nation and regarding Germany’s position vis-à-vis other European powers. This is not to say that they operated as “empty signifiers” of identity, or pure literary artifice without reference to material factors. Indeed, these material factors, constituting the social logic in which these texts were situated, necessarily informed, and to some extent determined, the liberal preference for an overtly imperialist dimension to their proffered nationalist meta-narrative. Clearly, a discernibly bürgerlich social stratum chose a means of self-expression that coincided with and advanced its material needs. These tropes, although at times reshuffled, reconfigured, and reemphasized, constituted the discursive parameters of liberal imperialist discourse from its crystallization at the Frankfurt Nationalversammlung until well into the colonial era. Neatly summarizing the tropes of imperialist discourse was a recollection of the fundaments of Germany’s earlier Kaiserreich colonial claims by the Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft in its organ, the Deutsche Kolonialzeitung, which, in the Weimar era, sought to resurrect them. Its rehearsal of nineteenth century arguments posited colonies as being and having been necessary for a number of reasons: 1. Because we are a growing people that must operate in the future … more than ever before on our own ground and soil if we want to live independently. 2. Because we require territories for raw materials. 3. Because we must build up and expand our global trade, our global business again.

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4. Because we must open up a broader arena of activity for our culture and our collective tasks. 5. Because we believe in the maintenance of our people, that it is heading for a great new future, if its world mission amongst the nations is correctly grasped.5

In the first point, demographic concerns and the solving of the social question were alluded to, in its identification of population growth and its concomitant threat of growing poverty as a key future problem that could only be satisfactorily solved through territorial expansion. In the second and third points, the primary resources and trade topoi of the economist trope were reaffirmed as the basic material arguments asserted by German liberals for imperialism. Point four alluded to the national responsibility that Germany, in liberal eyes, bore to culturally realign non-European civilizations in line with the operating priorities of the German nation and economy—a mission that liberals at best naïvely, and at worst disingenuously, portrayed as a process of enlightenment and progress, rather than one of wholesale sociocultural engineering and, in many instances, destruction. The final point, operating as the binding argument between liberal interests and national aggrandizement, deployed the nationalist trope, confidently asserting that in the fulfillment of Germany’s world mission, as defined in the preceding points (points 1–4), a German nation would be created that was a “first rank” power—a nation able to operate with a “free hand” when and wherever it decided. Significantly, these tropes cannot be seen as mutually exclusive or competing paradigms of imperialist ideology, as they were often simultaneously apparent in pro-imperialist texts, overlapping and informing one another, particularly prior to colonial imperialism having been given an official profile.6 This may be largely explained by the initially oppositional nature of imperialist discourse in the nineteenth century that permitted, and indeed encouraged, heterogeneous imperialist visions to coexist for tactical reasons. Strategically, this meant that German liberal imperialism was a broad church attracting an equally broad constituency of would-be imperialists, each harboring their own particular ideal or vision of what a German empire should look like. Linked to this is the fact that imperialism was by no means a hermetically sealed, clearly delineated discourse, whose limits and practical aims were agreed upon before its implementation. Partly because of its initially oppositional nature, imperialist theorizing was fluid in nature, a fluidity that saw some discursive strands foregrounded and others glossed over, according to the strategic needs of a given context; that is, in accordance with the imperatives that arose whilst attempting to gain the acceptance and adherence of the national public to the imperialist project. As such, imperialist discourse utilized or dispensed with its constituting tropes according to both the immediate social context and the particular theoretical inclination and preoccupations of the composer of the imperialist text being deployed.

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The first of these tropes, the economic, focused on the utility of colonialism in the process of Germany’s capitalist development. In economist presentations of colonialism, the discussion included a perceived overproduction crisis within Germany, coupled with a desire to create “captive” markets across the globe. Similarly deployed were arguments concerning access to primary resources, the importance of benefiting from the economies of scale that colonial production could offer, and the need for financial and physical security for Germany’s global traders that would arise as a result of both the “uncivilized” regions that their economic activity penetrated, and through the controlling of territory in the vicinity of the colonies of other major European economies (notably Britain and France, who may through jealousy and avarice fall upon the hapless German trading outpost). Immediately apparent in this discursive strand is the seeming contradiction between the “captive markets” topos and that concerning the declared security requirements of Germany’s traders. The former required large scale colonial settlements if it were to be feasible, whereas the latter could have easily been fulfilled through a form of quasi “private sector” colonialism that restricted the government’s role to the acceptance of the right of German companies to claim territory that the companies themselves would manage. Already a discernible inconsistency between a minimalist and a settler colonial imperialism is evident. Far from an oversight, this apparent inconsistency was an important example of the built-in flexibility of imperialist discourse, which could thereby hope to appeal simultaneously to German free traders and protectionist interventionists. Only in the 1870s and 1880s, when these differences ossified in the debates between progressive liberals and nationalist-liberals, would such inconsistencies become problematic for the translation of imperialist theory into praxis. The second trope, demographic in nature, viewed the emigration of German nationals, in particular to the Americas, as pointing to a fundamental weakness in the German state. The discussion here was of a sapping of strength, or as Friedrich List saw it, a loss of those qualities that makes nations great—capital and energy.7 Economically, these émigrés took with them whatever capital they had, with little hope of the fruits of this capital returning to Germany, while culturally, they would inevitably be assimilated (“assimiliert”) or fused (“verschmelzt”) with the larger American population, speaking English and adapting to American civic institutions.8 Colonies, it was argued, would ensure that Germany’s human capital was harnessed within the German economic sphere, ensuring that Germany would not end up losing this form of economic strength to other nations that, for their own profit, provided emigrants with a destination within their own internationalized imperialist economies. Also considered were the political dividends that colonialism offered the political classes in Germany itself. It is this that Wehler and Bade, amongst others, have referred to as the attraction of a Sammlungspolitik,9 whereby the more conservative elements of German society could externalize the growing political and economic problems that had resulted from rapid modernization and the

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concomitant construction of an urban proletariat that was rapidly organizing itself. Although perhaps not in the manner in which Wehler views it, notions of pragmatic domestic politics are evident in early colonialist discourse; however, only in so far as imperialism was seen as a solution to the social question, rather than as a means of avoiding it. It appears that Wehler’s “social imperialism” cannot be antedated to this period,10 in as much as the extent of conservative and liberal cooperative political action in the post–1848/49 era through to the beginning of active state imperialism in 1884 was relatively minor, the role of reform conservatives in the Frankfurt Nationalversammlung notwithstanding, with their relationship marked more by confrontation than fellow purpose. Liberals did indeed see imperialism as a valid answer to the social question which would render socialism an obsolete meta-narrative; however, the positioning of imperialism as a social remedy was also at odds with the conservative national meta-narrative in the pre-colonial era. It is not until after the turn of the century, in such instances as the so-called “Hottentot” election of 1907, that liberals and newly pro-imperialist, increasingly bourgeois conservatives made it a common cause to use the ascendant liberal imperialist discourse to isolate the by then far more politically organized and ominous Social Democrats through an appeal to an alternate national mission abroad.11 Colonial discourse also had its perceived moral dimension, in so far as it was viewed as an exercise in bringing European civilization to the savages.12 Missionary activity, and more importantly, the bringing of the “saving virtues” of work discipline to the “indolent natives” of the extra-European world, was consistently discussed as being the right and responsibility of an “advanced” nation such as Germany. This is perhaps the discursive strand that is more usually dismissed as sheer cynical and racially motivated propaganda; however, in so far as it was the form in which some of the earliest forms of racial theoretics were cast, the moralist colonial trope, as a means of conveying liberal Enlightenment notions of cultural progress and racial difference, is deserving of serious attention. Finally, nationalist sentiments were consistently appealed to in imperialist discourse. Irrespective of the precise nature of the imperial dreams they harbored, contributions to German pro-colonial discourse were infused with a certain national competitiveness that viewed expansion and naval aggrandizement as a means by which the new German nation could assert itself in the world. This conflation of nationalism and imperialism was central to early German liberal nationalism. The liberal desire for an ostentatious assertion of national power and strength in the external world through an expansionist foreign policy should be seen as the discursive nexus between the liberal proffering of the nation-state as their preferred mode of governance (as determined by their own material class interests) and the broader, contested debate between adherents to rival concepts of statehood and their preferred modes of governance. The deployment of the nationalist trope was the attempt to transform a partisan liberal interpretation of German statehood into a collective identification of the state with the liberal imperialist nation.

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The central figure in the consolidation of these tropes of German imperialist discourse was Friedrich List. Amongst the composers of pro-colonial texts prior to the 1884 decision to endorse the National Liberals’ expansionist agenda, Friedrich List stands out as the exponent whose pronouncements on colonialism established the rhetorical terrain upon which the imperial debate would be argued for almost one hundred years. It is in List’s consistent and closely argued texts that the nexus between imperialism and more general liberal aspirations was most firmly established, and later proponents of German colonies borrowed heavily from the lines of discussion established in the Listian corpus. Casting some light on the broader historical context within which List was situated is Heinrich August Winkler, who, in writing of changes brought about in the revolutionary era, summarized the processes at work in the following terms: From the period preceding the March Revolution of 1848 to the founding years of the German Empire, the national slogan was primarily an expression of the desire for bürgerlich emancipation … the creation of a German national state would not least enable Germany to reduce its economic backwardness in comparison with industrially advanced England. In this respect, early nationalism was an ideology of modernization.13

Winkler’s argument correctly posits the various substrata of the German Bürgertum as having been anxious to translate their sociocultural preponderance into political gain, with this desire for political power having a largely economic dimension to it. In essence, German liberals hoped that by controlling the political direction of the nation, they could ensure that the liberal economic model would become the national economic model. With a modern, capitalist economic model perceived as being reliant upon overseas trade and, therefore, the integration of non-European territories into the German politico-economic realm, an equation was made between the political and economic utility of imperialism as a means of securing domestic political support and furthering the economic hegemony of German liberals. That said, it does not do to over-homogenize the clearly disparate theories of political economy that were current in liberal circles during the 1848–1884 period, with the glaring dispute amongst liberals at this time being the split between free traders and protectionists, a dispute which saw political unity fracture to such an extent that liberal political power was severely undermined by their disunity.14 One side effect of this rupture was a reappraisal of the desirability of statist colonies by progressive liberals, who, in the 1880s began to see in them protectionist economics translated into foreign policy, as the Samoa affair of 1880 illustrates.15 In his still useful survey of the latter years of the dispute, Ivo Nikolai Lambi accurately summarized the varying fortunes of Germany’s free traders and protectionists as a decade’s long contest between adherents to the tenets of Adam Smith and those of Friedrich List.16 Both positions were proffered as models for Germany’s industrial and commercial development, models that would allow Germany to develop a modern economy able to compete with the region’s capitalist hegemons Britain and France.17 As fiercely competing proponents of diver-

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gent economic pathways within the edifice of nascent German liberal capitalism, and with each variously embraced and rejected by Germany’s economic theorists and government and university economists, both protectionists and free traders attempted to assert that their theoretical positions represented the best possible means by which Germany could effectively internationalize its economy. Yet despite the fierce competition between these two versions of economic modernization, the teleology of both was virtually identical—a robust German capitalism with a strong commercial and industrial base that was able to compete within an internationalized economy as a free trading nation. As Lambi has pointed out, despite his reputation as the father of a form of German nationalist protectionism, Friedrich List saw protectionism as the means by which Germany would arrive at the same level of economic development as England and France—at which time tariff protection would have no further legitimate role and would require dismantling: “Essentially, List’s system admitted protective duties, but only as a means of preparing the nation for free trade.”18 The teleological confluence of liberalism’s two programs of economic modernization is of critical importance in the understanding of the place of the extraEuropean periphery within liberal economics and politics. With both positions positing, firstly, the need for economic modernization and internationalization, and secondly, the need for Germany to be able to compete in a successful fashion with the economies of its main European rivals, the necessity of foreign acquisitions or, at the very least, foreign spheres of economic dominance were implicit in both positions. In effect, this meant that, despite disagreements over its precise form, as a point of agreement between liberal protectionists and liberal free traders, imperialism operated as a lynchpin discourse upon which both groups could agree, and which both could use as the basis for a pan-liberal discourse of German national progress. That is, imperialist discourse and its praxis enabled liberals to offer a unified form of national identity, which was congruent with both of the competing versions of a liberal economic policy agenda. Although certainly not the first to call for a German imperial project, Friedrich List was one of the most influential early advocates of an imperialist foreign policy as a central tenet of liberal politics.19 With his work, many of the tropes of imperialist discourse in Germany were established, paving the way for decades of research, journalism, pamphleteering, and novel writing, which would stretch beyond the “liberal moment” of 1848/49. Constantly repeated and reinscribed, the central tenets of his belief in the necessity of imperialism as a national mission were transmitted to the next generation of liberal politicians and theorists who would become active at the time of Germany’s unification. In this way, a discernible theoretical position on how and why Germany should become an imperial power emerged, and in the post-unification years of a liberal cultural, if not political, hegemony, this theoretical position could finally realize itself in the world through an imperialist praxis. Significantly, List’s prototypical enthusiasm for colonies was not extraneous to the other liberal causes that he championed throughout his long and prolific

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career. Rather, it was a cornerstone to his politico-economic Weltanschauung. Being so deeply embedded in his theoretics, imperialism was for List an integral part of any liberal ascendancy, as a means of both securing and safeguarding a (yet to be born) liberal and national(ist) Germany.20 This liberal, trading Germany, he argued, would, in concert with other liberal trading nations, extract enormous economic gain from the “civilization” of lands outside of Europe: There is no greater interest for the advanced nations of Europe and North America than the civilization and colonization of the lands of South America, Africa, Asia and Australia. Through this all of them could infinitely increase their exports in manufactured good, their imports of foreign products and their transport and transit commerce.21

The interconnectedness of colonial imperialism, colonial trade, and European prosperity with the duty of Europeans to “civilize” or harness non-European nations was a theme to which List often returned, both in this major work and in others, parts of which are worth a full reproduction: By the importation of food and raw materials, the nation gains the chance to found colonies and attach them to them in a way that is beneficial for both sides, in that it would assist in the development of a lucrative reciprocal trade; if this importation is obstructed, an important means of prosperity and of caring for the unemployed is removed.22 In the state of nations there rules however an infinite diversity; we discern in them giants and dwarfs, healthy bodies and cripples, civilized, half-civilized and barbaric … It is the task of politics to civilize the barbarous nationalities, to make the small and weak large and strong, before everything however to secure their existence and continuance. It is the task of the national economy to manage the economic development of the nation and to prepare it for an entrance into the future universal society.23 Only with the manufacturers comes the capacity of the nation to conduct trade with less cultivated nations, to increase shipping, to establish naval power and to use the surplus population for the good of the nation and the power of the nation.24

Rhetorically positioning Germany as an industrializing, manufacturing nation (before this became a self evident truth), List was simultaneously able to assert the necessity of colonialism for Germany as a source of raw materials for a burgeoning industrial economy whilst deflecting more reactionary or Romantic notions of an inherently agricultural Germany. In doing so, List formulated the enduring tropes of liberal imperialism—namely its economic, demographic, and political utility: Colonies are the lifeblood of manufacturing strength, and of the related growth in domestic and foreign trade, of meaningful coastal and open sea maritime travel and of large ocean fisheries and at some point of significant naval power … The surplus strength of the mother nation in terms of population, capital and entrepreneurial spirit gain through colonization a positive channel, the return on which is paid with interest . . . Agricultural nations, for whom the resources to establish colonies are not available, also do not possess the power to

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use them or to claim them. What the colonies require they cannot provide, and what they offer the colonies the colonies themselves already possess. If European nations other than Britain wish to take part in the very profitable business of cultivating wild lands or civilizing barbaric nations or once cultured nations that have sunk into barbarism, then they must begin to develop their domestic manufacturing strength, their maritime capacity and their naval strength …25

The alternative, as List saw it, to an imperialist Germany, was a loss of the most dynamic elements of German society who would simply express their restless energy by emigrating to and assimilating into other, more dynamic nations, thereby depriving Germany of precisely those qualities that would enable it to safeguard its political and economic power and status: Of what benefit is it to the German nation, if the emigrants that have left for North America become happy, but they are lost forever for the German nation, while from their material production only insignificant fruits are to be expected for Germany … Of the many Germans currently living in North America, there is without doubt not a single one whose descendents prefer the German language to English … they will and must be fused with the dominant population in accordance with natural law.26

To ensure that this nightmare scenario of lost German “energy” did not come to pass, List, preempting the Frankfurt Nationalversammlung and the pro-naval sentiments of Bennigsen and Miquel’s Nationalverein, turned to Prussia as the mostly likely candidate to successfully establish a German navy and German colonies.27 Regarding the matter of the cost of colonies, List invoked the colonial experts—the English—asserting that: “Mr Gladstone has proven, and his evidence cannot be doubted, that colonization would pay its own costs.”28 Even with this level of colonialist urging, List felt that he had not adequately addressed colonialism, and complained about the constraints of space that necessitated the removal of an even more detailed exploration of the issue of colonialism.29 Interestingly, List illustrated elements of the differing strains of German imperialist thought, in his advocacy of not only overseas colonies, but also Eastern expansionism. Problematically for Woodruff Smith’s Lebensraum/Weltpolitik dichotomy,30 List, throughout his imperialist theoretics, saw no contradiction in urging both overseas mercantile expansion and settlement and Eastern commercial and settler expansion, viewing both as twin arms of the same policy—imperialism, for the sake of politico-economic betterment—based on the exchange of German manufactured goods for largely agricultural products from the colonies.31 Smith’s separation of List’s views on Eastern “inner colonization” from his views on overseas colonies fails to respect the interconnectedness between the two that List saw. In his analysis of the differing strands of German imperialism, Smith has constructed a somewhat overly schematic picture of a severance between Weltpolitik and Lebensraum modes of imperialist thought. In fact, for List, Weltpolitik, as a primarily modernizing force for economic imperialism that stressed the control of overseas raw materials for use in Germany and Lebensraum,

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as a settler and agrarian movement that looked for land for largely comparable reasons were interchangeable arguments used to express the desire for a more expansionist Germany. This was made abundantly clear in Das nationale System der politischen Ökonomie, in which he outlined in detail his reasons for recommending German colonial activity in Central and South America,32 as opposed to post–Monroe Doctrine North America (where settlers were fast becoming assimilated into the hegemonic Anglo-Saxon culture). After his discussion of South America he remarked, “The same policy might be followed in the Orient, European Turkey and the southern Danube region.”33 If any split in colonial discourse occurred, its unity is demonstrably still intact at the time of List. Indeed, his criterion for colonialism was not whether it was to be mercantile or settler colonialism, overseas or adjacent territories, but only if the land to be colonized was culturally, politically, and economically inferior to Germany: Here there is an entirely new and rich market for manufactured goods to be conquered; whoever has established secure links here, can remain in possession of them forever. These lands, without their own moral strength to raise themselves to a higher cultural standing point, or to introduce well-ordered governments and confer on them stability will more and more come to the conviction that help must come to them from the outside—through immigration.34

It is worth noting the use of moral language, the perceived cultural imperatives underpinning imperialist activity—further illustrating the parallels with the later Nationalversammlung, where the sittlich benefits of imperialism were similarly foregrounded. It is difficult to judge the concrete effect of List’s work on the generation of pro-colonial text composers of the mid to late nineteenth century; however, it is remarkable that both List’s argumentative method and persuasive technique, formulated prior to the 1848 revolutions, reoccured in the textual production prior to and during the second liberal ascendancy at the time of national unification and beyond. The language of economic necessity, counterpoised against that of colonial opportunity, the references to current territorial restrictions offset by expansionist possibility, and the discussion of a hierarchy of culture and morality, and of a strengthened German nation, all reemerged, to a greater or lesser degree, in the writings of later proponents of imperialism who shared List’s liberal inclinations. Of similar interest is the work of the Leipzig professor Wilhelm Roscher, whose methodically established typology of colonialism was a similarly seminal pro-imperialist work. Curiously understudied, Roscher’s work in many ways prefigures that of Friedrich Fabri, whose late nineteenth century work is often mistaken for German liberal imperialism’s theoretical point of origin.35 To briefly summarize the contents of Roscher’s theorizing, four major variants of colonies were identified: conquest colonies (Eroberungskolonien), trade colonies (Handelskolonien), agrarian colonies (Ackerbaukolonien), and plantation colonies

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(Pflanzungkolonien). The first he identifies with the period of Spanish and Portuguese imperialism, with the conquistadors in South America as the prototypical example. The last he viewed as reliant upon slavery and therefore morally impermissible. However, trade and agrarian colonialism were presented as possibilities befitting modern Germany in so far as they were by and large liberal democratic in nature36 as well as being suitable only for those nations in which “the entire people have attained a relatively high level of affluence and culture and in particular a strong middle class must exist.”37 As with List, colonialism was seen by Roscher as a task befitting those of a suitable cultural and political standing, with a modernizing economic base. In his discussion of the reasons for colonialism, Roscher again offered four main grounds: overpopulation (Übervölkerung), surplus of capital (Überfüllung mit Kapital ), political discontent (politische Unzufriedenheit), and religious enthusiasm (religiöse Begeisterung), with the first of the two being his most important. Significantly, Roscher, like Max Weber after him, identified political discontent and the necessity of “releasing” a surplus proletarian population, not in the combative sense employed by Wehler’s social imperialism thesis, but in the tradition of classical (that is to say Roman) popular reform. Roscher, like Weber, sought to mobilize the urban proletariat and the downwardly mobile Mittelstande, not out of fear of the specter of socialism, as Wehler suggests, but rather in deference to the wisdom of the ghosts of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus.38 For Roscher, colonies did not mean that the struggling middle and working classes would be beguiled by an imperialist diversion enacted by cynical patrician liberals and conservatives, but rather that the proletariat and its children would become healthy, well-fed middle class adults in the colonies, even as they supplied the raw materials required by German industry. As at the Frankfurter Assembly, the leitmotif here was not class warfare, but social mobility and economic potential.39 Colonialism could operate, Roscher argued, as a means of solving the social question, not avoiding it. As for the revolutionary elements of German society, the colonies could also accommodate the demands for social mobility lying at the heart of socialist politics.40 Once again, this was not framed in terms of attempting to divert the poor from a socialist agenda through the deployment of an imperialist one: rather, it was an attempt to demonstrate that the liberal imperialist meta-narrative superseded that of socialism, in that it offered the possibility of simultaneously solving the outstanding issues for German liberals—the consolidation of a liberal Germany and, in the process, the betterment of the material conditions of those classes worst afflicted by the changes heralded by modernity. For Roscher, as with List, the creation of an imperialist German nation was not merely desirable, but rather “a necessary consequence of the new development in business … [a] symptom of an energetic vital force …” and as such, “on these grounds must be greeted joyfully.”41 As with other colonial enthusiasts, Roscher viewed imperial expansion as an economic, cultural, and political necessity that would secure Germany’s industrial modernity and, as he remarked in his

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1885 edition, consolidate the nationalist gains of 1871. Roscher summarized the links between modernity, nationalism, and cultural development in his concluding remarks, which are worth quoting at length: That the German people will fulfill their obligatory colonizing mission in the spirit of humanity, intellectual freedom and economic equality is vouched for by its past. The German farmer and craftsman does not act overseas in the wilderness in a spirit of adventurist, gold greedy desire like the conquistadors, but for the welfare of his family in the future. Rather than the sword securing his possession of the earth, the plough and the axe create for him a new homeland. Rather than the converting rage of fanatical priests, the reforming spirit of the German Reformation and German commerce will conduct the leading and ruling of the lower races. After the German people raised themselves up to become a nation and regained for themselves the right to self-determination through the great deeds of the seventies, it must, faithful to the tradition of their forefathers, its share in the culture of the world reclaim.42

In this edition, Roscher picked up a theme that Max Weber would later become renowned for expounding—that unification was a mere stepping stone to a greater, imperial Germany that would see its surplus industrial, trade, and cultural “energies” harnessed through a colonial policy that would ensure Germany’s supply of raw materials and offer an outlet for those segments of the German people that had as yet failed to benefit from the leap into modernity. Roscher (as did Weber) saw Germany’s current problems in classical terms and saw the solution in classical terms. As the Gracchi had broken up the latifundia to enable the Roman urban proletariat a stake in the imperial state, so too did Roscher urge a harnessing of colonies as a means of enabling Germany’s urban poor to become affluent. Roscher offered imperialism as a route out of the social impasse that had been brought about by rapid modernization. Far from an attempt to divert the masses from the social question, colonialism was for liberals, such as Roscher, an attempt to answer it. A similarly early advocate of German colonialism was Alexander von Bülow, whose work Auswanderung und Colonisation im Interesse des deutschen Handels built on his years of colonial experience in the employ of the Belgian Colonial Society.43 Instrumental in the founding of the St. Tomas colony in Guatemala, Bülow argued strenuously that Germany was fast missing the opportunity to create its own colonial empire that could strengthen German international business interests. In accordance with the prevailing tropes of German imperialist discourse, Bülow situated his argument firmly within the context of a perceived economic need for German commerce to expand in order to satisfy its surplus capacity—arguments first clearly delineated by List. Bülow made no secret of his theoretical indebtedness to List, quoting him at great length and recommending List’s work on the relationship between commercial policy and colonialism.44 For Bülow, List’s imperialist theorizing was, “the basis for the beginning of a new study of the nature of the colonization of North America and regarding the possibility of the same in Central America.”

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Subsequent to his exposure to List’s theories, Bülow related, he contributed a number of articles to the Kölner Zeitung on the subject, before undertaking his practical colonial work in Central America.45 Despite this overt presentation of his intellectual pedigree, Bülow’s work was no mere recycling of List’s exhortations to empire. Rather, Bülow sought to blend the dominant tropes of colonialist discourse with innovations of his own, drawn from his experience in the colonies. Significantly, Bülow dismissed the overpopulation argument for colonialism, arguing that Germany was neither overpopulated nor in danger of becoming underpopulated through emigration,46 thereby clearing the theoretical ground for the foregrounding of his own, more commercially oriented arguments for a colonial destination for Germany’s emigrants. With demography not an important consideration, Bülow argued that Germany’s real gain in establishing colonies came in their ability to answer for Germany the question of why Germany did not rank amongst the world’s industrial powers.47 According to Bülow, the answer was not because Germans were emigrating en masse, but that it was the most energetic, vital part of the nation that was seeking an outlet for their energy abroad. In England and Ireland, he argued, only the most wretched of the poor opted for emigration as a last resort, whereas, in contrast, Germans were only too willing to leave their homeland.48 Through colonialism, this exiting vitality could be retained for Germany and subsequently be made to bear economic fruits. It was a matter of retaining the latent economic strength of Germany’s emigrants, and thereby solving a host of social problems experienced by Germany’s fledgling industrial economy.49 As with the debate in the Frankfurt National Assembly, Bülow postulated the organization of Germany’s ranks of emigrants as of critical importance for the national economy; however, he also viewed two other conditions as being important, the same conditions also mentioned in the debates at the Paulskirche, namely the establishing of a German naval fleet and national unification. Operating in a complementary fashion, these conditions, the grounding of a national fleet and the achievement of national unity, were seen as being instrumental in the establishment of German colonies and critical in ensuring the capacity of a German nation to pursue an independent commercial policy, which could be supported by military might and which would be respected by other European global powers. Furthermore, this centralization of control over a channeled emigration under the auspices of a unified German government with access to naval strength would, Bülow argued, enhance the material benefits of colonial imperialism.50 Somewhat prematurely, Bülow declared: Germany, the third largest European trading nation, has, in comparison to other trading nations, to this point done extraordinarily little in order to attain the influence on global trade which is its rightful due. If the origins of this phenomenon are to be found particularly in the political position of our Fatherland, in the lack of a navy, in the absence of unified leadership of these vital interests, that until now a Germany did not actually exist, so might we now, in this regenerative period of our great Fatherland regard these hindrances as having been overcome and in joyful hope expect a future which will lift us from an

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inadequate level to the lofty position where the intelligence of a great people must gain in material interests.51

Clearly, the resurrection of the previously existing linkage between national unity, a maritime military capacity, and an active policy of colonial imperialism, discussed both in the Frankfurt National Assembly and in the works of Friedrich List, was employed by Bülow, both because it was viewed as a proven necessity and in the hope that the resonances of that lineage would strike an already established chord with the work’s liberal readership. Bülow was, however, no mere theoretical imperialist, and in 1849 he established the Berliner Kolonisationsverein, which had to partially compete with, and partially work with, the shortly thereafter-established Hamburger Verein für Kolonisation in Zentralamerika. In 1851, Bülow’s organization secured a settlement contract for German settlers to colonize Costa Rica and in 1853, Bülow’s colony, Angostura, came into (an albeit short-lived)52 being, with the arrival of one hundred German families on a ship from Bremen.53 This Angostura project was just one example of the attempts by liberal imperialist theorists to translate the discursive norms of the nationalist-liberal meta-narrative into praxis a number of years after German liberals had lost the political initiative at the national level. Similarly active in an organization striving to realize colonial goals was the theorist Karl Gaillard, who also saw Central and South America as the correct site for the emergence of a German colonial empire.54 His criteria for the positioning of colonies, as with other theorists, were climatic, economic, and cultural. Could Europeans comfortably live there, were there products available there that would be useful for Germany, and would the preexisting laws in the area permit Germans to maintain their unique national identity upon their initial arrival?55 Considering these factors, and having rejected Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, and North America, Gaillard enthusiastically declared, “Spanish America. That is our Canaan, the land for German settlements in the full interests of Germany, German emigrants and the maintenance of their nationality…”56 Not content with such a vague indication of direction, Gaillard outlined the starting points for a South American German empire that would most likely succeed. Naming St. Tomas in Guatemala and the coastal strip between Bluesfield and San Juan in Nicaragua as good initial settlement points, Gaillard asserted that: … from St. Tomas outward the Germans can easily spread themselves out over Honduras and Guatemala and from the designated areas of Mosquitia outwards thereafter over the particularly favorable Nicaragua and the other states of Central America.57

Far from marking the limits of Gaillard’s vision, this conquest of Central America was seen as the necessary first step. In the longer term, Uruguay was also seen as a candidate for a thorough-going Germanization: Of all other lands of Southern America, no other is as favorable for German colonization, by virtue of its climate, soil quality, position, sparse population and quantity of space which offered for the expansion of Germans, as Uruguay.58

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The scope of Gaillard’s idea that Germany could come to dominate South America just as the English had come to dominate North America is in line with the expectations of many colonialist theorists of the time. In fact, Gaillard’s work is best seen as the theoretical basis for the imperialist praxis of the Berliner Verein zur Centralisation der deutschen Auswanderung und Kolonisation, whose statutes were added as an appendix to the work.59 In the context of a general desire for the direction of Germany’s stream of emigrants, South America appeared to many theorists as a logical choice for the establishing of a Neu-Deutschland by the new liberal German nation. The further linkage between German unity, naval power, and colonialism in South America can be found in the work of Prussia’s former envoy to Brazil, Johann Jacob Sturz. One of his earliest major statements on the issue, Soll und kann Deutschland eine Dampfflotte haben und wie?,60 constructed a direct relationship between a fleet, emigration, national unity, and colonial imperialism. Ostensibly focused on a perceived necessity for a steam line between Germany and South America, Sturz’s imperialist sensibility emerged slowly over the course of the text, at first as an unspoken assumption, and finally as a direct exhortation to the grounding of a New Germany. Sturz introduced the colonial idea by postulating that the task of the German nation was the establishment of an “enduring, secure base in South America”;61 however, he soon went on to speak in less coy terms about the necessity of a German colonial empire as the appropriate task for a German nation: Emigration is therefore not only not damaging, it is useful, it is necessary. Everything militates ever more powerfully towards grasping that emigration and the directly connected colonization is practically one of the most important national desires. It is time to commence this, from a higher national-economic, political and not least historical standpoint.62

Only through a colonial policy, Sturz argued in accordance with the model established by List, could Germany’s emigration be properly organized so as to benefit Germany, rather than North America, which for Sturz (as for List) represented a drain on German industry and the German nation.63 At this early stage, Sturz saw the organization of emigration as most likely to take the form of German emigration to Brazil, which, he claimed, was suitable for German colonization in terms of climate.64 For Sturz, Germany’s naval capacity, industrial capacity, and an imperial policy were part of the construction of a new modern Germany, whose proper place was as an actor upon the world stage. As he saw it, the German populace was clamoring for Germany to become a great sea power, and this should be taken as a sign that the time had come to fulfill this national mission: “Germany stands on the wave of a new epoch of its history, called upon to take up a new position in the life of the world.”65 Like List and other German imperialists of the 1840s, Sturz viewed modernity and empire as necessarily linked prospects. Sturz saw Germany’s future national prosperity as dependent upon a well-executed foreign policy that would see Ger-

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many standing shoulder to shoulder around the globe with the other great European colonial powers. It should also be noted that Sturz’s plan for a German colony in Brazil was far from the dream of a solitary theorist. Johann Gustav Droysen had in 1844 also expressed his view that a Brazilian colony was perhaps Germany’s best imperial prospect;66 indeed, much of the discussion of the 1840s revolved around South America rather than Africa or Asia as a preferred colonial destination. That Sturz went on to revise his support for Brazil and nominate other countries in the region as perhaps more suitable for German colonization in no way lessened his firm commitment to the demonstration of Germany’s industrial modernity through the prosecution of colonial imperialism in South America.67 Also discussing the necessity of colonies at this early stage was Hermann Blumenau, who published an anonymous treatise on the subject in 1846.68 At this stage, Blumenau had not yet formulated a specific plan to direct colonialism himself, as he would in the post-revolutionary years, when he would articulate and carry out a form of private sector colonialism.69 Rather, in the Vormärz era, Blumenau was one of a number of voices calling for a government policy of colonial imperialism. Blumenau also did not stray far from the liberal nexus between national identity, the need for a German navy, and the dire need for German colonies as a means of retaining the surplus capital and labor power represented by German emigrants. For Blumenau, “The question of emigration is a question of the survival of Germany in the future,”70 and the means of answering the problem lay with “the establishment of a German colony.” Blumenau argued for the direction of German emigrants to specifically German colonies, where, “they are at least not so alienated from their Fatherland, under the rule of a foreign power and having also to assume a foreign language and customs, becoming scattered in all regions.”71 The emphasis on the retention of German language and customs was continuously foregrounded by Blumenau, not only as a means of ensuring the “material wellbeing” of the individual emigrant, which he saw as important in itself. Rather, broader national interests—the assertion of a national German identity and the economic interests of German trade and industry abroad—were seen as being at stake: While for individual emigrants the only question with meaning is where and how he will attain happiness and wellbeing, for the wellbeing of the whole and for the interests of the German Motherland there are others that are no less pertinent. They are in regard to the maintenance of German nationality, language and customs, the revival of German trade and manufacturing for the immediate future …72

The various possibilities and avenues for German imperialism were systematically reviewed by Blumenau, with several factors highlighted as inhibiting the potential success of various forms of German colonization. In particular, the lack of a centrally unified German nation directing the project—“a German great power

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at the apex of the undertaking”—and the absence of a powerful fleet (“mächtige Flott” ), a strong navy (“starke Seemacht”), were two factors singled out as hampering German imperialism.73 Here, Blumenau hinted, colonialism and national unification were linked projects, with only national unity affording the possibility of attaining the sea power requisite for colonial undertakings. Blumenau was similarly convinced that the German colonies needed to be autonomous, or at the very least comprise the hegemonic political class within their colonies. For this reason, he argued, “the future emigrant will turn to neither Texas nor the United States.”74 The entire point of colonialism was, according to Blumenau, that Germans could exercise rule over themselves and any other inhabitants of their proclaimed colonies—it was, in his view, critical, “that the Germans in their new Fatherland attain predominant power and prestige and accordingly lead or exercise their influence upon the politics of it.”75 This naturally held repercussions for the indigenous inhabitants in German colonies, whom Blumenau envisaged as working solely toward the material priorities of the German economy and in particular, the colonial agribusiness and trading interests that were to be the colonies’ major contribution to it.76 In this early work, the lack of a responsible central government complicated colonialism in Blumenau’s eyes, although he would later go on to be the foremost practitioner of private sector German colonialism. The reason Blumenau posited for the traditional role of government was that, due to both the initial establishment costs and the colonies’ deeper role and significance in terms of international power politics for the colonizing state, imperialism had hitherto always been a state-run affair aimed not at the “improvement” of the colonial land and people, but the improvement of the material and political position of the colonizing power prepared to invest in the settlement of non-European land: … colonies have never been the ends, even if they are established and supported at enormous cost—they have and will always be considered purely as a means of securing and broadening the power and wealth of the Motherland.77

As has been mentioned, Blumenau himself would later find a means of overcoming the blockage imposed by an unwilling state by simply bypassing the state, which had proved a disappointing avenue for liberal imperialists in the post–1848/49 period. In the process, he would assert the cultural and economic hegemony of German liberalism at a time in which it was confronting the political obstructionism of those who had not yet acceded to the radically new, industrialized, bourgeois Germany. Blumenau—at this stage still only a theorist of liberal imperialism—would remain undaunted by the political reversals brought about by the post–1848/49 period. In fact, the colony “Blumenau,” which he founded in 1850 during the period in which colonial imperialism supposedly disappeared from the German liberal agenda, is arguably one of the most long-lived and tangible manifestations of the nineteenth century German liberal imperialist movement’s push to establish a Neu-Deutschland in South America.

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The construction of the tropes of liberal imperialism by Vormärz text composers such as Friedrich List, Alexander von Bülow, Johann Sturz, and Hermann Blumenau (in effect the type of theorists referred to by von Gagern at the Frankfurt Nationalversammlung), established the intellectual terrain upon which the liberal imperialists would consolidate liberal imperialist nationalism in the 1850s and 1860s. These figures, along with those who have already been closely scrutinized by Hans Fenske and Frank Lorenz Müller,78 created a vital imperialist discourse, whose translation into a form of state-sanctioned national praxis was not realized until the 1880s. Despite this, the private sector and liberal civil society remained undeterred, picking up where the state left off. Germany’s liberal imperialists came to at least partially realize their imperialist dreams, both through continued political agitation and the private sector colonies that stemmed from the bürgerlich world of the Verein.

Notes 1. See H. Fenske. “Imperialistische Tendenzen.” FL Müller. “Der Traum von der Weltmacht.” 2. G. Herwegh. Die deutsche Flotte: Eine Mahnung an das deutsche Volk. Verlag der literarischen Comptoirs, Zürich, 1841. 3. The contextualization of these texts will not include a detailed survey of literacy levels and readership, and it will be taken as a reasonable assumption that, for the texts discussed, “Der ‘gemeine’ Leser ist ein Bürger” and that social divisions marked the consumption of imperialist texts by the German population. See R. Schenda. Volk ohne Buch: Studien zur Sozialgeschichte der populären Lesestoffe 1770–1910. Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main, 1970. pp. 456ff. See also R. Schenda. Die Lesestoffe der Kleinen Leute: Studien zur populären Literatur im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Verlag CH Beck, München, 1976. And R. Engelsing. Analphabetentum und Lektüre: Zur Sozialgeschichte des Lesens in Deutschland zwischen feudaler und industrieller Gesellschaft. JB Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart, 1973. Although more often addressed to the bourgeois reader, imperialist texts did at least partially penetrate into the world of the working class reader in the late nineteenth century—on this see for example JP Short. “Everyman’s Colonial Library: Imperialism and Working-Class Readers in Leipzig, 1890–1914.” German History 21 (4), 2003. pp. 445–75. 4. The utility of a textual approach to consensus building is confirmed by Schenda, when he writes, “Es steht fest, daß die Kommunikationsmittel die Denkweisen einer ganzen Nation beeinflussen können.” Volk ohne Buch. p. 487. This insight is not too distant from the Gramscian notion of organic intellectuals attaching themselves to the ascendant ideology of an emerging social cohort. That is, these text composers were not merely justifying existent social realities; rather, through their labors they mediated and transformed social facts into conceptual units that themselves went on to operate on the material world, attempting to turn myths into reality. See also B Anderson. Imagined Communities. 5. DKG 36(3). 20 March 1919. “Wir müssen unsere Kolonien zurückerhalten.” p. 25 (frontispiece). 1. Weil wir ein wachsendes Volk sind, das sich in Zukunft … mehr als je zuvor auf eigenem Grund und Boden betätigen muß, wenn es selbstständig leben will. 2. Weil wir Produktionsländer für Rohstoffe … nötig haben. 3. Weil wir unseren Welthandel, unsere Weltwirtschaft neu aufbauen und ausbauen müssen.

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6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

4. Weil wir unserer Kultur, unseren Missionen ein erweiteres Feld der Tätigkeit eröffern müssen. 5. Weil wir den Glauben an unser Volk aufrechterhalten, daß es einer neuen großen Zukunft entgegengeht, wenn es seine Weltaufgabe im Rate der Völker richtig erfaßt. Contra W. Smith. The Ideological Origins of Nazi Imperialism. Smith has argued that two antipathetic discourses of imperialism, which he designates as Lebensraum and Weltpolitik, competed throughout the imperial age. Such a reification of the differences between two contiguous aspects of colonial discourse do not find an easy correlation to the major imperial texts of Germany, which moved fluidly between the various tropes outlined in this chapter. F. List. Das nationale System der politischen Ökonomie, in A. Sommer, ed. Friedrich List. Schriften / Reden / Briefe. Scientia Verlag, Aalen, 1971. Vol. VI. pp. 422–26. F. List. Das nationale System der politischen Ökonomie. pp. 422–23. HU Wehler. Bismarck und der Imperialismus. K. Bade. Friedrich Fabri. PM Kennedy. “German Colonial Expansion. Has the ‘Manipulated Social Imperialism’ Been Antedated?” Past and Present (54), February 1972. pp. 134–41. U. van der Heyden. “Die Hottentottenwahlen von 1907” in J. Zeller & J. Zimmerer, (eds). Völkermord in Deutsch-Südwestafrika. pp. 97–102. For this see especially the works of Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden. HA Winkler. “Nationalism and Nation-State in Germany” in M. Teich & R. Porter, (eds). The National Question in Europe in Historical Context. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993. p. 182. The most notable example of this was the split in the National-Liberal party in 1879. See JJ Sheehan. German Liberalism. pp. 186ff., D. Langewiesche. Liberalism in Germany. pp. 196ff. See below, Chapter Five. IN Lambi. Free Trade and Protectionism in Germany 1868–1879. Franz Steiner Verlag, Wiesbaden, 1963, Ch. 1. pp. 1–22. IN Lambi. Free Trade. pp. 1, 5. IN Lambi. Free Trade. p. 9. On the influence of List’s nationalist thought throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries more broadly, see R. Szporluk. Communism and Nationalism: Karl Marx versus Friedrich List. Oxford University Press, New York, 1988. On List’s expansionist thought, see pp. 125ff. List’s commitment to liberal imperialism was in concert with his “infant industry” protectionist economic policies, which, as Iva Lambi pointed out, were aimed at nurturing German industries until such time as they could effectively rival British economic dominance. IN Lambi. FreeTrade. pp. 8–9. F. List. Le Système Naturel d’Économie Politique in A. Sommer. Friedrich List. Vol. IV. p. 228. “Il n’y pas pour les nations les plus avancées de l’Europe et de l’Amérique du Nord, de plus grand intérêt que celui de la civilisation ou de la colonisation de tous les pays de l’Amérique méridionale, de l’Afrique, de l’Asie et de l’Australie. Toutes pourront, par ce moyen, agrandir à l’infini leurs exportations en merchandises fabriquées, leurs importations des productions étrangères et leur commerce de transport ou de transit.” F. List. Le Système Naturel d’Économie Politique. p. 322. “Par l’importation des substances et des matières premières, la nation acquiert la possibilité de fonder des colonies et de se les attacher de la manière la plus avantageuse à l’une et à l’autre; c’est-à-dire en facilitant un commerce réciproque et lucrative; en empêchant cette importation, elle s’enlève un moyen si important de s’enrichir et de pourvoir les individus qui manquent de travail.” F. List. Das nationale System. p. 210. “In den Zuständen der Nationen herrscht indessen zur Zeit eine unendliche Verschiedenheit; wir gewahren unter ihnen Riesen und Zwerge, normale Körper und Krüppel, zivilisierte, halbzivilisierte und barbarische … Es ist die Aufgabe der Politik, die barbarischen Nationalitäten zu zivilisieren, die kleinen und schwachen groß und stark zu machen, vor allem aber ihnen Existenz und Fortdauer zu sichern. Es ist die Aufgabe der Nationalökonomie, die ökonomische Erziehung der Nation zu bewerkstelligen und sie

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24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30. 31. 32.

33.

zum Eintritt in die künftige Universalgesellschaft vorzubereiten.” Worth noting here is the link between nation-building and the colonial project. It is also worth noting here that this “civilizing of barbarian nations” was seen as being necessary so as to ensure that “die Länder der heißen Zone … [geraten] in die Abhängigkeit der Länder der gemäßigten Zone.” p. 53. F. List. Das nationale System. p. 238. “Mit den Manufakturen erst entsteht die Fähigkeit der Nation, fremder Handel mit minder kultivierten Nationen zu treiben, die Schiffahrt zu vermehren, eine Seemacht zu gründen und den Überfluß der Bevölkerung des Nationalwohlstandes und der Nationalmacht zu verwenden.” F. List. Das nationale System. pp. 289–90. “Die höchste Blüte der Manufakturkraft, des darauf erwachsenden inner und äußern Handels, einer / bedeutenden Küsten- und Seeschiff-fahrt und großer Seefischereien, und endlich einer ansehnlichen Seemacht, sind die Kolonien … Die überschüssige Kraft der Mutternation an Bevölkerung, Kapital und Unternehmungsgeist erhält durch die Kolonisation einen wohltätigen Abfluß, der ihr mit Interessen wieder dadurch vergütet wird … Agrikulturnationen, denen schon die Mittel fehlen, Kolonien anzulegen, besitzen auch nicht die Kraft, sie zu benutzen und zu behaupten. Was die Kolonien nötig haben, können sie ihnen nicht bieten, und was sie bieten können, besitzt die Kolonie selbst … Wollen auch die andern [d.h. außer England] europäischen Nationen an dem gewinnreichen Geschäft teilnehmen, wilde Lande zu kultivieren und barbarische oder wieder in Barbarei versunkene Nationen alter Kultur zu zivilisieren, so müssen sie damit anfangen, ihre inneren Manufakturkräfte, ihre Schiffahrt und ihre Seemacht auszubilden.” F. List. Das nationale System. p. 425. “Was hilft es der deutschen Nation, wenn die nach Nordamerika Auswandernden noch so glücklich werden, ihre Persönlichkeit geht der deutschen Nationalität für immer verloren, und auch von ihrer materiellen Produktion sind nur unbedeutende Früchte für Deutschland zu erwarten … Wie viele Deutsche gegenwärtig in Nordamerika leben, doch lebt sicherlich kein einziger dort, dessen Urenkel nicht die englische Sprache der deutschen vorzöge … sie werden und müssen sich natur gemäß mit der vorherrschenden Bevölkerung verschmelzen.” F. List. Das nationale System. pp. 425–26. “… daß Preußen jetzt schon mit Kreierung einer deutschen Handelsflagge und mit Grundlegung einer künftigen deutschen Flotte den Anfang machte, und daß es Versuche anstellte, ob und wie in Australien oder in Neuseeland oder auf andern Inseln des fünften Weltteils deutsche Kolonien anzulegen wären.” F. List. Die politisch-ökonomische Nationaleinheit der Deutschen. In A. Sommer. Friedrich List. Vol. VII. p. 391. “Herr Gladstone hat nachgewiesen, und sein Beweis kann auch nicht im mindesten bezweifelt werden, daß die Kolonisation ihre Kosten selbst bezahlen würde.” F. List . Das nationale System. p. 650. List wrote that he had a series of ideas related to agriculture, emigration, and colonialism that he had left out and would write about later (which he never did). “… Ideen über … Kolonisation usw., welche ich aus Mangel an Raum hätte zurückweisen müssen, ohne zu sagen, daß ich in Zukunft mit diesen und andern nationalökonomischen Materien noch ganze Bände anzufüllen gedächte.” This professed interest in colonialism makes it difficult to agree with Smith’s assertion that colonies “played a relatively small role in List’s overall thinking.” See W. Smith. Ideological Origins. p. 31; List. Das nationale System. pp. 424–25. W. Smith. Ideological Origins. Passim. F. List. Das nationale System. p. 425. An undertaking whose theoretical beginnings had already been made manifest in the early plans of Johann Sturz and which would later continue with Hermann Blumenau, amongst others, who attempted to establish German colonies in South America in the years after 1850. Interestingly, List had initially opposed Sturz’s earliest plans for a German colony in Brazil, on the grounds that Sturz’s plans benefited the English rather than Germany. See F. List. Die Ackerverfassung, die Zwergwirtschaft und die Auswanderung. pp. 524–25, 678. F. List. Das nationale System. pp. 422–25. “Gleiche Politik wäre in Beziehung auf den Orient, die europäische Türkei und die untern Donauländer zu befolgen.” See also F. List. Die

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34.

35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

42.

43. 44. 45.

46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51.

Ackerverfassung. p. 499–500; and Die politisch-ökonomische Nationaleinheit. pp. 521–23, 823–24. F. List. Das nationale System. p. 424. “Hier ist ein ganz neuer und reicher Manufakturwarenmarkt zu erobern: wer hier feste Verbindungen angeknüpft hat, kann für alle Zukunft im Besitz derselben bleiben. Diese Länder, ohne eigene moralische Kraft, sich auf einen höheren Standpunkt der Kultur zu erheben, wohlgeordnete Regierungen einzuführen und ihnen Festigkeit zu verleihen, werde mehr und mehr zur Überzeugung gelangen, daß ihnen von außen—durch Einwanderung—Hilfe kommen musse.” List’s hierarchy of civilizations and the following effect on the political economy of nations can also be found on p. 49. See also HH Best. Interessenpolitik und nationale Integration 1848/49. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen, 1980. pp. 23–29. W. Roscher. Kolonien, Kolonialpolitik und Auswanderung. 3. Aufl. Winter’sche Verlagshandlung, Leipzig. 1885. W. Roscher. Kolonien. p. 22. “In ihrem Innern besitzen die Ackerbaukolonien gewöhnlich einen sehr demokratischen Character.” W. Roscher. Kolonien. p. 28. “… das ganze Volk eine ziemlich hohe Stufe des Wohlstandes und der Kultur erreicht haben, muß insbesondere eine tüchtige Mittelklasse vorhanden sein.” W. Roscher. Kolonien. p. 32. W. Roscher. Kolonien. p. 35. “Kinder, die im Mutterlande vielleicht dem Proletariate anheim gefallen wären, dürfen mit Zuversicht auf eine wohlhabende Zukunft rechnen.” W. Roscher. Kolonien. p. 38. W. Roscher. Kolonien. p. 359. “eine nothwendige Folge der neueren wirthschaftlichen Entwicklung . . . [ein] Symptom einer energischen Lebenskraft … aus diesem Grunde freudig begrüßt werden müssen.” W. Roscher. Kolonien. p. 467. “Daß das deutsche Volk die ihm obliegende kolonisatorische Mission im Sinne der Humanität, der geistige Freiheit, der religiösen Toleranz und der wirthschaftlichen Gleichberechtigung erfüllen werde, dafür bürgt seine Vergangenheit. Nicht abenteurliche, golddurstige Begierde treibt den deutschen Ackerbauer und Handwerker gleich den Conquistadoren übers Meer, in den Urwald, sondern die Fürsorge für die Zukunft seiner Familie; nicht das Schwert sichert ihm den Besitz des Bodens, sondern Pflug und Axt schaffen ihm eine neue Heimat; nicht die Bekehrungswuth fanatischer Priester, sondern ein durch die deutsche Reformation und die deutsche Wissenschaft geläuterter Geist wird die Leitung und Herrschaft der tiefer stehenden Rassen übernehmen. Nachdem durch die großen Thaten der siebziger Jahre das deutsche Volk sich zur Nation emporgeschwungen und sein Selbstbestimmungsrecht wiedererlangt hat, muß es, getreu der Tradition seiner Väter, seinen Antheil an der Kultur der Welt wieder übernehmen.” A. Bülow. Auswanderung und Colonisation im Interesse des deutschen Handels. FS Rittler & Sohn, Berlin, 1849. A. Bülow. Auswanderung. pp. 108ff. A. Bülow. Auswanderung. p. 108. “… die Basis für den Beginn eines neuen Studiums über das Wesen der Colonisation in Nord-Amerika und über die Möglichkeit derselben in MittelAmerika.” A. Bülow. Auswanderung. pp. 4, 7–8. A. Bülow. Auswanderung. p. vi. A. Bülow. Auswanderung. p. vii. “In England erschien mir die Auswanderung der letzte verzweifelte Schritt, bei den Deutschen erschien sie mehr das Ergebniß einer Vorsicht.” A. Bülow. Auswanderung. pp. viii–ix. A. Bülow. Auswanderung. pp. 106–7. A. Bülow. Auswanderung. pp. 386–87. “Deutschland, der dritte europäische Handelstaat, hat im Verhältniß zu den übrigen Handelstaaten bis her noch außerordentlich wenig gethan, um denjenigen Einfluß auf den Welthandel zu erlangen, welcher ihm naturgemäß gebührt. Wenn die Ursachen dieser Erscheinung vornehmlich in der politischen Stellung unseres Vaterlandes, in dem Mangel an einer Marine, in der Abwesentheit einer einheitlichen Leitung dieser

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52.

53.

54. 55. 56.

57.

58.

59. 60. 61. 62.

63. 64. 65. 66.

67. 68.

69. 70. 71.

hochwichtigen Interessen, kurz darin zu suchen sind, daß bisher ein Deutschland eigentlich nicht existierte, so dürfen wir jetzt, in der Regenerationsperiode unseres großen Vaterlandes, diese Hindernisse als überwunden betrachten und in freudiger Hoffnung einer Zukunft entgegensehen, welche uns von der unangemessenen Stufe auf die erhabene Stelle heben wird, welche die Intelligenz eines großen Volkes seinen materiellen Interessen erringen muß.” Hendrik Dane quotes US envoy Squier as reporting, “Baron Bülow, the projector of this company died in 1856, and it is probable that this scheme expired with him.” See H. Dane. Die Wirtschaftlichen Beziehungen Deutschlands zu Mexiko und Mittelamerika im 19. Jahrhundert. Böhlau Verlag, Köln, 1971. p. 140. H. Fröschle. “Die Deutsche in Mittelamerika” in H. Fröschle, Hg. Die Deutschen in Lateinamerika: Schicksal und Leistung. Horst Erdmann Verlag, Tübingen, 1979. pp. 567, 574–75, 596. K. Gaillard. Wie und Wohin? Die Auswanderung und die Kolonisation im Interesse Deutschlands und der Auswanderer. Verlag von Carl Reimarus, Berlin, 1849. K. Gaillard. Wie und Wohin? p. 8. K. Gaillard. Wie und Wohin? p. 35–36. “Das Spanische Amerika. Dies ist unser Kanaan, das Land für deutsche Niederlassungen im vollsten Interesse Deutschlands, der deutsche Auswanderer und der Erhaltung ihrer Nationalität.” See also p. 46. K. Gaillard. Wie und Wohin? pp. 51–52. “… von St Tomas aus sich die Deutschen leicht über Honduras und Guatemala und von dem bezeichneten Theile Moskitias aus zunächst über das besonders bevorzugte Nicaragua und die andere Staaten Centralamerikas ausbreiten können.” K. Gaillard. Wie und Wohin? p. 64. “Von allen Ländern des südlichen Amerikas ist keins günstiger für eine deutsche Kolonisation durch Klima, Bodenbeschaffenheit, Lage, spärliche Bevölkerung und die Größe des Raumes, welcher der Ausbreitung den Deutschen geboten wird, als Uruguay.” K. Gaillard. Wie und Wohin? pp. 81ff. See also p. 79, in which a joint government/private sector undertaking was suggested. JJ Sturz. Soll und kann Deutschland eine Dampfflotte haben und wie? F. Schneider & Co., Berlin, 1848. JJ Sturz. Soll und kann Deutschland. p. 12. JJ Sturz. Soll und kann Deutschland. p. 19. “Die Auswanderung ist sonach nicht allein nicht schädlich, sie ist nützlich, sie ist nothwendig. Alles drängt immer mächtiger darauf hin, daß die Emigration und die mit ihr unmittelbar zusammenhängende deutsche Colonisation praktisch als eins der wichtigsten Nationalanliegen erfaßt werde, es ist Zeit, sie vom höheren nationalöconomischen, politischen, nicht minder vom historischen Standpunkte aus aufzunehmen.” JJ Sturz. Soll und kann Deutschland. p. 20. JJ Sturz. Soll und kann Deutschland. p. 21. JJ Sturz. Soll und kann Deutschland. p. 24–25. “Deutschland steht an der Schwelle einer neuen Epoche seiner Geschichte, berufen, eine veränderte Stellung im Weltleben einzunehmen.” Letter to Arendt, 18 November 1844. In R. Hübner, ed. Johann Gustav Droysen: Briefwechsel. Band. I: 1829–1851. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart, 1929. p. 300. See also FL Müller. “Imperialist Ambition.” p. 366. See Chapter Three. H. Blumenau. Deutsche Auswanderung und Colonisation. Verlag der JC Hinrichs’chen Buchhandlung, Leipzig, 1846. The editor, who contributed a warm introduction, was the Göttingen University geography professor, J. Wappäus. See Chapter Three. H. Blumenau. Deutsche Auswanderung und Colonisation. p. 3. “Die Auswanderungsfrage ist Lebensfrage für Deutschlands Zukunft…” H. Blumenau. Deutsche Auswanderung. p. 2. “… sie wenigstens ihrem Vaterlande nicht so weit entfremdet werden, unter der Herrschaft einer fremden Macht auch fremde Sprache und Sitte annehmen zu müssen und in alle Gegenden zerstreut zu werden.”

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72. H. Blumenau. Deutsche Auswanderung. p. 7. “Während für den einzelnen Auswanderer nur die Frage Bedeutung hat, wo und wie er am schnellsten zu Glück und Wohlstand gelangt, sind andere für das Wohl des Ganzen und das Interesse des Deutschen Mutterlandes von nicht geringerem Belange. Sie betreffen für die nächste und nähere Zukunft die Erhaltung der Deutschen Nationalität, Sprache und Sitte, die Belebung des Deutschen Handels und Fabrikwesens…” On national identity, see also p. 24. On the benefits to German trade and industry, see pp. 25–26. 73. H. Blumenau. Deutsche Auswanderung. pp. 16–17. “… eine Deutsche Großmacht an die Spitze des Unternehmens.” 74. H. Blumenau. Deutsche Auswanderung. p. 4. “… daß sich die künftigen Auswanderer weder nach Texas noch nach den Vereinigten Staaten wenden mögen.” 75. H. Blumenau. Deutsche Auswanderung. pp. 7–8. “… daß die Deutschen in ihrem neuen Vaterlande zu überwiegender Macht und Geltung gelangen, und demgemäß die Politik desselben leiten oder doch einen Einfluß auf sie ausüben.” 76. H. Blumenau. Deutsche Auswanderung. p. 13. “Deutschland wird eine Colonie haben, deren eingeborne Bevölkerung an Deutsches Interesse gebunden ist…” 77. H. Blumenau. Deutsche Auswanderung. p. 18. “… noch nie sind Colonien Zwecke gewesen, selbst wenn sie mit den ungeheursten Kosten gegründet und unterhalten wurden—immer wurden und werden sie nur als Mittel betrachtet, die Macht und den Reichthum des Mutterlandes zu befestigen und zu erweitern.” 78. H. Fenske. “Imperialistische Tendenzen.” FL Müller. “Der Traum von der Weltmacht.”

PART II

LIBERAL IMPERIALISM IN THE “POST-LIBERAL” ERA

Figure B. Alte und neue Zeit. Kladderadatsch, 25 August 1861. Source: WA Coupe. German Political Satires. p. 21.

Chapter 3

INFORMAL EMPIRE AND PRIVATE SECTOR IMPERIALISM, 1849–1884


The period between the liberal ascendancy of 1848/49 and national unification in 1871 was an era which saw tremendous political instability, both in terms of the diplomatic and military clashes between the various German states, Denmark, and France, and in terms of the political suppression and, at least at a “national” level, political marginalization of Germany’s liberals. Given the political uncertainties that confronted German liberals in the mid nineteenth century, it is understandable that they feared for the future of their project for a united Germany. For many, the frustration that stemmed from Prussia’s abnegation of a leadership role in the unification process with the Treaty of Olmütz in 1850,1 combined with the prevailing mood of Kleinstaaterei, led to a pessimistic assessment of the future of national unity under any model, let alone one that accorded with the dictates of the liberal meta-narrative of nationhood.2 Superficially, this era could be viewed in terms of liberal quietism and retreat; however, Germany’s liberals clearly did not disappear in the post-revolutionary era. At least in the eyes of conservative Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl, Germany in 1851 was culturally and economically, if not politically, bürgerlich. “In our day,” he declared, “the Bürgertum unquestionably possesses overwhelming moral and material power. Our entire era has a bürgerlich character.”3 Significantly, the prevalence of German liberals active in the political arena at the state level, to say nothing of within the multifarious strains of civil society, ensured that a sustained, if somewhat constrained, pressure for political liberalization continued even throughout the most reactionary years of the early Notes for this section begin on page 92.

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1850s.4 Furthermore, the difficulties inherent in overt political activities did not impede the continued cultural ascendancy of Germany’s liberals, as they came to assert their dominance in the press, literature, and the world of the Verein.5 In economic terms, the expansion of industrial capitalism and the Wirtschaftsbürgertum continued unabated between the 1840s and the 1870s, as both David Blackbourn and Jürgen Kocka have argued.6 With regard to imperialism and its role in promoting national unity, liberal hopes that territorial expansion would bring about the desired outcome of a strong, unified state were if anything intensified, as internal political avenues appeared to have been all but closed off to the liberals’ unificatory overtures. For example, Heinrich von Treitschke, Johann Gustav Droysen, and Ludwig August von Rochau, amongst other prominent liberals, looked forward to an era in which the stark choice between becoming an imperialist great power, or the threat of having to submit to the will of one, would see Germans unify in order to act militarily as a single nation on the world stage, as a prelude to a definitive act of national unity.7 In light of the political failure of the statist initiatives canvassed by the Frankfurt Nationalversammlung, the complexion of German imperialism during this era came to change, as some of the more ambitious manifestations of imperialist thinking, such as state-supported large-scale colonies on the British model, were heavily modified, without being abandoned, in line with the prevailing political conditions. Similarly, plans for a national fleet suffered the consequences of having no nation to serve. However, the liberals’ commitment to the creation of a German state as a liberal, militarily strong trading nation continued to hold currency, as did the liberal belief that it was through Germany’s military domination over distant lands and the peoples that lived there that Germany would acquire the nationhood that they saw as being commensurate with their economic and cultural strength. Despite the fact that a central German government, and therefore the notion of overseas colonies controlled by the nation-state, had been indefinitely postponed, liberals, rather than give up on the idea of creating a “New Germany” overseas, continued to agitate for territorial expansion, albeit in a modified form, in the realms of civil society and private enterprise. In the absence of hope for an official national colonial policy, liberals supported a series of private colonialist ventures, trusting in Rochau’s prediction that these products of the liberal cultural Zeitgeist could not be resisted in the long run by the forces of political reaction.8 What Rochau’s notion of the liberal Zeitgeist offered German liberals was the hope of a gradual victory based on engagement with the realities of contemporary politics, coupled with the consolidation of what he saw as an already existing liberal cultural hegemony.9 Politics would in the end, he argued, have to follow the common mode of thought, the new phenomenon of “public opinion” that was inherent to the Zeitgeist.10 The principles, Rochau argued, which informed this as yet unsung liberal spirit of the age were precisely those of the years of

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1848/49, the last time that the cultural hegemony of liberal thought and praxis was matched with a corresponding degree of political agency.11 Rochau, in conformity with the kleindeutsch vision of the Nationalverein, situated the hopes for a liberal political ascendancy with Prussian primacy. With Prussia nominated as the chosen vessel for liberal hopes, those Germans displaying anti-Prussian tendencies were defined as de facto anti-liberal particularists, or more precisely, as being against the liberals’ traditional unificatory meta-narrative, as defined by the package of policies pursued during the liberal ascendancy of 1848/49: [T]he community of parties antagonistic to Prussia have either tacitly allowed or with rash tongues openly disowned an entire range of the most important points of the earlier, generally accepted national political program—unity, power, the greatness of the Fatherland, the German parliament, the German fleet, powerful intervention in European politics, the respect of foreign powers and so on.12

Noteworthy in this list of the components of the “generally valid national political program” is the emphasis on a forward foreign policy and military power. The desirability of a democratic or parliamentary Germany is certainly present, however, in this formulation it is clearly overshadowed by the desire for a unified nation able to assert itself beyond its own borders. The attempt to assert this vision as a national vision further illustrates the mythopoeic function of inherently militaristic and expansionist manifestations of national unity, such as a German fleet and the winning of respect for Germany abroad through their deployment of military power and their dominance in international trade. These external symbols of German dominance, liberals argued, were also to operate as domestic symbols of national unification. This equation between external power and internal unity lay at the heart of the liberals’ nationalist mythology, in the postrevolutionary era as they had during 1848/49, manifesting itself both through the establishment of private sector colonies and through the agitation of various pro-imperialist liberal associations such as the Nationalverein and the Deutscher Kolonialverein. As such, far from an 1880s Bismarckian Kolonialpolitik, German imperialism is best seen as a product of liberal civil society—an imperialism from below that was viewed as intrinsic to the ascendancy of the bourgeoisie.

Private Sector Imperialism Far from peripheral to German liberals’ efforts to stimulate the various German governments and maintain the public’s interest in German colonial imperialism were the projects of Germany’s private sector imperialists, whose plans and agitation spanned the entire period of time in which liberals were unable to force a political commitment to state-authorized imperialist policies—whether in terms of the establishment of a national fleet or the construction of German colonies.

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Convinced that the cultural hegemony of the German Bürgertum was sufficient to force eventual change, civil society stepped in at the point at which the state failed to enact the liberal vision of the national task. Looking back over this civic movement that stretched from the Hamburg Colonisations-Verein von 1849 through to his own 1880s Westdeutschen Verein für Colonisation und Export, the son of Friedrich Fabri, Timotheus Fabri explained the historic importance of the private sector imperialist movement, in terms that corresponded to Rochau’s belief in the inevitable drive of the Zeitgeist, which would be furthered by German liberals acting as a nationalist-imperialist vanguard, in the knowledge that they stood, as it were, on the correct side of historical development: The German colonial endeavors would most quickly and efficiently reach their goal through the involvement of the national government, however as they, on political and social grounds, have hitherto believed they must exercise strict reserve, the task has all the more fallen to private enterprise, to effect the widening of our economic zone through the practical overseas undertakings of German industry and German capital. Similarly, it is a patriotic duty to clarify the need for the ‘doubted’ colonies and, through a goal oriented agitation, to prepare for and precipitate the energetic action of the government.13

The private initiative ventures to which Fabri alluded were many and varied. Between 1849 and 1884, a large number of liberal imperial and colonial associations sprung up, which sought to further German influence abroad in just this way, through their pro-imperialist propaganda by deed—often with not only an absence of government support, but in the face of outright government opposition, as was the case with Brazilian colonial plans. It should be stressed that many of the mid nineteenth century plans for German private sector colonial imperialism were conceived as not-for-profit enterprises. Johann Sturz, for one, is an example of an imperial activist who saw colonialism very much in terms of state regulation to regulate the enterprise, even if the regulators were nominally disinterested nongovernmental associations composed of overseas traders. Continuing his revolutionary era advocacy of South America as a destination for German colonists in the post-revolutionary era, the former Prussian consul to Brazil backed his 1848 call for a national colonial effort with a series of later works devoted to the subject, with his two works of 1862 amounting to his most comprehensive treatment of the subject.14 By this time, disinclined to countenance the prospect of emigration to the United States, due to the civil war and the way in which Germans were “Yankeeified,”15 Sturz focused his arguments on the prospect of a German colony on the Plata River between Argentina and Uruguay,16 his preferred site upon which to build a “Neu-Deutschland,”17 a project most aptly described as a blend of settler colonialism and mercantile imperialism. Specifically ruling out the notion of sending German emigrants to the colonies of other European powers, Sturz, citing 1848 radical liberal Julius Fröbel, argued that the primary objective of imperialism was the fulfilling of the nation’s obligations to its emigrants by ensuring that they were safely conveyed

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to distinctly German colonies,18 where they could remain economically useful to Germany, as well as continue to be German “in Sitte und Sprache,”19 so as to ensure that they did not become pariahs on the fringes of the colonial societies of other European great powers.20 This vision, Sturz argued, was now realizable, as a result of the contemporaneous efforts to forge a German nation, which had helped overcome the main impediment to such efforts in the past—a lack of collective Nationalgefühl.21 The question of the relationship between colonies and the construction and identitification of a future German nation and its people was also discussed by Sturz, who argued that the question of colonies was “… a question of German honour, power and greatness … a question as much of direct practical effect, as of the far-reaching prospects of future unborn millions and distant epochs of world history.”22 Colonies, Sturz argued, demonstrated the strength and power of the German nation, in particular in comparison to older European colonizers such as Spain and Portugal, who currently claimed South America as their own, despite the eclipse of their power on the European continent itself: What would then be thought of the German nation without a colonizing capacity? What is colonization actually? Nothing other than the propagation of nations and states, and an inability to colonize means for a nation nothing more and nothing less than impotence. That is not the case however with the Germanic peoples, which possess a virility stronger than that of the Latin peoples. All the more sad, when they squander their seed in foreign acres, where only foreigners harvest the fruit.23

The degree of success anticipated by Sturz in his colonial theorizing was certainly ambitious, as illustrated in his assertion that in less than half a century, Germany could exercise hegemony over the entirety of the South American continent in the same way that English speakers had virtually monopolized North America.24 Through higher emigration rates and birth rates than the Spanish, and higher education and activity rates than the “erschlaffte” indigenous and minor settler populations in the more northern tropical zones, Germany could reasonably expect numerical parity and the “preponderance of domestic power” over others living in the region within forty years.25 The task of Germanizing South America, Sturz pointed out, would be far easier than that already successfully carried out in Germany’s formerly “Slavic East.”26 The establishment of German colonies in South America, Sturz argued, was, in the clear absence of government support for the necessary colonizing task,27 to fall to a colonial Gesellschaft 28 that would support the project, as well as a Central Bureau that could strictly enforce controls on how the emigration was carried out, so as to avoid the shortcomings that he saw with the emigration programs operating in Brazil, the United States, and Peru.29 Interestingly, Sturz saw the natural civil society supporters of his calls for German colonialism, and in particular for its support in a civil society association, as lying with the premier German national, liberal political organization, the Nationalverein, whose lobbying for a national

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fleet he saw as complementary to his own colonial plans.30 Ensuring that his point was clearly made, Sturz called upon Bennigsen and Schulze-Delitzsch as well as other prominent liberals by name, as the natural supporters of his program.31 Under their direction, Sturz argued, a national government would be forced to protect Germans in their South American colony, via diplomatic and commercial representation, as well as through German naval power.32 Perhaps with the lucrative endeavors of the less than scrupulous operators offering Germans up for indentured labor to work off inflated passage costs in mind, Sturz stressed that the planning of German colonies required a regulatory body independent of commercial considerations that would work at arm’s length from the type of private colonial enterprises that Sturz considered might be tempted to foreground financial concerns rather than the welfare of the German colonists.33 Similarly, the envisaged body of independent liberal imperialists had to be able to coordinate and elaborate a colonial policy that accorded with a truly national perspective: This institute must gratuitously and free from the influence of private interests provide information to all persons … An explanation of German emigration in a national sense must be disseminated in all corners of the Fatherland …34

Largely as a result of the clash between the rival German colonial imperialists Sturz and Blumenau, the notion of a German colony in Brazil became a somewhat controversial topic during the second half of the nineteenth century, with Sturz strenuously attempting to dissuade German settlers from emigrating there, and with various reports reaching Germany of “white slavery” and general overwhelming hardships being experienced by the settlers.35 Amongst others, Hermann Blumenau and Henry Lange reacted by charging Sturz with negating rival, more successful forms of German colonialism, not so much out of a sense of moral obligation as for financial reasons, having in 1860 attempted to set up a (failed) scheme whereby the English government should pay him a finder’s fee for each German colonist he convinced to emigrate to a British colony—thereby compromising himself by being involved not only in the unsavory practice of Menschenhandel, but also assisting in the de-Germanization of German emigrants.36 Despite these accusations of disloyalty, Sturz’s plans for South American colonies to rival those established in Brazil retained the support of numerous prominent individuals, not the least of whom was the Nationalverein director Rudolf von Bennigsen.37 As a result of a series of well-aimed polemics partially discrediting his commitment to German colonial imperialism by rival German imperialist theorists and practitioners such as Hermann Blumenau and Henry Lange,38 Sturz was forced to restate a final, slightly finessed version of his original plan for a South American New Germany in late 1867, so as to defend his reputation from these imperialist rivals in Germany.39 Regarding Rio Grande do Sul, he wrote: It is … desirable that no more hindrances stand in the way of the migration of Germans to this part of Brazil in the future. The German colonies of Rio Grande find themselves in

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a very important position in South America for the expansion of German culture and the strong development of these colonies can be of the greatest use to the German nation.40

Still firmly convinced of the unsuitability of much of Brazil, Sturz continued to focus on the Rio Grande do Sul region and neighboring Uruguay as more suitable destinations.41 Against the criticisms of those that remembered his earlier program for a broader colonizing effort in Brazil, Sturz replied that he had insisted this had always been contingent on the alteration of political and cultural impediments there, thereby enabling him to argue that those conditions had not been met and that the emigrants that had gone to Brazil had failed to understand the subtleties of what he had written.42 In this 1868 work, Sturz remained firmly in favor of a German colony in South America, particularly after the Monroe Doctrine closed off the possibility of autonomous German settlement in North America.43 In support of his claims, Sturz cited everything from German industriousness to the size of the German family as grounds for a colonial New Germany: However only through Germans can the intentions for the Rio Grande and the adjoining lands south and west be fulfilled. None of those presently there possess the physical and intellectual strength to claim it. Only the German introduces the plough to his land and lives in all areas. His always numerous children lie around him and expand the culture growing organically across the land … It is of importance for Germany’s future influence on world affairs, to which it is entitled by dint of the productivity of its physical and intellectual outpourings, to recognize emigration, and to promote it, but in any case to protect it.44

Sturz’s enthusiasm for the concept of Deutschtum abroad was continuously reinforced throughout the work, mentioning Uruguay, areas of Brazil, Chile, and other South American areas as suitable sites for Germany’s expanding Volk. Clearly, despite the setbacks experienced by Germany’s emigrants in Brazil, Sturz remained undeterred in his enthusiasm for German colonialism, seeing controlled and directed colonization as a means of ensuring that “Germany’s rank will be number one in world history someday.”45 Like Droysen, Blumenau, and others interested in the idea of South America as a German colony, Sturz viewed such colonies as not necessarily relying on state financial support. More feasibly, he saw them as the product of mass, directed emigration and the work of financially independent emigration Vereine, who through their dedicated efforts would create for Germany a series of wellregulated, inexpensive colonies,46 the existence of which would further German industry and trade and expand German interests and culture around the world. The points of the map ripe for an influx of German emigrants were to be determined according to a number of criteria: “Liberal and well secured institutions, religious freedom, unrestricted access to land ownership, fertile soil, a good position for world trade, a harbor are the main conditions for an emigration destination that could be recommended for our compatriots.”47 The call here for

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liberal political institutions and the emphasis on facilities for mercantile activity mirrored, of course, not only the political demands and the economic requirements of Germany’s own liberal movements (such as the Nationalverein), but were also posited to meet the requirements of German trade, industry, and liberal politics abroad. Another more strikingly private sector, civil society attempt at translating imperialist theory into practice was undertaken by Hermann Blumenau, whose Brazilian colony enjoyed a modest success despite the criticisms of Johann Sturz and the Prussian government’s regulation of emigration to Brazil. Apparently unperturbed by the setback to the colonial cause brought about by the political reversals of the post-revolutionary era, Blumenau was also able to successfully establish a private enterprise German colony in Santa Catarina, Brazil, in 1850. Having established the theoretical grounds for this colonial enterprise in his 1846 treatise on the climatic, economic, and political suitability of Brazil for German colonial emigration, Blumenau had quickly followed this up with one in 1850 that accompanied the actual establishment of his Brazilian colony.48 An outgrowth of an article for the Allgemeine Auswanderungs-Zeitung,49 the 1850 treatise introduced Brazil as “a true diamond that is only missing a competent master,”50 a role that Blumenau envisaged as being fulfilled by German settlers. Throughout Blumenau’s work, Brazil was favorably compared with other emigration destinations, such as Chile, the United States, and Australia, as a land in which an independent German colony could be constructed.51 With Germans, according to Blumenau, already viewed as the colonial equals of the British in Brazil,52 and the Brazilian constitution ensuring the type of liberal political institutions that could only be wished for in Germany,53 Blumenau had no hesitation in declaring: … the outlook for material acquisition for the individual immigrant is better, the competition is more limited, the market more protected and secure for the Germans than in any other of these sought for new lands . . . The social position of the Germans in South Brazil is in any event higher than the English and North Americans, and as such their language and customs are more secure. For an embryonic, regulated and large-scale German colonization directly on the sea coast, South Brazil offers scope and promises a future unlike any other land on earth …54

As a result of Sturz’s later accusation of “white slavery” in Brazil, Blumenau, on behalf of his and other neighboring German colonies, was forced to defend his colonial undertaking. Accordingly, Hermann Blumenau, in his 1868 publication refuting Sturz’s charges,55 attacked the “libels” and the “monstrous amounts of falsehoods directed at public opinion.”56 Demonstrating a characteristic concern with the “soziale Frage,” Blumenau compared the position of emigrants in Brazil to that of the poor in Europe, asserting that emigrants to Brazil were indeed far better off than the thousands of “propertyless, poor workers in Europe.”57 In an attempt to further discredit Sturz, Blumenau cited Sturz’s proposal to the British government to assist in the bringing of German emigrants to British

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colonies in return for a commission.58 Blumenau acutely pointed out the extent to which this proposal was quite at odds with the pro-German, nationalist imperialism that Sturz championed in his German publications. In the waging of this colonial debate, Blumenau was not alone, supported as he was by other colonists such as Henry Lange.59 In terms of broader support, Blumenau was not left unrecognized by the broader German and indeed European community for his successful private colonialism efforts. In 1859, he was given honorary membership to the arch-liberal Freie Deutsche Hochstift zu Frankfurt am Main and entered into their Ehrenbuch des Deutschen Volkes. Perhaps of more interest is his taking of a gold medal and ten thousand francs at the Paris World Fair in 1867, indicative perhaps of the interest his project had aroused in international mercantile circles.60

Hamburg: the House of Godeffroy, the Colonisations-Verein of 1849 and the Role of the Wirtschaftsbürgertum Hamburg has been viewed by several historians as seemingly lying outside of the main trajectory of the history of German nationalism and the push towards unification, resistant as it was to all encroachments on its republican independence—particularly encroachments made by Prussia, which seemed to be slowly dominating the other German states through such mechanisms as the Zollverein and the Norddeutscher Bund.61 As a city whose rhythms, politics, economy, and culture were organized in accordance with the requirements of internationalized capital and the somewhat oligarchic liberal bourgeoisie in whose hands it rested,62 Hamburg was a city-state in which the notion of expansionist, internationalized trade held a great deal of currency. Indeed, as a state which had 162 consulates throughout the world as early as 1846, whose political masters had spent their youth working in Africa, Asia, and the Americas,63 and whose harbor was undergoing massive expansion due to the volume of trade to the rest of the world during the nineteenth century,64 Hamburg was in many ways the precocious face of German expansionism. Arguably exemplifying this expansionist energy were the activities of the merchant house Johann Cesar Godeffroy & Sohn in the Pacific region, and particularly in Samoa.65 Later to be instrumental in bringing the issue of colonialism to a head in the Reichstag, the Godeffroy merchant house was in its origins an outgrowth of the Wirtschaftsbürgertum, embracing nationalist, state-driven imperialism until the Nachmärz political climate saw them transform their position in favor of private sector imperialism. Beginning with the presence of Gustav Godeffroy at the Frankfurt Nationalversammlung,66 and the offering of the firm’s ship “Godeffroy” to the German navy, under the symbolic name of the “Deutschland,”67 the Godeffroy firm was energetic in its early enthusiasm both for national unification and a national naval force during the revolutionary period. Despite the ultimate failure of this attempt to create a German navy, the firm achieved

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its own expansionist success in the private sector, through their efforts aimed at mercantile penetration of Samoa during the 1840s. By 1860, as a result of British and American competition in the region, and in the absence of a German nationstate, they had petitioned for an official state presence in the form of a Hamburg Consulate in Apia to protect their domination of the region’s trade interests. The Hamburg Senate agreed to this measure in February of 1861, bestowing upon the Godeffroy employees August Unshelm and then later, Theodor Weber, the position of consul.68 This consulate gradually expanded from that of consul of Hamburg to that of the Norddeutscher Bund in 1868 and finally to that of the German Reich in 1872.69 Through the efforts of their employee consuls Unshelm and Weber, the Godeffroys’ firm consolidated its enormous system of coconut plantations supplying copra and other “colonial wares” to Europe with such success that the firm was labeled by the British as the “South Sea Kings.”70 Eye witnesses of the time noted the extent to which the firm had transformed the Samoan capital Apia into a German town, with “buildings, dwellings, warehouses, shipyards, in fact, the entire west side of the town” owned outright by the House of Godeffroy.71 To the British travel writer Constance Gordon-Cumming, the Godeffroys were the “Grab-Alls of the Pacific.”72 Yet, despite their successes in the region, the Godeffroy Trade House, through its exposure to Ruhr mining industries, was facing financial ruin by 1878.73 In an attempt to salvage the position, the firm separated its Pacific interests from the rest of the firm in March 1878, establishing a new legal entity, the Deutschen Handels- und Plantagen-Gesellschaft der Südsee-Inseln zu Hamburg.74 It was this entity that was eventually offered to the German government in 1880 and which is in some quarters credited as marking the beginnings of a statist moves toward colonialism.75 Admittedly, the firm Godeffroy did not attempt to transform the Pacific Islands into a German settler colony, preferring instead to exercise its network of control via agreements and contracts with both the indigenous people who worked on the plantations, as well as with the other two major powers in the region, the British and the Americans. However, this seemingly mercantile, “informal empire,” in addition to the presence of a German consul, also enjoyed the occasional support of a visiting German naval vessel that served as a reminder as to the seriousness with which Germany treated its Pacific income and influence, ensuring “that Germans abroad were no longer without any state protection.”76 To contextualize all of this, as Gallagher and Robinson pointed out in the early days of the historiography of imperialism, “it would clearly be unreal to define imperial history exclusively as the history of those colonies colored red on the map.”77 With this suitably extensive definition of imperialism in mind, ignoring the global reach of the German private sector, as exemplified by such firms as Godeffroy, is to deny the imperialist nature of the attempts at the wholesale restructuring of indigenous economies in order to make them compatible with European economic priorities. It is also to ignore any analysis of whose economic

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and sociopolitical benefit these trading empires served. Despite the lack of formal governmental control and, indeed, of large numbers of German settlers, the house of Godeffroy illustrates neatly the deep interconnectedness between liberalism, nationalism, and expansionist discourse and praxis. From their support and partial supplying of a national fleet in 1848 through to the establishment of an extensive and highly profitable German Pacific trade empire, Godeffroy & Sohn, like the house of Woermann in Africa, illustrated the extent of the embeddedness of Hamburg’s Wirtschaftsbürgertum in the processes of imperialism—whether formal or informal, governmental or private sector. Similarly stemming from Hamburg was the overtly colonial settlement established by the Colonisations-Verein von 1849 in Hamburg in the Brazilian region of Dona Francisca, also known as Joinville. A cartel of high profile Hamburg traders and political personalities, the Colonisations-Verein was an organization that attempted to satisfy the perceived economic and strategic necessity of strengthening Germany’s grip over trade in and with South America, through colonial endeavors. Their project exhibited a mix of economic pragmatism and the paternalistic sense of noblesse oblige characteristic of the high bourgeoisie of Hamburg, which was revealed in their belief that the establishment of a concentrated, independent German colony, composed of the surplus population of the economically disenfranchised, would facilitate German trade and access to agricultural products and raw materials from the area.78 The Colonisations-Verein was in many ways the activist arm of a broader emigration/colonial movement made up of prominent Hamburg liberals who attempted to link the demands of expanding German industry and trade with the welfare of German emigrants.79 Combined with the Hamburger Verein zum Schutze von Auswanderung,80 their emigration and foreign trade oriented newspaper Hansa, and even to a certain extent the later Geographische Gesellschaft of Hamburg,81 the Colonisations-Verein attempted to bring about a German colonial empire despite not only a lack of cooperation from German governments, but after 1859, the direct opposition of the influential Prussian government, which, in response to the reports of indentured servitude in Brazil, imposed heavy restrictions on emigration to Brazil.82 The main identities in this circle included the Verein directors Senator Christian Matthias Schröder, Georg Wilhelm Schröder, and Adolph Schramm,83 all of whom had business and political links with other like-minded international traders and politicians such as the Godeffroy trading house.84 In terms of the purpose of the Verein, the organization followed the Paulskirche ideal of concentrated German emigration as a means of establishing a beachhead for German economic, political, and military interests abroad. As a private sector enterprise, such notions were expressed in terms of economic nationalism: … the work, that we are calling into life, brings not only favorable results for the interests of our association, but is also equally meaningful for the welfare of German emigrants, as well as for the trade and industry of Germany …85

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As members of Hamburg’s patrician liberal governing community, the members of the Hamburg Colonisations-Verein saw in the organization of Germany’s emigrants a means of alleviating the social pressures generating by urbanization, which had in their opinion created not so much a proletariat as an underclass lumpenproletariat. It was these marginalized elements of German society that were to not only find a new social and economic role through colonialism, but who were to become the “Trojan horse” for German expansionism.86 In offering the prospect of prosperity in the colonies and attempting to halt the geographic concentration and the deterioration in the material state of this surplus workforce, the ColonisationsVerein sought to demonstrate the ability of the liberal imperialist meta-narrative of German nationhood to solve the social problems engendered by modernization, without recourse to solutions entailing a redistribution of wealth. With the materially disenfranchised excised from the urban German setting and employed profitably in German colonies, liberalism’s meta-narrative rival, socialism, was to have been rendered redundant by imperialist praxis. The liberal promise of colonial prosperity held out by the Colonisations-Verein, as a means of the addressing of the Sozialfrage, was indeed a form of social imperialism, however not in the sense of it operating as a diverting prestige program, as the term has been employed by Wehler,87 but as understood by Eley, a paternal, liberal, reformist solution to the apparent material poverty experienced by the urban poor as a result of the burgeoning capitalist social and economic order.88 In keeping with this end, the national utility and economic significance of the colonies was foregrounded by the Verein, in a manner that placed it firmly within the preceding tradition of liberal imperialist discourse: If we have set ourselves the goal of preparing a place for the German emigrant, to preserve his native customs and habits and to alienate him as little as possible from his old homeland—if we have hoped in this way to ensure that the portion of emigration following our invitation would not be lost to the Motherland … but rather, through lasting affection and a lively mutual exchange abroad, might also contribute to the improvement of German industry and trade, and in this way perhaps bring Germany a beneficent profit from an inevitable emigration instead of an apparent loss, so we believe that we might from this perspective look back with satisfaction on the success of our efforts.89

The instrumentalization of a more overtly nationalist-imperialist discourse was noticeably heightened in the protests against Prussia’s restriction of emigration to Brazil, in which both the Verein’s colonists and those of Blumenau attempted to deploy the culturally resonant notion of establishing a New Germany abroad that could both reflect and assist the newly unified Germany of the old world: Will then Prussia, that began the reconstruction of Germany with bold hands, will it not also for those Germans that have left their homeland, instead of playing with petty restrictions, finally focus on goals worthy of its greatness, and add to their wreath of glory for the new configuration of the old Germany a second for the founding of a new Germany in Brazil’s Southern Provinces?90

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It has often been assumed by historians that Hamburg was reluctant to support the colonial ideal, and that they resisted the Reichstag’s eventual embracing of a colonial policy.91 This seems to mischaracterize the situation. Certainly, proprivate sector expansionist Eugen Richter, leader of the German Fortschrittspartei, saw it otherwise, believing in 1888 that pro-imperialist pressures in Germany stemmed largely from Hamburg, as he made clear in the Reichstag: If the businessmen wish to go out on an adventure, then let them do it from their own pockets without sponging from the treasury and the German nation … If the men of Hamburg are really so convinced of the value of an energetic furthering of a colonialism in East Africa, then I don’t understand why the pockets of Hamburg remain so tightly closed … Why haven’t they given any money for it? They’ve got enough for it!92

Insofar as the traders of Hamburg had been undecided on the issue, this hesitancy was far from representing a resistance to the notion of German imperialism, which they had been conducting through private enterprise since the 1840s. Rather, it was a residual concern over the effects of a protectionist stance in matters of international trade.93 If Bismarck supported the Listian, protectionist brand of colonial autarky proffered by nationalist-liberals, then retaliatory action by other powers such as England, France, and the United States could see Germany’s (and indeed, Hamburg’s) previously lucrative international trade between their own colonies and those of other nations effectively shut down—particularly if Germany’s colonies could not be maintained by a naval force. In Hamburg, the guiding ethos was that Germany certainly needed to expand abroad, but that the state needed to tread carefully rather than aggressively, so as to not provoke other colonial powers into excluding German traders from their colonies. This is the line that the Fortschrittspartei also followed. In the end, the differences were procedural, not substantive. Both liberal parties in the Reichstag and Hamburg’s merchants agreed on the need for overseas expansion; however, the question was how this should be done without jeopardizing the opportunities it offered. Yet even this hesitancy has been somewhat overemphasized, and it is worth remembering that not only was Hamburg not insulated from colonial propaganda, as Richard Evans has suggested, but claimed as its citizen perhaps the most influential colonial propagandist besides Friedrich Fabri of the early 1880s, Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden, who lived, profitably traded, and wrote in Hamburg—and he was far from a lone voice in the wilderness,94 with the influential liberal merchant milieu of Hamburg including a healthy number of Germany’s most ardent supporters of the broader national imperialist ideal.95 Elements of the Hamburg press, in particular the Hamburger Fremden-Blatt, also published a number of pro-imperial articles, including the press releases of the Kolonialverein, with the understanding that “The question of colonization becomes more urgent with each day. …”96 Surrounded by like-minded individuals in Hamburg, HübbeSchleiden published a number of works that sent a wave of colonial enthusiasm throughout Germany.97

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Apart from the writing of colonial tracts and the conducting of private sector imperialism, the political institutions of Hamburg were not just theoretically sympathetic to an imperialist national foreign policy, but were also involved in the active lobbying of the Reich government to adopt just such a stance, as can be clearly seen in the case of the Denkschrift from the Hamburger Handelskammer to the Berlin government (via the Hamburg Senate) in July 1883.98 Composed by Adolph Woermann, heir to his father’s immense African trading firm C. Woermann (an African version of Godeffroy’s Samoan empire), and member of not only the Handelskammer and the Hamburg Bürgerschaft, but in the following year the holder of a Reichstag seat for the National Liberal party, the Denkschrift, ratified by the Handelskammer, called for a number of aggressive foreign policy options in the light of French and English imperialist activity in Africa.99 The meeting of the Hamburg Handelskammer at which the Denkschrift was approved took place on the evening of Friday, 22 June 1883,100 during which the necessity of statist colonizing activity was debated. At the meeting, the first in a chain of political meetings that would fundamentally reorient national foreign policy in line with liberal imperialist thought, various combinations of naval power, diplomatic pressure, and colonial acquisitions were discussed. Woermann argued that there was no point in having a navy if it could not intervene on Germany’s behalf in foreign lands, and that the seizing of colonies would in effect pay for the upgrading of the German naval presence in Africa.101 In the end, the Handelskammer voted to send Woermann’s petition as it stood to the Senate, with only two members voting against it. The Senate then passed the petition on to the national government, which looked upon the proposals favorably.102 As Gottfried Klein has suggested, it was this petition, addressing the dual concerns of free trade and colonialism, that led Bismarck to ask Woermann to brief the soon to depart Imperial Commissioner to Africa, Dr. Gustav Nachtigal, who, as Walter Nuhn records, on a “strictly secret mission,”103 in 1884 would declare Togo and Cameroon German, in line with the Hamburg request for German possessions along the West coast of Africa.104 In the face of such lobbying for a mix of strong diplomatic pressure, gunboat diplomacy, naval consolidation in Africa, and active state colonialism, it is hard to maintain that, in the years preceding “Bismarck’s” colonial Umschwung, the merchants of Hamburg were less than enthusiastic about German imperialism or a foreign policy based on colonial protectionism. Apart from the expansionist enterprises of Woermann and Godeffroy, which had reoriented the economies of entire non-European regions so as to benefit their firm and the German economy, the liberal-dominated Hamburg Chamber of Commerce, via the liberal-dominated Hamburg Senate, actively requested that the German government undertake a more interventionist, imperialist foreign policy. Although this request had its immediate origins in contemporary events in Africa, it was also in keeping with the tenets of liberal nationalist-imperialism that had existed in Hamburg since the time the firm Godeffroy had bequeathed his ship, the symbolically renamed “Deutschland,” to the Frankfurt Nationalversammlung’s national navy in 1848.

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As exemplified in the case of Hamburg, Germany’s mercantile liberal middle class were able to expand German influence abroad via foreign investment, trade and trading colonies, and settler colonization projects. In this manner, they attained in some regions the type of hegemonic economic position that, given its relatively long lineage as a form of expansionist praxis, cannot be accurately described as “neocolonialism,” as Kwame Nkrumah famously did.105 Far from a new phenomenon, the actions of a number of German companies demonstrate the extent to which German penetration and domination of international markets had always been a means of simultaneously supporting liberal Germany’s claims to great nation status and of underwriting the prosperity of the German middle classes.

Other Plans for Latin America As Thomas Schoonover, in his pithy article on German activity in Central America has shown, the lack of a formal governmental policy of colonialism did little to slow the rate of German penetration in the region, to the extent that US Minister George Williamson warned, “The Germans and not the British are our real competition for the trade of the whole of Spanish America.”106 From the Hamburg based trade interest in Central America, through to the Prussian government’s involvement in the search for trade and colonial possibilities that would secure transit rights across the Central American isthmus for German merchants, German states had been intensively involved with the region, on the behalf of and in conjunction with their mercantile liberal traders.107 An excellent example of this is to be found in the case of Guatemala, where, as Katharina Trümper has demonstrated, Germany exercised a form of economic imperialism that established itself so successfully in the nineteenth century that it caused the turn of the century German diplomat F.C. Erckert to remark, “In no area external to Germany, our own colonies included, is their such successful and such concentrated pastoral property ownership in German hands as in Guatemala.”108 The basis for this economic control lay with the penetration of the Guatemalan coffee market, and in particular the astute vertical integration of German companies, that saw the entire process funded by German banks, controlled by German producers, and shipped by German vessels to European markets, assisted by what Michael Rieckenberg has called a Guatemalan “Liberalen Entwicklungsdiktatur,”109 whose efforts amounted to, as Trümper’s paraphrasing of Rieckenberg renders it, “an unsuccessful attempt” at developing Guatemala, managing only to bring about a “stronger dependence on foreign nations and the world market.”110 As Trümper has argued, the position of influence held by such German firms as Hockmeyer & Rittscher, and Schlubach and Thiemer & Co in Central America (like Jantzen & Thormählen and C. Woermann in Africa, or Godeffroy & Sohn in the Pacific) demonstrates the extent of the control over extra-European

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lands exercised by the commercial representatives of an expansionist German nation.111 It further illustrates the translation of liberal imperialist discourse into a theoretically informed private sector praxis. Guatemala exemplified Germany’s private sector expansionism by bringing together emigration based colonialism, and German capital and its coercive power over the political decision making of the colonial government, in an era in which liberals were politically unable to realize their expansionist goals via statist means. Despite the inability of liberals to translate growing cultural and economic hegemony into national political control within Germany itself, Germany’s Wirtschaftsbürgertum nonetheless exercised real, that is to say, imperial power over the economic base of colonial nations, as the Guatemalan example demonstrates.112 Of course, not all German activity in the area during the pre-colonial era went without government assistance. As Schoonover explains, by 1877/78, Germany felt that its interests in Central America were of such significance as to warrant the despatching of a five-ship squadron to Nicaragua to gain satisfaction in a dispute involving the German consular officials and traders Paul and Christian Moritz Eisenstück.113 Clearly, there were limits to the disinterested stance of the German government in the “pre-colonial” era of informal empire. The Colonisations-Verein von 1849 in Hamburg and, indeed, Hermann Blumenau were perhaps prime examples of a form of private sector liberal colonialism that continued throughout the post–1848 and pre–1884 period; however, they were far from alone in their efforts to establish autonomous German colonies in South America. Notable other attempts included the remarkable colonization of Pozuzo and other regions in Peru, at the behest of the German explorer, Damian Frh. von Schütz-Holzhausen, during the 1850s114 as well as Jakob Rheingantz’s Sao Lourenço colony in Brazil in 1858.115 Similar private initiative colonies were also established in this period by Bernhard and Rudolph Phillipi in Chile,116 and Hermann Frers in Argentina.117 Of further interest are the efforts of the later leader of the Alldeutscher Verein Ernst Hasse of Leipzig, whose Südamerikanische Colonisations-Gesellschaft zu Leipzig was an interesting example of a colonization society in a city far removed from the German coastline, which nonetheless saw the broader national interest as interlinked with the furthering of maritime imperialism. The Leipzig Colonial Society, like most liberal imperialist associations, stated its aims as being the direction of German emigration to a region in which the German population would constitute a majority and where they would wield the largest share of the economic power. Mooted were ideas for Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay or Chile as potential sites, but in the end, it was Paraguay that was seen as being most promising.118 This society was also firmly committed to the principle of private sector imperialism.119 In fact, it appears as one of the final examples of the private sector imperialism, which had become institutionalized in the 1850s as a result of the failure of the revolutionary period attempts at implementing a statist liberal imperialism. Also of interest is the social composition of the organization, which bore all of the hallmarks of other private sector imperialist organizations in the German

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pre- (statist) colonial era. Apart from Ernst Hasse, who was also the chairman of the Leipzig Verein für Handelsgeographie, prominent members included the Düsseldorf-based son of the renowned colonial theorist Dr. Friedrich Fabri, Dr. Timotheus Fabri, himself heavily involved in the Westdeutscher Verein für Colonisation und Export, and the organization’s chairman, Kaufmann Hermann Schnoor, of the firm Schnoor & Co., a member of the Leipzig Handelskammer and the German Handelstag. Of the other members of the Society’s Board of Directors, three bankers and two manufacturers, a lawyer, an agriculturalist with a doctorate, and a Count were also listed as responsible for the Society’s undertakings.120 Contrary to the assertion of Holger Herwig,121 such colonial plans and ventures, if not in themselves successful “Trojan horses” for the further penetration of South America, were at least designed with that function in mind. For Sturz, Blumenau, Hasse, and the Hamburg Colonisations-Verein, the establishment of private sector colonies in South America was the first step toward the establishment of German hegemony over South America—once the “indolent” imperial presence of the Spanish was swept aside through the force of numbers and “diligence” of German emigrants. Concerned about the loss of German identity in North America, the Monroe Doctrine’s exclusion of foreign powers from establishing colonial beachheads within North America, and wishing to broaden international trade and their own access to resources, liberal Germans engaged in imperialist practices as a means of ensuring that Germany would be able to keep pace with the economic and colonial penetration of the extra-European world that was being carried out by European powers such as Britain. Unable to call upon their national government to assist them in their various projects, they attempted to undertake this modernizing project through private initiative. Such plans, far from a retreat from the aim of establishing a liberal German empire, represented an attempt to further this early nineteenth century liberal goal in the face of overwhelming political opposition, particularly from Prussia. For Germany’s liberal imperialists, colonies stemming from the world of civil society and private enterprise were a pragmatic answer to the question of how Germany could expand without any central government. These colonial plans were, on the one hand, a sublimation of the desire for a united Germany into the idea of a united, liberal New Germany abroad; however, on the other hand, they were also a furthering of a liberal economic and social agenda that in the postrevolutionary era lacked official political sanction within Germany. Such colonial theories, whose earlier origins can be seen in Johann Tellkampf ’s advice to the Frankfurt Assembly, the theories of Blumenau and Sturz, and in the grounding of the Hamburg-based colonial associations in the 1840s,122 offered private sector imperialism as a form of ersatz national foreign policy, at times when German liberalism was experiencing difficulties translating economic and social dominance and regional political power into political power at a national level. Culturally speaking, colonies stemming from the liberal world of the Verein were an external manifestation of the embourgeoisement of German society, as liberal society sought other avenues to further their interests when formal politi-

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cal institutions could not deliver the results they demanded. As Fritz Sudhaus has argued with reference to the colonial ventures of this era based in Hamburg, “The grounding of colonies by the Hamburger Kolonisationsvereins was a successful attempt, through private initiative, to find a positive solution to counter the failures of the German government.”123 With German governments sluggish to respond to both the needs of emigrants and the aspirations of German liberals, particularly Germany’s liberal traders, colonial societies and organizations set about preparing the ground for a German imperialist foreign policy, or put another way, set about pursuing a form of German imperialism from below irrespective of the wishes of the various German governments. If colonial theorizing and experiments in Brazil demonstrated anything, it is that Germany’s liberal imperialism, as an organic movement necessitating an eventual response from the government, had its initial impetus in the broader liberal milieu of the Wirtschaftsbürgertum, whose grassroots activities and pressure forced a political solution in the end. Mid nineteenth century German liberals were fully aware of this, as Langewiesche, with reference to Rochau, has pointed out. Rochau, Langewiesche argues, posited in 1853 that politics must inevitably follow “the opinion of the century which has consolidated to form certain principles, views and habits of understanding.”124 Perhaps a less idealist rendering of the same would be to state that, unable to obtain outright political dominance, German liberals wasted no time in attempting to assert their cultural and economic hegemony, with an intuitive understanding that over time, the superstructural forms of political rule would adapt to correspond to the socioeconomic base and the cultural practices and priorities of a nascent bourgeois Germany. The only other possibility open to anti-liberal political elites, liberals knew, was an indefinite period of coercive rule in the rather unrealistic hope that the economic and cultural conditions for monarchic rule would somehow return.125 Seen through the prism of nineteenth century liberalism, the linked discourses of imperialism and nationalism, as components of the superordinate meta-narrative of liberalism, were understood as necessary elements of an inevitable evolution of the German state, which was dictated by seemingly ironclad laws of historical development, to lead to a liberal nation-state.

Notes 1. D. Langewiesche. Liberalism in Germany. p. 58. 2. J. Sheehan. German Liberalism in the Nineteenth Century. p. 112ff. 3. WH Riehl. Die bürgerliche Gesellschaft. Quoted in J. Sheehan. German History 1770–1860. pp. 793–94. See also D. Blackbourn & G. Eley. Peculiarities. p. 183. 4. D. Langewiesche. Liberalism in Germany. Ch. 3. See also J. Sheehan. German History. pp. 863, 869, 881. See also D. Rebentisch. “Zusammenfassung.” In K. Schwabe. Die Regierungen

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5.

6.

7.

8. 9. 10. 11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

der deutschen Mittel– und Kleinstaaten 1815–1933. Harald Boldt Verlag, Boppard am Rhein, 1983. p. 208. On the importance of civil society avenues for the exercising of social and cultural leadership, see G. Eley. From Unification to Nazism: Reinterpreting the German Past. Allen & Unwin, London, 1986. pp. 70–71. D. Blackbourn & G. Eley. Peculiarities. pp. 180–81. See also J. Kocka. “Bürgertum und bürgerliche Gesellschaft im 19. Jahrhundert.” Quoted in H. Seier. “Liberalismus und Bürgertum.” p. 201. Langewiesche. Liberalism in Germany. p. 59. Langewiesche’s assertion that such views “did not point forward to the imperialist liberalism of Wilhemine Germany” owes much to Mommsen’s contentious view that imperialist discourse represented the Verfremdung rather than the continuation of earlier German liberalism. Schulze-Delitzsch for example, during the Nationalverein debate over the navy and the Schleswig-Holstein debate, argued that the conflict could turn into a broader European conflict which could bring about a centralized German government, an eventuality for which they had best prepare. See Verhandlungen der zweiten Generalversammlung des deutschen Nationalvereins in Heidelberg am 23. und 24 August 1861. Verlag der Expedition der Wochenschrift des Nationalvereins, Coburg, 1861. p. 35. LA v. Rochau. Grundsätze der Realpolitik. (ed. HU Wehler). Verlag Ullstein, Frankfurt a.M., 1972. pp. 32–35. See also D. Langewiesche. Liberalism in Germany. p. 62. LA v. Rochau. Grundsätze der Realpolitik. p. 33. “Der Zeitgeist ist die zu bestimmten Grundsätzen, Anschauungen und Verstandesgewohnheiten konsolidierte Meinung des Jahrhunderts.” LA v. Rochau. Grundsätze der Realpolitik. pp. 32, 34. Exemplifying the way in which the spirit of 1848/49 continued to guide German liberals like Rochau in the 1860s was the printing of the 1849 “Grundrechte des deutschen Volkes” in toto in a supplement to the Wochenschrift des Nationalvereins, No. 154. 10 April 1863. Rochau was of course the editor of this Nationalverein publication. LA v. Rochau. Grundsätze der Realpolitik. pp. 234–35. “Halten wir uns indessen an den heutigen Stand der Dinge, so fällt zunächst die sprechende Erscheinung ins Auge, daß die Bundesgenossenschaft der preußenfeindlichen Parteien eine ganze Reihe der wichtigsten Punkte des frühen allgemein gültigen nationalpolitischen Programms—die Einheit, die Macht, die Größe des Vaterlandes, das deutsche Parlament, die deutsche Flotte, das kräftige Eingreifen in die europäische Politik, den Respekt des Auslandes usw.—entweder stillschweigend hat fallen lassen, oder gar mit dreistem Munde verleugnet.” T. Fabri. In BA Berlin. R8023/262. Deutsche Kolonial-Gesellschaft. p. 67. “Die deutschen Colonialbestrebungen würden am schnellsten und wirksamsten durch ein Eintreten der Reichsregierung ihr Ziel erreichen, da aber dieser aus politischen und socialen Gründen bis jetzt sich in strenger Reserve halten zu müssen glaubt, so ist es umsomehr der Privat–Initiative die Aufgabe gestellt, durch praktische überseeische Unternehmungen des deutschen Handels, der deutschen Industrie und des deutschen Capitals die Erweiterung unseres Wirtschaftsgebietes zu bewirken; wie es anderseits eine patriotische Pflicht ist, das fragliche Bedürfnis in weitesten Kreisen klarzustellen und durch eine zielbewusste Agitation auch ein thatkräftiges Vorgehen der Regierung vorzubereiten und in Bälde herbeizuführen.” J. Sturz. Die Krisis der deutschen Auswanderung und ihre Benützung für Jetzt und Immer. Ein Hebel für deutsche Schifffahrt, deutschen Handel, deutsche Rhederei und Gewerbe, zur deutschen Flotte und eine Gewährleistung für deutsche Einigung, Kräftigung und Selbstachtung diesseits und jenseits des Weltmeers. Hickethier Verlag, Berlin, 1862. J. Sturz. Kann und soll ein Neu-Deutschland geschaffen werden und auf welche Weise? Ein Vorschlag zur Werthung der deutschen Auswanderung im nationalen Sinne. Striefe & Co., Berlin, 1862. J. Sturz. Krisis der deutschen Auswanderung. pp. 7–8. See also Kann und soll ein Neu-Deutschland geschaffen werden?, for Sturz’s fear that Germans would be veryankeet in the United States and helotisirt in Brazil.

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16. J. Sturz. Krisis der deutschen Auswanderung. pp. 27ff. Kann und soll ein Neu-Deutschland geschaffen werden? pp. 22, 24, 45. 17. J. Sturz. Krisis der deutschen Auswanderung. p. 42. Kann und soll ein Neu-Deutschland geschaffen werden? p. 24. 18. Demonstrating the degree of intertextuality within liberal imperialist discourse, Sturz in this respect approvingly cites the conviction of fellow liberal imperialist Julius Fröbel that German emigration required a German colony as a destination. See Krisis der deutschen Auswanderung. p. 148. 19. J. Sturz. Krisis der deutschen Auswanderung. p. 7. 20. J. Sturz, Kann und soll ein Neu–Deutschland geschaffen werden? p. 21. 21. J. Sturz. Krisis der deutschen Auswanderung. pp. 6–7. 22. J. Sturz. Kann und soll ein Neu–Deutschland geschaffen werden? p. 6. “… eine Frage der deutschen Ehre, Macht und Größe … eine Frage von eben so unmittelbar practischer Wirkung, als von der weitreichenden Perspective in die Zukunft ungeborener Millionen, und ferner Epochen der Weltgeschichte.” 23. J. Sturz. Kann und soll ein Neu–Deutschland geschaffen werden? p. 13. “Ja, was wäre denn auch von der deutschen Nation zu halten, ohne Colonisationsfähigkeit? Denn was ist überhaupt die Colonisation? Nichts anderes, als die Fortpflanzung der Nationen und Staaten, und Nichtcolonisationsfähigkeit bedeutet für eine Nation nicht mehr und nicht weniger als Impotenz. So steht es aber nicht mit den deutschen Völkern, welche vielmehr eine weit kräftigere Potenz besitzen als die romanischen Völkern. Um so trauriger, wenn sie ihren Saamen auf fremden Fluren vergeuden, wo nur Fremde die Frucht ernten.” See also p. 14, which discusses the shame that comes with Germany being shut out from global expansion by such insignificant powers as Portugal and Holland. Linking colonialism to naval capacity, Sturz argued that in the past, Germany had been unable to compete globally for territory because of its unfortunate lack of naval power, which resulted in it being unable to enforce territorial claims. 24. J. Sturz. Kann und soll ein Neu-Deutschland geschaffen werden? pp. 40ff. 25. J. Sturz. Kann und soll ein Neu-Deutschland geschaffen warden? pp. 41–42. 26. J. Sturz. Kann und soll ein Neu-Deutschland geschaffen werden? p. 43. 27. J. Sturz. Kann und soll ein Neu-Deutschland geschaffen werden? p. 47. 28. J. Sturz. Kann und soll ein Neu-Deutschland geschaffen werden? pp. 49–51. See also J. Sturz. Krisis der deutschen Auswanderung. pp. 46–50. 29. J. Sturz. Krisis der deutschen Auswanderung. pp. 48ff. 30. J. Sturz. Krisis der deutschen Auswanderung. p. 161. “Leicht wäre es für den deutschen Nationalverein und in vollem Einklang mit seinen Bestrebungen für eine deutsche Flotte, einen Ausschuß zu bilden, und dem die beregte Sache anzuvertrauen.” 31. J. Sturz. Krisis der deutschen Auswanderung. p. 45. This support was eventually reciprocated, with Bennigsen ensuring that some of the funds of the Nationalverein made their way to Sturz’s fund. 32. J. Sturz. Krisis der deutschen Auswanderung. p. 161. 33. Curiously, the shorter of the two works, Kann und soll ein Neu-Deutschland geschaffen werden? was more open to the possibility of leaving the project in the hands of the private sector. See especially pp. 47–48. 34. J. Sturz. Krisis der deutschen Auswanderung. p. 161. “Dieses Institut müßte unentgeldliche und von Privatinteressen gänzlich unbeeinflußte Auskunft an alle Personen … ertheilen. … Aufklärung über deutsche Emigration im nationalen Sinne [müßte] in allen Winkeln des Vaterland verbreitet … [werden] …” 35. Fritz Sudhaus’ Deutschland und die Auswanderung nach Brasilien im 19. Jahrhundert, Hans Christian Verlag, Hamburg, 1940, remains the best commentary on the intricacies of this debate. See also D. Bendocchi-Alves. Das Brasilienbild der deutschen Auswanderungswerbung im 19. Jahrhundert. Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, Berlin, 2000. pp. 68–70, 102–114.

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36. For a late example of the polemics generated by this controversy, see H. Lange in Wissenschaftliche Beilage der Leipziger Zeitung. No. 65, 13 August 1868. In Niedersachsisches Staatsarchiv (NsSA). Wolfenbüttel. 192N (Nachlass Hermann Blumenau VIII, 5. p. 24). 37. In March of 1865, a public fund was set up to support Sturz in his retirement, having lost his state pension as a result of his remarks about Brazil. Amongst the largely well–to–do contributors to the fund was Bennigsen. See NsSA. 192N, VIII, 5. p. 21. “Aufruf zu einer Oeffentlichen Subscription für Herrn General-Consul Sturz.” 38. See for example Hermann Blumenau’s vituperative Abwehr. Zur Charakteristik der Wirksamkeit des Hrn. Sturz in der deutschen Auswanderung, F. priv. Hofbuchdruckerei, Rudolfstadt, 1868, itself a response to Sturz’s anti-Brazilian supplement to the National-Zeitung on the 3rd of July that year. (No. 305). Blumenau. Abwehr. p. 1. 39. This alteration in his position was first published in book form in Sturz’s 1868 work, Die deutsche Auswanderung und die Verschleppung deutscher Auswanderer. Kortkampf Verlag, Berlin, 1868. 40. NsSA. Wolfenbüttel. 192N, VIII, 5. p. 19. J. Sturz. “Deutscher Auswanderung nach Brasilien.” Berlin, 25 December 1867. “Es ist … wünschenswerth, dass der Auswanderung Deutscher nach dieser Theile Brasiliens für die Zukunft von keiner Seite mehr Hindernisse im Wege stehen. Die deutschen Colonien Rio Grandes befinden sich auf einem zur Verbreitung deutscher Cultur höchst wichtigen Punkte Südamerikas und eine kräftige Entwickelung dieser Colonien kann der deutscher Nation nur zum größten Nutzen gereichen …” 41. F. Sudhaus. Deutschland und die Auswanderung. p. 100. 42. J. Sturz. Verschleppung deutscher Auswanderer. p. 14. 43. J. Sturz. Verschleppung deutscher Auswanderer. p. 7. 44. J. Sturz. Verschleppung deutscher Auswanderer. p. 21. “Aber nur durch Deutsche kann die Bestimmung Rio Grandes und der ihm südlich und westlich angrenzenden Länder je erfüllt werden. Keine der dort bestehenden Nationalitäten besitzt die physische und geistige Kraft in deren ungetheilten Besitz sich zu behaupten. Nur der Deutsche führt den Pflug und lebt sich überall, besonders auf dem ihm eigen gehörigen Boden, ein. Seine stets zahlreichen Kinder legen sich um ihn herum und breiten die Cultur organisch wachsend über das Land aus … Das Vaterland seiner Kinder wird ihm zum eigenen, das engere zum weiteren, denn, “so weit die deutsche Zunge reicht” war seine Heimath dem Gemüthe nach, jetzt ist es in der That. Das ihm deutsche Wissenschaft, Kunst und geistige Nahrung erschaffende und spendende Land bleibt Deutschland für alle Zeiten und ist es an allen Orten, wo nicht eine brasilianische Urwaldsnacht das Licht erstickt. … Es ist für Deutschlands künftigen Einfluß auf die Weltangelegenheiten, zu dem es durch seine immense Productivität geistiger und physischer Ausflüsse berechtigt ist, von Wichtigkeit, die Auswanderung anzuerkennen und selbst zu begünstigen, jedenfalls aber zu schützen …” The reference to the poetry of the nationalist Ernst Moritz Arndt is worth noting. 45. J. Sturz. Verschleppung deutscher Auswanderer. p. 21. “Deutschlands Rang wird dereinst in der Weltgeschichte um so mehr der Erste sein.” 46. J. Sturz. Verschleppung deutscher Auswanderer. pp. 21–22. 47. J. Sturz. Verschleppung deutscher Auswanderer. pp. 22–23. “Liberale and wohlbefestigte Institutionen, Religionsfreiheit, freier Bodenbesitz, Fruchtbarkeit des Bodens, gute Lage für den Welthandel, Seehäfen sind die Hauptbedingungen für von uns zu billigende Ziele für Auswanderung unserer Landsleute.” 48. H. Blumenau. Deutsche Auswanderung und Colonisation. Verlag der JC Hinrichs’chen Buchhandlung, Leipzig, 1846. H. Blumenau. Südbrasilien in seinen Beziehungen zu deutscher Auswanderung und Kolonisation. G. Froebel Verlag, Rudolfstadt, 1850. 49. H. Blumenau. Südbrasilien. p. iii. 50. H. Blumenau. Südbrasilien. p. 1. “… ein wahrer Diamant, dem nur ein tüchtiger Meister fehlt.” 51. H. Blumenau. Südbrasilien. p. 13. See also pp. 32, 88–90.

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52. H. Blumenau. Südbrasilien. pp. 18, 89. 53. H. Blumenau. Südbrasilien. p. 21. The liberal constitution appears to have been an obvious selling point in Blumenau’s eyes, to the extent that he appended his German translation of it to the work. See pp. 91ff. 54. H. Blumenau. Südbrasilien. p. 89. “Die Aussichten auf materiellen Erwerb für den einzelnen Einwanderer sind günstiger, die Concurrenz ist geringer, der Markt geschützter und den Deutschen mehr gesichert, als in irgend einem andern von diesen aufgesuchten neuen Lande … Die sociale Stellung des Deutschen in Südbrasilien ist unter allen Umständen höher als unter Engländern und Nordamerikanern, daher die Erhaltung seiner Sprache und Sitte gesicherter. Für eine geregelte, großartige, unmittelbar an der Seeküste beginnende deutsche Kolonisation bietet Südbrasilien einen Spielraum und gewährt eine Zukunft, wie kein anderes Land der Erde …” 55. H. Blumenau. Abwehr. 56. H. Blumenau. Abwehr. p. 2. 57. H. Blumenau. Abwehr. p. 8. 58. H. Blumenau. Abwehr. pp. 11ff. 59. H. Lange in Wissenschaftliche Beilage der Leipziger Zeitung. 60. J. Blumenau-Niesel. “Humanitäres Ziel. 150 Jahre Blumenau in Santa Catarina, Südbrasilien.” Tópicos (3), 2000. p. 35. 61. R. Evans. Death in Hamburg: Society and Politics in the Cholera Years 1830–1910. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1987. pp. 2–12. 62. R. Evans. Death in Hamburg. p. 33. “Virtually everything was ruthlessly subordinated by the Senate and the administration to the interests of trade.” Evans also points out that the Senatorial party, the Fraktion der Rechten, were by and large supportive of the agenda of the National Liberals at the national level. See p. 45. 63. R. Evans. Death in Hamburg. p. 4. 64. R. Evans. Death in Hamburg. pp. 28–9. 65. See A. Skřivan. “Das hamburgische Handelshaus Johann Cesar Godeffroy & Sohn und die Frage der deutschen Handelsinteressen in der Südsee.” Zeitschrift des Vereins für Hamburgische Geschichte. Vol. 81, 1995. pp. 129–155; and K. Schmack. JC Godeffroy & Sohn: Kaufleute zu Hamburg. Leistung und Schicksal eines Welthandelshauses. Verlag Broschek & Co, Hamburg, 1938. 66. HH Best & W. Weege. Biographisches Handbuch. pp. 156–57. Godeffroy participated as a member of the Center-Left Augsburger Hof and was a member of the naval committee in April 1849. 67. K. Schmack. JC Godeffroy & Sohn. p. 81ff. As a firm based in Hamburg, obviously the fear of a Danish blockade rode high in the minds of the Godeffroys; however, there is no reason to doubt the sincerity of their belief that Germany could only continue its progress through a blending of mercantile and military expansion. 68. A. Skřivan. “Das hamburgische Handelshaus.” p. 130–32. Hamburg’s first consul, August Unshelm, drowned off the coast of Fiji in March 1864. He was replaced by the energetic Theodor Weber in April of the same year. Weber also became consul for the Norddeutscher Bund in 1868, allowing other German firms to expand more rapidly in the region. 69. A. Skřivan. “Das hamburgische Handelshaus.” pp. 130–32. See also F.M. Spoehr. White Falcon. The House of Godeffroy and Its Commercial and Scientific Role in the Pacific. Pacific Books, Palo Alto, 1963. p. 45. 70. A. Skřivan. “Das hamburgische Handelshaus.” p. 132. See also W. Nordmeyer. Die Geographische Gesellschaft in Hamburg 1873–1918: Geographie zwischen Politik und Kommerz. Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart, 1998. pp. 76–81. 71. French captain Theophile Aube, quoted in F.M. Spoehr. White Falcon. pp. 38–39. 72. CF Gordon-Cumming. A Lady’s Cruise in a French Man-of-War. Quoted in FM Spoehr. White Falcon. p. 39.

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73. A. Skřivan. “Das hamburgische Handelshaus.” pp. 136–37. 74. A. Skřivan. “Das hamburgische Handelshaus.” p. 138. See also StA Hamburg. 621–1:1. Handels–Gesellschaft: Handels- u. Plantagen-Gesellschaft der Südsee Inseln zu Hamberg, which includes the statutes of the newly established firm. 75. See for example W. Nordmeyer. Die Geographische Gesellschaft. p. 66. 76. K. Schmack. JC Godeffroy & Sohn. pp. 217–18. “… daß die Deutschen in Übersee nicht mehr ohne jeden staatlichen Schutz waren.” A. Skřivan, “Das hamburgische Handelshaus,” pp. 134–35, doubts the probable efficacy of such naval visits; however, while not tantamount to “gunboat diplomacy,” they were a signal that Germany intended to protect its interests abroad, no matter how far flung they were and irrespective of their private sector nature. 77. J. Gallagher & R. Robinson. “The Imperialism of Free Trade.” p. 1. 78. The primary sources for the Colonisations-Verein von 1849 in Hamburg are the series of files kept in the StA Hamburg (373–7i: Auswanderungsamt I: IIF1a.) and those in the Bundesarchiv, Berlin (R8023/259, R8023/260 Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft). 79. On the convoluted interpenetration of private sector imperialists within Hamburg, see H. Kellenbenz. “Die Auswanderung nach Lateinamerika und die deutschen Kaufleute (vornehmlich am Beispiel Brasilien).” In K. Friedland, ed. Maritime Aspects of Migration—Sonderdruck. Böhlau Verlag, Köln, 1989. pp. 215–41. 80. The Hamburger Verein zum Schutze von Auswanderung was itself an organization linked to the Berliner Verein zur Centralisation der Deutschen Auswanderung und Colonisation, under the direction of Alexander von Bülow. 81. W. Nordmeyer. Die Geographische Gesellschaft. pp. 64ff. “Allein schon aus den Tatbeständen, daß die Kolonialpolitik des Deutschen Reiches unter Bismarck ursprünglich deutsche Handelsinteressen in Übersee … zu schützen versucht hat, diese Handelsinteressen im wesentlichen die von hamburgischen und anderen hanseatischen Kaufleuten waren und die hamburgische Geographische Geselleschaft zu großen Teilen aus Kaufleuten … bestand, muß unweigerlich folgen, daß auch die Geographische Gesellschaft in Hamburg in die deutsche Kolonialpolitik verwickelt war.” In particular, Nordmeyer singles out Ludwig Friederichsen, Wilhelm Hübbe– Schleiden, and numerous members of the Godeffroy family as actively pro-imperialist members of the Geographische Gesellschaft. 82. JL da Cunha. Rio Grande Do Sul und die deutsche Kolonisation: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der deutsch-brasilianisch Auswanderung und der deutschen Siedlung in Südbrasilien zwischen 1824 und 1914. Gráfica Léo Quatke, Santa Cruz do Sul, 1995. p. 261. 83. Statuten des in Hamburg errichteten Colonisations–Verein von 1849. StA Hamburg. 373–7i: IIF1a. 84. H. Kellenbenz. Die Auswanderung nach Lateinamerika. pp. 233–36. 85. Vierter Bericht der Direction des Colonisations-Vereins von 1849 in Hamburg (May 1852). p. 8. Repeated also in Fünfter Bericht (December 1855). StA Hamburg. 373–7i: IIF1a. “… das Werk, welches wir in’s Leben riefen, nicht allein günstige Resultate für die Interessenten unseres Vereins bringen, sondern ebenso bedeutsam für die Wohlfahrt der deutschen Auswanderer als gewinnbringend für den Handel und die Industerie Deutschlands …” 86. On the social composition of potential colonists and the way in which colonialism was seen as an answer to the social question, see Bericht der Interimistischen Direction des ColonisationsVereins von 1849 in Hamburg. 1851. StA Hamburg. 373–7i:IIF1a. pp. 3–4. 87. HU Wehler. Bismarck und der Imperialismus. See for example p. 115. 88. G. Eley. From Unification to Nazism. pp. 162–3. 89. Dreiundzwanzigster Bericht. (November 1874). StA Hamburg. 373–7i:IIF1a. p. 3. “Wenn wir uns in erster Beziehung das Ziel gesetzt hatten, dem deutschen Auswanderer eine Stätte zu bereiten, seine heimische Gebräuche und Gewohnheiten beizuhalten und ihn so der alten Heimath so wenig als möglich entfremde—wenn wir es auf diese Weise zu erreichen hofften, dass der unserer Einladung folgende Theil der Auswanderung dem Mutterlande nicht verloren gehe … sondern durch dauernde Anghänglichkeit und lebhafte Wechselbeziehung auch in der

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90.

91. 92.

93. 94.

95.

96.

97. 98. 99.

Ferne noch zur Hebung deutschen Gewerbfleisses und Handels beitragen möge, und dass auf diese Weise die einmal nicht zu hindernde Auswanderung für Deutschland statt eines scheinbaren Verlustes einen segenreichen Gewinn bringen möge, so glauben wir von diesem Gesichtspunkte aus mit Genugthuung auf die Erfolge unseres Wirkens hinblicken zu dürfen.” “Noch ein Protest aus Brasilien (aus der Colonie Blumenau) gegen geflissentlich verbreitete Verdächtigungen und Verläumdungen.” (July 1868), StA Hamburg. 373–7i:IIF1a. “Wird denn Preußen, das mit kühner Hand daheim den politischen Neubau Deutschlands begonnen, wird es nicht endlich auch für die aus der Heimath scheidenden Deutschen, statt mitt kleinlichen Beschränkungen zu spielen, seiner neuen Größe würdige Ziele ins Auge fassen und zu dem Ruhmeskranze für die Neugestaltung des alten Deutschland den zweiten gesellen für die Begründung eines neuen Deutschland in Brasiliens Süd-Provinzen?” On the effect of the Prussian restrictions on the colony, see Neunter Bericht (September 1860). pp. 3–4; Fünfzehnter Bericht. (November 1866). p. 6; Achtzehnter Bericht (November 1869). p. 3. See for example R. Evans. Death in Hamburg. p. 28. “Colonial propaganda received almost no support in Hamburg …” Quoted in IS Lorenz. Eugen Richter. Der entschiedene Liberalismus in wilhelminischer Zeit 1871–1906. Matthieson Verlag, Musum, 1980. p. 108. “Wenn die Kaufleute auf Abenteuer ausgehen wollen, dann mögen sie es aus eigener Tasche tun und nicht die Reichskasse und das deutsche Volk in Anspruch nehmen … Wenn die Herren in Hamburg wirklich so überzeugt wären von dem Nutzen einer energischen weitergehenden Kolonialpolitik in Ostafrika, dann begreife ich nicht, warum sie die Taschen so absolut gerade in Hamburg zugeknöpft halten … Warum geben sie denn kein Geld dazu? Sie haben es ja dazu!” Evans. Death in Hamburg. p. 28. W. Nordmeyer. Die Geographische Gesellschaft in Hamburg. Nordmeyer, in a short summary of the more prominent pro-colonialism movement in Hamburg, discusses, besides Hübbe– Schleiden, Ludwig Friederichsen, Johann Cesar Godeffroy Sen, Adolph Woermann, and William Henry Oswald, all of whom were actively involved in pro-imperial lobbying and private sector imperialist praxis in the pre–1884 era. Thus, of the 38 members of the Kolonialverein from Hamburg listed in 1884, twenty-five were merchants or traders, with two bankers, along with institutional members such as Godeffroy’s Südseeinseln company, A Woermann from C. Woermann & Co. and L. Friederichsen, Secretary of the Hamburg Geographical Society and the publisher of Hübbe-Schleiden’s works. See BA Berlin. R8023/253. Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft. p. 136. BA Berlin. R8023/256a. p. 194. Erste Beilage zum Hamburger Fremden–Blatt. 22 November 1882. See the same, 21 October 1882, for the positive review of Maltzan’s Handels–Colonien, eine Lebensfrage für Deutschland, which concludes with the statement “Die Hauptstraßen in das Innere Afrika’s … gelangen von Tag zu Tag mehr in die Hände der französischen und englischen Nation und doch ist es für Deutschland eine Lebensfrage, sich an dem täglich erweiternden Verkehr mit dem Lande der Zukunft, Afrika, zu betheiligen.” This support was not, however, monolithic, with the Fremden–Blatt conversely declaring on 11 August 1882 that if the Junker Eastern latifundia estates were broken up, overseas colonization would become unnecessary. Not entirely anti-colonial in its logic, it situates the necessity of colonies in terms of an anti-conservative, redistribution-oriented colonialism that would erode the material base of Junjer power, understood as the Junker’s territorial preponderence in the East. On Hübbe-Schleiden’s literary output, see below. W. Nordmeyer. Die Geographische Gesellschaft in Hamburg. p. 82. W. Nordmeyer. Die Geographische Gesellschaft in Hamburg. p. 82. See also H. Pogge von Strandmann. “Consequences of the German Empire: Colonial Expansion and the Process of Political-Economic Rationalization.” In S. Förster, WJ Mommsen & R. Robinson. Bismarck, Europe and Africa. The Berlin Africa Conference 1884–1885 and the Onset of Partition. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1988. p. 110.

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100. A partial transcript of the meeting and Woermann’s petition can be found in G. Klein, (ed). Dokumente zur Geschichte der Handelskammer Hamburg. Th. Dingwort & Sohn. Hamburg, 1965. pp. 167ff. 101. G. Klein, (ed). Dokumente zur Geschichte. pp. 170–71. “Wozu hätten wir eine Kriegsmarine, wenn nicht zum Schutz unserer Beziehungen zu fremden Ländern?!” 102. G. Klein, (ed). Dokumente zur Geschichte. p. 175–76. The actual text of the petition was as follows: “1. Ernennung eines deutschen Konsuls an der Goldküste. 2. Abschluss von Verträgen mit England, event. auch Frankreich, durch welche den Kolonien dieser Staaten in jeder Beziehung, namentlich bezüglich des Erwerbes von Grundeigenthum, gleiche Rechte mit Angehörigen gewährleistet werden. … 3. Einwirkung auf Frankreich zwecks Aufhebung der Benachtheiligung des deutschen Handels, wie sie durch das Verbot der Einfuhr von Gewehren in der Kolonie Gaboon und die gleichzeitige Einfuhr großer Quantitäten zum Handel bestimmter Gewehre durch de Brazza herbeigeführt wird. 4. Bewirkung der Anerkennung des Inkraftbestehens des Handelsvertrages durch die Liberianische Regierung; eventuelle Revision des Vertrages und Sicherung gleicher Behandlung der Deutschen in Liberia mit den Angehörigen anderer Staaten. 5. Schutz der deutschen Interessen in den von unabhängigen Negerstämmen bewohnten Distrikten durch Abschluss von Verträgen mit den Häuptlingen, und durch Stationierung von Kriegsschiffen zu dem Zwecke … 6. Neutralisirung der Congo-Mündung und des benachbarten Küstenstriches. 7. Begründung einer Flottenstation (Fernando Po). 8. Erwerbung eines Küstenstriches in West-Afrika zur Gründung einer Handelskolonie …” 103. W. Nuhn. Kolonialpolitik und Marine: Die Rolle der Kaiserlichen Marine bei der Gründung und Sicherung des deutschen Kolonialreiches 1884–1914. Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Bonn, 2002. p. 48. On Nachtigal’s later role in establishing Germany’s African colonies, see A. Tunis. “Gustav Nachtigal—Gefeierter Afrikaforscher und umstrittener Kolonialpionier.” In U. van der Heyden & J. Zeller, (eds). Kolonialmetropole. pp. 96–102. 104. G. Klein. Dokumente zur Geschichte der Handelskammer Hamburg. p. 176. This notion is also supported by the polemical but not inaccurate work of Renate Hücking & Ekkehard Launer, Aus Menschen Neger Machen. Wie sich das Handelshaus Woermann an Afrika sich entwickelt hat. Galgenberg, Hamburg, 1986. pp. 47ff. 105. K. Nkrumah. Neocolonialism. The last Stage of Imperialism. Heinemann, London, 1965. 106. T. Schoonover. “Germany in Central America, 1820s to 1929: An Overview.” Jahrbuch für Geschichte von Staat, Wirschaft und Gesellschaft Lateinamerikas. 25 / 1988. pp. 33–59. For the quotation, see p. 44. 107. T. Schoonover. “Germany in Central America” pp. 34–41. Schoonover describes this process as Prussia drifting “into the imperial competition between Britain and the United States.” See p. 35. 108. FC Erckert. “Die wirtschaftlichen Interessen Deutschlands in Guatemala.” Beiträge zur Kolonialpolitik und Kolonialwirtschaft (1901–2). pp. 225–38, 269–84. Quoted in K. Trümper. Kaffee und Kaufleute: Guatemala und der Hamburger Handel, 1871–1914. Lit Verlag, Hamburg, 1996. p. 34. 109. M. Riekenberg. Zum Wandel von Herrschaft und Mentalität in Guatemala. Ein Beitrag zur Sozialgeschichte Lateinamerikas. Böhlau Verlag, Köln, 1990. p. 72ff. See also Trümper. Kaffee und Kaufleute. p. 6. 110. M. Riekenberg. Zum Wandel von Herrschaft und Mentalität in Guatemala. pp. 76ff. See also Trümper. Kaffee und Kaufleute. p. 6. 111. K. Trümper. Kaffee und Kaufleute. pp. 30–31. 112. K. Trümper. Kaffee und Kaufleute. pp. 76–77. “Diese Epoche ist ein Beispiel dafür, wie sich ausländische Unternehmer ab der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts—mit Beginn der Ausbildung eines modernen Weltmarktes—in das Wirtschaftssystem eines ökonomisch unterentwickelten Staates intergrierten und es entscheidend prägten. Die Hamburger Kaufleute kamen in ein Land, das sich politisch und wirtschaftlich im Umbruch befand. Ausgerüstet mit höchstem

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113.

114. 115.

116. 117.

118.

119.

120. 121. 122. 123. 124.

125.

technischen und kaufmännischen Wissen und abgesichert durch ihre Verbindungen zum Hamburger Handel besetzen die Kaufleute innerhalb kürzester Zeit Schlüsselpositionen bei der Finanzierung, der Produktion und dem Export von Kaffee.” T. Schoonover. “Germany in Central America.” p. 44. For one of the commanding naval officer’s memory of events, see K. Paschen. Aus der Werdezeit zweier Marinen: Erinnerungen aus meiner Dienstzeit in der k.k. österreichischen und kaiserlich deutschen Marine. Ernst Siegfried Mittler & Sohn, Berlin, 1908. pp. 186ff. G. Petersen & H. Fröschle. “Die Deutschen in Peru,” in H. Fröschle. Die Deutschen in Lateinamerika: Schicksal und Leistung. pp. 703–6, 739. KH Oberacker & K. Ilg. “Die Deutschen in Brasilien,” in H. Fröschle. Die Deutschen in Lateinamerika. p. 197. See also D. v. Schütz-Holzhausen. Der Amazonas: Wanderbilder aus Peru, Bolivia und Nordbrasilien. Herdersche Verlagshandlung, Freiburg, 1895. pp. 221ff. C. Converse. “Die Deutschen in Chile,” in H. Fröschle. Die Deutschen in Lateinamerika. pp. 304–11. W. Hoffman. “Die Deutschen in Argentinien,” in H. Fröschle. Die Deutschen in Lateinamerika. p. 86. According to Hoffman, in the period 1856–85, there were 46 predominantly German colonies established in the Argentinian province of Santa Fe. See p. 146. BA Berlin. R8023/261. Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft. Of particular interest is the pamphlet “Die Südamerikanische Colonisations-Gesellschaft. Ein Beitrag zur praktischen Lösung der deutschen Colonisationsfrage.” p. 18, as well as the extensive correspondence between Ernst Hasse and Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden of Hamburg (pp. 4ff.), which developed into a Denkschrift by Hübbe-Schleiden in 1881, entitled “Entwurf einer Paraguay–Gesellschaft,” which was in essence a feasibility study of creating a German colony in Paraguay, including a description of constructing railroads and the establishment of a cash crop economy based on tobacco, sugar, and coffee. See BA Berlin. R8023/262. Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft. pp. 101ff. Such national interpenetration of seemingly discrete, regional colonial associations was the norm rather than the exception (as further evinced by the Düsseldorf-based Timotheus Fabri’s role in the Leipzig Society). BA Berlin. R8023/261. p. 18. “Diese Vorgang muß m.E. privatrechtlich (durch Ankauf geeigneter Ländereien) vollziehen und bedarf der staatsrechtlichen Formen (Annexion) über welche man so viel streitet, überhaupt nicht.” The “suitable estates” were found in Paraguay— namely Estancia Germania. (p. 22). BA Berlin. R8023/261. p. 21 for November 1882, p. 82 for March 1884. HH Herwig. Germany’s Vision of Empire in Venezuela 1871–1914. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1986. pp. 47ff. LE Wirth. Protestantismus und Kolonisation in Brasilien.Verlag der Ev.-Luth. Mission, Erlangen, 1992. p. 35. F. Sudhaus. Deutschland und die Auswanderung. pp. 69–70. LA von Rochau, quoted in D. Langewiesche. Liberalism in Germany. p. 62. This echoes Renan’s notion of the idea of nation as a “daily plebiscite,” deciding how the identity of the nation is delineated. In his discussion of the power of public opinion, Rochau asserted that even the power of “oriental despotism” must bend to it. Further, he wrote, a Staatspolitik that attempted to run counter to the Nationalgeist created an environment in which an oppositional Volkspolitik, such as the cultural resistance and political lobbying of the Nationalverein, was necessitated. See Rochau. Grundsätze der Realpolitik. pp. 33–36.

Chapter 4

BÜRGERLICH AGENCY AND THE WORLD OF THE VEREIN 1849–1884


Complementing the liberal civil society and private sector associations agitating exclusively for empire and expansion was the enthusiasm of liberal Germans for a national navy to support global trade and secure Germany’s position as a first rank power evinced by other organizations in pre-unification Germany that were not solely dedicated to promoting expansionism. Foremost amongst these was the Nationalverein, the kleindeutsch, nationalist-liberal association whose role as the voice of the German middle classes was broadly recognized and whose political agitation on the German states had far from negligible effects.1 Independent of the state yet sure of their historical necessity in terms of their congruence with the cultural ascendancy of the liberal middle classes, the members of the Nationalverein operated as a bridge between the 1848 generation of liberal politicians and agitators and that of the Reichsgründung.2 The Nationalverein was home to such liberal luminaries as Rochau,3 Rudolf von Bennigsen,4 Ernst Keil,5 Franz Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch,6 and Johannes Miquel.7 Their role, as they saw it, was to ensure “the independence and power of Germany abroad and the development of its intellectual and material powers domestically”8 and they operated as both an expression of, and the driving force for, German liberalism and its attempt to construct a liberal German nation via all available means, including through the manipulation of foreign policy crises.9 Belying W.J. Mommsen’s assertion that “colonial strivings didn’t play a particularly meaningful role in the German public sphere,”10 in both the minutes of their meetings and in their mouthpiece weeklies, the Wochenschrift des Nationalvereins (1860–65) and the later Wochen-Blatt des Nationalvereins (both edited by Notes for this section begin on page 111.

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Rochau11), the Nationalverein discussed and endorsed the proposition that Germany required an expansionist foreign policy as a matter of urgency. As with the discussions in the Paulskirche in 1848/49, the context was once again the necessity of a naval force in light of the continuing Schleswig/Holstein issue; however, the debate was by no means contained to the discrete issue of a perceived threat from Denmark. The view that Germany required a fleet was argued in several different ways throughout the life of the Nationalverein. Strikingly, the broader societal call for a German fleet was at first seemingly negated by the Wochenschrift des Nationalvereins; however, this negation appears to have been deployed as a strategic reminder of the primacy of the issue of unification. There could be no German fleet, it was argued, because there was no German nation to equip, maintain, and utilize such a fleet. It was true, the paper argued, that “All of our people thirst for national honor and military power …”; however, this could not be satisfied without an act of national unification: “Without a German state … no German army and no German fleet.”12 This position was reiterated the following week, with the Wochenschrift declaring that “for the German Federation of States there is as little a German fleet as there is a German army and a German politics.”13 However, the tone soon changed after the committee meeting of the 22nd of August 1861 and the Generalversammlung of the 23rd and 24th of August 1861, in which it was decided, after some debate, to alter the previous stance of the Nationalverein and to begin the collection of contributions for a German navy, which in the absence of a central government would be entrusted to the Prussian naval ministry.14 When Prussia expressed a reluctance to take up the role assigned it by the Nationalverein, Hamburg and Bremen were counted amongst the possible hosts for such a fleet.15 This change in policy was welcomed by publications that were generally supportive of the Nationalverein, with, for example, the Magdeburgische Zeitung dutifully reporting the development on the 17th of September 1861, by first discussing the importance of a naval fleet in terms of the material military necessity for a trading sea power such as Germany, and secondly in terms of its contribution to a sense of German national unity, as a symbol of the German nation: The establishment of a naval fleet, which cannot be done without by any coastal or sea trading people without penalty, still less by a true Great Power, is included in this goal [of national unification]. The members of the Nationalverein have, through their agreement, devoted themselves to the attaining of this goal with all strength and by all legal means …16

Just a few days later, the same paper made the link between the new naval policy of the Nationalverein, and German international trade and colonialism: An industrial trading people without a navy conducts trade without assurances … Those places penetrated by German trade and German colonies, where German honor and German possessions are to be defended and supported, there must the Germany-protecting flag of Prussia fly!17

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Initially presented as a defensive navy to guard the coastline of the German states,18 over time the perception of the fleet’s utility was expanded to encompass the types of broader foreign policy objectives that had been discussed at the Frankfurt Nationalversammlung in 1848/49 and the treatise of Adalbert. In February 1862, the Wochenschrift declared that without a naval fleet, the German nation was a “cripple” that could never be a “Great Power” unless it could manage “to also assert itself on the world’s oceans.”19 Later that year, the “shameful” state of Germany’s naval affairs was again reported on, with the competency of other nations directly compared with Germany’s dolorous position. Nostalgically ruminating on Germany’s naval strength in Hanseatic times, the article’s author asserted that Germany still had the capacity to become a great nation and a great naval power, if it so wanted.20 The liberals of the Nationalverein viewed their attempts at establishing a German fleet in historical terms, constructing a theory of historical determinism that was supposed to dictate the necessity of a navy. Commenting on the role that naval power had played in the ascendancy of such nations as Britain, France, and Spain, the Wochenschrift asserted that naval strength and involvement in global trade could be used as indicators of the extent to which a nation had developed into a world power, stating, “It is a recognized historical fact that each people, as soon as it feels itself called to play a role in the world, strives for sea trade and, to protect this, attempts to become a sea power.”21 Evident here is the conflation of the political and economic priorities of Germany’s liberals with not only the “national” interest, but also a broader teleological narrative of historical progress as measured by expansionist capabilities. Basing their interpretation of historical progress on the example of earlier imperialist powers, German liberals viewed the instrumentalization of the extra-European world and a forward foreign policy as exemplifying Germany’s liberal industrial modernity, with a navy operating not merely as a symbol of national unity but also of national strength, enabling Germans to come to accept as inevitable “that Germany must one day be a sea power of the first rank.”22 Through the expansion of its military, economic, and diplomatic strength abroad, it was argued, Germany could fulfill its great power destiny: … when, in the future, the Reich government is the sole legal representative of Germany in foreign affairs, when there are only German envoys, that represent a population of forty million abroad, and the black, red and gold flag waves from all German embassies on the Earth and from numerous German warships which command respect … When in the future the entire armed might of Germany on land and sea is at the sole command of the Reich government, which with more power than any other, can decisively cast its sword into the scales of the fates of nations …23

The scope of liberal expansionist thinking was revealed in an uncharacteristically forthright article in 1865, in which the themes of national unity, naval power, and imperial desires were brought together:

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It is an uncontested fact that Germany, having gained respect for its domestic intellectual and material resources that outstrip the development of any other nation, feels the need to gain that respect to which it is rightfully entitled, considering its size, its geographical position and the intelligence of its inhabitants, outside its borders, on the seas. It wants a share of world trade, through which it can actively intervene in the fates of nations. With the striving for unity upon land, a simultaneous striving for prestige at sea has emerged in the soul of the nation … Despite the disfavor and jealousy of other nations, despite the insistence of England against the fortification of Kiel, Germany will in a short time possess a fleet, a powerful fleet, to protect its ships, whose keels already travel through the oceans of the world. The German race has been ordained by Providence to exercise global rule. It is physically and intellectually favored above all others, and half the Earth is practically subject to it. England, America, Germany—these are the three branches of the mighty German tree, that sprouted on the plateaus of Asia, that took root in the heart of Europe, and under whose shade the entire world will one day find peace.24

Calls for a German fleet worthy of an ascendant liberal nation continued to be issued by the Nationalverein until its dissolution in November 1867. In February of 1867, it was recalled that Germany’s citizens had been striving for a naval fleet for a generation, as a means of satisfying the extent of Germany’s power and greatness.25 The fleet, it was asserted, remained the concern of the entire German nation and remained an enabling symbol of the nation’s unity, or as it was reported, “Germany has at least attained unity on the sea.”26 With the continual disappointments and setbacks faced by the Nationalverein in their attempts to establish a national navy, it is perhaps unsurprising that the prospect of establishing statist colonies underwritten by a central German government appeared to the association’s members as being on the outer range of their potential successes, and was therefore somewhat underemphasized in comparison to their more immediate task of unifying Germany under the auspices of Prussian preeminence. However, when discussed, colonies were portrayed as an integral part of any nation claiming great power status, and as yet another example of how Kleinstaaterei had prevented Germany both from being able to become the power it deserved to be, and from protecting its multitudes of emigrants: England, Holland, France, Russia all have their vast colonies. Their citizens, when they emigrate, remain bound to the Motherland, and do not stop—at least indirectly—to work for it … Only Germany has no colonies, yet it has so many of its children, more than any other land on Earth, that have left for foreign lands, where they, without protection for themselves or their livelihoods, are lost to their Motherland forever.27

Broadly speaking, the Nationalverein saw a centrally directed emigration program as the most desirable: Therefore it is undeniable that, on patriotic and purely humanitarian grounds, it would be preferable if we could lead the regular stream of German emigration with as little loss as possible into the bed of one or more national colonies.28

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The desirability of colonies lay in their Malthusian utility, as a means of economically harnessing and humanely dealing with Germany’s ostensibly superfluous poor. In the case of formal national colonies, it was a task for the post-unification future, or in the case of private colonies, a continuing task for Germany’s mobile emigrant and merchant community.29 As for the more immediate practical application of imperialist plans, the Nationalverein was firm in its conviction that at that precise moment of historical national development, colonies were only to be achieved via the efforts of private associations.30 This did not discount an interest in the “civil society imperialism” from below of other German liberals. In fact, as the minutes of the Nationalverein reveal, their approval of Sturz’s anti-Brazilian, pro-Uruguayan colonization project, planned so as to be firmly controlled and with the protection of the colonists in mind, resulted in the granting of funding to Sturz’s organization on at least one occasion in 1862, at the behest of the Nationalverein chairman Rudolf Bennigsen, with further contributions stymied only as the financial position of the Verein became more precarious in 1865.31 As a favored cause of the Nationalverein, Sturz’s South American colonialism (viewed as well-planned and without the risk of “white slavery” for which Brazil was renowned) exemplified the type of liberal imperialism to which the Nationalverein and its supporters continued to be attracted. For his part, Sturz had all but relied upon the Nationalverein as the appropriate vehicle for his colonial program.32 The Nationalverein was also in favor of supporting German nationals in their encounters with the resistance of colonized indigenous peoples, with the Nationalverein contributing financially to German colonists who had been attacked by indigenous North Americans in the colony of Neu-Ulm.33 Furthermore, Bennigsen’s interest in assisting the Heuglin expedition to Africa in search of the German researcher Eduard Vogel34 demonstrated, not only his personal interest in the events surrounding Germany’s exploration and research into potential trading and settlement outposts around the globe, but also his commitment to institutionalizing the support of such efforts as part of the tapestry of the Nationalverein policy. That Bennigsen was pushing for the financial support of expansionist causes in a pre-colonial German organization as early as 1862, points to the conclusion that Bennigsen’s and Miquel’s role in the establishment of the Deutscher Kolonialverein in 188235 was not a result of newfound colonial enthusiasm, but rather long-term imperialist ambitions for the new liberal nation, and thus, they sought to agitate for them and eventually implement them when it became politically possible to do so. Bennigsen’s, Miquel’s,36 and for that matter the Nationalverein’s, support for German imperialism clearly does not appear to have been contingent on the fluctuations of the business cycle, nor a sense of crisis accompanying social ferment,37 but rather it appears in keeping with German liberalism’s broader and longstanding commitment to the notion that Germany’s national task lay outside its own borders, in the penetration and incorporation of the extra-European world.

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It was to this commitment that Bennigsen appealed in his toast to Deutschtum abroad at the Second Bundesschießen in Bremen in 1865.38 The Bundesschießen, as the sporting equivalent of the Nationalverein (with a similar emphasis on national unity), were an appreciative audience, with constant cries of “bravo” meeting Bennigsen’s laudatory remarks regarding the role of German emigrants and traders throughout the world, metaphorically positioning them as symbols of Germany’s international competitiveness and expansionist drive: The German merchant, the German seaman, the German manufacturer, can now participate in a competition with all nations; he overcomes all difficulties, he is respected and powerful when compared with England and the citizens of the greatest and most powerful nations.39

Miquel, for his part, made repeated calls for an active imperial naval policy in several of his speeches, stretching over the period of his involvement with the Nationalverein, the Norddeutscher Reichstag, and the German Reichstag. Within the context of the Nationalverein, Miquel insisted that the contributions from the German public, which had been collected by the association, should only be directed to the creation of a national fleet. It was, he argued, unthinkable that the trust of the German nation could be betrayed—even if the money were to be spent on arguably naval related causes such as a naval school.40 Miquel relentlessly argued for the fleet as a question of arousing and defining the national spirit and purpose of the liberal German nation, arguing that, “the naval fund collections were a product of national enthusiasm,”41 and that “this naval concern is the best example of that which we expect from the nation, of the resources that the nation can set in motion, of the style of politics into which we want to bring the nation …”42 Politically speaking, Miquel saw beyond the purely monetary benefits of the Nationalverein’s naval collection. Not only was the money a step toward the financing of a national fleet, “a great and powerful fleet,” it had also provided the Nationalverein and indeed, German liberalism, with a tactical advantage, the accumulation of “das politische Kapital.”43 Not only was it the case that “these days the children on the street know that our German navy is as necessary as their bread,”44 through their decision for a national fleet, Germans had demonstrated that political liberalism—in grasping the necessity of a national navy—was the true vessel for their nationalist sentiments, and that the attempt of conservatives to stymie liberal progress, which might threaten conservative military projects (in particular the Prussian army), toward a national fleet needed to be met with resistance: “A people, which concerns itself politically with such a great, high cause, must not allow itself to be diverted in its political conduct by so pitiful an attempt by an already dead reaction.”45 Should conservative opposition continue, Miquel continued, it was, in the long run, of little consequence. Echoing Rochau’s invocation of the Zeitgeist, Miquel affirmed, “… I am still of the opinion that the time will come in Prussia, when we can faithfully place this money and that yet to come in the hands of a liberal Prussian government.”46

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Interestingly, Miquel had begun his speech with reference to the need for the coastal defense of Germany’s north; however, by the end of his address to his fellow members of the Nationalverein, he was invoking the plight of German emigrants abroad and their need for protection in the strongest of terms: Well might our German brothers gaze at the wide sea and in vain wait and hope that a powerful warship with the black-red-gold flag was coming to protect them! Gentlemen, no nation has as many compatriots that faithfully rely upon the Fatherland, that has as many free colonies as we do abroad; almost no nation has as much coastline to protect, no nation has as much capital and interests in play, and this nation of 40 million does not have a single warship to command. Disgrace and shame, I say, disgrace and shame to those that brought about this situation, to those that brought us to this point …47

Miquel’s pro-fleet tendencies were also demonstrated in the Norddeutscher Reichstag debate on the 15th of June 1868, in which he and his fellow National Liberals were attacked by the Fortschrittspartei for embracing naval budgetary legislation that Miquel’s opponents viewed as weakening the power of the parliament.48 That the National Liberals, just as the Progressives, wished to see the development of constitutional rule within Germany, Miquel argued, was beyond question. Where the difference between the two lay, in his opinion, was in the Progressives’ willingness to play with the military preparedness of Germany for short-term political gain: “We however believe that the plight of the Fatherland is not a tool to increase the rights of the people …”49 With this in mind, Miquel asserted that budgetary savings needed to be sought elsewhere, not at the cost of the naval program: “We are of the opinion that it was not necessary to suspend the naval work and find savings there.”50 The following year, a similar pronouncement was made by Miquel in the Norddeutscher Reichstag, as he once again argued that budgetary savings should not come at the expense of the navy,51 the development of which “for a nation like Germany is absolutely necessary.”52 It was true, he argued, that the budget was under strain, and given the current political climate, the reduction of infantry forces was hard to imagine. However, a short-term liquidity crisis should not discourage the Reichstag from securing a loan for the development of the navy, nor should it be an inducement to raise the level of taxation in an attempt to pay for a fleet out of the government’s taxation revenue. Besides, Miquel argued, all problems of liquidity would be solved in the future—“a future where national unity has hopefully come to fruition,”53 in which case southern Germany would also contribute to the naval repayments. In the post-unification era, Miquel continued to lobby for a strong national navy, capable of coastal defense and the restitution of the national honor wherever Germans abroad were abused.54 Perhaps, Miquel remarked caustically, if the Reichstag felt unable to pay for a national navy, then everything should simply be auctioned off, as had happened in the 1850s. However, warned Miquel, the German nation would not be in accord with such a course of action, having shown their approval in 1867 for the development of a naval fleet—and after all, what had

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changed since that time? “Has our power become weaker since 1967, has our financial strength weakened since 1867, are the commercial undertakings that we must face less, has the honor of the nation that we must defend overseas changed?”55 In his consistent defense of the idea and reality of a German navy, Miquel constantly referred to the national and nationalist implications of its success or failure. As not only a means of defending the German coastline or German trade, but also as a symbol of German honor, power, and military reach, the German navy was for Miquel an embodiment of the strength that came with German national unity. As such, his emphasis upon the Ehre of the German nation was far from fatuous nationalist pride, but was rather a recognition that the fleet served an important symbolic purpose in terms of the positioning of an expansionist, liberal Germany amongst the other expansionist powers of Europe. Miquel’s involvement in the agitation for German imperialism did not of course begin and end with calls for a German naval fleet. As a founding member of the Deutscher Kolonialverein in the early 1880s, Miquel was optimistic about the chances of the Reichstag endorsing colonial imperialism and urged the other Kolonialverein members to shrug off the sense that the Godeffroy/Samoa debate in parliament in 1880 had decided the question of colonialism in the negative.56 That had, he argued, been a question of supporting a bankrupt trading firm, and not a decision as to whether or not the government should support a policy of colonial imperialism per se. This was a different question—the question of “the interests of our people.” Colonial imperialist agitation was for Miquel a national duty, as a means of expressing the will of the nation, the national Zeitgeist. As such, his view of the role of the Kolonialverein was very clear: “We must express the feelings for a maritime colonization, that live in the emotions of the nation.”57 Despite a late beginning, the Deutscher Kolonialverein58 was an organization confident in the long heritage of the imperialist discourse and praxis that it sought to promote. Established in 1882 through the efforts of Hermann Maltzan,59 the organization quickly outgrew its founder, as it became swamped with some of the leading liberal personalities and organizations of the era, in particular liberal politicians and representatives of both the Wirtschafts- and the Bildungsbürgertum.60 Apart from Maltzan, the membership included National Liberal Johannes Miquel (who was on the board of directors),61 National Liberal Rudolf von Bennigsen, as well as the well-known colonial propagandists Friedrich Fabri, his son Timotheus Fabri, Franz Moldenhauer, Hamburg’s Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden, and the renowned merchant and publisher Friederichsen of L. Friederichsen & Co. The role of the Kolonialverein, as its name suggests, was the overt support of a German overseas empire: The colonial efforts of the German people to support, in particular 1. to establish national protection for those German trading outposts in suitable foreign lands that at the present time are not subject to the protection of a civilized power. 2. to assist in the establishment of trading centers and to support German settlements abroad, without taking part in establishing these ourselves.62

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These aims, as well as the intellectual and practical pedigree of the imperialist discourse the association sought to disseminate, were further elaborated by Timotheus Fabri, editor of the Colonialpolitisches Correspondenz, which would become the Kolonialverein’s official organ: Now we are at the point where we understand that at present European culture is becoming a world culture, that every great European nation, whether they wish to or not, stands before a global task in a political and commercial sense, even if they wish only to ensure their continental position in the long term. We want to work together to make the call for the spread of the overseas power and the economic sphere of our Fatherland become the call of the people, we want to assist in the practical solution to the colonial question … Great national movements are not the result of single deeds, single years; they are rather subject to the laws of a slow, unseen growth … So too the colonial question, the question of the broadening of our overseas military and economic zones, is not merely the product of our own day. Since the end of the last century, such pleas have grown louder, most of which displayed a stronger love of the Fatherland than an understanding of foreign relations. These suggestions gained a tangible form in the years after 1848. What the homeland does not offer, foreign lands shall provide.63

Timotheus Fabri’s account then carefully described some of the theorists and individuals that he considered to be direct landmark forerunners of the organization, beginning with the Hamburger Colonisations-Verein von 1849, and including the 1878 Berlin organization, the Centralverein für Handelsgeographie und Förderung deutscher Interessen im Auslande, the Westdeutscher Verein für Colonisation und Export in Düsseldorf, the Leipziger Verein für Handelgeographie, as well as Roscher’s 1856 work, Colonien, Colonialpolitik und Auswanderung, and the works of Friedrich Fabri and Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden.64 Far from seeing itself as an innovative organization, the Kolonialverein was at pains to link itself to preexisting imperialist discourse and praxis; a discourse that posited imperialism as the socioeconomic basis and symbolic signifier of a truly liberal nation-state, and a praxis that had seen private sector colonies flourish in the past. These historic ties, made overt in statements like that of Timotheus Fabri, were also evinced in the tropes of the Kolonialverein’s argumentation in favor of an imperialist foreign policy. In his foundation statement on the need for German colonies, and therefore a colonial association to agitate for their establishment, Hermann Maltzan’s arguments were precisely those used at the Frankfurt Nationalversammlung in 1848, and by a range of imperialist theorists and practitioners ever since.65 Germany, as a modern, outward-looking nation, needed to be able to overcome the overweening influence of England and France in the extra-European world, both of which could possibly “lock out” German trade. Besides, he argued, Germany was overpopulated and it was economically necessary for the nation to retain the “Arbeitskräfte” of German emigrants. The colonies would provide the required raw materials for German industry as well as agricultural goods.66 The colonies would allow German industry and trade to be able to assert its independence from, and ability to compete with, its European economic rivals.67

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In defining and publicizing itself as the Kolonialverein, the organization had rhetorically posited itself as transcending the interests of any one segment of Germany society. Despite its overwhelmingly liberal complexion, it was claimed of the Verein that, “Men of all parties, all classes have united for the solution to a national task.” Together, this alleged cross-section of German society was forging a common mission for the new nation, irrespective of social class. Their common goal, it was claimed, was: … to awaken and strengthen the consciousness that the colonial question is becoming a question of survival for the new German Reich, that they are chosen and suitable to revive once more the inner development of our Fatherland, to strengthen Germany’s European position, to begin our global mission.68

Imperialism, as a means of reviving the internal development of the nation (seen broadly in terms of the task of nation-building as well as economic development), was self-consciously delineated by the Kolonialverein, through its recourse to the preexisting tropes of a well understood public discourse, as the preferred national path. In the pursuit of this expansionist future, Germany would demonstrate its internationalist credentials in the same way that England and France had already been able to do. The liberal press, largely supportive of the Kolonialverein’s project, did not fail to pick up on this linkage between the establishment of a German overseas empire and the construction of a German national identity that, despite its alignment with liberal imaginings of the national unit, was ostensibly able to transcend Germany’s social levels. In November of 1882, the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung approvingly quoted the National Liberal organ, the Hannoversche Courier, which made known its joy that the Kolonialverein ostensibly included members from “all political and economic parties.” Finally, the papers proclaimed, “We have … a national question, that is loftier than the petty party disputes of the day.”69 The Oberfränkische Zeitung, under the heading “A New German Undertaking,” similarly remarked on the necessity of a colonial solution as an appropriate “Solution to the social or ‘hunger’ question.”70 Similarly, Der Reichsbote welcomed the Kolonialverein’s pro-colonial agitation in terms which neatly encapsulated the breadth of domestic support for imperialism, the economic and nationalist imperatives behind it, as well as the lack of novelty to the Kolonialverein’s goals and aims: The necessity of the German Reich establishing colonies, which we have stressed for years, in order to free our industry from the interference of England and France and (to ensure our ability to compete with any nation) the essential advantage of ensuring direct access to raw materials and direct markets for manufactured goods, is finding agreement in increasingly wider circles.71

The Andernacher Zeitung, not as concerned for the socioeconomic base and discursive traditions of German imperialism, simply concentrated on the need for the new German nation to proclaim itself to the wider world through a policy

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of colonization, in its serialized article on the necessity of colonialism, which focused on Germany’s position vis-à-vis the other European great powers, and cited Hübbe-Schleiden’s assertion that “Overseas policy alone is in the position … to lay the ground for a WORLD-POWER GERMANY.”72 As an organization that attempted to reassert imperialism as a basis for both German prosperity and German national identity, the Deutscher Kolonialverein was instrumental in refocusing the debate on German colonialism away from the piecemeal programs of the various post–1848/49 colonial associations, toward a truly national, statist approach. Similarly, as an organization devoted solely to colonialism, it could focus on expansionism in a way that was not possible for the Nationalverein, the hopes of Bennigsen and Sturz notwithstanding. While appropriating for themselves the heritage of those groups, which had transmitted liberal imperialist theory and committed themselves to colonial praxis during an era of active government opposition and liberal political difficulty, the Kolonialverein proclaimed that it was able to put behind it the “lack of discipline” of earlier imperialist associations,73 and translate German liberalism’s cultural hegemony into political facts in the field of foreign policy. With the Kolonialverein successful in having its objectives met in 1884, Rochau’s trust in the inevitable triumph of the liberal Zeitgeist appeared to have been borne out.

Notes 1. S. Na’aman. Der Deutsche Nationalverein: Die politische Konstituierung des deutschen Bürgertums, 1859–1867. Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf, 1987. p. 17. See also A. Biefang. Politisches Bürgertum in Deutschland 1857–1868: Nationale Organisationen und Eliten. Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf, 1994; and A. Green. “Representing Germany? The Zollverein at the World Exhibitions, 1851– 1862.” In JMH 75 (Dec 2003). pp. 836–63. 2. For a short biography of prominent Nationalverein members, see A. Biefang, ed. Der Deutsche Nationalverein 1859–1867: Vorstands– und Ausschußprotokolle. Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf, 1995. pp. xxix–xv. 3. The author of the influential Grundsätze der Realpolitik. 4. A future leading figure in the Nationalliberale Partei and the Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft. 5. The editor of the influential weekly liberal family periodical Die Gartenlaube and the Leipzig Allgemeine Deutsche Turnzeitung. For confirmation of Keil’s membership, see A. Biefang. Der Deutsche Nationalverein. p. 156. Keil was also present at the fourth Generalversammlung of the Nationalverein. See Verhandlungen der vierten Generalversammlung des deutschen Nationalvereins. Verlag der Expedition der Wochenschrift des Nationalvereins. Coburg, 1863. p. 39. 6. A future leading figure in the Deutsche Forschrittspartei. 7. A future leading figure in the Nationalliberale Partei and the Kolonialgesellschaft. 8. H. Oncken. Rudolf von Bennigsen: Ein deutscher liberaler Politiker: Nach seinen Briefen und hinterlassenen Papieren. Vol. I. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart, 1910. p. 342. “[D]ie Unabhängigkeit und Macht Deutschlands nach außen und die Entwicklung seiner geistigen und materiellen Kräfte im Innern.”

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9. 10. 11. 12.

13.

14.

15. 16.

17.

18. 19. 20. 21.

22. 23.

24.

A. Biefang. Der Deutsche Nationalverein. p. xix–xx. WJ Mommsen. Geschichte Deutschlands 7 (1). p. 508. S. Na’aman. Der Deutsche Nationalverein. p. 354. “Der fromme Wunsch einer deutschen Flotte.” Wochenschrift des Nationalvereins (WS). No. 3, 15 May 1860. p. 21. “Alle Stämme unseres Volk lechzen nach nationaler Ehre und nach militarischer Macht …,” “Ohne deutsches Staatwesen … kein deutsches Heer und keine deutsche Flotte.” “Die deutsche Küste unter nationalem Gesichtspunkte.” WS. No. 4, 22 May 1860. p. 27. “[F]ür den deutschen Staatenbund gibt es so wenig eine deutsche Flotte, wie ein deutsches Heer und eine deutsche Politik.” A. Biefang. Der Deutsche Nationalverein. pp. 135, 137, 151. See also Verhandlungen der zweiten Generalversammlung des Nationalvereins. Verlag der Expedition der Wochenschrift des Nationalvereins, Coburg, 1861. pp. 32ff. WS. No. 221. 21 July 1864. p. 1874. “Bremen und die Flotte.” BA Berlin. R8031/24. Deutscher Nationalverein. p. 258. “Die Errichtung einer Kriegsmarine, die von keinen Küsten besitzenden und Seehandel treibenden Volke, noch weniger von einer wirklichen Großmacht jemals ungestraft entbehrt werden kann, ist abweisbar in diesem Ziele inbegriffen. Der Erreichung dieses Ziel mit allen Kräften und gesetzlichen Mitteln sich hinzugeben, haben die Mitglieder des Nationalvereins durch ihre Unterschrift gelobt …” BA Berlin. R8031/24. Deutscher Nationalverein. p. 295. “Ein industrielles Handelsvolk ohne Kriegsmarine treibt Handel ohne Assecuranz … Ueberall, wohin Deutscher Handel und Deutsche Colonien dringen, wo Deutsche Ehre und Deutsches Gut zu vertheidigen und zu vertreten ist, da muß auch die Deutschland schützende Preußische Flagge wehen!” A. Biefang. Der Deutsche Nationalverein. p. 151. WS. No. 95. 21 February 1862. p. 778. “Zur Flotten–Literatur.” WS. No. 133. 14 November 1862. p. 1116. “Die deutsche Kriegsflotte.” WS. No. 203. 17 March 1864. p. 1719. “Noch einmal: Die deutsche Flotte.” “Es ist eine anerkannte geschichtliche Thatsache, daß jedes Volk, sobald es sich zu einer Rolle in der Welt berufen fühlt, dem Seehandel zustrebt und zum Schutze desselben eine Seemacht zu werden sucht.” WS. No. 232. 6 October 1864. p. 1999. “Die Flotten Sache.” Was der deutsche Nationalverein will. Eine Skizze. Coburg, 1863. BA Berlin. N2350 / 291 (Nachlass-Rudolf v. Bennigsen). p. 43. “… Wenn künftig in Deutschland nur die Reichsgewalt die vökerrechtliche Vertretung Deutschlands nach Außen hin in Händen hat, wenn es nur deutsche Gesandte gibt, die eine Bevölkerung von 40 Millionen im Ausland vertreten, und das Schwarz-roth-goldene Banner von allen deutschen Consulatgebäuden des Erdballs und von zahlreichen deutschen Kriegsschiffe achtunggebietend weht … Wenn künftig nur der Reichsgewalt die gesammte bewaffnete Macht Deutschlands zu Lande und zu Wasser zur Verfügung steht, und sie mit einer solchen Macht, größer als irgendeine, ihr Schwert in die Waagschale der Geschicke der Völker entscheidend werfen kann …” Wochen-Blatt des Nationalvereins. (WB). No. 23. 7 September 1865. p. 183. “Die deutsche Seemannsschule in Hamburg in ihrer Bedeutung für die Zukunfts–Marine Deutschlands.” “Es ist eine unbestrittene Thatsache, daß Deutschland, nachdem es seine geistigen und materiellen Hülfsquellen im Innern seines Landes bis zu einem, jeden andern Staat überflügelnden Grade entwickelt und ihnen Geltung verschafft hat, das Bedürfniß fühlt, sich auch jenseits seiner Grenzen auf dem Meere diejenige Geltung zu erobern, welche ihm seiner Größe, seiner geographischen Lage und der Intelligenz seiner Bewohner nach rechtmäßig zusteht. Es will Theil haben am Welthandel und damit in die Geschicke der Völker thätig eingreifen. Mit dem Streben nach Einheit auf dem Lande ist auch gleichzeitig das Streben einer Geltung zur See in den Gemüthern des Volkes aufgetaucht … / Trotz aller Ungunst und allen Neides von Seiten anderen Nationen, trotz der Einsprache Englands gegen die Befestigung Kiels, wird Deutschland in kurzer Zeit eine Flotte, und zwar eine mächtige Flotte besitzen, um seine Schiffe zu

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25. 26. 27.

28.

29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

36.

37. 38.

39.

40.

41. 42.

schützen, deren Kiele bereits alle Weltmeere durchfuhren … Die germanische Race ist von der Vorsehung bestimmt, die Weltherrschaft zu führen. Sie ist physisch und geistig vor allen andern bevorzugt, und die halbe Erde ist ihr fast unterthan. England, Amerika, Deutschland, das sind die drei Zweige des mächtigen germanischen Baumes, der auf den Hochebenen Asiens gekeimt, im Herzen Europas Wurzel getrieben hat, und unter dessen Schatten einst die ganze Erde ruhen wird.” WB. No. 92. 21 February 1867. p. 724. “Die deutsche Flotte und Herr Wichman in Hamburg.” WB. No. 92. 21 February 1867. p. 724. “Was der deutsche Nationalverein will. Eine Skizze.” Coburg, 1863. In BA Berlin. N2350 / 291(Nachlass—Rudolf v. Bennigsen). p. 39. “England, Holland, Frankreich, Rußland haben ihre ausgedehnten Colonieen. Ihre Angehörigen, wenn sie auswandern, bleiben in Verbindung mit dem Mutterlande, und hören nicht auf—wenigstens indirect—für dasselbe zu arbeiten … Deutschland allein hat keine Colonie, und doch hat es so viel seiner Kinder, wie kein anderes Land der Erde, in die Fremde entsandt, wo sie ohne Schutz für ihre Personen wie für ihre Vermögen dem Mutterlande für immer mit Beiden verloren gehen.” The major statement on the issue was made in WB. No. 108. 13 June 1867. pp. 845ff. “Nationale Colonialpolitik.” The concern for both the fate of Germany’s emigrants and the drain on the national strength and resources they represented is discernible as early as the first issue of the Wochenschrift. See WS. No. 1. 1 May 1860. p. 7. “Was Deutschland bei der Auswanderung verliert.” “Es ist zwar sicherlich nicht zu leugnen, daß es, aus vaterländischen wie aus rein menschlichen Gesichtspunkten, schön wäre, wenn wir den Strom der regelmäßigen deutschen Auswanderung, mit so wenig Verlust wie möglich, in das Bett einer oder mehrer nationalen Colonien leiten könnten.” WB. No. 108. p. 846. WB. No. 108. pp. 845ff. A. Biefang. Der Deutsche Nationalverein. pp. 189, 193, 356. Bennigsen later donated more to a fund to sustain Sturz in his retirement. See NsSA. 192N, VIII, 5. p. 21. J. Sturz. Krisis der deutschen Auswanderung. p. 161. A. Biefang. Der Deutsche Nationalverein. pp. 212, xxvii. A. Biefang. Der Deutsche Nationalverein. pp. 73, xxvi. H. Oncken. Rudolf von Bennigsen. Vol. II. p. 510. Bennigsen’s membership application to the Kolonialverein can be found in BA Berlin. R8023/256a. Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft. p. 54. The same application lists the Verein’s committee, where Miquel’s name is to be found. For Miquel’s address at the establishment of the Deutscher Kolonialverein, see J. Miquel. “Die Begründung des Deutschen Kolonialvereins.” Frankfurt, 6 December 1882. In W. Schultze & F. Thimme, (eds). Johannes von Miquels Reden: Vol 3: 1878 bis 1891. Verlag der Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses, Halle, 1913. pp. 110ff. See especially Miquel’s foregrounding of the colonial association’s role in promoting a sense of national purpose. Contra Wehler. Bismarck und der Imperialismus. p. 142. R. Bennigsen. “Die Deutschen im Auslande.” In W. Schultze & F. Thimme, (eds). Rudolf von Bennigsens Reden: Vol I: 1857 bis 1878. Verlag der Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses, Halle, 1911. pp. 160–61. R. Bennigsen. “Die Deutschen im Auslande.” p. 160. “Der deutsche Kaufmann, der deutsche Schiffer, der deutsche Handwerker, er kann jetzt offen auftreten in einem Wettkampf mit allen Nationen; er überwindet alle Schwierigkeiten, er verschafft sich Achtung und Macht gegenüber England und den Angehörigen der größten und mächtigen Nationen.” J. Miquel. “Der Nationalverein und die deutsche Flottenfrage” Coburg, 6 October 1862 in W. Schultze & F. Thimme, (eds). Johannes von Miquels Reden. pp. 36–45. On the naval school, see pp. 43–44. J. Miquel. “Der Nationalverein und die deutsche Flottenfrage.” p. 38. J. Miquel. “Der Nationalverein und die deutsche Flottenfrage.” p. 39.

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43. J. Miquel. “Der Nationalverein und die deutsche Flottenfrage.” p. 40. 44. J. Miquel. “Der Nationalverein und die deutsche Flottenfrage.” p. 40. 45. J. Miquel. “Der Nationalverein und die deutsche Flottenfrage.” pp. 40–41. “Ein Volk, welches politisch handelt, sich einen großen, hohen Zweck vorsetzt, das darf sich nicht alterieren lassen in seinem politischen Handeln durch so klägliche Versuche einer bereits toten Reaktion.” 46. J. Miquel. “Der Nationalverein und die deutsche Flottenfrage.” p. 43. “ … ich bin nach wie vor der Meinung, es werde in Preußen die Zeit kommen, wo wir dieses Geld und das noch hinzukommende vertrauensvoll in die Hände einer liberalen preußischen Regierung legen können …” 47. J. Miquel. “Der Nationalverein und die deutsche Flottenfrage.” p. 44. “Wohl mögen unsere deutschen Brüder hinausblicken auf das weite Meer und sie warden vergeblich harren und hoffen, ob nicht ein mächtiges Kriegsschiff mit der schwarz-rot-goldenen Fahne kommt sie zu beschützen! Meine Herren, keine Nation hat so viele Landsleute, die treu am Vaterlande hängen, soviel freie Kolonien wie wir im Auslande, keine Nation auf dem Kontinent hat eine so große Handelsflotte wie wir, keine Nation fast hat so große Küsten, die zu beschützen sind, keine Nation fast hat so große Kapitalien und Interessen auf dem Spiele, und diese Nation von 40 000 000 hat nicht ein einziges Kriegsschiff zu Gebote stehen; Schmach und Schande, sage ich, Schmach und Schande auf diejenigen, die diesen Zustand herbeiführten, auf diejenigen, die uns dahin brachten …” 48. J. Miquel “Für die Marineanleihe: über die grundsätzliche Verschiedenheit von Nationalliberalismus und Fortschrittspartei.” 15 June 1868. In W. Schultze & F. Thimme. (eds). Johannes von Miquels Reden. pp. 299ff. 49. J. Miquel “Für die Marineanleihe.” p. 300. 50. J. Miquel “Für die Marineanleihe.” p. 301. 51. J. Miquel. “Flottenausgabe, Bundessteuern und Matrikularumlagen.” 13 April 1869. In W. Schultze & F. Thinne. Johannes von Miquels Reden. pp. 328ff. 52. J. Miquel. “Flottenausgabe, Bundessteuern und Matrikularumlagen.” p. 329. 53. J. Miquel. “Flottenausgabe, Bundessteuern und Matrikularumlagen.” p. 330. 54. J. Miquel. “Die Notwendigkeit eines umfassenden Flottenplanes.” In W. Schultz & F. Thimme. (eds). Johannes von Miquels Reden: Vol 2: 1870 bis 1878. Verlag der Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses, Halle, 1912. pp. 114ff. 55. J. Miquel. “Die Notwendigkeit eines umfassenden Flottenplanes.” p. 117. “Ist unsere Macht etwa schwächer geworden seit 1867, sind unsere Finanzkräfteschwächer geworden seit 1867, sind die kommerziellen Aufgaben, die wir zu vertreten haben, geringer geworden, ist die Ehre der Nation, die wir zu verteidigen haben im Auslande, eine andere geworden?” 56. For the Reichstag Samoa debate (27 August, 1880), see Stenographische Berichte über die Verhandlungen des Reichstags. 4 / III /ii. (1880). Verlag der Buchdruckerei der Norddeutschen Allgemeinen Zeitung, Berlin, 1880. pp. 945ff. 57. Minutes of Kolonialverein meeting, 26 August 1882 in BA Berlin. R8023/253. Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft. p. 6. “Wir müssen das Gefühl einer marit. Kolonisation, das in den Gemütern der Nation lebt, endlich zum Ausdruck bringen.” 58. For the Kolonialverein see also HU Wehler. Bismarck und der Imperialismus. pp. 158ff. 59. On Maltzan’s role, see BA Berlin. R8023/256a. Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft. p. 185. Article from Bremen Handelblatt describing Maltzan as the “Urheber der Idee.” For Maltzan’s Rede des Freiherrn von Maltzan aud der constituirenden Generalversammlung des Deutschen Kolonialvereins zu Frankfurt am Main am 6. Dezember 1882. J. Sittenfeld, Berlin, 1882; see same, pp. 238–42, especially p. 239, where the work of the Kolonialverein was explicitly described as a national undertaking that “wohl des Strebens einer großen Nation werth ist.” See also p. 240, “Um etwas für die Zukunft Deutschlands Bedeutungsvolles zu schaffen, dazu gebrauchen wir die Mitwirkung der Nation.” See also Maltzan’s Handels–Kolonien. Eine Lebensfrage für Deutschland. Julius Sittenfeld, Berlin, 1882 in same pp. 264–73.

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60. For a comprehensive breakdown of the Kolonialverein, see HU Wehler. Bismarck und der Imperialismus. p. 165. 61. BA Berlin. R8023/256a. Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft. p. 54. 62. BA Berlin. R8023/256a. p. 32. “Die Colonialbestrebungen im deutschen Volke zu unterstützen, in besondere 1. den dazu geeigneten in überseeischen Ländern bestehenden deutschen Handelsfactoreien, welchen den Schutz einer civilisirten Macht nicht zur Seite steht, den nationalen Schutz zu erwirken; 2. die zur Errichtung von Handelsfactoreien geeigneten Plätze zu ermitteln und überseeische deutsche Niederlassungen zu begünstigen, ohne selbst an deren Begründung theilzunehmen..” In this way they differentiated themselves as an overtly statist colonial movement from the private sector colonial bodies that had preceded them. 63. BA Berlin. R8023/256a. p. 32, 278. “Nun wir stehen im Begriff, zu begreifen, daß heute aus europäischer Cultur Weltcultur geworden, daß jede große europäische Nation, sie mag wollen oder nicht, in politischer und comercieller Hinsicht vor Weltaufgaben gestellt ist, will sie selbst nur ihre continentale Stellung auf die Dauer behaupten. Wir wollen mitarbeiten, den Ruf der Ausbreitung überseeischer Macht– und Wirtschaftssphäre unseres Vaterlandes zum Rufe des Volkes zu gestalten, wir wollen mithelfen an der praktischen Lösung der Colonialfrage … / Große nationale Bewegungen sind nicht das Ergebnis einzelner Thaten, einzelner Jahre; sie stehen vielmehr unter dem Gesetze eines langsamen, gleichsam geheimen Wachstums … So ist auch die Colonialfrage, die Frage überseeischer Erweiterung unseres Macht– und Wirtschaftsgebietes nicht lediglich ein Erzeugnis unserer Tage. Schon seit Schluß des vorigen Jahrhunderts sind solche Mahnrufe laut geworden, die allerdings meistens mehr Vaterlandsliebe als Kenntnis überseeischer Verhältnisse verrieten. Greifbarere Gestalt gewonnen die Vorschläge in Folge des Jahres 1848. Was die Heimat nicht bot sollte die Fremde geben.” 64. BA Berlin. R8023/256a. p. 32. p. 278. 65. H. Maltzan. Handels–Kolonien. BA Berlin. R8023/256a. pp. 264–73. 66. BA Berlin. R8023/256a. pp. 266–68, 272. 67. BA Berlin. R8023/256a. p. 272. 68. BA Berlin. R8023/256a. p. 277. Newspaper advertisement—“Aufruf.” “… das Bewusstsein zu erwecken und zu kräftigen, dass die Colonialfrage sich ausbleiblich zu einer Lebensfrage des neuen deutschen Reiches gestalten wird, dass sie berufen und geeignet sind, die innere Entwicklung unseres Vaterlandes neu zu beleben, Deutschlands europäische Stellung zu kräftigen, unseren Weltberuf zu begründen.” 69. BA Berlin. R8023/256a. p. 198. Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung. 24 November 1882. “[H]aben wir … eine nationale Frage, die über den kleinlichen Parteihader des Tages erhaben ist.” 70. BA Berlin. R8023/256a. p. 211. Oberfränkische Zeitung. 28 November 1882. “Lösung der sozialen oder Magenfragen …” 71. BA Berlin. R8023/256a. p. 11. Der Reichsbote. 23 July 1882. “Zur Kolonialfrage.” “Die seit Jahren von uns hervorgehobene Notwendigkeit für das deutsche Reich zur Erwerbung von Kolonieen, um seine Industrie von der Vermittlung Englands und Frankreichs zu befreien und ihr den für die Konkurrenzfähigkeit mit jenen Ländern unerläßlichen Vorteil direkter Bezüge von Rohmaterial und direkten Absatzes der Fabrikate zu verschaffen, findet in immer weiteren Kreisen Anklang.” 72. BA Berlin. R8023/256a. pp. 164–65, 169–170. Andernacher Zeitung. “Ueberseeische Politik allein vermag … den Grund zu legen zu einer WELTMACHT DEUTSCHLANDS” (emphasis in original). 73. BA Berlin. R8023/256a. p. 15. Diagnosed as the single greatest hindrance to earlier German colonizing attempts by the Berliner Tageblatt of the 1 August 1882, in its leading article, “Die Hindernisse deutscher Kolonialpolitik.” This is of course to overlook governmental, not the least of which was Bismarckian, hostility to colonialism.

Chapter 5

BISMARCK AND THE SOCIOPOLITICAL CONTEXT OF THE COLONIAL “UMSCHWUNG”


In the years prior to 1884, Bismarck had taken every opportunity to declare his opposition to a German policy of colonial imperialism as well as to exhibit his animosity towards the notion of Germany as a naval power. In 1881, Bismarck declared, “As long as I am chancellor, we will not pursue a colonial policy. We have a fleet that cannot sail … and we should not possess any vulnerable spots in distant parts of the world, that would fall prey to the French as soon as it gets going.” Colonies for Germany were, according to Bismarck, “exactly like a sable fur for Polish noble families that have no shirts.”1 Prior to this, Bismarck had categorically ruled out the confiscation of French colonial possessions as reparations after Sedan, proclaiming, “I too want no colonies,”2 and again in the same context in relation to Viet Nam, “But that is a fat lump for us; we are not rich enough to afford the luxury of colonies.”3 As late as 1883, Bismarck was heard to restate this position to Caprivi.4 Yet within a year, Bismarck had apparently completely reversed this vehement anti-colonialism and had come to champion the cause of German imperialism as the host of the Berlin Conference in 1884/85 (see Fig.5.1), to the loud cheers of many German liberals for whom colonialism had long been a cherished dream. Precisely how Bismarck’s apparent volte-face came to pass has been a problem that has exercised several historians, yet there exists no consensus as to how this leap into overseas imperialism came about.5 By the same token, despite a number of studies examining the complexion and composition of pro-imperialist pressures during the colonial era,6 the social origins of nineteenth century German impeNotes for this section begin on page 128.

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Figure 5.1. “Africa” watches as Europe decides its fate. Die Gartenlaube. No. 49, 1884, p. 805. rialism, as seen from a long-term perspective, have hitherto not been adequately explained. In the absence of such studies of la longue durée capable of carefully recovering the voices clamoring for a German colonial imperialism prior to the construction of a unified Germany, as well as during the time of Bismarck’s policy of “the satiated Reich,” the existing historiography has been unable to accurately trace German imperialism from its pre–1848 origins through to its later discursive and material manifestations. As such, the careful reconstruction of the historical context that obliged Bismarck to turn to colonialism has been obscured and gradually ossified into two opposing but equally unsatisfactory schools—the so-called Bielefelders, focusing on domestic origins of imperialism, and the neo-Rankeans, who have explained events in terms of the foreign policy developments within Europe.7 Interestingly, both schools have attempted to situate the decision within a seemingly self-contained Bismarckian period, without reference to the sixty years of pro-imperialist agitation that had preceded it. Through diametrically opposed argumentation stressing either the endogenous or exogenous origins of the decision to adopt a policy of colonial imperialism, both have failed to take into

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account the longevity and pervasiveness of the expansionism that finally saw its expression through statist praxis in 1884. That is, both the “Bielefelders” and the “neo-Rankeans” have excised the colonial history of the 1880s from the longerterm historical trends that traversed the nineteenth century. Yet, with these preexisting forms of expansionism in mind, it is nevertheless necessary to focus, as both the “Bielefelders” and the “neo-Rankeans” have, upon the events surrounding the transition from “informal” or private sector imperialism to state imperialism. In doing so, it is critical not only to question the extent of Bismarck’s personal agency in the revision of Germany’s official opposition to colonialism, but to also more firmly embed German colonial politics of the 1880s within the continuing intra-Liberal debates over national identity, which had their origins in the early 1840s. Without reference to the ongoing conflict between mutually exclusive narratives of statehood and identity being fought out by liberals, conservatives, socialists, and Catholics, the rationale and processes by which Germany acquired an overseas empire cannot be understood. If Bismarck’s own statements are to be believed, he was steadfastly opposed to all forms of exposure to risk represented by German overseas expansion, yet there had been an alternative strand to Bismarck’s Kolonialpolitik, as evinced through his often overlooked support for the nationalization of the foundering Hamburgbased South Sea Islands trading house of Godeffroy, that, under the weight of underperforming mining assets in Germany, was at the point of insolvency. Under this proposal, supported by many National Liberals, the German nation was to take over the firm’s role in the Pacific, thereby creating a de facto colony. In essence, the legislation that Bismarck attempted to pass on the 27th of April 1880, on behalf of the Wirtschaftsbürgertum of Hamburg,8 was to have marked a shift from private sector imperialism to state imperialism some four years before the annexation of the African territories. Somewhat confusingly, the Reichstag debate over Samoa ran along two completely separate lines of argument. The first was the question of state colonial imperialism and its efficacy and necessity, whereas the other was the hardheaded economic question of the advisability of setting a precedent for the financial support of a failed business by the nation.9 Despite the bill being supported by luminaries such as Bismarck, Delbrück, and Bennigsen, it was defeated.10 Yet, far from a condemnation of imperialism per se, the vote was lost because, as the foundation of a colonial policy, it was simply not imperialist enough to achieve the outcomes those who had supported imperialism had always targeted. It was seen by the Reichstag as unwise to initiate an imperial policy in such a timid fashion and in a manner that would do nothing to solve the twin crises of excess emigration and poverty, the grounds usually cited for justifying a policy of state imperialism: Our colonial politics cannot be furthered by the acquisition of these Samoan Islands? Do you believe that those that for whatever reason emigrate would go to the Samoan Islands? … Is this really an opportunity with such a firm to inaugurate a new colonial policy? Has the mighty Germany no other opportunity? … Are we so miserable that we must begin where Godeffroy left off!11

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The reference to Godeffroy hints at the second ground for the Reichstag’s refusal of the Samoa plan—that to rescue the firm Godeffroy would be to establish an improper relationship between the state and the private sector. Quite simply, it was seen as a thoroughly unsound economic practice to offer a failing business the unlimited resources of the state as a means of saving it from financial collapse. As Miquel later reported, the Reichstag vote on Godeffroy’s Samoa was largely fought not as a question of whether Germany should become a colonial power, but rather as a question of how to deal with failed private enterprises.12 On these grounds, which were demonstrably not those of a principled anti-imperialism, the clumsy first attempt of the Reichstag to formulate a mechanism for the introduction of an imperialist foreign policy position foundered. Clearly, as early as 1880, Bismarck was not quite as staunchly opposed to colonial imperialism as he had led the nation to believe. Similarly, his preparedness to cooperate with Woermann and the Hamburg Handelskammer and Senate, in assessing the feasibility of German colonies in Africa in the early 1880s, suggests a more flexible attitude toward overseas imperialism.13 Yet his decision of 1884 to usher in a German imperial policy was nonetheless seen as a surprising development and as a complete directional change in German foreign policy. Several arguments have been posited for this policy shift. Some earlier arguments, such as AJP Taylor’s, focused on international affairs and the diplomatic maneuvering undertaken by Bismarck to widen the rift between Britain and France in order to bring France closer to Germany and thereby minimize the risk of France being driven to war out of a sense of isolation.14 This argument has also been repeated more recently by Klaus Hildebrand.15 According to this argument, Bismarck is supposed to have used domestic Anglophobia, as a convenient diplomatic backdrop, to be instrumental in an attempt to negotiate colonial concessions from England at a time when it had its hands full dealing with the French in Egypt, the Russians to the north of India, and an increasingly fractious Boer population in South Africa.16 Taylor’s diplomacy-oriented analysis mirrors, or rather has been reflected in, much of German historiography, as the example of Hildebrand shows. This line of argument has conscientiously observed the Rankean precept of the primacy of foreign policy, by focusing on the jiggery-pokery of international diplomacy and its fruits, without, it must be said, considering the domestic social basis upon which this diplomacy was based.17 In attempting to exclude social imperialism as a cause for Kolonialpolitik,18 such accounts have relegated the entire domestic sphere to the level of irrelevance when compared with the high politics of diplomacy. This has in large part been contested by a series of scholars whose focus has been the social forces that shaped foreign policy, and namely the extent to which these policies had their origins in the pressures of Germany’s domestic politicoeconomic position and societal structures. The highlighting of endogenous rather than exogenous influences quickly became an alternative analytical paradigm. Eckart Kehr is seen as the usual starting point for this scholarly direction, which culminated in the “Bielefeld School” and Hans Ulrich Wehler’s Bismarck und

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der Imperialismus.19 Wehler’s thesis was essentially that the Bonapartist Bismarck embarked upon a colonial policy as a means of deflecting the internal economic and political tensions beginning to arise as the result of modernization, democratization, and the precocious Social Democratic movement, which threatened to undermine what Wehler has called the “conservative utopia.” In order to safeguard this conservative utopia, Wehler argued, Bismarck embarked upon a course of “social imperialism” designed to ensnare a feudalized bourgeoisie in a diversionary colonial project, whilst similarly diverting an increasingly militant proletariat so that they would not be lured to the organized Left by the Socialists’ siren song.20 In his attempt, “to divert Germans to a new path,” Wehler argued, Bismarck strove to integrate Germans not into a burgeoning liberal nation, but “in a system of autocratic pseudo-constitutionalism”21 via a “distraction from domestic problems.”22 Wehler’s useful focus on the domestic, politico-economic genesis of foreign policy and his notion of the prophylactic utility of imperialism in dealing with late nineteenth century German socialism, whilst not uncontested, has enjoyed much support as an alternative analytical paradigm for the study of German imperialism. Perhaps less deservedly, the ideas of a Flucht nach vorn and a liberalconservative Sammlungspolitik, two paradigmatic assumptions implicit in Wehlerite domestic policy analysis, have also gained acceptance, despite the convincing counterarguments offered by Blackbourn and Eley, whose diagnosis of the effect of the subterranean forces of embourgeoisement at work in late nineteenth century Germany widened the scholarly focus.23 Eley in particular has usefully attempted to focus on the cultural agency of Germany’s middle classes, rather than their limitations.24 In terms of the existence of a “conservative utopia,” Wehler’s pessimism and even Eley’s ambivalence about the degree of parliamentary power exercised by Germany’s liberal middle classes has also been credibly critiqued.25 Similarly foregrounding domestic considerations in explaining German colonial imperialism, Erich Eyck asserted that colonialism was Bismarck’s way of ensuring that Germany had a means to break with England (over colonial issues), by the whipping up of Anglophobia, should it be necessary. Superficially bearing the hallmarks of Taylor’s neo-Rankean analysis, in fact the real aim here was the deflecting of any English influence over Germany’s Progressive Liberals who were the supposed favorite of Germany’s Crown Prince.26 On this reading, Eyck saw colonialism as being formed through the blending of Bismarck’s antipathy to the nascent forces of progressive liberalism and his worries about the political complications implicit in the imperial succession. Both Wehler’s and Eyck’s approaches, it would appear, are half right in that they attempt to contextualize German foreign policy in terms of domestic political developments. However, the view that Bismarck was relying on colonialism as a hedge against the death of the emperor remains speculative, as does the related assumption that this was linked to a perceived need to stifle the Left Liberals before they could become ensconced in power courtesy of an approving Crown Prince.27

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Hartmut Pogge von Strandmann has offered a perhaps more nuanced analysis of events leading up to Bismarck’s colonial Umschwung.28 In a closely argued article, that at some points intersects with the detail of Wehler’s analysis, Pogge von Strandmann illustrated the nexus between Bismarck’s timing of his public embrace of colonialism and the political pressure placed upon him as a result of the 1881 collapse of the National Liberal vote—a collapse accompanied by a concomitant explosion in the progressive Left-Liberal vote. In other words, for Pogge von Strandmann, Bismarck’s colonial Umschwung had its origins in his desire to resurrect the fortunes of the National Liberal party.29 This appears to be a constructive approach, in that it displays an acute understanding of contemporaneous political conditions, whilst allowing for the existence of an historical linkage between liberalism and imperialism. It is also illuminative in its illustration of the fact that, in terms of the Bismarckian dichotomy between Reichsfeinde and Reichsfreunde, the major shift in domestic political strength preceding the announcement of a colonial policy came, as Pogge von Strandmann makes clear, in the 1881 election, in which the National Liberals hemorrhaged votes and seats, dropping from 99 seats down to 47.30 Meanwhile, the combined progressive liberal parties (in particular the Fortschrittspartei) saw their vote almost triple, shifting the political balance to the Left. Reliant as he was upon the parliamentary support of the Nationalliberalen, this was a problematic turn of events for Bismarck.31 At the same time, far from constituting a threat, the Social Democratic vote managed only a small rise from nine seats to twelve—demonstrating the strain placed upon the party by the 1878 Sozialistengesetz. Irrespective of these constraints, it was a low number of seats, given that German liberals were still suffering the disruptive effects of the free trade dispute and the schism between Bennigsen’s wing of the National Liberals and Lasker’s free traders. In parliamentary terms, the Socialist threat was well and truly contained, despite the Bismarckian tubthumping that suggested otherwise. At the other end of the spectrum, the two conservative parties lost a little ground, with the losses of the Free Conservatives being perhaps most noteworthy.32 The Center continued to enjoy its rock solid 100-seat result, which seemed impervious to the effects of day-to-day politics. Clearly, the 1881 results stood to harm Bismarck’s governing coalition. Plainly put, Bismarck’s problem post–1881 was one of liberalism—how to revive the nationalist-liberals and contain the progressives. If Bismarck was to survive as Reichskanzler, he needed to find an issue that would isolate the progressive liberals whilst bringing the National Liberals to the fore. Expansionism, although a long-standing point of agreement between German liberals, was, at this precise historic juncture, just such an issue. With it, Bismarck hoped to save himself by simultaneously resurrecting the National Liberals and marginalizing progressive liberals, who, as both he and the Nationalliberalen knew, would find it difficult to accept colonialism if it was presented as a part of a Bismarckian protectionist agenda, rather than as the imperialism of a politically liberal Germany. Through the clumsy choice of Godeffroy’s Samoa holdings as an initial step in 1880, Bismarck had failed to successfully attach himself to the

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colonial policy advocated by the National Liberals prior to the election of 1881, despite their support for what was a deeply flawed proposal. In the aftermath of the 1881 election, however, he was in a position where he needed to try again in a way that would enable him to drive a visible wedge between the liberal groupings in a manner that would make the National Liberals far more appealing to the liberal electorate. It is of course arguable that, by ultimately rejecting the idea of bringing Bennigsen into the Prussian State Ministry, and by introducing the socialist laws, the tobacco monopoly, and the trade tariffs, Bismarck had been instrumental in alienating National Liberals such as Lasker in the first place.33 That is not, however, to say that Bismarck knew this would bring about a dramatic split in National Liberal circles. Bearing in mind Lothar Gall’s characterization of Bismarck’s as the sorcerer’s apprentice without a master to clean up his political messes, it is perhaps best that Bismarck not be seen as imbued with the omnipotent guile and remarkable foresight with which he credited himself and to which his opponents blamed their lack of success.34 Yet, as a result of the unfolding liberal recriminations, Bismarck became cognizant of the progressive liberals’ likely rejectionist stance on further protectionist measures (such as the statist colonies). Bismarck returned to imperialism in 1884, despite the failure of the Samoa Bill in 1880, confident that he would not suffer the embarrassment of progressive liberal support when he came to agree to the historically liberal desire for a colonial Weltaufgabe. This view runs counter to that of Wehler, whose portrait of Bismarck is, as Gall has charged, a version of negative hagiography,35 in which each move that frustrated the political “progress” of the “deceived” liberal bourgeoisie and the burgeoning socialist wave is blamed upon the “Bonapartist” dictatorship of Bismarck. A corrective perspective to this simply places Bismarck within the context of a complex web of power relations, that saw him forced, however unwillingly, into a series of symbiotic relationships with others within that web, ranging from the Kaiser and the Reichstag through to the press and public opinion. Bismarck did not exist, as Wehler suggests, at the apex of a power pyramid; indeed, the difficulties he experienced since 1881 forced him to an understanding that “total rule at the zenith of the power pyramid”36 was simply impossible, and that concessions to liberal policy and interests were a price he would necessarily pay if he wished to play any further role in the governance of a Germany that was increasingly marked by the hegemony of its liberals.37 This also casts light on the notion of a “liberal capitulation” to Bismarck or that of a “bourgeois decay.”38 The diminishing parliamentary dominance of the National Liberals (and the growing strength of the Left Liberals) was clearly not the result of an overarching Bismarckian master plan. Rather, as the National Liberals came to terms with the differences between being a focused movement of national unification, an oppositional mass movement (such as the Nationalverein), and a party working for incremental change through compromise politics within the constraints of a semi-parliamentary setting, they faced an unsurprising

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Left–Right split within the party. Differences, such as that over what constituted political legitimacy, which had not been critical as long as liberals were an oppositional force, became pivotal as they rose to be a party with a stake in government. To place the blame for the growing internal contradictions amongst liberals, and their consequences, at the feet of Bismarck, is to suggest that the German liberals were so ideologically homogenous as to rule out any internal ruptures once their common task of national unification had been achieved.39 In fact, the tortuous self-examination undergone by National Liberals at this time illustrates the extent to which they were fully conscious of the ramifications of the shift in political discourse in Germany and their position in a governing coalition. The destabilizing 1879/80 splits with the party by Lasker and his fellow secessionists, and the March 1884 Heidelberg Declaration40 spelling out the party’s new direction under Miquel, demonstrated the self-conscious seriousness with which the National Liberals treated the shift in the political landscape and their place in it after the task of unification had been completed. The Left wing of the party decided on a more pronouncedly oppositional role, while the Right, freed from the constraints of compromise by the secession of the party’s Left wing, were free to pursue policy according to their own overtly nationalist but nonetheless historically liberal impulses—including a renewed emphasis on the decades-old policy of naval power and colonial imperialism. With a clean slate made of outstanding policy issues, once dissident, anti-compromise liberals had exited the party, the scene was set for the remaining National Liberals to pressure Bismarck into deploying a politically resonant Kolonialpolitik as a means of resurrecting their electoral fortunes, understanding that the anti-protectionist, anti-Bismarck progressives would find it difficult to support precisely as an apparently “Bismarckian” proposal. In terms of the evidence for Bismarck’s gradual acquiescence to the National Liberals’ historic commitment to the colonial imperialist project, Bismarck’s statement that “the whole colonial story is of course a swindle, but we need it for the elections”41 illustrates his need of the National Liberals rather than their need of him. The extent to which Bismarck actually believed colonialism was in fact a “swindle” is of course doubtful, given his support for the Samoa Bill of 1880, which was consistent with his other protectionist moves, and his subsequent accommodation of the wishes of the expansionist Hamburg liberal Wirtschaftsbürgertum on the question of Africa. Similarly, Bismarck’s communications with Münster, in which he characterized the critical nature of colonialism in terms of immediate domestic politics, illustrate Bismarck’s reliance upon not only the role of the National Liberals in the Reichstag, but also upon public opinion and the cultural hegemony of nationalist liberals committed to the enactment of a German Weltaufgabe. Bismarck was forced to admit that the colonial question was, “already in terms of domestic politics” a “Lebensfrage … Public opinion in Germany presently places so strong a weight on colonial politics, that the position of the government relies upon the success of it.”42 What this shows is the extent to which Bismarck’s Alleinherrschaft of a “conservative utopia” was in fact a chimera,

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a facade obscuring the extent to which the cultural hegemony of the liberals was by now discernible and the political contours of the Kaiserreich were coming to resemble the discursive substance of the liberal nationalism of the Paulskirche. The minimalist, “informal empire” model of colonialism Bismarck presented— imperialism that continued to be based upon control by the private sector and underwritten by state support—did not illustrate a continuing ambivalence toward the direction he had chosen as much as his acceptance of the idea that Germany’s Wirtschaftsbürgertum should be given a free hand in their international operations, albeit with the entire weight of the German nation acting as a protecting guarantor for their endeavors. This stance, whilst satisfying the immediate concerns of an increasingly pro-protectionist German commerce, had the benefit of allowing those elements of the Bildungsbürgertum more concerned with the satisfactory resolution of the Sozialfrage (as a Malthusian problem of poverty and demographics rather than one of socialism) to see this as a welcome beginning to the new colonial era. It was a policy crafted to meet both the immediate political requirements of the National Liberals and the economic necessities of an industrialized, internationally oriented economy under the growing political control of a bürgerliche Gesellschaft. By embarking on an imperialist foreign policy, Bismarck implicitly conceded the political importance, and indeed the centrality of liberalism in Germany at the time—both in positive and negative terms; positively, in that Bismarck was forced to tacitly admit the necessity of supporting the National Liberals and the imperialist praxis dictated by their meta-narrative of German nationhood, and negatively, in that the newfound success of the progressive liberals was shown to constitute a serious threat to the parliamentary hegemony of, to Bismarck’s mind, the acceptable face of liberalism, in a way that the Social Democrats would not do until the turn of the century. In coming to accept the longstanding liberal dream of empire, Bismarck also strengthened his own claim to power by projecting himself as in step with a historically important element of nationalist aspirations, and with an ascendant Bürgertum more broadly. Just as importantly, in terms of how this imperialist turn of events impacted on the broader issues of national identity, as a result of Bismarck’s support for it, that section of society that saw colonialism and active imperialism as a necessary part of Germany’s world mission became stronger, more confident, and, in numerical terms, larger, and as such it is possible to speak in this context of an accompanying Kolonialrausch. Yet, in the context of the late nineteenth century, this enthusiasm for expansionism did not separate German imperialism from any other European form of state-driven imperialism. Indeed, for many German liberals, the desire to imitate other powers such as Britain, and to a lesser extent France, as global powers, was central to their concept of national identity, and the conversion of Bismarck marked a shift from colonialism as an oneiric discourse of opposition or the exclusive realm of private enterprise praxis, unfulfilled in a statist sense, to a concrete and feasible political agenda with the backing of not only the strongest segment of German society but the government.

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Clearly then, this support for German expansionism had not been created by Bismarck, nor for that matter by the National Liberals of the 1880s. Rather, German liberals, since the time of Friedrich List, irrespective of whether they were free traders or protectionists, had argued strenuously for a German Weltaufgabe.43 After unification, this hankering after an expansionist foreign policy had remained central to the differentiation of liberal visions of German identity from the various rival meta-narratives of the Left, the Elbian agribusiness Right, and the Catholics. Significantly, after the intra-liberal debates on protectionist economics, this support for expansionism had also become a means of differentiating between nationalist and progressive liberals. State imperialism, where it had once united all liberals, continued in its mythopoeic function within national-liberal circles, remaining central to their conception of national unity, as a way to fulfill what Horst Gründer has described as an Identitätssehnsucht,44 a yearning for national selfdefinition in contradistinction to all alternative elaborations and narrations of the nation-state’s political, cultural, and economic identity. Progressive liberals on the other hand were content to see imperialism quarantined to civil society and the private sector (as it had been since the 1850s), so long as Bismarck was chancellor. This deployment of colonialism as a form of demarcation meant to divide the progressive from the nationalist-liberals is interesting, given that imperialism and expansionism had operated historically as a point of unity within liberal circles. Indeed, as Ina Lorenz has argued, the anti-colonialism of progressive liberals in 1884 was by no means monolithic (as exemplified by Georg von Siemens’ support for colonialism); it was relatively short-lived (until 1896) and best characterized as a position of “Nein, aber,”45 aimed at facilitating the creation of a certain amount of wriggle-room on the issue. Furthermore, as Lorenz has shown, the progressives’ critique was not against expansionism in toto, but was in essence based on a critique of the economic benefit of Bismarck’s proposed course—a course in their view prone to exacerbate protectionism internationally and likely to be unprofitable to Germany in the long run. However, expansionism itself was not ruled out, as Eugen Richter’s statement in the Reichstag in 1884 made clear: It is totally self-evident, that we will extend to German trade the protective resources of consulates and the navy … Apart from that, whether one goes further than this in individual cases, that must depend on the individual and particular case of the relevant bill.46

Seen as a natural extension of Bismarck’s earlier divisive protectionist policies, at this particular juncture (that is, in light of the recent liberal Sezession and the strident opposition to protectionism provoked amongst progressives loyal to the economic liberalism of John Prince Smith), colonialism, as a form of globalized protectionism,47 was a project impossible for progressive liberals to support in the short-term, particularly under the auspices of a “Bismarckian” rule.48 On the other hand, for National Liberals, far from imperialism representing their “Sündenfall,” their continued adherence to expansionist policies came to be presented to the liberal electorate as emblematic of their status as the true heirs

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of liberalism’s historic imperialist longings, as previously made manifest in the politics of the Frankfurt Nationalversammlung and the more recent Nationalverein. In this manner, it became possible to rhetorically position the progressives as betraying liberalism’s historic heritage—ironically precisely the charge leveled by modern historians at the National Liberals, whose imperialism is now viewed as somehow inimical to liberalism.49 The reintroduction of colonial imperialism to the national political landscape afforded the National Liberals a clearly defined, historically supported agenda, and a means of unifying themselves and thereby, it was hoped, the ability to renew and widen their electoral base, at the expense of the progressive liberals, whose success in 1881 appeared to have been generated by National Liberal losses.50 Thus, a partial explanation for the return of imperialism to the national agenda was the simple desire of liberals to remain relevant in the post-unification era. With the debates over the politico-institutional shape of the nation reaching an impasse, it was not surprising that other polices with long liberal pedigrees such as colonialism reemerged as the Nationalliberalen looked to move beyond their nation-building task. Indeed, the Progressive/National Liberal divide is perhaps best seen within this context, as having resulted from the desire of the progressives to continue creating the nation by establishing its legitimacy through further liberalization of political forms, whilst the nationalists attempted to utilize the state as it existed in order to realize other liberal goals. However, the slowing of progress toward absolute liberal control over the Reichstag was not the only reason for renewed liberal enthusiasm for colonialism. Also critical to the renewal is the fact that at the time colonialism was embraced as official Reich policy, the question of the complexion of German national identity had not been finalized. Affecting the overall political complexion of the nation-state, and therefore its future direction, the issue of national identity was one in which the National Liberals maintained a keen interest. As Benedict Anderson has argued, the construction of nationality is often hastened and more successful if undertaken via its embodiment in emotionally potent symbols (such as colonies) that enable an imagined sense of national community.51 Within Germany, this process of national embodiment, as enunciated through the programmatic assertions of the Nationalliberalen, as well as through the representations created by the newly emerging instruments of print capitalism, was designed to shape public opinion so as to maintain and further an everevolving cultural hegemony, which was gradually to be translated into a basis for political rule. For Germany’s liberals, imperialism had historically operated as the mythopoeic engine for this process of identification.52 This struggle for national identity was, of course, an overtly political one, where the future tone of German politics was at stake. More than merely a decision of which party to support in any given election, the renewed attempt to shape German national identity in 1884 through expansionist politics was an attempt at shaping the sense of national identity held by the Germans, which could potentially inform their political predisposition for a generation.

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It is precisely through this lens of nation-building, national identity, and the contest between rival narrations of Deutschtum that the Social Democrats viewed the renewed focus on colonialism—as a gambit by the middle classes to impose their own narration of national identity over the German state through their recourse to expansionist praxis. The liberal assertion of a German Weltaufgabe, leading socialists understood, emerged only at the expense of the rival, socialist conceptualization of the German state. Thus, in the party organ of the day, Der Sozialdemokrat, came statements to the effect that: “The bourgeoisie wants colonies for their own advantage—on the same grounds as they clamor for colonies, the proletariat, with an eye for class interest, must act with all decisiveness against them.”53 Colonies, designed to materially and politically benefit the middle classes, were not to be supported by the working classes, precisely because of the mutually exclusive character of the struggle between the two, as the agents of diametrically opposed totalizing systems within the German nation-state. Similarly, the claims of capital accumulation and that the nation was suffering from an overproduction crisis were treated by the same newspaper as tactical rhetoric employed to serve the imperialism of the bourgeoisie, itself predicated on pecuniary interests—“Colonization means the accumulation of capital, the accumulation of capital means the accumulation of misery”;54 Der Sozialdemokrat proclaimed: “The loud cries of the bourgeoisie for colonies can be put down to this, that in the Motherland too much money is available, that the capitalists cannot find a profitable use for their money at home.”55 Interestingly, Kautsky warned of domestic consequences for the colonizing activity of the middle classes: “the more devoid of rights the indigenous peoples of German colonies, the more barbaric the bourgeoisie in Germany.”56 For Social Democrats, the issue was not that of a “social imperialist” united front between a feudalized bourgeoisie and conservatives. Rather, as Markku Hyrkkänen has argued, Social Democrats viewed the “entire colonial question” as actually being “a bourgeois question” with conservatism not seen as a consideration.57 That is, the fundamental pressures in favor of imperialism stemmed from the liberal middle classes, as they attempted to position their particular class interests as the interests of an idealized national community, and their desired course of action as having the nature of a national mission. The proletariat, the Social Democrats warned, should have nothing to do with it. 58 With Bismarck’s acquiescence to the National Liberal’s discourse of active colonialism, partly brought about by the logic of his own movement toward protectionism, we see the reemergence of statist imperialism reinscribed as the hegemonic form of national identity proffered to an increasingly bürgerliche Gesellschaft. The National Liberals had at this point become at least partially successful in their attempts to define the project of the nation-state in explicitly imperialist terms and in the process, had largely overcome the opposition represented by rival conceptualizations of the ideal German polity. Unsurprisingly, this new “national” identity reflected the material interests and political priorities of the liberal middle classes, who had agitated for this movement for decades. 59

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To summarize, what is being asserted here is the symbiosis between nationalism and imperialism as mutually reinforcing concepts deployed by liberals to further consolidate a form of national identity that coincided with their broader program of rule. Through this symbiosis, the German nation-state, at the behest of the ascendant liberal middle classes,60 undertook to pursue the historic expansionist objectives proffered by liberals since Friedrich List. Central to the liberal deployment of imperialism was the desire that, just as parts of Africa and the Pacific would become identified as “German,” to be “German” would increasingly become inextricably linked to a distant, economically dependent colonial periphery, with rule over an objectified colonial alterity. In a sense, the nation constructed an empire in 1884 in order to further construct and reflect itself precisely as an imperialist power, not dissimilar to Britain. Underpinning all of this was of course the sense amongst liberals that expansionism would bring real material advantage; however, with socialists, Catholics, and conservatives proffering their own national tasks, and progressive liberals adhering to the strategy of imperialism from below, 1884 was a crucial turning point, in that it became for the National Liberals a means of inscribing the state imperialism of Friedrich List at the heart of the German nation.

Notes 1. Quoted in H. Gründer. Geschichte der deutschen Kolonien. Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn, 1985. p. 22. See also K. Hildebrand. Das Vergangene Reich. p. 87. 2. H. Gründer. Geschichte der deutschen Kolonien. p. 22. 3. H. Gründer. Geschichte der deutschen Kolonie.n p. 51. 4. Quoted in H. Gründer. Geschichte der deutschen Kolonien. pp. 51. 5. Although by no means an exhaustive list, the views that will be considered here are those of AJP Taylor, E. Eyck, K. Hildebrand, HU Wehler, H. Pogge von Strandmann, and L. Gall. The views expressed in the various works of these historians are sufficiently diverse to enable the major areas of contention to emerge. 6. See for example R. Chickering. We Men Who Feel Most German. A Cultural Study of the Pan German League 1886–1914. Allen & Unwin, Boston, 1984. See also VR Berghahn. Der Tirpitz–Plan. Genesis und Verfall einer innenpolitischen Krisenstrategie unter Wilhelm II. Droste, Düsseldorf, 1971. See too S. Förster. Der doppelte Militarismus. Die deutsche Heeresrüstung zwischen Status–Quo–Sicherung und Aggression 1890–1913. Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart, 1985. 7. For a detailed view of the debate regarding the primacy of domestic or foreign policy, see K. Hildebrand. Deutsche Aussenpolitik 1871–1918. R. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich, 1989. p. 93ff. See also G. Eley’s critique of Hildebrand’s neo–Rankean approach in G. Eley. “Society and Politics in Bismarckian Germany.” German History 15(1), 1997. Esp. p. 114. For a somewhat more disparaging discussion, see Volker Berghahn. “The German Empire, 1871–1914: Reflections on the Direction of Recent Research.” CEH 35 (1). pp. 75–81. 8. See Chapter Three.

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9. Stenographische Berichte über die Verhandlungen des Reichstags. 4 / III /ii (1880). Verlag der Buchdruckerei der Norddeutschen Allgemeinen Zeitung, Berlin, 1880. pp. 945ff. 10. The vote was 112 for the proposal, with 128 against. Ibid. p. 962. 11. Speech by Loewe. Stenographische Berichte über die Verhandlungen des Reichstags. 4 / III /ii (1880). pp. 946–48. “Unsere Kolonialpolitik kann durch die Akquisition dieser armseligen Inseln nicht gefördert werden. Wohin wollen Sie den Strom der Auswanderer leiten? Nach den Samoainseln? Glauben Sie, daß diejenigen, die aus irgend welchen Gründen auswandern, nach den Samoainseln gehen werden? … Ist das nun wohl eine Gelegenheit, mit einem solchen Unternehmen eine neue Kolonialpolitik zu inauguriren? Hat das mächtige Deutschland keine andere Gelegenheit? … Sind wir so armselig, daß wir anfangen müssen, wo Godeffroy aufgehört hat!” 12. BA Berlin. R8023/253. Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft. p. 6. Minutes of Kolonialverein meeting, 26 August 1882. Miquel stated, “In der Samoa–Frage hat nicht die Frage der Kolonisation die Sache zum Falle gebracht, sondern der Zipfel, mit dem man es angefasst hat, das Stützen eines bankrotten Hauses, die Subvention.” 13. G. Klein. Dokumente zur Geschichte der Handelskammer Hamburg. p. 176. See also Renate Hücking & Ekkehard Launer. Aus Menschen Neger Machen. pp. 47ff. 14. AJP Taylor. Germany’s First Bid for Colonies 1884–1885: A Move in Bismarck’s European Policy. WW Norton & Co., 1970. 15. K. Hildebrand. “Opportunities and Limits of German Foreign Policy in the Bismarckian Era, 1871–1890: A System of Stopgaps?” in G. Schöllgen, ed. Escape into War? The Foreign Policy of Imperial Germany. Berg, Oxford, 1990. p. 81. “What was at issue here was a rather tentative attempt to set the Reich in Europe and the world on a more advantageous basis through a settlement with France effected on overseas terrain over British opposition.” 16. AJP Taylor. Germany’s First Bid for Colonies. pp. 11, 80–86. 17. For recent examples of the foregrounding of foreign policy considerations at the expense of German domestic sociopolitical conditions, see K. Hildebrand. Das Vergangene Reich. p. 86ff.; K. Hildebrand. Deutsche Aussenpolitik. p. 93ff; L. Gall. Bismarck: der weiße Revolutionär. Propyläen Verlag, Frankfurt a.M., 1980. pp. 615–18. See also G. Eley’s critique of this approach in G. Eley. “Society and Politics in Bismarckian Germany.” esp. p. 114. 18. K. Hildebrand. “Opportunities and Limits.” p. 81. 19. On this lineage, see VR Berghahn. “The German Empire, 1871–1914.” pp. 75–81. 20. HU Wehler. Bismarck und der Imperialismus. Kiepenheur & Witsch, Köln, 1969. For a distilled version of this work, cf. HU Wehler. “Bismarck’s Imperialism, 1862–1890.” (trans. N. Porter, J. Sheehan & TW Mason) in J. Sheehan, ed. Imperial Germany. Franklin Watts, New York, 1976. pp. 180–222. Wehler himself summarized Social Imperialism as an attempt “to direct the dynamic forces of the economy and the social and political struggles for emancipation into external expansion …” Wehler. “Sozialimperialismus.” Quoted in G. Schöllgen. “Introduction. The Theme Reflected in Recent German Research.” In G. Schöllgen. Escape into War? p. 8. 21. HU Wehler. Bismarck und der Imperialismus. p. 469. 22. HU Wehler. Bismarck und der Imperialismus. p. 470. 23. D. Blackbourn & G. Eley. The Peculiarities of German History. Inexplicably, the argumentation of Blackbourn and Eley has not yet entirely overturned or in some instance even penetrated the analysis of the “Bielefelders,” despite some lively exchanges between the two camps. See HU Wehler. “A Guide to Future Research on the Kaiserreich?” CEH 29 (4). pp. 541–72; and Eley’s response, “Problems with Culture: German History after the Linguistic Turn.” CEH 31(3). pp. 197–227. 24. G. Eley. “Problems with Culture.” pp. 197–227. See esp. p. 227. 25. M. Kreuzer. “Parliamentarization and the Question of German Exceptionalism: 1867–1918.” CEH 36(3), 2003. pp. 327–57. See esp. pp. 332–33. 26. E. Eyck. Bismarck and the German Empire. Allen & Unwin, London, 1968. p. 274ff. H. Gründer. Geschichte der deutschen Kolonien. pp. 53–54.

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27. E. Eyck. Bismarck and the German Empire. pp. 284–89. 28. H. Pogge von Strandmann. “Domestic Origins of Germany’s Colonial Expansion Under Bismarck.” Past and Present 42(1), 1969. p. 140ff. 29. H. Pogge von Strandmann. “Domestic Origins.” p. 145. 30. The following statistics have been drawn from: German Bundestag Publications Section. Fragen an die deutschen Geschichte. Ideen, Kräfte, Entscheidungen von 1800 bis zur Gegenwart. (English ed.). German Bundestag Publications Section, Bonn, 1989. Supplement: “The Development of the Parties 1871–1987.” 31. Importantly, as Pogge von Strandmann has argued elsewhere, the collapse of the national vote for the National Liberals did not signal an absolute political demise, much less an end to their sociocultural hegemony. Their continued dominance in municipal and city elections demonstrated that, particularly at the level of face-to-face local politics, the liberals were a dominant force up to the outbreak of World War I. See H. Pogge von Strandmann. “The Liberal Power Monopoly in the Cities of Imperial Germany.” In H. Lehmann, KF Ledford, eds. Elections, Mass Politics, and Social Change in Modern Germany. Cambridge University Press, New York, 1992. pp. 93–118. 32. From their 1878 record high of 57 seats to the 1881 result of 28 seats, which took them back slightly below the realm of their pre–1878 results in the mid 30s range of seats held. 33. See for example, E. Eyck. Bismarck and the German Empire. pp. 240, 261. 34. L. Gall. Bismarck: der weiße Revolutionär. Translated into English as the two volume Bismarck: The White Revolutionary, by JA Underwood. Unwin & Hyman, London, 1986. Gall is scathing of Wehler’s “social imperialism” thesis, which he sees as “having the fascinatory power of a universal explanation that promises to order the confusing flood of details under a single broad concept,” stating that “in truth things are far more complicated and not so easily reduced to a common denominator.” (p. 615). However, his own return to Ranke, in nominating foreign policy motivations as primary in Bismarck’s colonial policy reversal, ignores the underlying weakness of Bismarck’s domestic political position. (See p. 618). Despite this somewhat antiquated approach, Gall’s imagery of a vacillating Bismarck responding to immediate crises rather than implementing carefully plotted political masterstrokes remains instructive. 35. Thus Gall’s complaint regarding the “negativen Bismarck–Bewunderung … Erfolgsgeschichte mit veränderten Wertungen.” L. Gall. Bismarck: der weiße Revolutionär. p. 527. 36. Wehler. Bismarck und der Imperialismus. p. 486. “Alleinherrschaft auf der Spitze der Machtpyramide.” 37. This is further attested to by the (admittedly exculpatory) memoirs of Wilhelm II, who relates Bismarck’s enduring personal disinterest in the colonies, but his begrudging appreciation of the fact that the increasingly pro-colonial, pro-naval sentiment of public opinion left him no choice. As the Kaiser related events, “in the first half of the ‘eighties I had been summoned to the Foreign Office at the behest of Prince Bismarck. … I won the confidence of the Prince, who consulted me about many things. For instance, when the Prince brought about the first German colonial acquisitions [in Africa], I informed him, at his wish, concerning the state of mind created in the public and the navy by this move, and described to him the enthusiasm with which the German people had hailed the new road. The Prince remarked that the matter hardly deserved this. Later on I spoke often with the Prince about the colonial question and always found in him the intention to utilize the colonies as commercial objects, or objects for swapping purposes, other than to make them useful to the fatherland or utilize them as sources of raw materials. As was my duty, I called the Prince’s attention to the fact that merchants and capitalists were beginning energetically to develop the colonies and that, therefore––as I had learned from Hanseatic circles––they counted upon protection from a navy. For this reason, I pointed out that steps must be taken for getting a fleet constructed in time, in order that German assets in foreign lands should not be without protection; that, since the Prince had unfurled the German flag in foreign parts, and the people stood behind it, there must also be a navy behind it.” Wilhelm II. Trans. TR Ybarra. The Kaiser’s Memoirs. Harper, New York, 1922. p. 15.

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38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

43. 44. 45. 46.

47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

53. 54. 55 . 56. 57. 58.

59.

60.

Wehler. Bismarck und der Imperialismus. p. 459. Contra D. Langewiesche. Liberalism in Germany. pp. 194–99. D. Langewiesche. Liberalism in Germany. p. 199ff. Quoted in H. Gründer. Geschichte der deutschen Kolonien. p. 58. See also HU Wehler. Bismarck und der Imperialismus. p. 475. Dispatch to Münster, in RJ Gavin & JA Bentley, eds./trans. The Scramble for Africa: Documents on the Berlin West Africa Conference and Related Subjects 1884/5. Ibadan University Press, Ibadan, 1973. p. 413. See also H. Gründer. Geschichte der deutschen Kolonien. p. 57. As per FL Müller’s article “Imperialist Ambitions.” pp. 346–68. See also S. Zantop. Colonial Fantasies. pp. 4–5. H. Gründer. Geschichte der deutschen Kolonien. p. 30. IS Lorenz. Eugen Richter. pp. 98–111. Quoted in IS Lorenz. Eugen Richter. p. 108. “Das ist ganz selbstverständlich, daß wir dem deutschen Handel den überseeischen Schutz mittels Konsulate und Marine zuteil werden lassen... Im übrigen, ob man im einzelnen Falle weiter geht, das muß von dem einzelnen und besonderen Fall der betreffenden Vorlage abhängen.” As per Friedrich List. IS Lorenz. Eugen Richter. pp. 100–102. See for example WJ Mommsen. “Wandlungen der liberalen Idee.” German Bundestag Publications Section. Fragen an die deutschen Geschichte. Supplement: “The Development of the Parties 1871–1987.” B. Anderson. Imagined Communities. This differs fundamentally from Wehler’s conceptualization of imperialism as a diversion (Ablenkung), in that far from being borne out of anxiety, it stemmed from a combative liberal self-assertion. It bespoke not crisis but confidence in the superiority of their narration of the German nation-state. Quoted in M. Hyrkkänen. Sozialistische Kolonialpolitik: Eduard Bernsteins Stellung zur Kolonialpolitik und zum Imperialismus 1882–1914. Trans. C. Krötzl. SHS, Helsinki, 1986. p. 32. M. Hyrkkänen. Sozialistische Kolonialpolitik. p. 32. M. Hyrkkänen. Sozialistische Kolonialpolitik. p. 34. M. Hyrkkänen. Sozialistische Kolonialpolitik. p. 57. M. Hyrkkänen. Sozialistische Kolonialpolitik. p. 61. On the initial hostility of the SPD towards colonial imperialism, see H. Stoecker & P. Sebald. “Enemies of the Colonial Idea.” Trans. LH Gann.) In AJ Knoll & LH Gann, eds. Germans in the Tropics: Essays in German Colonial History. Greenwood Press, New York, 1987. pp. 59–72. The official position of the Social Democratic leadership did not of course translate into a refusal by individual social democrats to countenance colonial fantasies. See JP Short. “Everyman’s Colonial Library.” German History 21(4), 2003. pp. 445–75. See the effect of this again in the 1907 “Hottentot” election, this time aimed at isolating socialist opposition to the government’s decision to financially underwrite the genocidal Herero/ Nama wars. U. van der Heyden. “Die ‘Hottentottenwahlen’ von 1907” in J. Zimmerer & J. Zeller, (eds). Völkermord in Deutsch–Südwestafrika. pp. 97ff. A. Hillgruber. Germany and the Two World Wars (trans. WC Kirby). Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. 1981. p. 2.

PART III

THE TEXTS OF IMPERIALISM

Figure C . “Das gefährliche Kind.” Kladderadatsch 7, 5 February 1854. p. 20. Source: WA Coupe. German Political Satires.Vol. II.

Chapter 6

EXPANSIONIST AGITATION AFTER 1849


As imperialist commercial praxis continued unabated during the post–1848/49 era, imperialist agitation through a variety of textual forms also flourished. Whether via overtly propagandistic pamphleteering, the dissemination of imperialist themes through the liberal popular press, the positive treatment of imperialist themes in scholarly journals or through the burgeoning genre of the imperialist novel, liberal readers came to imbibe more and more material that situated German nationals as imperialists. Although the various textual forms, by reason of their context, audience, and purpose, differed in their presentation of alterity and of Germans’ relationship with it, what remained surprisingly static was the presentation of the German nation as requiring a “world mission” (Weltaufgabe), the proportions of which should be commensurate with their status as a Weltmacht of the first rank. When translated into a concrete program for imperialist praxis, this world mission often bore the hallmarks of Vormärz and revolutionary era discussions of the necessity of imperialism. That is, Germany’s global task, although often described as a “cultural mission,” was to harness the peoples, resources, and economies of extra-European lands in order that they might assist Germany’s transformation into a globalized trading power replete with a strong industrial economy and a secured network of colonies providing both raw materials and markets for German goods. These plans variously did or did not foreground settler colonies, dependent on the position, population, and resources of the particular colony under discussion; however, what was consistently posited as necessary was an extensive commercial fleet and, critically, a strong navy that was able to oversee and protect Germany’s overseas interests. A careful inspection of the detail of these Notes for this section begin on page 154.

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plans illustrates the marked continuity in liberal imperialist thought in the post revolutionary era. Offering a number of parallels to the Vormärz and revolution era works of Sturz, Blumenau, and von Gagern were those of Julius Fröbel, the one time member of the Frankfurt National Assembly, who had in the years after 1848 fled to and eventually settled in the United States.1 Published almost a decade after the Paulskirche assembly, Fröbel’s contribution to the furthering of the discourse of liberal German imperialism, in the form of a collection of letters that had been published in the Allgemeine Auswanderungs-Zeitung,2 should (like the discussions of the Frankfurt Nationalversammlung) be seen as stemming from a commitment to the protection of German emigrants, the theme with which most of his correspondence dealt. It should also be seen against the backdrop of the disappointment of liberal imperialists’ immediate hopes in the post revolutionary era, resulting from the liberals’ difficulties at the national level in the 1850s. In particular, Fröbel’s thirteenth letter in the collection spelled out in a concise and direct manner his view of how the German colonial task should be carried out. Foreshadowing Max Weber’s famous characterization of Germany’s expansionist task, Fröbel declared that a small, insignificant colonial undertaking was not worth the effort, and that, in keeping with his often asserted view “that the German nation will either achieve greatness or nothing,” Germany should set about the establishment of a “Neudeutschland” on a scale sufficient to ensure that this New Germany would come to have the same significance for the German spirit as the United States had come to have for the English.3 Politically independent from Germany (an unsurprising proviso from a liberal political refugee from 1848/49), this New Germany was, according to Fröbel, to become a realm in which the untrammeled personal freedoms guaranteed in the United States were to be mimicked, in order that Germany’s emigrants might find encouragement to settle there. In terms of a location, Fröbel joined those voices in favor of Brazil, and in his reasoning referred to the earlier imperialist works of List and Roscher,4 citing but discounting List’s economic reasoning for the popularity of emigration to the West rather than the East and all but ruling out Roscher’s enthusiasm for the European regions of the Ottoman Empire. Rather gently, Fröbel claimed to share their enthusiasm for the colonization of the Danube, the Balkans, the Black Sea, and the Bosphorus, but whether such theorizing could be vindicated by history or was mere utopian dreaming, he was unsure. Such colonies, he believed, could only be gained by martial conquest and these lands were not conducive to the types of freedoms offered by life in the American colonies. For Fröbel, the political symbolism of geography was an instructive framework for imperialist praxis, with a movement westward a move toward political freedom, whilst a move eastward was to move toward the political oppression that he and other emigrants had sought to escape.5 The degree of intertextuality and interpenetration of earlier liberal imperialist theorists, notably List and Roscher, is worth noting. At a time when such liberal

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imperialists are supposed to have lost their intellectual clout, or, when imperialist theorizing is supposed to have counted for little, Fröbel’s work shows the degree to which later imperialist works maintained a dialogue with those that had originally established the tropes of the discourse, with which Fröbel, as a politician of the 1848/49 period, was thoroughly acquainted. Although the degree of theoretical indebtedness varied from work to work, the extent to which later imperialist discourse was a means of reappraising ideas that had been discussed in liberal circles during the Vormärz and revolutionary eras is significant. Naturally, Fröbel’s relatively modest (but nonetheless important) contribution does not in itself constitute a lively imperialist discourse. Fröbel was merely one, albeit high profile, theorist amongst many to have emerged at this time. Similarly committed to German expansionism was Samuel Gottfried Kerst, again a one-time representative at the Frankfurt Nationalversammlung, who served on the naval committee and who later went on to become a sitting member in the Prussian Landtag as a member of the Fortschrittspartei.6 During his time as adviser to the Admiral of the Naval Division of the Prussian War Ministry, Kerst delivered a series of lectures to Berlin-based colonial societies, such as the Berliner Verein zur Centralisation deutscher Auswanderung und Colonisation, which were subsequently published. In the first of these,7 Kerst painted a bleak picture of emigration as an enormous drain on the labor and capital resources of Germany, and a dangerous pursuit for Germany’s emigrants.8 “Yankeefied” in North America and virtually enslaved in South America, the only reasonable hope of a destination suitable for concentrated colonization by German emigrants after the failure of the Frankfurt Nationalversammlung rested, in Kerst’s eyes, with Uruguay. Geographically and climatically suitable, and populated only by a few “poor, harmless races of natives”9 Uruguay, it appeared to Kerst, had been reserved precisely for German colonial exploitation: “It appears to be reserved for the German race to establish an enduring governing order in both temperate zones of this part of the world, and to develop a new rich and historical existence on new soil.”10 It was not only for the good of Germany’s emigrants that Uruguay was a suitable point for German colonization, as Kerst, invoking Alexander von Humboldt, made clear. Rather, the benefits to Germany in having a South American colony were too great to be ignored, bringing about a huge boost, as he envisaged it, to Germany’s trade and military (particularly naval), power: … consider further … the mouth of the Rio Negro and Uruguay offer at these points safety and room for the trading fleet of the whole of Europe, and you will agree that this part of the world is of extraordinary interest for German colonization and trade … A large German population in Uruguay, closely connected with the Motherland, a German settlement on the mouth of the Rio Negro, and we will be able to assert our trading independence in the future … and no other European sea power will have or find on the Atlantic ocean a base from which they would be in the long-term position to control the mouth of the La Plata.11

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Quietly rueful of Germany’s dolorous naval position, Kerst wondered aloud how much better it would be if Germany could immediately send a German frigate to Uruguay to stake a German claim, and thereby ensure that they were not beaten to it by the English.12 Kerst’s vision of a strategically placed German colony in South America once again shows many of the hallmarks of liberal imperialist plans, in its attempt to simultaneously solve several problems that had arisen as Germany lifted itself into the ranks of Europe’s foremost industrialized, trading powers. The net loss of labor and capital to competitor powers represented in emigration, the desire to protect German emigrants from exploitation, and the need for Germany to establish a global capacity for its trading and military fleets so that German could compete internationally with the other European trading nations were all issues that Kerst sought to link under the umbrella of imperialism. In terms of national identity, Kerst offered a consistent vision of his Uruguay plan as an intrinsically national undertaking, presupposing as it did a pan-German colonial character, as well as pan-German trading and naval fleets. For Kerst, the underlying principles of his plan were summarized in his final words: “Patriotism … Power … Capital.”13 In 1852, Kerst presented another version of his argument for the necessity of a German colonial empire, to a Berlin-based pro-colonial association. Rehearsing much of the same material discussed in the previous year,14 Kerst argued that emigration, in particular undirected emigration, was a drain on the labor power and capital of Germany, which rendered the nation weaker: “There is no larger, I should say ridiculous waste of strength, nothing illustrates our impotence more vividly, than the present dissipation and the directionless objectives and destination of German emigration.”15 Germany’s only real chance to reverse this trend, according to Kerst, was through state direction of this emigration to a region that would provide a site for the maintenance and expansion of German values and language,16 the improved life chances of the struggling German poor and the downwardly mobile sections of the Mittelstand. Significantly, considering the bürgerlich nature of the colonial association he was addressing (and indeed of imperialist discourse in general), the expansion of German trade and industry and the furthering of liberal political and religious institutions and concepts were also foregrounded: One cannot deny the dangerous effects of Germany’s emigration, as such it is an unavoidable duty to divert it where it can be useful for us, or at least not harmful to us, and to make provisions so that a prosperous middle class remains; in short, to organize emigration.17

As a result of these prescriptive stipulations, the description of Kerst’s proposed colony was determinedly specific. Lands eligible were: Only those lands, that, through the expenditure of German capital and labor, open new opportunities for the German people, for German manufactured products and offer a new market for German trade, … only lands in which the German emigrant enjoys religious and civil freedom, where his language and customs will be respected …18

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At first glance, such an impossibly specific colonial utopia appears to amount to little more than a liberal vision of the desired future Germany displaced to a foreign setting;19 however, the prescriptive nature of Kerst’s colonial vision was in fact a negation of two of the more predominant, contemporaneous forms of German colonization. On the one hand, the “denationalization of the Germans in North America” was seen as ruling out the United States and Canada,20 whilst the illiberal “white slavery” that was taking place in Brazil was seen as even more undesirable. For Kerst, “the unatoned sin, the shameless law-breaking, the appalling maltreatment” being perpetrated by the landholders of Brazil and the shipping firms transporting Germans to this indentured servitude represented little more than a continuation of Brazil’s decades long dependence on slave labor—only this time the slaves were Germans.21 Kerst’s judgement on Brazil saw him embroiled in a polemical debate with George Gade, a Brazilian landowner who took exception to Kerst’s rather bleak description of the conditions awaiting German settlers in Brazil. Comparable to the Brazilian debate that would rage between Johann Sturz and Hermann Blumenau a decade later, a series of newspaper articles and treatises were exchanged on the subject that became more personal as the debate progressed.22 Without doubt, Kerst viewed colonialism not as unachievably utopian, but as a program of national renewal to be carried out under the auspices of the culturally dominant, but in the post-revolutionary era, politically handicapped German Bürgertum. This movement was to act as the impetus for a renewal of the prospects of Germany’s liberal traders, who could thereby reclaim their social role as the driving force behind Germany’s economic and political life. For Kerst, it was Germany’s ability to successfully expand overseas that would ensure its national strength and freedom, attributes that would then return to the German nation itself, as a direct result of the establishment of a liberal Deutschtum in German colonies. In this manner, the dominance of German liberalism as the discursive underpinning of the nation’s sense of identity would reemerge through Germany’s encounter with the colonial periphery. Aside from any material advantage that colonies might bring, Kerst argued, one of their central benefits was in assisting Germany’s Bürgertum in reasserting itself, as he made clear in his preface to the work of another pro-imperial German, L.G. Bahre: The question of emigration has become a burning one. Their current dispersal and lack of direction is a sign of German impotence, and threatens the German nation with an historical death … Honor, interests, and politics require that the friends of the Fatherland finally demand that emigration be organized as soon as possible and that it be given an advantageous direction and a worthwhile destination. If all of the friends of the Fatherland agree, then the glory-filled times of the old Hansa will return in a new form, the middle class (Bürgerthum) will reattain a consciousness of their strength, and through the free construction of the German spirit and life on new soil, the old homeland will become revitalized, and a joyous future will be ushered in.23

On the question of an imperial German navy, a series of works were released in the 1860s that pointed to a continuance of the earlier liberal demands for a

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national navy capable of pursuing a forward foreign policy. Noteworthy amongst these is the 1861 treatise written by the liberal Ruhr industrialist Friedrich Harkort,24 who was renowned amongst his contemporaries for his progressive theories on education, and in particular the Sozialfrage, and who would later go on to sit as a member of the Fortschrittspartei in the Reichstag in 1874. The work stands as a fiercely partisan contribution to the debate over the relationship between liberalism, naval capacity, and national identity, all of which are brought together in the Foreword. Harkort, in no uncertain terms, accused “Junkerthum” of betraying the interests of the nation through their decision not to support a national fleet. Quoting Humboldt, Harkort further contended that ideas such as national unity, and indeed its symbol of a national navy, must eventually prevail over the particularist misconceptions of the “un-German” critics that were unable to see Prussia’s true role as the seat of German naval power and the prime unifying force in Germany.25 Harkort’s quotation from Humboldt recalls Rochau’s commitment to the notion that in the long-term, the Zeitgeist would prevail over the myriad obstructions placed in its path by those who had failed to grasp its inevitability: “… that whenever a century has begun giving room to a great hope, it does not rest until it has been fulfilled.”26 Naval capacity and the construction of a unified nation committed to a strong global maritime presence were the twin hopes that Harkort viewed as the German tasks of the nineteenth century and, as Rochau had, he viewed the cultural dominance of German liberalism as a factor counting strongly toward their eventual fulfillment. Harkort further positioned his work as a contribution toward the work of the Nationalverein, who, as the liberal champions of Prussia’s role in Germany and firm supporters of the naval power ideal, were clearly the type of organic intellectuals that Harkort believed were required by the new industrial Germany. As such, Harkort, in a short chapter devoted to the relationship between the Nationalverein and the national fleet, called upon all Germans, particularly those in the Hanseatic towns and cities, to support the Nationalverein in their endeavors to unify the nation and establish a national fleet as a symbol and a foreign policy tool of this unified national entity.27 The role of the German fleet was envisaged by Harkort as being “Attack, defense, and protection of maritime trade … the protection of our traders in every ocean”—at least in the nineteenth century. The concept of engaging the “colossal” fleets of Britain and France was ruled out by Harkort for the time being, due to the pressing concerns of defending German interests abroad and the fact that the German fleet was to be built from almost nothing.28 In keeping with Friedrich List’s concern for the fate of German colonists, amongst the German interests that Harkort argued required protection were the emigrants Germany had sent out to the colonies of other powers. Interestingly, Harkort not only imagined directly intervening with naval force in the affairs of these colonies, should German interests require it, but also hinted at a future role as a dominant colonial power:

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The opponents of the German fleet may object that we have no colonies, what should this fleet do in times of peace? In answer we say: doesn’t Germany send 100,000 of its children each year as colonists across every ocean and to every corner of the globe; doesn’t the future in Australia and America belong to the German race? Doesn’t a relationship remain with the Fatherland, through trade? Do we not have the third largest merchant navy in the world?29

To this end, Harkort suggested an initial minimum naval presence around the world at any one time: one warship in the Mediterranean Sea, one off the West coast of Africa, two in the Indian Ocean, one in the West Indies, and one in the Pacific Ocean.30 The result of this, he argued, would be that German interests around the world could be sure of the backing of their nation’s navy. In terms of naval tactics, Harkort argued that “Defense belongs to the weak; Germany must switch to the offensive …”31 Sharing Harkort’s views that a German fleet was the concern of the entire German nation under the leadership of Prussia, in 1863 and 1864, the lieutenant, and soon to be corvette captain (and later German admiral), Reinhold Werner also published a series of early contributions to the debate on the role and size of a German navy.32 In the first of the works, Die preussische Expedition nach China, Japan und Siam, an expansion upon the contributions he made to the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung whilst abroad,33 Werner opened his discussion of the expedition by pointing out that such voyages were rightfully aimed at the supporting of Germany’s international trade and industry, which had “noiselessly” but “successfully” established Asian trade routes without the support of sympathetic governments: From the shores of India to the north of China, German trade, in particular German shipping, has established a beachhead unnoticed, without the protection or action of the German government and in spite of the powerful English and American competition.34

Part of his task, Werner wrote, was to ensure that Germany knew of the extent of the “enormous business interests” awaiting German development in the Far East.35 For this success to continue, Werner argued, German international trade required a national approach—an approach that could be characterized as “planned and in the interests of the Fatherland.”36 The sending of a Prussian envoy to Peking and the signing of trade contracts were important first steps; however, Germany needed to take further action in order to capitalize on this beginning: “The second step that must be taken is the display of a Prussian or German war fleet in Eastern waters, that will lend an emphatic protection to German ships and the German name respect.”37 This insistence on the demonstration of German naval power might arguably have at least as much to do with the aforementioned English and American competition as with the countries of Asia within which Werner saw a role for German penetration, and it is this link between the strength and reach of German economic power and the strength and reach of German military power that

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lay at the heart of his desire to see the naval fleet of a unified Germany patrolling those regions in which Germany’s traders were establishing trading settlement beachheads. Werner’s work Die Preußische Marine similarly delineated a vision of Germany as a newly arriving maritime force. Beginning with the familiar hymn to the will of the German people who had striven to create a national fleet,38 the work then stressed the necessity of national unity if the fleet was to be a credible international force. The requisite national unity was only achievable, Werner argued, through the recognition of Prussian primacy.39 Although the occasion of this particular work was (once again) the conflict with Denmark, Werner’s concerns were largely with the future of the German fleet as a truly first rank power, capable of parity with Britain, particularly, as Werner saw it, with Britain reluctant to acknowledge the rights of other nations on the sea: “As long as England resists, Prussia must possess the resources to confront the shameless arrogance of an Albion so proud of its fleet, so that it can threaten English trade with complete ruin, should war break out.”40 Exemplifying the conflation of the social, economic, and cultural interests of Germany’s middle classes with the broader “national interest” and sense of national identity was Werner’s positing of a fundamental change “in the character of our nation,” a change that had seen Germans realize that “the size and intelligence of their population and their inner strength requires world trade.”41 Germany was rightfully a competitor with England and the United States in trade and its deserved future was as the world’s premiere trading and naval power, if necessary at the cost of England, with whom, it seemed (to the future Admiral to Kaiser Wilhelm II) a conflict was inevitable.42 Emphasizing societal change, Werner implicitly argued for a reorganization of the nation’s priorities, toward that of a modernizing liberal trading nation with a global role to play, rather than an insular, rural economy. In recasting the identity of Germans, Werner, in the tradition of Vormärz theorists and the 1848 Nationalversammlung, attempted to have Germans see themselves as a united nation with a naval force capable of projecting power globally. All of this pro-expansionist theorizing, which employed the tropes of a discourse formalized by Friedrich List and embraced by liberals in the 1840s, culminated in the work of the imperialist theorist Friedrich Fabri, whose Bedarf Deutschland der Colonien? 43 marked both a theoretical continuation of previous liberal imperialist discourse and a major theoretical leap forward, with its systematic and publicly acclaimed rehearsal of preexisting arguments for a German colonial project expanding the scope for imperialist discourse to be translated into a form of national, political praxis. In its polemical format, Fabri effectively summarized the prevailing liberal interest in colonialism, as initially formulated in the 1840s, by rehearsing discursive elements first consolidated by Friedrich List—to the extent that Fabri, at times, appears to paraphrase exact statements made by List, whilst demonstrating a degree of theoretical indebtedness to such other pro-imperial liberals as Wilhelm Roscher. Through the degree of inter-

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textuality exhibited by his text, both acknowledged and unacknowledged, Fabri consciously sought to place himself firmly within the theoretical tradition of the imperialist liberals that had preceded him. Fabri has been previously discussed by historians of German imperialism, notably in Wehler’s influential work,44 and, of course, the exhaustive study of Fabri and the cultural milieu surrounding him undertaken by Klaus Bade.45 Both works may be bracketed together, sharing as they do important critical assumptions. Indeed, the title of Bade’s work, with its echo of Wehler’s “social imperialism” thesis, effectively situates Bade’s conceptualization of Fabri within the analytical paradigm constructed in Wehler’s Bismarck und der Imperialismus. Like Wehler, Bade perceived a direct causal link between the threat of social revolution to a “conservative utopia,” short-term economic crisis and the need for colonies: The early understanding of society’s dependence on the state of the economy led to the idea that the social crisis could be overcome at the same time as the economic crisis through overseas expansion. A socially conservative attitude, that viewed the “proletarian question” as a question of existence … [t]he positive connection of the necessity of expansion to stave off demise with the legitimation ideology of a völkisch nationalism’s imagined civilizing mission in the end lent Fabri’s social-imperialist crisis theory its aggressive character.46

Fabri, Bade argued, saw colonial imperialism as a means by which the proletarian revolution could be staved off, through the construction of an intrinsically conservative alliance between conservatives and liberals and the integration of the newly arrived urban, industrial working classes into a national prestige program of colony building: It was a theory that sought in a socially defensive manner to cement the social order that had been thrown into question by rapid industrialization, by stabilizing the disturbed economic order, and in its implementation came to misunderstand itself as a sociopolitical project.47

In attaching itself to Wehler’s “social imperialism” thesis, Bade’s work shares many of the problems of its prototype. As Geoff Eley, in an early diagnosis of the problem, argued, the notion of a grand coalition or cartel of the Right appealing to a harmonious model of national identity as a means of diverting socialist tendencies amongst the working classes is highly problematic, conflating as it does the variances and contradictions that existed between the conservative and liberal versions of the new nation-state, as posited by the social groups who are supposed by Wehler and subsequently by Bade to constitute an “ideological consensus.”48 Put another way, a historical cleft existed between Germany’s liberals and the conservatives, with liberals not at all convinced by the atavistic meta-narrative of statehood proffered by Germany’s conservative defenders of Elbian agribusiness, as evinced in such polemic instances as Friedrich Harkort’s stormy rejection of Junkerthum49 and the fiercely independent trajectory of Nationalverein politics. It is also worth remembering that German conservatives had only begrudgingly

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come to support the liberal concept of the German state as a “nation-state,” let alone an industrialized, mercantile nation-state. This long-term antagonism between two competing meta-narratives of economic and political organization continued throughout the post-unification period, the National Liberals’ tactical support of Bismarck notwithstanding. In attempting to support Wehler, Bade went to great lengths to detect a lineage of Fabri’s suspicion of the working class, back to his experience of the 1848 revolutions and his religious education. In fact, Bade is partially correct, in that Fabri was certainly not a convert to the idea that a social revolution was a legitimate means of alleviating poverty, emigration and social tension. Fabri, as Bade writes, had a long-held awareness that, “behind all contemporary political questions lies the question of existence for the future, the so-called social question,” which he is said to have seen as “the true question of the nineteenth century.”50 Viewing this “social question” as impeding the path to the ideal nation state, Fabri asserted, “What we need before everything else is that we stand as a powerful and respected nation internationally.”51 Like many of his contemporaries, Fabri came to view the activities of the organized working class as representing an unpatriotic, indeed unholy, process, as Bade points out.52 Bade is no doubt correct in seeing Fabri as continuing to hold suspicions about the organized political activities of the working class. Indeed, his strong familial and friendship links to the National Liberals would suggest that it would have been surprising for him not to be against the notion of a social revolution, and his earlier pamphleteering career displayed an abiding interest in what were the social issues of the day.53 However, it is an entirely different matter to posit this quintessentially liberal dislike of socialism as the predominant reason for his enthusiasm for colonialism. Similarly, it is perhaps overestimating Fabri’s theoretical contribution as constituting a determined, overt intervention in an anti-socialist discursive tradition. Such a view positions Fabri’s imperialism as subordinate to an ostensibly superordinate interest in fighting social revolution, and thus presents his colonialism as an ideology of pure negation, when in fact Fabri juggled a variety of social, cultural, and economic interests, which were treated in a number of thematically diverse works. What appears as more likely is that Fabri’s colonialism was a robust manifestation of his long-standing commitment to a range of liberal causes, including imperialism, which he viewed as a matter of national urgency as a liberal solution to the social question, a question understood in terms of fighting not socialism but poverty and the displacement caused by industrialisation. It was a project made possible by the confidence of the culturally ascendant Bürgertum, rather than a reaction to its fears. Fabri’s Bedarf Deutschland der Colonien was indicative of the assertiveness of the liberal middle classes, rather than a panicked reaction to an imminent social revolution.54 Bade has consistently held to the social imperialism model, stating in more recent works, “The millionfold emigration from nineteenth-century Germany,

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which had the effect of exporting social problems, served to relieve widespread tensions in the home country,”55 and that emigration “bore … a definite role as a partial exportation of the social question.”56 This notion of German liberals, in cahoots with conservatives, attempting to cast the proletarian revolution away on the Bismarck Archipelago or in North America sits uneasily with Fabri’s prime concern—the demonstration that the liberal socioeconomic and political paradigm of the German nation could overcome all social problems—poverty included. Fabri, as a proponent of guided emigration, i.e., colonialism, was attempting to transmit and renew a preexisting liberal tradition of state-driven imperialism, by demonstrating how it would not only render other rival meta-narratives such as socialism redundant through its solution to the problem of poverty, but also how it could lead to economic gain through the retention of German labor abroad and the provision of raw materials for industry. As such, Bade’s potentially useful notion of colonialism’s “national and social ideological integration function”57 needs to be extricated from its links to Wehlerite notions of a conservative/liberal grand coalition (a conservative “utopia”) and the primacy of the “fear of revolution” and of the need for a “prophylactic against revolution.”58 Fabri did see colonialism as a means of integrating Germany’s surplus population into the German economy; however, this was viewed as a means of turning one of nascent capitalism’s negative externalities into an economically useful offshore sector. To deal with that element of Fabri’s colonialist tract that might possibly be construed as relating to “social imperialism” in the Wehlerite sense, in the second chapter Fabri, whilst explaining the twin problems of emigration and overpopulation, referred to “an inner unrest and ferment,” and, amongst the masses, a “spirit of critique and dissatisfaction not known before.”59 In this perfect opportunity to lambast the socialist menace, Fabri quickly evaded an overtly political critique and settled for a quasi-religious condemnation of the way in which the “anti-religious and anti-culture principles of materialism” had permeated mass culture.60 Far from being the central pillar of an argument regarding the need to divert the socialist masses in patriotic colonial work, Fabri simply rehearsed the religious themes first expounded in his earlier religious work—Briefe gegen Materialismus.61 In the ensuing five chapters that comprise the remainder of the work, Fabri only mentioned the utility of colonialism as a social prophylactic in two other places, in a small, apologetically offered section on the possibility of creating penal colonies—a form of colonialism Fabri looked upon as undesirable, but a possibly useful externality arising alongside colonialism’s core benefits. After discussing the overcrowding of German prisons, Fabri mentioned “a political reason” for colonies. Yet this reason was not, as the social imperialism paradigm would have it, to instil a sense of proper nationalist purpose amongst the numbers of the socialist movement and thereby integrate them into the “conservative utopia” of the Reich. Rather, it was the rather jocular offer of sending starry-eyed revolutionaries to an island:

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One could then in benevolent liberality provide a suitable island—perhaps name it Utopia— for the self-rule of the communards, so that they might bring their world-improvement program to fruition, to test it. But to follow this path, Germany would have to already have colonial possessions in a suitable place.62

Surrounded as it is with comparisons with the English banishment of the Fenians, the French banishment of agitators to New Caledonia, and the Russian use of Siberia, it is hardly a suggestion for a movement of national reconciliation with the masses, but rather a provocative joke produced to demonstrate that penal settlements also relied upon an expansionist foreign policy. That Fabri himself remained unconvinced by this brand of social imperialism is evident in his characterization of colonialism based on penal settlements as a “regrettable fact” and “to some extent shameful.”63 Fabri’s final mention of colonialism’s effect on social democracy came with his positioning of colonialism as a means of allaying the anxieties of the masses, which he saw as being at the core of the socialist menace. By creating colonies, Fabri argued, the masses would see an opportunity to better their lot without the need for revolutionary agitation. Two important points arise from this discussion. Firstly, Fabri explicitly ruled out the notion that this might be an attempt to merely distract the lower orders, with a kind of anti-revolutionary safety valve project:64 I don’t mean emigration as a form of safety valve … If not amongst the hardest, then amongst the majority of the misguided and those who really feel themselves to be downtrodden, emigration would awaken a new and realistic sense of hope, thereby will the gnawing sense of dissatisfaction will be diminished.65

As far as Fabri was concerned, colonial imperialism was not a deceptive, ideological tool for distracting the lower orders with a nationalist project. Rather, he saw in imperialism a possible solution to the social question, in a way that recalls the debate at the Frankfurt Nationalversammlung and the liberal discussion of the issue thereafter. Far from a desperate plan of a bourgeoisie in the grips of a siege or crisis mentality, it was a confident assertion of bourgeois liberal imperialism as a truly national, that is trans-social, discourse that would be instrumental in bringing about social integration by rendering the socialist meta-narrative redundant through a generalized prosperity created through imperialist economics. This plan was not an embracing of a “Flucht nach vorn”66 as a means of alleviating the panic of the besieged middle classes in the face of the socialist masses. Rather it was, for Fabri, merely further evidence of the critical importance of economic and territorial expansion to the broader liberal project of modernization. Secondly, Fabri’s gesture in the direction of a putatively Wehlerite “social imperialism” by no means constitutes the basis of his entire pro-colonial thesis. Briefly, indeed thinly, argued, it is offered as a hasty addition, a by-product of colonialism, and then left. At best, social imperialist reasoning is offered as a positive externality to imperialism’s core business—the solving of the twin overpro-

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duction and overpopulation problems perceived as hindering German progress. Essentially, Fabri’s pamphlet was conceived in overwhelmingly Malthusian and Listian, that is to say, mercantile, economist terms and, irrespective of Bade’s assertion to the contrary,67 did not see its main role as diverting the German proletariat from identifying their poverty or attempting to stop them from organizing politically to do something about it. Rather, in accordance with patrician impulses of noblesse oblige, mixed with hardnosed economist reasoning, Fabri’s theorizing sought a solution to the problem of poverty, whilst offering the nation an explanation of how colonialism could better assist Germany’s rush toward industrial modernity. At best ambivalent about the use of colonialism as a mechanism of social control, Fabri concentrated instead on the, to him, more pressing or at least overarching matter of liberal nation-building. Firmly prioritized by Fabri were two basic forms of colonial activity that he designated as Ackerbau-Colonien and Handels-Colonien, agrarian and trading colonies.68 It is this simple dichotomy that informed Fabri’s theorizing, as he explained how each in turn could alleviate the problems he viewed as afflicting Germany during its modernizing, restructuring phase.69 Fabri pointed to the twin crises of overpopulation-driven emigration and overproduction. In simple terms, the problem of a surplus population and the emigration of Germans to non-German colonies was to be resolved via agrarian settler colonialism, whilst the overproduction crisis was to be resolved through trade with both German settler colonies and German trade colonies in areas dominated by other European powers. Interestingly, the manner of expressing the pressing nature of these problems adhered very closely to its description decades earlier by List, Blumenau, and Sturz. Concerns over the assimilation of Germans into English colonies as a result of the dearth of German colonies were highlighted.70 Similarly, the anthropological assumptions of List and Sturz, of the right of more “highly civilized” societies to appropriate the lands of “barbarous” nations, were again asserted by Fabri: Through a providential ordering of the house of historical development, these vast territories have been reserved over thousands of years for the white race. The indigenous people, most belonging to the so-called red race, are without exception hunters and herders, and as such are by comparison barely developed and are destined to be mere placeholders until the time when the white man arrives amongst them and their quickly dropping numbers shall see them restricted to ever smaller areas … So shall the white man, who has turned himself from the hunt to the plow, win these lands for culture, through effort and work.71

Such anecdotal illustrations of the intertextuality of pro- imperialist texts, remarkable as they are, are incidental when compared against the structural unity that binds the two theories—namely, their adherence to the tropes of imperialist discourse as established in the Vormärz era, and in their use of colonialism as a means of asserting the quintessentially industrial, mercantile nature of the German nation.

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As has already been discussed, Fabri’s pamphlet was a confident expression of liberal Germany’s belief in imperialism as a means of nation-building. For Fabri, as for most German liberal imperialists since the 1840s, the new German nation was to take as its world mission the expansion of German trade and influence via either the indirect or direct control of overseas resources (that is, through either trade colonies or agrarian colonies). As with List, Fabri measured Germany against the English model of mercantile imperialism, and saw Germany in dire need of colonies to ensure the future material prosperity of the nation. Similarly, colonies and trade were equated with great power status—those who are great powers have colonies, and those who have colonies are entitled to see themselves as great powers: When the German Reich stood at the apex of the European states centuries ago, it was the premier trading power and sea power. If the new German Reich wants to ground and maintain its reattained position of power for the long term, it must see it as a cultural mission, and no longer hesitate to reactivate its colonizing mission.72

So seriously did Fabri take colonialism as an indicator of national wealth and great power status that he effusively quoted Friedrich Kapp’s assertion that “colonies are nothing but the expression and echo of the domestic entrepreneurial spirit and hard work; only a nation with a blooming and healthy civic spirit, a nation that aims high can establish viable daughter states.”73 He then went on to assess the fitness of the various nations to be colonial powers, citing, as Sturz had, the “[i]nability of the nations of the Latin race to colonize,” because of their too-rapid depletion of the resources of the colonies, but also because, “surplus strength has been lacking on the Iberian peninsular for a long time …”74 This questioning of Luso-Spanish imperialism further suggests that Fabri thought it fitting that Germany take over the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in Africa and South America. Although viewing the mercantile activities implicit in imperialist activity as essentially belonging to the middle classes, Fabri consciously drew attention to the nature of the imperialist project as a national moral duty, a national mission: However it is also a patriotic duty, to think seriously about all possibilities that promise a broad and secure development of our national work, and through this our national prosperity. In relation to this task we assign tremendous meaning to the question “does the German Reich need colonial possessions?”75 Until then, we repeat the claim confidently, that primarily economic reasons and following this political reasons and indeed the national psyche demand the establishment of a scrupulous and energetic colonial policy for the German Reich.76 Germany, in searching for colonial possessions, is not driven by a lust for expanding its power, rather, it wants only to fulfill a national, we might even say, moral duty.77

Fabri’s vision of imperialism as a vehicle for national identity and as a means of cementing the discourse of liberal imperialism as the hegemonic political meta-

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narrative went further, in its forceful placement of expansionism at the heart of German identity, both domestically and internationally: The new Reich is already so embittered, soured and poisoned by the unfruitful discord of the parties, that the opening of a new promising path for national development will be a relief, with the spirit of the nation powerfully motivated for something new, it will now be in a position to act on this. Weightier still is the consideration that a nation is at the heights of political power and development only as long as it can successfully claim its historical position, as long as it is recognized as and has proven itself as the bearer of a cultural mission. This is at the same time the only way to secure the continuance and growth of the nation’s wealth and the necessary foundations for a lasting growth in power. The time when Germany took part in the tasks of our century through its intellectual and literary activity alone is over.78

Where Bade saw Fabri’s imperialism in terms of a narrow, short-term, feardriven diversion from the social question, it is perhaps better to see it as a part of the longer term liberal task of asserting a national German unit as an expansionist power. Bade was indeed correct in seeing Fabri as attempting to negate the socialist meta-narrative, however, only indirectly, insofar as he saw imperialism as a solution that ultimately rendered socialism redundant, by overcoming the domestic divisions caused by the structural problems inherent in capitalist development. Fabri, as a member of the liberal middle classes, exhorted the German nation to follow the example of the other dominant European liberal power—Britain—in industrializing its economy, globalizing its trade, and liberalizing its society. Alongside Wehler and Bade, there have been attempts to explain the nature of liberal theories of expansionism, and indeed, imperialist theory and praxis in Germany prior to the First World War, as exemplified by Fabri, as characterized by a dichotomous split between liberal, trading imperialists and conservative migrationist imperialists that looked to the East and overseas settlements as an arena for further German expansion. The central figure here is Woodruff Smith,79 who organized Wilhelmine imperialism into two discrete units—liberal mercantile colonialism, which he designates Weltpolitik, and settlement imperialism, to which he assigned the appellation Lebensraum.80 Weltpolitik, he argued was “… a foreign policy worldwide in scope, aimed at the protection and expansion of the external connections of the German industrial economy. There is nothing … about agriculture, nothing about peasant settlement abroad … Weltpolitik was, first and foremost, external policy in support of German commerce and the industrial sector.”81 As Smith argues, the reverse holds true for Lebensraum, which was fundamentally a movement designed to promote and implement policies aimed exclusively at migrationary colonialism.82 Critically, in positing a more or less “liberal” and a “conservative” imperialism, this version tends to undermine the notion of a political cartel, a broad liberal-conservative front that shared a vision of imperialism as a path out of an economic and social impasse that was beginning to favor Germany’s socialists. Perhaps unintentionally, this historiographical tradition offers a model of imperialism that, if not stemming from a

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critique of Wehler’s analysis, does not square with Wehler’s social imperialism paradigm that foregrounds a unity of purpose between liberals and conservatives. Nevertheless it has problems of its own, offering as it does a perhaps overly schematic delineation of the cultural and social origins of nineteenth century German imperialism. The difficulty with this argument—that these two strands of imperialist discourse were diametrically opposed—is that, as exemplified by Friedrich List, Johann Sturz, and Friedrich Fabri, nineteenth century imperialists saw the two as linked, or at the very most a matter of preference that had very little to do with broad ideological divides between forward-looking industrialists and retrograde conservatives attempting to resurrect a dying peasantry. Indeed, Fabri’s quintessentially liberal argument for colonial imperialism rested on the assumption that mercantile and settlement colonialism were twin pillars supporting liberal imperialist discourse. When Fabri argued that, “There are at present two basic forms of colonial possessions, that are known as agricultural and trading colonies,”83 he saw these as complementary modes of imperialism and not in any sense ideologically different. In fact, the only stipulation as to which colonies should be migrationary and which should be mercantile stemmed from climatic conditions—“agricultural colonies are only possible in temperate zones.”84 Far from demonstrating hostility to the new industrial conditions, Fabri’s argumentation for agrarian colonies relied upon Germany’s identity as an industrial nation, which necessitated colonies in order to create a trade loop between an agrarian colonial periphery and the industrial core nation.85 For Fabri, as for Sturz and List, both migratory colonialism and mercantile imperialism were seen as the means by which a newly industrialized nation such as Germany could solve the twin problems of overproduction and overpopulation, in the process ensuring Germany’s future supply of primary resources and thereby, its prosperity. Similarly, for Fabri, the concepts of Weltpolitik and Lebensraum were in fact two sides of the same liberal imperialist coin, as Fabri demonstrated in his own eagerness for a future German expansionism that could conceivably encompass the lands to the Southeast of Germany, throughout the Balkans, stretching all the way to the Levant. In the Middle East, Fabri wrote, the apparent disintegration of the Ottoman Empire meant that, “a cultural mission in the Orient also lies in Germany’s future.”86 The reference to a “cultural” mission was typically disingenuous, as Fabri hinted at when he declared that “a large-scale mass emigration to Asia Minor and Syria is not excluded from the future.”87 There was, of course, no clear division in the nineteenth century between Weltpolitik and Lebensraum as mutually exclusive paradigms of German expansionism. Just as Hans Christoph Gagern had, in the Vormärz era, seen Europe’s Southeast as an area suitable for German colonies, so too did Friedrich Fabri view German expansionism as possible in a number of settings. He offered several suggestions as to how it was to be carried out; however, in the end, these suggestions rested upon his analysis of probability and opportunity, and not a dogmatic adherence to one or another school of imperialist thought. With Russia seemingly

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in the ascendancy after the Russo-Turkish war, which constituted the immediate context of Fabri’s writing,88 it is not surprising that he did not foreground an aggressive Eastern policy designed to upset the fragile balance of power in a region contested by virtually every European power. Instead, he pragmatically emphasized Africa, Brazil, Samoa, and only then the Ottoman Empire as possibilities for new German realms. Fabri offered Germans what he considered to be a pragmatic program for directed migration and the development of German trade and agriculture. The Hamburg-based colonial agitator Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden, as a late pre–1884 pro-imperialism propagandist, built upon the renewal of colonial theory by Friedrich Fabri to construct a position that was a blend of abstract theories of imperialism as a form of cultural and national development on the one hand, and concrete plans for existing and potential colonizing actions on the other. Operating as both theorist and practitioner, Hübbe-Schleiden personified the state of pre–1884 colonial praxis, which, on the one hand, busied itself with private sector imperialist projects, and on the other, sought to motivate the new German nation into embracing statist imperialism as its national cultural and political task, a task that would define German national identity within the existing tradition of an expansionist European liberalism.89 In his 1881 work Deutsche Colonisation, eine Replik auf das Referat des Herrn Dr Friedrich Kapp über Colonisation und Auswanderung, Hübbe-Schleiden took as his initial rationale for colonial imperialism a statement from the periodical Export, the organ of the Central-Vereins für Handelsgeographie: In our view the organization of Germany’s mass emigration is a phase in the struggle of the German nation for independence … “Away from North America” is the slogan for Germany’s emigration policy! This slogan will lead in the course of generations to purely German overseas state formations, and thereby secure for Germany its due position in the world—a world position, which will perhaps be called to complement or even replace those of the other great branch of the German family of peoples.90

For both the Central-Vereins and Hübbe-Schleiden, colonialism and the expansionist foreign trade it facilitated represented a means of furthering the construction of the German nation, both in terms of its inner development, and in terms of its external cultural and material position vis-à-vis the other European great powers, with whom it was in competition. Germany’s national prosperity and international position, Hübbe-Schleiden argued, was a product of the nation’s capacity to maintain an actively expansionist foreign policy, including both a policy of global trade and one of the opening up of extra-European lands to development: The wealth of the nation goes hand in hand with its global trade and prospers only in relation to the development of it; similarly its intellectual culture and its importance as a nation amidst the nations of the Earth also grows as it functions as a nation active within the circles of civilization.91

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Externally, the utility of private sector trading and colonizing projects outside of the United States lay in their role as Trojan horse settlements of Germans that would later expand into a German empire on par with that of England. Internally, the need for such expansion, Hübbe-Schleiden argued elsewhere in the same year, lay with both the nation’s material needs, as well as its “cultural” need to develop in terms of Einheit, Selbständigkeit, and Lebensfähigkeit. Such considerations constituted the Nationalpolitik basis for imperialist expansion.92 Primary amongst these internal considerations was the desire for national unity, which Hübbe-Schleiden argued could not be delivered by any mechanism other than colonial possessions to tightly bind the nation together through the integration of their economic needs, which necessitated common colonial endeavor: Nothing can secure the existence of our Reich as the extent of our nationality over distant rich economic zones, which can serve as the basis for our power, our national prestige and our wealth, whereby it can continuously grow and thrive … If we have a valuable treasure somewhere in the world, in which all members of the German nation have a common interest … such a material interest would be a strong force for national unity.93

Only this, in his opinion, could “hold the Reich together after Prince Bismarck’s effectiveness came to an end.”94 Clearly, the notion of unifying and bestowing an identity upon the new German nation through imperialist action abroad was, at least rhetorically, as important to Hübbe-Schleiden as the actual material benefits German expansionism was supposed to bring. At the same time as Hübbe-Schleiden was formulating his more theoretical explanations of the importance of cultural constructions of national identity to the material development of the nation, he was also contributing a number of profoundly practical Denkschriften to colonial societies and associations. These Denkschriften were devoted to the minute planning of contemporary colonialist undertakings, in particular those taking place in South America. For example, in 1881, Hübbe-Schleiden produced a plan for the colonization of Paraguay that suggested beginning with a vanguard of eight hundred colonists to oversee the necessary construction of railroads and other infrastructure necessary for the colony’s survival.95 Similarly, in 1882, the year in which he helped establish the Colonialverein,96 he unveiled a plan for the settlement of Uruguay that called for five hundred families to emigrate there within five years, a number which was to expand to 1350 families in the first nine years of settlement.97 Both were envisaged as cash crop settlements, whose production was largely calibrated towards enhancing the economic position of Germany, despite the claim that such plans were geared solely at benefiting “the general development of Germanhood in South America.”98 Interestingly, Hübbe-Schleiden, like Benedict Anderson more recently,99 posited the notion of “Nationalität” as a purely synthetic, cultural formation, which in his opinion did not correspond to “a preponderant scientific expression … like ‘Volk’ or ‘race.’”100 Leaving the characteristically nineteenth century asser-

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tion that race was a naturally occurring scientific category aside, what was being posited by Hübbe-Schleiden was a requirement that nations consciously create themselves and their identity in such a way as to force themselves to be recognized from within and without as a coherent national unit. The cultural process he saw as necessary for the generating of a unifying national identity was the conscious construction of a vision of a German national task—that of imperialism. Within Hübbe-Schleiden’s theoretics, national culture was a construct, a highlighting of what was seen as a distinctly German mode of being, defined not only in terms of a tradition of art, music, and literature, but also with reference to a common economic model, a set of political norms, and, above all, a common understanding of the nation-state and its global role. This imperialist formulation of German national culture would be asserted both in concert and in competition with other similar cultures, that is, other “civilized” liberal European nations with which Germany hoped to compete: Through such an independent cultural capacity alone can the German nation develop an enduring viability … The existence of a nationality requires independent cultural activity and importantly is conditional on it. The arrival and passing of peoples throughout the course of world history demonstrates that national existence without such active development is not possible in the long run. As all of humanity continually pursues the idea of culture, and an organic development of culture, so each nation that wants to remain capable of existing as a member of the human race must take part in this common quest.101

This theory of national cultural development, expressed in terms of expansionism, was aimed at simultaneously fulfilling what Horst Gründer has described as the Identitätssehnsucht102 central to liberal attempts to construct the German nation in their own image, as well as the supposed political and material preconditions for successful national unification and expansion. Properly nurtured, this imperialist sense of national identity would see Germany become a truly first rank imperialist nation within a generation.103 Immersed in imperialist debate at both the practical and the theoretical level, Hübbe-Schleiden, along with other pro-imperialist agitators such as Friedrich Fabri, Friedrich Harkort, Reinhold Werner, Samuel Kerst, and Julius Fröbel, became instrumental in both reconstituting the preexisting liberal imperialist theoretical base and in the attempt to realize this theoretical corpus in the imperialist praxis during the years immediately prior to a state sanctioned policy of national imperialism. The 1870s and 1880s were not the point of origin for liberal imperial discourse. Instead, the theorists of this period, most notably Friedrich Fabri, represent the culmination of a decades long tradition. Far from exemplifying a new liberal capitulation to conservative politics, they illustrate the continued importance of imperialism to liberalism during the nineteenth century.

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Notes 1. HH Best & W. Weege. Biographisches Handbuch. pp. 146–47. 2. J. Fröbel. Die deutsche Auswanderung und ihre culturhistorische Bedeutung. Franz Wagner, Leipzig, 1858. 3. J. Fröbel. Die deutsche Auswanderung. pp. 86–87. This treatise was first published in the Allgemeine Auswanderungs–Zeitung. No. 26, 25 June 1858. 4. J. Fröbel. Die deutsche Auswanderung. pp. 87–89. 5. J. Fröbel. Die deutsche Auswanderung. pp. 87–89. 6 . H. Best & W. Weege. Biographisches Handbuch. pp. 202–3. 7. SG Kerst. Die Länder am Uruguay. Vortrag gehalten in der Sitzung des Berliner Vereins zur Centralisation deutscher Auswanderung und Colonisation. Julius Sittenfeld, Berlin, 1851. 8. SG Kerst. Die Länder am Uruguay. pp. 1–4. 9. SG Kerst. Die Länder am Uruguay. p. 12. 10. SG Kerst. Die Länder am Uruguay. p. 12. “Dem germanischen Stamme scheint es vorbehalten zu sein, in den beiden gemässigten Zonen dieses Welttheils staatliche Ordnungen dauernd zu gründen und auf neuem Boden ein reiches Geschichtsleben in neuer Gestalt zu entwickeln.” 11. SG Kerst. Die Länder am Uruguay. pp. 13–14. “ … erwägen Sie ferner … die Mündung des Rio Negro und der Uruguay an der eben bezeichneten Stelle Sicherheit und Raum für die Handelsflotte von ganz Europa bieten und Sie werden mir beistimmen, dass dieser Fleck Erde für deutsche Colonisation und Handel von ungewöhnlichem Interesse ist … /Eine zahlreiche deutsche Bevölkerung am Uruguay, in inniger Verbindung mit dem Mutterlande, ein deutscher Stapelplatz an der Mündung des Rio Negro, und wir werden unsere handelspolitische Selbstständigkeit auch in Zukunft zu behaupten vermögen … und keine europäische Seemacht hat und findet im atlantischen Ocean einen Stützpunkt, von dem aus ihre Flotten für die Dauer die Mündung des La Plata zu beherrschen vermöchten…” 12. SG Kerst. Die Länder am Uruguay. p. 16. 13. SG Kerst. Die Länder am Uruguay. p. 16. 14. SG Kerst. Die Länder in Stromgebiete des La Plata mit Rücksicht auf den deutschen Handel und die deutsche Auswanderung. Selbstverlag des Central-Vereins für Deutsche Auswanderungsund Kolonisations-Angelegenheiten in Berlin, Berlin, 1852. 15. SG Kerst. Die Länder in Stromgebiete des La Plata. p. 5. “Es giebt keine grössere, fast möchte ich sagen, unsinnigere Kraftverschwendung, nichts documentirt augenfälliger unsere Impotenz, als die gegenwärtige Zersplitterung und in ihren Zwecken und Zielen richtungslose Deutsche Auswanderung.” 16. SG Kerst. Die Länder in Stromgebiete des La Plata. p. 9. “Die Concentration der Auswanderung unter dem Schutze und der Mitwirkung der deutschen Regierungen ist eine Nothwendigkeit geworden.” 17. SG Kerst. Die Länder in Stromgebiete des La Plata. p. 6. “Kann man die gefährlichen Wirkungen der Deutschen Auswanderung nicht leugnen, so ist es eine unabweisliche Pflicht, sie dahin zu lenken, wo sie uns nützlich, wenigstens nicht schädlich wird und Versorgen zu treffen, dass ein wohlhabender Mittelstand bestehen bleibe, kurz, dass man die Auswanderung organisire.” 18. SG Kerst. Die Länder in Stromgebiete des La Plata. p. 11. “Nur solche Länder, welche durch die Aufwendung deutscher Kapitalien und Arbeitskräfte dem deutschen Volke neue Erwerbswege eröffnen, den deutschen Industrieerzeugnissen und dem deutschen Handel einen Markt darbieten … nur Länder, in denen der deutsche Auswanderer religiöse und bürgerliche Freiheit geniesst, seine Sprache und seinen Sitten nicht gewalt angethan wird…” 19. In fact, Kerst had Uruguay in mind. See SG Kerst. Die Länder in Stromgebiete des La Plata. pp. 13, 27–28. 20. SG Kerst. Die Länder in Stromgebiete des La Plata. p. 14. 21. SG Kerst. Die Länder in Stromgebiete des La Plata. p. 7.

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22. See G. Gade. Bericht über die deutschen Colonien der drei grossen Grundbesitzer am Rio preto (Provinz Rio de Janeiro) in Brasilien, nebst einer kritischen Beleuchtung und Würdigung der Schriften des Herrn Director Kerst. Carl Schröder & Comp, Kiel, 1852. Kerst’s reply to Gade is to be found in SG Kerst. Ueber Brasilianische Zustände der Gegenwart, mit Bezug auf die deutsche Auswanderung nach Brasilien und das System der brasilianischen Pflanzer, den Mangel an afrikanischen Sklaven durch deutsche Proletarier zu ersetzen, zugleich zur Abfertigung der Schrift des Kaiserl. Brasil. Prof. Dr Gade: Bericht ueber die deutschen Kolonien am Rio preto. Verlag von Veit & Comp, Berlin, 1853. While the slanderous mechanics of the polemics themselves are not of immediate importance, of note is Kerst’s despair at the lack of a German navy, which could be sent to Brazil so as to regain Germany’s honor by punishing Brazil militarily for its misuse of German settlers. See Kerst. Ueber Brasilianische Zustände der Gegenwart. p. 77. 23. SG Kerst, foreword to LG Bahre. Gegenwart und Zukunft der Plata–Länder für Deutschen Handel und Colonisation. Hoffmann & Campe, Hamburg, 1852. pp. xi–xii. “Die Auswanderungsfrage ist eine “brennende” geworden. In ihrer jetzigen Zersplitterung und Ziellosigkeit ist sie ein Zeichen deutscher Impotenz, bedroht sie das deutsche Volk mit dem geschichtlichen Tod … Ehre, Interesse und Politik fordern, daß sich die Vaterlandsfreunde endlich ermannen, die Auswanderung möglichst organisiren und ihr die vortheilhafteste Richtung und ein erstrebenswerthes Ziel geben. Handeln alle Vaterlandsfreunde in diesem Punkt in möglichster Uebereinstimmung, dann werden die ruhmreichenen Zeiten der alten Hansa in neuer Gestalt wiederkehren, das Bürgerthum wieder zum Bewußtsein seiner Kraft gelangen und durch die freie Gestaltung des deutschen Geistes und Lebens auf dem neuen Boden die alte Heimath wieder gekräftigt, überhaupt eine erfreuliche Zukunft eingeleitet werden.” Bahre’s work urged Germany to settle and dominate South America before French politicking could see them shut out of South America as they were shut out of North America. See p. viii. 24. F. Harkort. Die Preußische Marine und die deutsche Flotte. Georg Reimar Verlag, Berlin, 1861. 25. F. Harkort. Die Preußische Marine. pp. 3–4. 26. F. Harkort. Die Preußische Marine. p. 4. 27. F. Harkort. Die Preußische Marine. pp. 60–61. “Die Wirksamkeit des Nationalvereins in der Flottenangelegenheit können wir nur lobend anerkennen, es liegt darin ein Geständniß, daß die ganze Nation verpflichtet sei, Preußen in seinen Bestrebungen zu unterstützen.” 28. F. Harkort. Die Preußische Marine. p. pp. 6–7. “Angriff, Vertheidigung und Schutz des Seehandels … der Schutz unserer Kauffahrer in allen Meeren.” 29. F. Harkort. Die Preußische Marine. p. 14. “Die Gegner der deutschen Flotte können einwenden, wir besitzen keine Kolonien, womit soll sich die Kriegsmarine im Frieden beschäftigen? Dagegen fragen wir: sendet nicht Deutschland jährlich bis 100,000 seiner Kinder als Kolonisten aus über alle Meere und fast alle Gebiete der Erde; gehört nicht die Zukunft in Australien und Amerika der germanischen Race? Bleibt nicht eine Beziehung zum Vaterlande, namentlich in Betreff der Handelsverbindungen? Haben wir nicht die dritte Handelsmarine der Erde zu schützen?” 30. F. Harkort. Die Preußische Marine. p. 14. 31. F. Harkort. Die Preußische Marine. p. 21. “Die Defensive gebührt nur dem Schwachen; Deutschland muß zur Offensive übergeben…” 32. R. Werner. Die preussische Expedition nach China, Japan und Siam in den Jahren 1860, 1861 und 1862: Reisebriefe. FA Brockhaus, Leipzig, 1863. R. Werner. Die Preußische Marine: Ihre Betheiligung am deutsch-dänischen Kriege, Ihre Bedeutung und Zukunft. FC Mittler Verlag, Berlin, 1864. 33. R. Werner. Die preussische Expedition. p. vii. Werner dedicated this work to the architect of the German fleet, Heinrich Adalbert of Prussia. 34. R. Werner. Die preussische Expedition. p. ix. “Von der Küsten Indiens bis in den Norden Chinas hinauf haben, ohne Schutz und Zuthun der deutschen Regierungen und gegenüber der mächtigen englischen und amerikanischen Concurrenz, deutscher Handel und inbesondere deutsche Schiffahrt in ungeahnter Weise festen Fuß gefaßt.”

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35. R. Werner. Die preussische Expedition. p. xii. 36. R. Werner. Die preussische Expedition. p. ix. 37. R. Werner. Die preussische Expedition. pp. ix–x. “Der zweite Schritt, der gethan werden muß, ist die Ausstellung eines preußischen oder deutschen Kriegsgeschwaders in den östlichen Gewässern, das dem vaterländischen Verkehr nachdrücklichen Schutz und dem deutschen Namen Respekt zu verleihen vermag.” 38. R. Werner. Die Preußische Marine. p. 1. 39. R. Werner. Die Preußische Marine. p. 3. “Nichts erfordert gebieterischer eine absolute Einheit des Willens und der Führung, als eine Flotte, und ohne einen deutschen Kaiser oder eine souveraine Centralgewalt ist ein solches Institut, wenn es nicht ein bloßes Schaugepränge, sondern von Nutzen für das Land sein soll, nicht denkbar.” 40. R. Werner. Die Preußische Marine. p. 76. See also pp. 77–78. “So lange sich England dagegen sträubt, so lange muß Preußen sich die Mittel reserviren, den unverschämten Anmaßungen des auf seine große Flotte stolzen Albion wirksam entgegen zu treten, indem es im Kriegsfalle den englischen Handel auf das gründlichste zu ruiniren droht.” 41. R. Werner. Die Preußische Marine. p. 78. 42. R. Werner. Die Preußische Marine. pp. 78–81. 43. F. Fabri. Bedarf Deutschland der Colonien? Eds. ECM Breuning & ME Chamberlain. Edwin Mellon Press, Lewiston, 1998. 44. Wehler. Bismarck und der Imperialismus. . 45. KJ Bade. Friedrich Fabri und der Imperialismus in der Bismarckzeit: Revolution—Depression— Expansion. Atlantis Verlag, Freiburg, 1975. 46. KJ Bade. Friedrich Fabri. p. 75. 47. KJ Bade. Friedrich Fabri. p. 75. 48. G. Eley. “Defining Social Imperialism: Use and Abuse of an Idea.” Social History (3), October 1976. See especially p. 284ff. 49. Harkort. Die Preußische Marine. p. 3. 50. F. Fabri, quoted by Bade. Friedrich Fabri. p. 35. However, it would be false to posit this concern with the social question as characterizing all of Fabri’s work in this manner, particularly his earlier publications which for the most part deal with the questions of the relevancy, independence, and sociopolitical context of the Evangelical Church in a new culturally liberal Germany. See F. Fabri. Briefe gegen den Materialismus. SG Leisching, Stuttgart, 1864. And F. Fabri. Kirchenpolitische Fragen der Gegenwart: Die politische Lage und die Zukunft der evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland. Die Unions- und Verfassungsfrage. Friedrich Andreas Perthes, Gotha, 1867. 51. F. Fabri, quoted in KJ Bade. Friedrich Fabri. p. 35. 52. KJ Bade. Friedrich Fabri. p. 36. 53. ECM Breuning & ME Chamberlain. Introduction to F. Fabri, Bedarf Deutschland der Colonien. Edwin Mellon Press, New York, 1998. pp. 4–5. 54. Bade attempts to situate Bedarf Deutschland der Colonien within the context of the assassination attempts on the Kaiser; indeed, he suggests that this colonial tract arose as a response to socialist agitation. It should be noted that these attempts are not mentioned by Fabri, nor is the attending sense of “crisis” that Bade argues was the consequence of growing socialist ferment. KJ Bade. Friedrich Fabri. p. 74. 55. KJ Bade, M. Weiner. Migration Past, Migration Future. Germany and the United States. Berghahn Books, Providence, 1997. p. 6. 56. KJ Bade. “Die deutsche überseeische Massenauswanderung im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert: Bestimmungsfaktoren und Entwicklungsbedingungen.” In KJ Bade, Hg. Auswanderer— Wanderarbeiter—Gastarbeiter. Bevölkerung, Arbeitsmarkt und Wanderung in Deutschland seit der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts. Scripta Mercaturae Verlag, Ostfildern, 1984. pp. 267–68. Reprinted in KJ Bade. Sozialhistorische Migrationsforschung. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen, 2004.

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57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62.

63. 64.

65.

66. 67. 68. 69.

70.

71.

72.

73.

74. 75.

KJ Bade. “Die deutsche überseeische Massenauswanderung.” p. 296. KJ Bade. “Die deutsche überseeische Massenauswanderung.” pp. 294, 297. F. Fabri. Bedarf Deutschland. p. 64. F. Fabri. Bedarf Deutschland. pp. 64–66. F. Fabri. Briefe gegen den Materialismus. Verlag von SG Lierching, Stuttgart, 1864. F. Fabri. Bedarf Deutschland. pp. 104–106. “Man könnte dann in wohlwollender Liberalität eine geeignete Insel—etwa Utopia genannt—den Communards zur Selbstverwaltung überlassen, um ihr Weltbeglückungs-Programm doch irgendwo einmal zum Experimente zu bringen, zur Probe zu nöthigen. Aber um solchen Weg beschreiten zu können, müßte eben Deutschland irgendwelche coloniale Besitzungen in geeigneter Lage bereits erworben haben.” F. Fabri. Bedarf Deutschland. p. 106. Contra A. Lubinski. “Overseas Emigration from Mecklenburg—Strelitz: The Geographic and Social Contexts.” In D. Hoerder & J. Nagler, eds. People in Transit. p. 78. Lubinski explicitly based his formulation of the notion of “a safety valve for the social crisis” on Bade’s work. See also Bade. “Die deutsche überseeische Massenauswanderung.” p. 291. F. Fabri. Bedarf Deutschland. pp. 148–52. “Ich meine aber nicht bloß die Auswanderung, als eine Art Sicherheits-Ventil … Wenn auch wohl nicht bei den Grimmigen, so doch bei der Mehrzahl der mehr Irregleiteten und wirklich sich gedrückt Fühlenden würde solche Auswanderung ein neues, nicht unerreichbares Hoffnungsbild erwecken, und schon damit wäre der um sich fressenden Unzufriedenheit eine Schranke gesetzt.” Contra KJ Bade. Friedrich Fabri. p. 74. KJ Bade. Friedrich Fabri. p. 35. F. Fabri. Bedarf Deutschland. p. 78. This Ackerbau– and Handelscolonien dichotomy owes a theoretical debt to the delineation of colonial typologies by Roscher in his work Kolonien, Kolonialpolitik und Auswanderung and is characteristic of the intertextual nature of Fabri’s work. F. Fabri. Bedarf Deutschland. p. 78. “[S]ollen unsere Brüder und Landsleute, die über See ziehen, mit raschem Verlust von Sprache und Nationalität sich immer wieder unter unsere angelsächsischen Vettern unterschieben…” Compare this with List’s concerns that Germans “müssen sich mit der vorherrschenden Bevölkerung verschmelzen.” F. Fabri. Bedarf Deutschland. p. 80. “Durch eine providentielle Ordnung im Haushalt der geschichtlichen Entwicklung sind diese großen, weitgestreckten Territorien Jahrtausende hindurch der weißen Rasse für kommende Zeiten aufbehalten worden. Die Ureinwohner, meist der sogennanten rothen Rasse angehörig, sind ausnahmlos Jäger und Viehzüchter, also in der Volkszahl äußerst spärlich entwickelt und bestimmt, die Platzhalter zu sein bis auf die Zeit, wo der weiße Mann bei ihnen eindringen und ihre rasch sich mindernde Zahl in immer eingeschränktere Gebiete zurückdrängen sollte … So konnte auch erst der weiße Mann, statt zu der Jagd zum Pfluge sich wendend, mit Fleiß und Arbeit diese Länder allmähig der Cultur– Entwicklung erschließen.” Again, this hierarchical mode of thinking, while not uncharacteristic of its historical context, bears a direct relationship to List’s assertions regarding the rights of European powers to “civilize” the rest of the world. F. Fabri. Bedarf Deutschland. p. 180. “Als das Deutsche Reich vor Jahrhunderten an der Spitze der Staaten Europas stand, war es die erste Handels- und See-Macht. Will das neue Deutsche Reich seine wiedergewonnene Machtstellung auf längere Zeiten begründen und bewahren, so wird es dieselbe als eine Cultur-Mission zu erfassen und dann nicht länger zu zögern haben, auch seinen colonisatorischen Beruf aufs Neue zu bethätigen.” F. Fabri. Bedarf Deutschland. p. 60. “Colonien sind nichts als der Ausdruck und Widerhall heimischen Unternehmungs-Geistes und Fleißes; nur ein bürgerlich blühendes und gesundes, nur ein noch emporstrebendes Volk kann lebensfähig Tochterstaaten gründen. ” F. Fabri. Bedarf Deutschland. p. 60. F. Fabri. Bedarf Deutschland. p. 48. “Aber es ist auch eine patriotische Pflicht, allen Möglichkeiten, die eine breitere und gesichertere Entwicklung unserer nationalen Arbeit und damit

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76.

77.

78.

79.

80.

81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89.

90.

unseres nationalen Wohlstandes verheißen, aufmerksam nachzudenken. Und unter diesen Aufgaben weisen wir der Frage: ‘Bedarf das Deutsche Reich des Colonial–Besitzes?’ eine sehr hervorragende Bedeutung zu.” F. Fabri. Bedarf Deutschland. p. 96. “Bis dahin wiederholen wir aber auch hier getrost die Behauptung, daß vor Allem wirthschaftliche und in ihrem Gefolge auch politische und völkerpsychologische Gründe die Aufnahme eine einsichtsvollen und energischen Colonial-Politik dem Deutschen Reiche gebieten.” F. Fabri. Bedarf Deutschland. p. 114. “Deutschland, indem es nach Colonial-Besitz sich umschaut, ist nicht von einem Gelüste nach Macht-Erweiterung geleitet, sondern es will nur eine nationale, ja wir dürfen sagen, eine sittliche Pflicht erfüllen.” F. Fabri. Bedarf Deutschland. p. 178. “Es ist im neuen Reiche Vieles bereits so verbittert, von unfruchtbarem Parteihader versäuert und vergiftet, daß die Eröffnung einer neuen, verheißungsvollen Bahn nationaler Entwicklung wohl auf Vieles wie befreiend, weil den Volksgeist nach neuen Seiten mächtig anregend, zu wirken vermöchte … Gewichtiger freilich noch ist die Erwägung, daß ein Volk, das auf die Höhe politischer Macht-Entwicklung geführt ist, nur so lange seine geschichtliche Stellung mit Erfolg behaupten kann, als es sich als Träger einer Cultur-Mission erkennt und beweist. Dies ist zugleich der einzige Weg, der auch Bestand und Wachstums des nationalen Wohlstandes, die nothwendige Grundlage dauernder Macht-Entfaltung, verbürgt. Die Zeiten, in denen Deutschland fast nur durch intellektuelle und literarische Thätigkeit an den Aufgaben unseres Jahrhunderts mitgearbeitet hat, sind vorüber.” W. Smith. The Ideological Origins of Nazi Imperialism. On Fabri, see in particular p. 35–37. Smith insists that Fabri was interested purely in migrationist colonialism, despite references in his work to German spheres of influence such as the decaying Ottoman Empire. Smith concedes the anachronistic nature of the latter designation, using as it does an early twentieth century term for an essentially nineteenth century movement. The naming of these two imperialist strands is of not of as much importance as the substance of Smith’s claim that the two strands were spawned from different social classes, and that this class distinction was in fact imprinted upon the discussion and conduct of the differing modes of imperialism. Smith. Ideological Origins. p. 83. Smith. Ideological Origins. p. 53. Smith. Ideological Origins. pp. 83–84. F. Fabri. Bedarf Deutschland. p. 78. F. Fabri. Bedarf Deutschland. p. 78. F. Fabri. Bedarf Deutschland. p. 84. F. Fabri. Bedarf Deutschland. pp. 174–77. F. Fabri. Bedarf Deutschland. p. 176. F. Fabri. Bedarf Deutschland. p. 174. This ambivalence regarding the utility of private sector colonizing efforts was fully explored in W. Hübbe-Schleiden. Colonisations-Politik und Colonisations-Technik, eine Studie über Wirksamkeit und Rentabilität von Colonisations Gesellschaften. L. Friederichsen & Co., Hamburg, 1883. See esp. pp. 99–100, 122, 130, 157ff. In essence, he viewed private sector colonies as important points of penetration or beachheads that would, however, in the long-term prove virtually useless unless they were at some point supported and greatly expanded by a proimperialist German government. W. Hübbe-Schleiden. Deutsche Colonisation, eine Replik auf das Referat des Herrn Dr Friedrich Kapp über Colonisation und Auswanderung. L. Friederichsen & Co., Hamburg, 1881. p. iii. “Unserer Ueberzeugung nach ist die Organisation der deutschen Massen;Auswanderung eine Phase in dem Ringen der deutschen Nation nach Selbständigkeit … ‘Los von Nord–Amerika!’ das sei die Parole für die deutsche Auswanderungspolitik! Diese Parole wird im Laufe der Generationen zu rein deutschen überseeischen Staatsbildungen führen und damit dem Deutschtum die ihm gebührende Weltstellung sichern—eine Weltstellung, welche vielleicht die gegenwärtige des anderen großen Zweiges der germanischen Völkerfamilie zu ergänzen

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91.

92. 93.

94. 95. 96. 97.

98. 99. 100. 101.

102. 103.

oder sogar abzulösen berufen sein wird.” The quote is taken from Export, No. 38, II, Berlin, 21 September 1880. p. 366. Hübbe-Schleiden’s publisher, the fellow pro-colonial Hamburger, Friederichsen, is also worth noting. W. Hübbe-Schleiden. Überseeische Politik: eine Culturwissenschaftliche Studie. L. Friederichsen & Co., Hamburg, 1881. p. 14. “Der Wohlstand der Nationen geht mit ihrem Welthandel Hand in Hand und gedeiht nur im Verhältnisse zur Entwicklung dasselben; ebenso aber wächst auch ihre geistige Cultur und ihre nationale Bedeutung unter den Völkern der Erde in demselben Maasse, wie sie sich als Nationen activ im Kreise der Civilisation bethätigen.” W. Hübbe-Schleiden. Überseeische Politik. p. 120. W. Hübbe-Schleiden. Überseeische Politik. p. 125. “Ebenso wird auch Nichts so sehr das Bestehen unseres eigenen Reiches sichern können, als die Ausdehnung unserer Nationalität über fernere reiche Wirthschaftsgebiete, welche unserer Macht, unserm nationalen Prestige und unserm Wohlstande als Basis dienen können, auf der sie fort und fort wachsen und gedeihen werden … Wenn wir irgendwo in der Welt einen grossen Geldbeutel liegen haben, an welchem alle Glieder der deutscher Nation ein gleiches gemeinsames Interesse haben … so wird ein solches materielles Interesse ein stärkes Band unserer nationalen Einheit sein.” W. Hübbe-Schleiden. Überseeische Politik. p. 121. W. Hübbe-Schleiden. “Entwurf einer Paraguay Gesellschaft.” November 1881. In BA Berlin. R8023/262. Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft. pp. 101ff. His membership application can be found in BA Berlin. R8023/256a. Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft. p. 62. W. Hübbe-Schleiden. “Entwurf einer Alto-Uruguay Companie mit einem Action-Capital von 3000000M. Colonisation der Nord-Argentinischen Provinz Misiones, der Jesuiten-Missionen des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts.” In R8023/262. pp. 139ff. W. Hübbe-Schleiden. “Entwurf einer Alto–Uruguay Companie.” p. 163. B. Anderson. Imagined Communities. W. Hübbe-Schleiden. Überseeische Politik. p. 129. W. Hübbe-Schleiden. Überseeische Politik. p. 129. “Durch eine solche selbständige culturelle Leistung allein kann erst die deutsche Nation sich zu dauernder Lebensfähigkeit entwickeln … Das Bestehen einer Nationalität erfordert selbstständige culturelle Bethätigung und wird wesentlich bedingt durch eine solche. Das Werden und Vergehen der Völker im Laufe der Weltgeschichte beweist, dass nationale Existenz ohne solche active Entwicklung auf die Dauer nicht möglich ist. Wie die ganze Menschheit continuirlich dem Ideale der Cultur, einer organischen Entwicklung der Civilisation zustrebt, so muss auch jede Nation, welche ein lebensfähiges Glied dieses Menschengeschlechtes bleiben will, sich an diesem gemeinsamen Streben betheiligen.” H. Gründer. Geschichte der deutschen Kolonien. p. 30. W. Hübbe-Schleiden. Überseeische Politik. p. 142. “In der jetzt heranwachsenden Generation keimt still die Saat einer deutschen Weltmacht; wenn diese Generation zum Mannesalter herangereift sein wird, dann endlich wird sich Deutschland zu einer Weltstellung ersten Ranges erheben, dann endlich wird das deutsche Volk den ihm gebührenden Weltberuf erfüllen als tonangebende Nation im Kreise des Menschengeschlechts.”

Chapter 7

GEOGRAPHY AND ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE SERVICE OF IMPERIALISM


I

n terms of scholarly literature dealing with the extra-European world, Ernst Jacob, in his 1938 collection of documentary material relating to German colonialism, listed the flurry of research devoted merely to Africa, asserting that between 1800 and 1884, around two hundred studies were published.1 Such works were in a long tradition of scientific research of many potentially useful overseas lands that had its roots in the Vormärz era.2 Although some professed an overtly agitational, pro-imperialist agenda, much of the research was less obviously “committed” research, and therefore far more subtle in the assertion of a pro-imperialist position. Yet the furthering of imperialist discourse and praxis via ostensibly apolitical scientific research cannot be underestimated, in its offering up of the non-European world as an object for European scrutiny, exploration, and ultimately, subjugation. This nexus, between scientific knowledge and imperialist power, and the understanding and controlling of colonial lands, has been discussed by Homi Bhabha: Its predominant function is the creation of a space for a “subject peoples” through the production of knowledge in terms of which surveillance is exercised … It seeks authorization for its strategies by the production of knowledges of colonizer and colonized which are stereotypical but antithetically evaluated. The objective of colonial discourse is to construe the colonized as a population of degenerate types on the basis of racial origin, in order to justify conquest and to establish systems of administration and instruction … [It is] a form of governmentality that in marking out a “subject nation,” appropriates, directs and domi-

Notes for this section begin on page 172.

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nates its various spheres of activity … [It] produces the colonized as a social reality which is at once an “other” and yet entirely knowable and visible.3

The link between the scholarship of the metropole and imperialism has already been illustrated in the field of philosophy by Ranajit Guha, whose discussion of Hegel’s Aesthetics and Lectures on the Philosophy of World History points out the great lengths to which Hegel went to produce a theory of the non-European past that, by simply arguing that without a (European-style) state there could be no history, marked out India and South America as legitimate targets for European colonization. “Nations,” Hegel argued, “whose consciousness is obscure, or the obscure history of such nations, are … not the object of the philosophical history of the world … —the spirits of those nations which [have] become conscious of their inherent principle, and have become aware of what they are and what their actions signify, are its object.” Furthermore, Hegel argued, civilized nations are entitled “to regard and treat as barbarians other nations which are less advanced than they are … in the consciousness that the rights of these other nations are not equal to theirs and that their independence is merely formal.”4 In the Aesthetics, Guha argues, Hegel revealingly turned to the literary production of the European past to illustrate this, when he approvingly described the high culture literature that seemed to corroborate his understanding of the historical clash between inferior and superior cultures, citing, the Iliad where the Greeks take the field against the Asiatics and thereby fight the first epic battles … that led to the wars which constitute in Greek history a turning point in world history. In a similar way the Cid fights against the Moors; in Tasso and Ariosto the Christians fight against the Saracens, in Camoens the Portuguese against the Indians. And so in almost all the great epics we see peoples different in morals, religion, speech, in short in mind and surroundings, arrayed against one another; and we are made completely at peace by the world-historically justified victory of the higher principle over the lower … In this sense, the Epics of the past describe the triumph of the West over the East.5

Guha, like Bhabha, emphasizes how the very systems and categories that underpin a Eurocentric philosophy of world history, as a narrative of global progress under European tutelage, are actually based upon an erroneous reading of extra-European history and a flawed scientific understanding of non-European peoples and lands. For Hegel, world history was European history in its imperialist endeavors abroad. As both Fanon and Said have made clear, this history is not that of the colonized, but that of the colonizers. A subspecies of European history, it is only meaningful when it is reconnected to a more complete world history that accounts for the history and culture of societies prior to the arrival of Europeans.6 Bhabha and Guha offer important insights, not only to works of philosophy, but also for the empirically based social sciences, as well as popular culture representations of non-European lands, which shared the Hegelian view of Europe’s

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role in the world, by denying the legitimacy of the pre-European societies and histories.7 Exemplifying this process of colonial ordering through scientific method was the classification and ordering of the populations and cultures of non-European lands as conducted in the discipline of anthropology, as Andrew Zimmerman has demonstrated.8 As a scientific foundation of liberal expansionism in Germany, the discipline of anthropology was predicated on the supposition that the study of non-Europeans was the study of ‘societies supposedly lacking history and culture.” As such, anthropology was, as Zimmerman makes clear, instrumental in the creation of the binary opposition between the cultured European Self and the Naturvölker of the colonial landscape.9 Zimmerman’s analysis of anthropology, no less than Guha or Bhabha’s analysis of European thought, usefully critiques the subjection of colonized peoples to the paradigmatic assumptions of a Eurocentric scientific taxonomy that a priori inferred their inferiority through the conflation of the norms of European culture with the hallmarks of a universally accepted “advanced” culture, thereby constructing extra-European lands as a rightful domain for the industrialized energies of European powers. In much the same way as philosophy and anthropology, geography attempted to add its own theoretical contribution to the categorizing and characterizing of indigenous peoples along hierarchical lines, just as it sought the classification of landforms, fauna, and flora in the potentially useful extra-European world.10 However, in addition to this assemblage of a hierarchy of the rightfully ruled and ruling, was the material role that seemingly disinterested, “wissenschaftlich” associations played in the furthering of German imperialism, in the “opening up” and “development” of non-European lands for German trade and industry and culture. As has been discussed in the case of Hamburg, the Geographical Society, with its leading lights Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden and Ludwig Friederichsen, was instrumental in the maintenance of imperialist discourse within the city’s mercantile and educated liberal circles, and not merely for the sake of pure scientific interest.11 Far from a radical innovation, the critical role played by the Geographical Society in Hamburg was uncannily similar to that played by societies all over Germany. Demonstrating this were the professed aims of the 1870s German umbrella geographical society, the Deutsche Afrikanische Gesellschaft, which counted amongst its key members the directors of the Geographical Societies of Rhineland/Westphalia (based in Bonn), Silesia (based in Breslau), Frankfurt, Halle, Munich, and Hamburg.12 In its charter, the society stated clearly that it had three goals, which it attempted to pursue simultaneously: 1. the scientific researching of the unknown regions of Africa. 2. their opening up for culture, trade and commerce 3. consequently, the peaceful elimination of the slave trade.13

It is the second point that is of interest, in its illustration of the self-conscious movement away from the mere production of ostensibly “pure” knowledge, which had been the hallmark of the Society’s predecessor the Deutsche Gesellschaft zur

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Erforschung Aequatorial-Afrikas, toward more openly imperialist activity. This acknowledged “widening of the objectives”14 to include both “scientific” and “more practical endeavors”15 demonstrates the extent to which this coordinating body of Germany’s geographical societies subscribed to the notion that the expeditions it sent to Africa were not mere attempts at cataloguing indigenous cultures, fauna, and flora, but that they had practical, material applications, not the least of which was “… the construction of forward positions, to serve partially as operations bases for travelers, and partially as cultural and trading way-stations.”16 Just what the Society’s idea of a “Cultur- und Handels-Mittelpunkt” entailed was summarized in an address delivered to the Geographische Gesellschaft zu Greifswald in 1882, in which the “cultural mission” of Germany was elucidated. In an era of private sector imperialism, before wholesale annexation of territories was possible, the guiding principle was the harnessing of indigenous populations for German trade and industry: Develop, win for culture, uncivilized lands and their inhabitants, certainly not through the plundering of their existing treasures, rather only through culture itself, through rising the level of productivity, and through cultivating in the widest sense of the word … for this, their own economic and intellectual work, the uncivilized peoples, like our children, must first be educated.17

The explicit connection made between culture and increased productivity by this address is instructive, and demonstrates what the notion of a “cultural mission” (as a symbolically resonant trope of imperialist discourse) actually denoted—the construction of a servile colonial workforce that worked for the material benefit of German trade and industry. This definition of “cultural mission,” as used by German exploration and geographical associations in the pre-colonial period, far from evolving, persisted throughout the entirety of the German colonial period, as Jürgen Zimmerer’s work pointing to the importance of a servile indigenous workforce in the case of German South West Africa has so acutely demonstrated.18 In terms of establishing the existence of an interrelationship between, and in some instances, the near-identical membership of imperialist and scientific associations, an over-representation of geographical and anthropological organizations in colonial organizations can be seen in the membership records of the Kolonialverein of 1882. In its founding drive for members, the Kolonialverein was not only successful in attracting the leading colonial propagandists Friedrich Fabri and Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden, and liberal notables Johannes Miquel and Rudolf von Bennigsen, but also a number of representatives of geographical associations. The Kolonialverein board of directors included both the chairperson and the secretary of Frankfurt’s Verein für Geographie und Statistik, Geh. Sanitätsr. Dr. Vorrentrapp and Dr. med. E. Cohn-Corr.19 Amongst rank and file “first wave” enlisted members who included their professional capacity on their application form were Dr. Theobald Fischer, Professor of Geography in Kiel,20 JJ Kettler, editor of the Zeitschrift für Wissenschaftliche Geographie in Karlsruhe, Dr. AB Meyer,

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the director of the Royal Zoological and Anthropological-Ethnological Museum in Dresden,21 L. Friederichsen, Secretary of the Geographical Society in Hamburg,22 and Dr. Rudolf Credner, Professor of Geography and Chair of the Geographical Society in Greifswald.23 These members brought with them not only their personal enthusiasm for German colonies, but also their official standing as representatives of prominent geographical organizations and institutions, offering the colonial movement a degree of scientific credibility and respectability, as well as intellectually formidable representatives all over Germany. Together with the more famous pro-colonial agitators of the Kolonialverein, these members of the professorial Bildungsbürgertum could present the intellectual and cultural benefits of empire in a more “scientific” and therefore perhaps more credible fashion than that which could be offered by the organization’s other wing, the Wirtschaftsbürgertum, represented by the merchant and business community, whose immediate commercial interests in gaining privileged access to colonial lands were more apparent.24 The link between researching the to-be colonized lands and the resulting material praxis was effectively described by the founder of the Kolonialverein, Freiherr Hermann von Maltzan, who saw the establishment of colonies in previously researched lands as simply a rightful reward for the expenditure on research. Far from being a reward in itself, the accumulation of knowledge about the nonEuropean world was merely a necessary step along the path to consolidating German power over it; first intellectual power, thence as enabled and warranted by this intellectual power, then material power: “We Germans have spent wealth and blood to explore many lands; if we now claim the reward for our deeds, we ask only for that which is deserved and reasonable.”25 This line of reasoning is also evident in the premier geographical journal of the period, which often discussed overseas research in terms of its material benefits for German commerce and settler colonialism.26 Ranging from feature articles to book reviews, the discussions of the significance of German geographical exploration illustrate the extent to which the discipline was viewed as an applied rather than merely theoretical field. Commencing publication at a time in which statist expansionism, as represented in the debates of the Frankfurt Nationalversammlung, is supposed to have wound itself up entirely, the first issue of Petermann’s Mittheilungen in 1855 depicted the significance of Dr. Heinrich Barth’s African expedition in terms of his opening up African waterways to European shipping and activating European “interest” in the area, becoming in the process “a proud Germany”: Barth’s main merit … is his iron tenacity, the endurance with which he pursued his goal; through which and through the emergent results of it, a new strong interest for this part of the world has been created, and shipping on African currents by European steamboats has once again begun.27

For his part, Barth, the son of a Hamburg merchant and a one time Privatdozent in classical geography and colonialism,28 viewed his expedition and research

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in precisely the same manner. Making the explicit link between geographical exploration and the commercial imperatives that underwrote it, Barth proclaimed in his preface that, “it will be my greatest satisfaction if this narrative should give a fresh impulse to the endeavors to open the fertile regions of Central Africa to European commerce and civilization.”29 Far from misinterpreting Barth’s research in relating it to European expansionism, the Mittheilungen paid Barth the compliment of concurring with his view of his research’s utility for colonization and the “opening up” of Africa to European commerce, as well as praising his success in this endeavor. Following this article on Barth in the inaugural issue of the Mittheilungen was a recommendation of German colonialism in Uruguay. Quoting an unnamed (and seemingly not impartial) report, the article offered no mitigating, negative editorial comment on the praise lavished upon Uruguay as a potential destination for German emigrants, in its statement that: This beautiful, healthy, fertile and promising country is primarily suitable for those Germans used to agricultural work, that is for the cultivation of grain, maize, potatoes, flax, hemp, clover and rapeseed … and thereby satisfy the European needs for them, so far as the occupation of the country by European hands makes this possible…30

Firmly anchoring the discussion of Uruguay in the economic requirements of Europe, the article praised the climate and accessibility of Uruguay for both European trade and emigration. South American colonies were also warmly recommended in the opening article of the first issue of 1856, whose title demonstrated the utilitarian assumptions of much geographical research in Germany—“Die Staaten im Strom-Gebiet des La Plata in ihrer Bedeutung für Europa.” Stressing the utility of appropriating overseas colonies, the article at first coyly expressed the opinion that “the general character of this expansive … stretch of land is highly inviting for settlement.”31 However, by the end of the article, the recommendations of its author Dr. v. Reden became far more strident in asserting the need for Germany to colonize the region: A peaceful settlement should be realized through the leading of German migrants to the La Plata region. Their endless importance has been highlighted by only a few; almost no one remembers that in this manner concentrated settlements for the separated branches of our race can be created, where each bud ripens into a fruit for the Fatherland, where each heartbeat finds its echo in the old homeland. Peaceful colonization transplants German language, German customs, and the German way of life generally to the new homeland; thereby the abiding spiritual ties are made permanent, as countless examples demonstrate.32

The author further discussed the longevity of his views, dating back to an 1843 proposal that he had penned. He also complained of a lack of governmental support, pouring scorn on governments who tried to make emigration difficult, “as if one could hinder what is necessary.”33 By way of conclusion, v. Reden reiter-

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ated his assertion that Uruguay, Entre Rios, and Paraguay, as well as sections of Corrientes and Buenos Aires, were natural sites for German imperialism: There shall millions of the hardworking poor find the necessary raw materials for worthwhile employment; there is the emigration point where 10,000 people of one race will suffice to preserve their independence, the customs of their homeland and the language of their parents and descendents.34

The 1856 edition of Wilhelm Roscher’s Kolonien, Kolonial-Politik und Auswanderung was also reviewed by the journal. The review concurred with Roscher’s view that colonialism represented a priority for the German people and society. The journal also expressed the hope that the book’s significance and recognitionworthy nature would be acknowledged by the German reading public.35 Despite its brevity, this endorsement of one of Germany’s primary colonial agitators gives an interesting insight into the extent to which pro-imperialist literature was welcomed within the discipline of geography, despite its seeming lack of a prominent political profile in the post–1848 era. It also serves as an example of how liberal imperialism was able to perpetuate itself as a discourse at the sub-political level, transmitted through discussions in professional journals and scientific publications. Far from a “stranded theorist” devoid of social or intellectual context, Roscher had not only a readership, but also an important scientific readership that was in a position to undertake the intellectual and explorative preparations for any eventual state policy of imperialism, whilst enabling German trade to penetrate the extra-European world and for private sector colonies to be established during the era of imperialism from below. The role of transmitting imperialist liberal culture is similarly discernible in reviews published in the Mittheilungen for the pro-colonial works of Hermann Blumenau, Joh. Aug. Prestien, and one-time Frankfurt Nationalversammlung representative, Julius Fröbel, all of which were discussed in review articles published in 1858.36 Blumenau’s careful summation of the situation in his South American colony was noted, and his request for more German emigrants highlighted, whilst Prestien and Fröbel were criticized for presenting an immoderate and ultimately unscientific picture of colonial life. Despite highlighting the shortcomings of the individual works, the notion that colonialism was a desirable end was not of itself critiqued. Rather, the criticism stemmed from the perception that the authors of the works were not always as scrupulous as they should have been in remaining objective in their writings. So whilst Fröbel was criticized for misrepresenting colonial Canada as an impossibility for German emigrants, the reviewer by no means attempted to discount Fröbel’s enthusiasm for South America.37 Of course, objectivity and academic rigor were not always the highest values set upon reviewed works, as the 1862 review of Friedrich Gerstäcker’s three volume Achtzehn Monate in Süd-Amerika und dessen Deutschen Kolonien shows. This work, as the reviewer stated, was not a strictly scientific work, but it was nonetheless praised as a clear contribution to the better understanding of Germany’s South American colonies in Peru, Chile, and South Brazil.38

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In 1860, Perthes’ Mittheilungen published an article on German emigration to Chile, by Dr. R. Philippi, a professor of natural history at the University of Santiago, Chile.39 Philippi, along with his brother, had been a tireless campaigner for German colonialism in Chile. In a long and detailed article, Philippi stressed the suitability of Chile for German migrants, albeit for those who had a trade or were used to being manual workers. Despite its perambulatory style, Philippi’s argument came down to one central argument—that Chile was a suitable colonial environment for German settlement.40 The sentiment that German colonial beachheads in South and Central America were an important political and economic development was also displayed in a series of articles by Dr. Moritz Wagner in 1863, where he discussed the suitability of certain “races” and cultures for the colonization of the various regions in the Americas.41 Apart from his concern about the climatic suitability of the region for Europeans and the question of settling freed American slaves in Central America, Wagner, particularly in the third article, also referred to the fertility of the land in Chiriqui and the success of German settlers in the region, comparing the region favorably to post Monroe Doctrine Texas, “as Texas has proved itself more and more as one of the less suitable countries for German colonists.”42 His conclusion finally revealed why he had been so concerned with presenting the geographic and demographic particulars of the region—pioneering German settlers were to prepare the way for subsequent German migration waves: It is only important, that German colonization in general has established itself well; it will, just as in the beautiful neighboring land Costa Rica, with the continuance of an ordered and quiet state of the country, prepare for a larger wave of immigration…43

Shorter articles and notices in the Mittheilungen also played their role in maintaining the profile of colonialism. Often, reports of German colonies in South America would be presented, which mixed empirical data and statistics with favorable editorial comment. The source of these shorter pieces was often the newspapers of the colonies themselves, and as such hardly critical sources. Exemplifying this was an article in 1866 on Santa Catharina.44 After some relatively pedestrian information about the size of the population, and the colony’s geographical features, it endorsed the potential of Santa Catharina as a site for German settlement with the concluding sentence, “The hinterland, the coastal land at the foot of the mountains as well as the highlands of the province consist to a large extent of pristine, state land wilderness that offers a wide area for colonization.”45 Perhaps more significant were the short reports appearing later in 1866, which first discussed in empirical terms the German colonies of Blumenau and Santa Catharina, with a follow-up article making a positive qualitative assessment of German colonial efforts in Brazil.46 This assessment, discussing Johann Sturz’s attack on the Brazilian colonies, argued that Sturz’s judgment should be set aside, due to the fact that it was based on personal bitterness rather than any quantifiable problem with the colonies themselves. To combat Sturz, the opinion of

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geographer Woldemar Schultz of Dresden was enlisted, who concluded that the area was “the natural basis for a gradual colonization of the entire La Plata region.”47 With his work praising the fertility of the land, the abundance of natural resources, and the suitability of the climate, Schultz’s research was positioned as a pro-colonial, scientific counterweight to the negative publicity generated by Sturz’s aggressive personal attacks. In 1867, reports from the colonies detailing the building of roads in the Brazilian mountains were written, as well as a review of each of the Brazilian colonies.48 The former, detailing the Fleiß of German workers and portraying their ability to overcome adversity, was a favorable depiction of Germany’s role in civilizing the wild lands of South America, bringing progress to the region. Interestingly, the latter, ostensibly a statistical report on the colonies, was not only positive about the main German colonies of Blumenau and Dona Francisca, but also went to great lengths to explain the independence of these colonies from the Brazilian government, stating that “the colonies, which can and may be directly subject to the government are the military and penal colonies—no others.”49 The affairs of the colonies, it was reported, were a matter for the directors of those colonies, leading to the impression being given to the readership of the Mittheilungen that German emigrants and private sector imperialist organizations were to be given a free hand in their attempts to Germanize Brazil, encouraging them to believe that broader colonization plans had a reasonable chance of success. By the time of the post-unification era, Africa was playing a greater role in discussions of where Germany’s future would lie. An 1875 article on the Deutsche Afrikanische Expedition discussed in detail the role that exploration in Africa would play in constructing national identity: … so should, indeed must we view the German African Expedition as an opportunity for the German Reich, that satisfies the newly elevated national self assurance through the magnificence of the plan and that promises a bright place for Germany in the history of discovery by some advantageous successes.50

Even at this early stage, a race for Africa had been proclaimed, albeit a race for the exploration and “discovery” of Africa.51 The osmotic nature of the divide between exploration and empire was signaled in an article in 1877, in which the practicality of a trans-African railway was discussed, as an adjunct not only to exploration, but also to trade and the permanent trading stations constructed by the European powers active in Africa.52 Overt references to nominally universal cultural values, employed as a means of justifying the processes of European expansionism, and the harnessing of indigenous African societies for the good of the European economy, further illustrate the normalization of the use of scientific research for directly imperialist ends and the conflation of scientific discourse with liberal imperialist discourse. The civilizing process, the article argued, had been hitherto hampered by the existence of the Sahara desert, a geographical fact that might now be overcome by the construction of a railway:

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On this all agree, that culture and civilization is most easily brought to barbarous races through commerce and trade with higher nations. The closer two peoples are bound to one another through commercial interactions, the more quickly similar relationships can be built … Indeed, we believe that we might claim, that if the Sahara was not there, Central Africa would have been opened up for European trade a long time ago.53

In just two short years, the discussion in the Mittheilungen of Africa as a realm for discovery had been transformed into a discussion of Africa as a site for European trade and expansion. African lands were “new regions” ready for Europeans to “exploit,” a realm of “unbounded wealth in raw materials of all types” that Germany simply could not “let slip [by] for our trade.”54 Despite this new interest in Africa, the journal did not entirely forget South America, and it continued to report on opportunities for Germany there. As late as 1879, the journal was still presenting Henry Lange’s argumentation against Johann Sturz’s by now antiquated negative view of German colonialism in Brazil,55 whilst in 1880, the journal advertised the publication of a lecture on the subject of “die deutsche Arbeit in fremden Erdtheilen”: With the high degree of interest that German emigration and colonization now excites, there now comes a lecture by the General Consul Dr. C. v. Scherzer, who has traveled in every part of the world … After an overview of the influence that German work for cultural development has exercised in a number of countries, he recommends with warm words German colonization and he makes preferential mention of Central America, Chile, South Brazil, the lands of La Plata, the Samoan Islands, the Solomon Islands, New Guinea, and North-East Borneo.56

The publication of KE Jung’s work Deutsche Kolonien was also praised by the journal as meeting a high demand, now that countless colonial plans and projects were signaling “that German colonization is still on the agenda.”57 Of course, not all Germans were monolithically in favor of Germany’s existing private sector colonies in South America, as a short review article in 1881 shows.58 However, even in this review, the reviewer’s judgment appears to have been reserved, with an authorial distance between the reviewer and the anticolonial geographical work constructed, as demonstrated in the relatively mild criticism implicit in the statement: “the discussed efforts to populate South Brazil heavily with Germans … does not find agreement everywhere …”59 In a later instance in which a work that was somewhat negative in its attitude toward colonialism was reviewed, this was balanced by an immediate discussion of a work that was “somewhat less pessimistic” in so far as it did not negatively prejudge the success of Germany’s South American colonies.60 Coming at the end of this long-standing support for colonial projects and the expansion of German overseas influence and trade, the journal was unsurprisingly very supportive of the aims of the Deutscher Kolonialverein, and in the important year of 1884, the Kolonialverein was twice given a voice in the journal, enabling them to be in a position “to awaken interest and understanding for the colonial

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mission of Germany amongst all circles.”61 In these articles, the journal’s readership was given a concise summary of not only the association’s aims, but the material benefits that underwrote them. Discussing the benefits that would flow to German trade and industry as well as to the German emigrants themselves, the articles presented the colonial task in its most naked form yet, with little use of the by now ritualized tropes of imperialist discourse that explained the process as part of a civilizing mission. In Cameroon for example, the task was simply “to make the blacks suitable for culture and work” in order that they might be used as an inexpensive labor force in German plantations. As for the rest of Africa, it was Germany’s task to open up the continent, so that it might be profitably exploited by such firms as Woermann’s of Hamburg.62 This was viewed as a competitive yet broadly collaborative project for Europe’s liberal nations, as articles discussing the place of France and England in the colonial picture made clear.63 In discussing the role of an African railway in opening up Africa to European trade, Dr. Rohlfs, for example, proposed the construction of a pan-European association that could take the project on behalf of all of the imperialist powers operating in Africa.64 Similarly, French rule in and around Senegal was seen as opening up possibilities for Germany in the area.65 At this stage, Germany’s geographers, so dependent on the support of foreign powers to fund their overseas expeditions in the past, viewed the “opening up” and exploitation of colonial lands as a joint enterprise shared between the colonizing Europeans. The harnessing of colonial resources and indigenous peoples, it was seen, was a burden to be shared amongst the world’s advanced liberal nations.66 Occasionally, the journal, in undertaking a theoretical ordering of peoples also offered instances of self-reflexive meta-analysis, in which the utilitarian assumptions that lay at the heart of anthropological research were overtly discussed. One such instance was in an early discussion of indigenous Africans.67 Giving the journal’s readership an overview of the discipline, the author wrote: Ethnology was at an earlier stage interested in the Hottentots. That is now otherwise, and in fact a race, infamous (if unfairly) for its stupidity, and to a large extent downtrodden through colonization, and apparently without a future for development is not very suitable for attracting sustained attention.68

Researchers paid little attention to this apparently “stupid” race, as it was expected that their society would not survive the crushing effects of the colonization and “development” process. Unable to be “civilized” into becoming a suitable workforce, they were deemed by most, although interestingly not by the writer of this particular article, as irredeemably impoverished as a society, without a future and therefore not worth the effort of researching. The tacit acceptance by the vast majority of ethnologists of the notion that the future of entire “races” was dependent upon their malleability, although obliquely critiqued in this instance, is a revealing anthropological insight into the scientific prehistory of Germany’s tragic interaction with the peoples of South West Africa.

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However, such reflective insights into the utilitarian logic of expansion-oriented science were indeed rare and were constrained within a more pervasive and intricate discourse of hierarchical theoretics. Apart from the usual discussions of the climatic suitability of some regions for particular races,69 articles in the journal formulated several different racial hierarchies. Exemplifying this was the article by Göttingen’s Professor Rudolf Wagner, in which he proclaimed the need for a revision of the racial categories used in anthropological analysis.70 This could only be done, he argued, through an exhibition of skulls from all over the world, from which a racial taxonomy could be derived.71 As Andrew Zimmerman has argued, the perception of objectivity accompanying this construction of hierarchical taxonomies through the scrutiny of skulls and human remains was based upon the notion that these colonized objects of study, as represented by their skeletal remnants, could be studied impartially, ostensibly without reference to their culturally constructed subjectivity.72 In fact, the attributing of significance to supposedly determining physiological differences simply reinscribed preexisting culturally constructed social hierarchies and explained them via the external markers of bodily difference, with the results presented as objective scientific knowledge. In this manner, “racial” characteristics became a short hand for social and cultural status in the colonial situation. Clearly, the strain of maintaining the semblance of scientific impartiality was great, and from time to time it did slip, so as to allow comments to emerge that were based on the more pervasive cultural chauvinism and use-value logic that was the hallmark of anthropological discourse, such as the following, written in 1878 with reference to the “Bushmen” of what would in six years become German South-West Africa: “How these most miserable of the miserable should come into the area of the missions and of civilization remains a mystery to us. They live so scattered and so restlessly, they are so impenetrable and so brutishly dull-witted that it is almost unbelievable.”73 These complaints, it seems, were aimed not so much at their inaccessibility as objects of study, but rather at the hindrance that their forms of culture posed to the process of harnessing them as a servile workforce, fears which the author sought to mitigate with anecdotal evidence of the Bushmen being, if well handled, “capable of service” (dienstfertig).74 Whilst not an exhaustive study of the place of the extra-European world in Perthes’ Mittheilungen, the examples that have been presented offer an insight into the overwhelmingly positive presentation of expansionist endeavors in this preeminent geographical journal. Between 1855 and 1884, a period in which colonial imperialism as a discourse was supposed to be nonexistent, the journal consistently presented Germans as not only competent global explorers and researchers, but as able and deserving settlers, traders, and colonial masters. With consistent reference to the role played by Germany and Germans in the “opening up” of the hitherto unknown and uncontrolled world by Europeans,75 Germany’s Bildungsbürgertum, through their wissenschaftlich cultural production, sought to

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bring the new German nation attention and respect abroad, whilst preparing the theoretical and scientific ground for imperialism domestically.76 With the sum total of many of the discussions within the journal being the portrait of the German people and the German nation as playing an important role in the discovery and conquering of designated colonial regions, ranging from South America to Africa, imperialism figured in Perthes’ Mittheilungen as Germany’s national mission, its Weltaufgabe.

Notes 1. EG Jacob, ed. Deutsche Kolonialpolitik in Dokumenten: Gedanken und Gestalten aus den letzten fünfzig Jahren. Dieterich’schen Verlagsbuchhandlung, Leipzig, 1938. pp. 20–23. 2. The Vormärz pro-colonial writer Johann Eduard Wappäus was, for example, a professor at the University of Göttingen and a corresponding member of the Parisian Societé de Geographie. See A. Lübcke. Welch ein Unterschied. p. 76. 3. H. Bhabha. The Location of Culture. Routledge, London, 1994. pp. 70–71. 4. R. Guha. History at the Limit of World History. Columbia University Press, New York, 2002. pp. 35, 42. See also pp. 9–10. 5. Hegel, cited in Guha. History at the Limit of World History. p. 43. 6. For recent historical approaches that have attempted this reintegration, see for example AG Frank. ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1998. Or JL Abu-Lughod. Before European Hegemony: The World System AD1250–1350. Oxford University Press, New York, 1989. 7. Hegel was of course not the only philosopher to think in Eurocentric terms. In Britain and France, John Stuart Mill and Tocqueville were theorizing in much the same way. See J. Pitts. “Empire and Democracy: Tocqueville and the Algeria Question.” In Journal of Political Philosophy, 8(2), 2000. pp. 295–318. Interestingly, JK Noyes offers Herder as an alternative voice in “late Enlightenment Germany,” which might have led German philosophers and social scientists toward a position closer to Homi Bhabha’s notion of cultural hybridity. See JK Noyes. “Commerce, colonialism, and the globalization of action in late Enlightenment Germany.” In Postcolonial Studies 9(1), 2006. pp. 81–98. 8. A. Zimmerman. Anthropology and Antihumanism in Imperial Germany. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2001. 9. A. Zimmerman. Anthropology and Antihumanism. pp. 3–4. 10. On this, see also HD Schultz & HP Brogiato. “Die ‘Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin’ und Afrika.” In U. van der Heyden & J. Zeller. Macht und Anteil an der Weltherrschaft: Berlin und der deutsche Kolonialismus. Unrast Verlag, Münster, 2005. p. 87ff. See also Noyes. “Commerce, colonialism and the globalization of action in late Enlightenment Germany.” pp. 81–98. 11. W. Nordmeyer. Die Geographische Gesellschaft. pp. 64ff. Demonstrating that this sciencecommerce relationship was not entirely monodirectional was the Hamburg merchant firm Godeffroy’s anthropological and ethnographical museum, whose collection of skulls and other artifacts offered up the Pacific for closer scientific scrutiny. For its contents see, JDE Schmeltz & R. Krause. Ethnographisch-Anthropologische Abtheilung des Museum Godeffroy in Hamburg. Ein Beitrag zur Kunde der Südsee Völker. L. Friederichsen & Co., Hamburg, 1881. The publishing house Friederichsen is worth noting.

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12. Gustav Nachtigals Nachlass. Staatsbibliothek Berlin—Preußischer Kulturbesitz. 14: Item 19. “… satzungen der Deutschen Afrikanischen Gesellschaft.” December 1876, Berlin. Also of interest is the membership of Hamburg luminaries C. Woermann, Bürgermeister Dr. Kirchenpauer, and W. O’swald. 13. Gustav Nachtigals Nachlass. 14:19. 1. “[D]ie wissenschaftliche Erforschung der unbekannten Gebiete Afrikas; 2. deren Erschliessung für Cultur, Handel und Verkehr; 3. in weiterer Folge, die friedliche Beseitigung des Sclavenhandels.” 14. Gustav Nachtigals Nachlass. 14:1. 15. Gustav Nachtigals Nachlass. 14:13. 16. Gustav Nachtigals Nachlass. 14:19. “… die Anlage von vorgeschobenen Punkten, um theils als Operationsbasen für die Reisenden, theils als Cultur- und Handels-Mittelpunkte zu dienen.” 17. BA Berlin. R8023/256a. Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft. p. 1. “Die Erschliessung des Inneren Afrikas.” “Erschliessen, für die Cultur gewinnen, lassen sich Naturländer und deren Bewohner überhaupt nicht durch Ausraubung ihrer vorhandenen Schätze, sondern nur durch Cultur selbst, durch Hebung ihrer Productivität, also durch Cultivation im weitesten Sinne des Wortes … zu dieser eigenen, wirthschaftlichen und geistigen Arbeit aber müssen die Naturvölker, sogut wie unsere Kinder, erst erzogen werden.” 18. J. Zimmerer. Deutsche Herrschaft über Afrikaner. 19. BA Berlin. R8023/256a. p. 54. 20. BA Berlin. R8023/256a. p. 45. 21. BA Berlin. R8023/256a. p. 76. 22. BA Berlin. R8023/256a. p. 80. 23. BA Berlin. R8023/256a. p. 90. 24. This is not to say that prominent members of Germany’s Wirtschaftsbürgertum did not take a part in the anthropological and geographical study of colonial societies. An important example of this was the Godeffroy Museum, established in 1860 and devoted to the study of the Pacific region. Research stemming from its collection was published in the in-house scientific periodical Journal des Museum Godeffroy. See FM Spoehr. White Falcon. pp. 27ff. 25. H. Maltzan. Rede des Freiherrn Hermann von Maltzan auf der constituirenden Generalversammlung des Deutschen Kolonialvereins zu Frankfurt am Main am 6. Dezember 1882. J. Sittenfeld, Berlin, 1882. In BA Berlin. R8023/256a. Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft. p. 241. “Wir Deutsche haben für die Erforschung vieler Länder Gut und Blut eingesetzt; wenn wir jetzt den Lohn für unsere Thaten fordern, verlangen wir nur was recht und billig ist.” 26. The journal in question is Petermann’s Mittheilungen aus Justus Perthes’ geographischer Anstalt über wichtige neue Erforschungen auf dem Gesammtgebiete der Geographie. Justus Perthes, Gotha. The issues under discussion are from 1855 to 1884. 27. Mittheilungen (1), 1855. “Dr Heinrich Barth’s Reisen.” p. 231. “Barth’s Hauptverdienst … besteht in seiner eisernen Beharrlichkeit, seiner Ausdauer, mit der er sein Ziel verfolgt hat; denn dadurch und durch die daraus hervorgegangenen Resultate ist ein neues reges Interesse für diesen Erdtheil erstanden, und die Beschiffung Afrikanischer Ströme durch Europäische Dampfboote hat erst wieder begonnen …” 28. AHM Kirk-Greene. “Heinrich Barth: A Biographical Note.” In H. Barth. Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa, Being a Journal of an Expedition Undertaken Under the Auspices of HBM’s Government in the Years 1849–1855. Vol. I. Frank Cass & Co, London, 1965. pp. x–xi. 29. H. Barth. Travels and Discoveries. p. xxxii. 30. Mittheilungen (1), 1855. “Uruguay als Feld für deutsche Auswanderung nach der neuen Welt.” pp. 231–32. “Dieses schöne, gesunde, fruchtbare und vielversprechende Land ist hauptsächlich geeignet für dem Deutschen gewohnte Ackerbau-Arbeit, also für die Anbauung von Korn, Mais, Kartoffeln, Flachs, Hanf, Klee und Rübsamen … und kann somit den Europäischen Bedarf an solchen befriedigen, soweit die Besetzung des Landes durch Europäische Hände dieses möglich macht …”

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31. Mittheilungen (2), 1856. “Die Staaten im Strom-Gebiet des La Plata in ihrer Bedeutung für Europa.” p. 2. 32. Mittheilungen (2), 1856. p. 15. “Eine friedliche Ansiedelung sollte durch die Leitung der Deutschen Auswanderer nach dem La Plata-Gebiete bewirkt werden. Ihre unendliche Wichtigkeit ist seither nur von Wenigen hervorgehoben; fast Niemand hat daran erinnert, dass dadurch Sammelplätze für die scheidenden Zweige unseres Stammes gebildet werden können, wo jede Knospe zu einer Frucht für das Deutsche Vaterland reift, wo jeder Pulsschlag der alten Heimath seinen Wiederhall findet. Die friedliche Kolonisation verpflanzt Deutsche Sprache, Deutsche Sitte, überhaupt Deutsches Leben in die neue Heimath; das hierdurch bleibende geistige Band ist unzerreissbar, wie zahlreiche Beispiele beweisen.” 33. Mittheilungen (2), 1856. p. 15. 34. Mittheilungen (2), 1856. p. 16. “Dort finden Millionen fleissiger Arme den günstigen Naturstoff lohnender Beschäftigung; dort ist das Auswanderungsfeld, wo 10,000 Menschen eines Stammes genügen, um Unabhängigkeit, heimische Sitte und die Sprache ihrer Eltern sich und ihren Nachkommen zu bewahren.” 35. Mittheilungen (2), 1856. “Wilhelm Roscher: Kolonien, Kolonial-Politik und Auswanderung.” pp. 239–40. 36. Mittheilungen (4), 1858. pp. 577, 586. 37. Mittheilungen (4), 1858. p. 586. 38. Mittheilungen (8), 1862. p. 357. 39. Mittheilungen (6), 1860. pp. 125ff. 40. Mittheilungen (6), 1860. p. 126. 41. Mittheilungen (9), 1863. “Die Provinz Chiriqui (West Veragua) in Mittel-Amerika.” pp. 16ff. “Physisch-Geographische Skizze der Provinz Chiriqui in Mittel-Amerika, mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Fragen des inter-oceanischen Verkehrs und der Neger-Colonisation.” pp. 288ff. “Neue Mittheilungen aus der Provinz Chiriqui in Mittel-Amerika.” pp. 370ff. 42. Mittheilungen (9), 1863. p. 370. 43. Mittheilungen (9), 1863. p. 372. “Wichtig ist nur, dass die Deutsche Ansiedelung überhaupt dort festen Fuss gefasst hat; sie wird eben so wie in dem schönen Nachbarland Costa-Rica bei Fortdauer der geordneten und ruhigen Zustände des Landes eine grössere Einwanderung vorbereiten …” 44. Mittheilungen (12), 1866. “Die Brasilianische Provinz Santa Catharina.” pp. 274–75. 45. Mittheilungen (12), 1866. p. 275. 46. Mittheilungen (12), 1866. “Die Deutsche Kolonie Blumenau in Brasilien,” “Die Deutsche Kolonie Santa Catharina in Brasilien,” and “Brasilien als Ziel Deutscher Auswanderung.” pp. 430–32. The source of the third of these was the Kolonie-Zeitung for Dona Francisca and Blumenau. Its unqualified reproduction here suggests the pro-colonial tendencies of both the journal and its readership. 47. Mittheilungen (12), 1866. p. 431. 48. Mittheilungen (13), 1867. “Deutsche Strassenanlagen in den Gebirgen Brasiliens.” pp. 79–80. “Die Brasilianischen Kolonien” pp. 150–52. 49. Mittheilungen (13), 1867. p.152. 50. Mittheilungen (21), 1875. “Die Deutsche Afrikanische Expedition” p. 1. “… so dürfen und müssen wir die Deutsche Afrikanische Expedition als eine Angelegenheit des Deutschen Reiches betrachten, die das neu gehobene nationale Selbstgefühl schon durch die Grossartigkeit des Planes befriedigt und bei einigem günstigen Erfolg hellstrahlenden Ruhm für Deutschland in der geographischen Entdeckungsgeschichte verheisst.” 51. Mittheilungen (21), 1875. p. 6. 52. Mittheilungen (23), 1877. “Eine Eisenbahn nach Central-Afrika.” pp. 45ff. 53. Mittheilungen (23), 1877. p. 45. “Darüber sind Alle einig, dass die Kultur und Civilisation barbarischer Stämme am leichtesten durch Verkehr und Handel mit höher stehenden Nationen

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54. 55. 56.

57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63.

64. 65. 66.

67. 68.

69.

70. 71. 72. 73.

74.

bewirkt wird. Je inniger zwei Völker durch commerzielle Beziehungen mit einander verbunden sind, desto schneller werden gleichartige Verhältnisse geschaffen werden … Das glauben wir allerdings behaupten zu dürfen, dass, falls die Sahara nicht bestände, Central–Afrika heute längst dem Europäischen Handel erschlossen wäre.” Mittheilungen (23), 1877. p. 53. Mittheilungen (25), 1879. p. 193. Mittheilungen (26), 1880. p. 364. “Bei dem hohen Interesse, welches die deutsche Auswanderung und Colonisation gerade jetzt wieder erregt, kommt ein Vortrag des in allen Welttheilen bewanderten Generalconsuls Dr. C. v. Scherzer … Nach übersichtlicher Skizzirung des Einflusses, den das deutsche Werk auf die Culturentwickelung in den verschiedensten Ländern der Erde geübt hat, empfiehlt er mit warmen Worten die deutsche Colonisation und macht vorzugsweise auf Central–Amerika, Chile, das südliche Brasilien, die La Plata-Länder, die Samoa–Inseln, Salomons– Inseln, Neu–Guinea und Nordost–Borneo aufmerksam.” Mittheilungen (29), 1883. p. 470. Mittheilungen (27), 1881. p. 397. Mittheilungen (27), 1881. p. 397. “Die genannten Bemühung, Süd–Brasilien in grossartigem Maasse mit Deutschen zu bevölkern … finden nicht überall Anklang …” Mittheilungen (30), 1884. p. 276. Mittheilungen (30), 1884. p. 40. See also p. 393. Mittheilungen (30), 1884. p. 393. “… die Neger kultur- und arbeitsfähig zu machen.” See for example Mittheilungen (29), 1883. p. 430. “Britische Annexionen an der Sierra LeoneKüste.” See also Mittheilungen (27), 1881. pp. 222ff. “Entdeckung eines neuen Handelsweges für Süd-Amerika durch Prof. Carl Wiener.” Mittheilungen (23), 1877. p. 53. Mittheilungen (28), 1882. p. 304. “Das Vordringen der Franzosen vom Senegal zum Niger, 1880–82.” Compare for example the discursive continuities between Mittheilungen (2), 1856. “Die Gebiets-Verhältnisse Central Amerika’s.” p. 270, on the role of European powers in saving South America from “alt-amerikanische Barbarei” with the statements asserting the general need to make Africans “kultur- und arbeitsfähig” in Mittheilungen (30), 1884. p. 393. These represent two separate instances, which demonstrated that competition between imperialist powers did not necessitate a negation of collaboration. Mittheilungen (4), 1858. “Die Hottentotten-Stämme und ihre geographische Verbreitung im Lichte der Gegenwart.” pp. 49ff. Mittheilungen (4), 1858. p. 49. “Die Völkerkunde interessirte sich früher sehr für die Hottentotten. Das ist gegenwärtig anders geworden, und in der That war ein Volk, wegen seiner Stupidität, wenn auch mit Unrecht, verrufen, zum grossen Theile durch Kolonisirung zertreten und scheinbar ohne Zukunft der Entwickelung, nicht sehr geeignet, auf die Dauer die Aufmerksamkeit zu fesseln.” See for example Mittheilungen (9), 1863. “Physisch-geographische Skizze der Provinz Chiriqui in Mittel-Amerika, mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Fragen des inter-oceanischen Verkehrs und der Neger-Colonisation.” pp. 288, 298–99. Mittheilungen (9), 1863. “Über die Nothwendigkeit neuer Fundamente für die geographischhistorische Anthropologie.” pp. 161ff. Mittheilungen (9), 1863. p. 164. A. Zimmerman. Anthropology and Antihumanism. pp. 86–87. Mittheilungen (24), 1878. “Hereroland, Land und Leute.” p. 309–10. “Wie diese elendesten der elenden Menschen ins Bereich der Mission und Civilisation kommen sollen, bleibt uns noch ein Räthsel. Sie leben so zerstreut und so unstät, sind so unzugänglich und thierisch stumpfsinnig, dass es fast nicht zu glauben ist.” Mittheilungen (24), 1878. p. 310.

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75. See for example the discussion of the role of Heinrich Barth, Mittheilungen (11), 1865. “Dr. Heinrich Barth.” p. 430. 76. Mittheilungen (11), 1865. p. 431.

Chapter 8

POPULAR CULTURE AND THE TRANSMISSION OF IMPERIALIST VALUES


Significantly, colonial imperialism was not merely the province of political pamphleteers or the practitioners of “high politics,” and the colonial project manifested itself in several arenas of popular culture, ranging from newspapers to novels. However, perhaps due to the very nature of these texts and their distance from high politics or official culture, this form of cultural production and transmission, signaling liberal German society’s willingness to participate in imperialist undertakings, has been ignored or, at best, understated.

Die Gartenlaube As with the scientific contents of Justus Perthes’ Mittheilungen, popular culture representations of the non-European world should be viewed as part of the overall system of imperial surveillance, ordering and domination of the colonized by the colonizers that has been theorized by Homi Bhabha.1 As informal, intimate texts, that both shaped and reflected the understanding of their consumers, magazines, novels, and artworks offered up a portrait of the colonial periphery that simultaneously confirmed the impressionistic understanding of colonies by the European reading public whilst informing and manipulating this understanding. Popular culture offered a simplified and easily digestible form of colonial “knowledge” that could be called upon consciously or subconsciously as a portable tableau of distant lands and peoples, and how they should be best handled. Notes for this section begin on page 198.

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Foremost amongst these popular representations of alterity was that of the weekly periodical Die Gartenlaube, a magazine whose origins in the nationalist project of the German liberal middle classes of the 1840s continued to influence its editorial direction long after these conditions had receded and its readership had expanded. As Kirsten Belgum has argued,2 Die Gartenlaube belonged to a liberal milieu that had been persecuted for its radicalism both prior to and after the 1848 uprising, and that despite this persecution, maintained a commitment to the liberal goals of industrialization, popular enlightenment, and nation-building. The periodical’s founder, Ernst Keil, had been imprisoned for nine months as a result of his publishing activities with such political and satirical periodicals as Laterne and Leuchtthurm.3 From the environs of cell 74 in Hubertusburg Landesgefängnis, Keil had planned for the construction of Die Gartenlaube,4 as a new periodical that would distill the essence of liberal politics and culture and further the interests of German liberals through the subtle but intensely personal medium of a seemingly apolitical family magazine. More importantly, the magazine sought to further a liberal agenda from within the realms of the private sphere, illustrating a precocious understanding of the osmotic nature of the public and private sphere divide.5 This penetration of the private sphere afforded Die Gartenlaube an enormous enunciative power, able, as it was, to speak directly to, and on behalf of, the German liberal middle classes in a situation of pronounced intimacy.6 In aiming for the domestic sphere as its arena for national discussion and social debate, Die Gartenlaube was able to situate the bourgeois family firstly as a legitimate space in which the processes of ideological conditioning and national consensus building could be carried out, and secondly, as a familial and social model worthy of nationwide emulation. Die Gartenlaube, therefore, was able to both reflect and construct the complexion and priorities of the ascendant German liberal middle classes, and thereby formulate a model of what the German nation should become.7 As Heidemarie Gruppe has pointed out, “Ernst Keil and his editorial team were in no way content to compose their articles in isolation from politics and controversies, but rather determinedly attempted to influence public opinion in the direction of liberal democratic ideals.”8 Thomas Nipperdey has pointed out that such illustrated newspapers served a broad ideological function in Germany, as an embodiment of liberal values and as a form of liberal politico-cultural engagement in and with the German nation: These new periodicals were conversational, literary and informative—about nature, foreign lands, history—warm-hearted and in no way apolitical, rather before all else liberal and national and integrative, if also harmonizing and a little idyllic and sentimental.9

Interspersed amidst the homely advice, serialized stories and stylized pictorial reproductions comprising much of the magazine was a fair degree of content that reflected the more political and material interests of its liberal readership, ranging from support for the processes of industrialization, the foregrounding of Germany as a seagoing nation, the approval of a bellicose foreign policy, and

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the promotion of national monuments as a means of instilling a national spirit.10 Linked to this broadly political content in what was ostensibly an apolitical domestic periodical was the magazine’s coverage of imperialist activity, both foreign and German. In bridging the space between the public and the domestic, Die Gartenlaube sought not to remain completely aloof from politically contentious issues, but rather to frame them in such a manner as to conceal the controversial or divisive nature of any commentary. Exemplifying this is the example given by Belgum, where the controversial issue of modernization was presented favorably through the personification and humanizing of the subject via a focus upon “heroic” individuals, whose industrial successes or innovations were synecdochically translated into narratives of national success.11 Thus, Alfred Krupp was transformed from “an aggressive industrialist who cared little for national boundaries” into a misunderstood and overlooked patriot who had suffered on behalf of the national ideal.12 A further means of this sympathetic framing of controversial issues was the use of exculpatory footnotes at the base of more politically charged articles, explaining that the issue was merely “topical” rather than party political, and therefore deserving of their readers’ attention.13 An attempt at maintaining the magazine’s apolitical stance, these footnotes in fact tended to signal that something of a politically controversial nature had been published. Although Belgum has correctly identified this process of personifying divisive political realities so as to further the normalization of liberalism as a discourse of national unity, it appears that the same process in terms of colonial and imperialist matters has escaped her notice. Curiously, Belgum has asserted that, “The fact that the magazine began reporting on German colonialism after it was already a reality stood in stark contrast to its reporting on other nationalist causes.”14 Yet this same process of humanization and exemplification was clearly evident in the reporting of imperialist issues prior to 1884. That is, just as other liberal causes had been personalized in order to make them more politically palatable, so too imperialism was explained metonymically through the exploits of representative individuals and positive case studies of imperialism in action. Clearly, the magazine was unable to report on official, statist German colonies prior to their existence; however, the magazine carried throughout the pre-colonial era a firm commitment to Deutschtum abroad, both in the private sector colonies of Germany and in the colonies of other European powers. To illustrate this, a description of the forms that the discussion of imperialism in Die Gartenlaube took is warranted. A detailed study of the entire corpus of the magazine lies well outside the scope of this study; however, even a brief survey of the years prior to Germany’s adoption of a policy of active overseas imperialism will suffice for the delineation of the modes of reportage employed for the favorable depiction of an expansionist Germany. These modes, used by Die Gartenlaube to examine German foreign affairs and events abroad concerning Germany, can be usefully divided into five different categories, each of which reveals the magazine’s support for, and shaping of, pub-

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lic opinion in favor of an imperialist German nation, within the limitations of an ostensibly apolitical magazine. Through each of these modes, concepts of German national identity were discussed, delineated, and manipulated within the context of a presentation of the encounters and interaction of Germans and the German nation with the extra-European world. The first, and by far the most prevalent, of these was the reporting on the lives and successes of German communities in the colonies of other powers, most notably in North and South America. Often these reports held out the hope that a degree of autonomy would be afforded to these communities, or in the absence of such hope, the emphasis would be on the self-reliance and self-help ethic of these communities, as well as the broad acknowledgement and fame they had won in their adopted homes. With their success, the magazine argued, the high esteem in which Germans were held as colonists was assured. More importantly, and often remarked upon, these settlements were portrayed as free from the particularism that seemed to plague the Germans within Europe. In reporting on the experiences of German settler communities abroad, Die Gartenlaube sought to highlight the ways in which these communities represented a successful German colonialism in the absence of a centralized, governmental German colonial policy. From its first issue in 1853, Die Gartenlaube narrated a form of national identity, as shaped through the encounters of German settlers with alterity. German colonists were constructed as models for cultural and political advancement in Germany itself, offering examples of how settlers were able to define themselves as Germans free of domestic Kleinstaaterei, in the absence of the domestic impediments of particularism or confessionalism. In terms of their ability to enact or perform as cohesive proto-national entities, German communities living together in foreign settlements were situated by Die Gartenlaube as exemplifying the possibility of enacting a national act of forgetting internal differences that, as Bhabha has argued, is central to the construction and narration of a totalizing national identity within a nation-state incorporating historically distinct forms of sociocultural identity and divergent political practices.15 Beginning with the first issue in 1853, Germans in North America in particular were posited as independent, intelligent, honest, and competent, in comparison with other settler groups, 16 with their competence ensuring that “through them Germany has risen greatly in esteem.” Although positioned as Germans by nationality, politically these emigrants belonged to the “Free States” of America, an oblique criticism of the illiberality of Germany’s domestic political setting in the post–1848 era.17 As free German settlers, they were invested with the national hopes and imperialist dreams of Germany’s liberal middle classes. As the work of Stefan von Senger und Etterlin has amply demonstrated (and Johann Tellkampf of the Frankfurt Nationalversammlung had hoped18), German liberals actively sought throughout the mid nineteenth century to establish a “New Germany” in North America, and then later as the consequences of the Monroe Doctrine slowly permeated German political consciousness, in South America.19

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This depiction of German settlers abroad, on the one hand winning Germany international recognition, and on the other enjoying political freedoms unavailable in Germany itself, continued as a means of supporting a liberal German nationalism based on its reputed successes overseas. Hence, by 1856, this had neatly solidified into a uniform picture of German settlers, forgetting their “Kleinstaaterei,” creating strong communities and learning to exercise their new political freedoms. In case anyone had missed the metaphorical transplantation of liberal hopes for the German nation to the American continent, one article’s author added “Germanhood will fulfill its mission first in America.”20 Similar were the reports of the “second, however happy and free Mecklenburg” established on land that twenty years early had been dotted with the “wigwam of the red sons of the forests,”21 a colony that allowed the “honest German soul” to breathe “the air of freedom.”22 According with this notion of Germans in America creating a simulacrum of a liberal Germany abroad, the report on the opening of Baltimore’s Concordia House in 1866 was rendered as the dedication of a monument to German unity, energy, and freedom, in which the writer addressed an audience in Germany via Baltimore, in terms that would have been approved of by the Nationalverein: And this monument has not been built for us here in Baltimore alone. It has been erected to honor all Germans in America. That I could I call out these words to my old Fatherland today: Unity creates strength. I wish that my words were repeated in all regions of Germany, that freedom follows unity.23

However, it was not merely North America that was offered as an ersatz liberal Germany to the readership of Die Gartenlaube, particularly with the increase in emigration from Germany to South America in the 1860s. The parameters of discussion were similar, with events abroad commented upon and then related to German national identity, how this identity was perceived by Germans in the colonies, and what lessons this held for the emerging German state. Thus, at the end of a fairly mundane report of the mercantile importance of various South American port towns, a fairly blunt message from “Germans living abroad” was sent to the magazine’s domestic readership: … they know no particularism—they want a united, large German Fatherland and greet with joy every report from home that shows that the North German—hopefully soon the German-League is growing and becoming stronger. They know best, that only then can our nation and our name be respected overseas, when we stand steadfastly united and thereby take the position amongst the nations that is our due.24

This appeal, ostensibly from the colonies, for national unity on the basis of Germany’s international standing and explicitly supporting the Norddeutsche Bund, illustrates how Die Gartenlaube attempted to use the concept of “Deutschtum abroad” as a means of furthering the liberal understanding of nationhood

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domestically. Energetic Germans in the colonies and in trading ports, it was implied, could show the sluggish Vaterland the way out of the post-revolutionary, pre-unification national impasse. Descriptions of German settlements abroad were also used to sustain liberal hopes of future imperial possessions, imaginatively transforming foreign lands into German realms, either through the use of linguistic sleights of hand such as “New York is the third largest German city in the world, in terms of the size of the population,”25 or through the explicit entertaining of imperialist fantasies, as revealed in Die Gartenlaube’s plans for the United States, which call to mind Tellkampf ’s notion of an American ersatz colony, discussed in the Frankfurt Nationalversammlung: In the United States of America, the German element is not only making itself a numerically significant proportion of the population, but has also gradually set itself up to be such a national influence, that it truly appears to be no illusory hope, that the future of the great transatlantic republic will be won for the Germans.26

South America figured similarly in such plans, with a (London based) German plan for the “conquering of an entire land that is larger than all of Germany … Indeed, the intention is … to make Ecuador a new Germany.” The plan was introduced as the latest in a series of efforts that saw, in the eye of Die Gartenlaube, the (yet to exist) German nation as “das eroberndste Volk.”27 Of course, it should be pointed out that this reporting on Deutschtum abroad also encompassed articles dealing with the issue of “white slavery,” in terms reminiscent of Johann Sturz’s and Samuel Kerst’s opposition to Brazil as a colonial destination. In these articles, it was described how unwitting Germans had taken out contracts with transport firms, agreeing to be taken to the colonies for free, in exchange for bonded labor there—labor that did not enable them to ever pay off their debt, leaving the emigrants in a state of “weiße Niggerei.”28 However, far from dampening the magazine’s enthusiasm for Germans who had emigrated, it led to calls for an interventionist government policy ensuring adequate protection for these emigrants, as well as general warnings against having dealings with reputedly unscrupulous firms.29 Such concerns notwithstanding, this first mode of reportage—the celebration of the German communities who had established themselves overseas—was a means by which Die Gartenlaube offered a view, not only of Germans flourishing overseas in a way that would make the notion of centralized German colonialism seem more viable, but also of an idealized “true” liberal German nation, discernible in its ventures and presence abroad, a nation imagined and narrated by Die Gartenlaube from within Germany as if from an external, colonial Archimedean point, ostensibly free from the parochial concerns of the Vaterland. As a form of popular anthropology, in its second mode of reportage, Die Gartenlaube offered in often incidental descriptive passages, or more tellingly as part of an overview of the fauna and flora of a foreign land, descriptive renderings of exotic landscapes, fauna, and flora that included pseudo-scientific classifications

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of the indigenous populations of the lands on which they reported. As Bhabha has pointed out, such descriptions in European texts had the effect of producing forms of knowledge about subject peoples that could be instrumentalized in the project of rule, construing “the colonized as a population of degenerate types on the basis of racial origin, in order to justify conquest and to establish systems of administration and instruction.”30 Far from clinical, empirical observations, these descriptions were often cast in moral terms, according to the indigenous peoples’ degree of docility and predisposition toward the labor tasks assigned to them by Europeans. Often, racially delineated social hierarchies were presented as advantageous to German colonization, such as in the 1853 report of life in Nicaragua, in which a three tiered system was described, comprising of a somnambulant Spanish government, a German and Spanish middle class, and an indigenous lower class, where the Europeans ruled and the indigenous people labored. For the German settler, it was argued, this social hierarchy bore all the hallmarks of a paradise, in which the aristocracy of race overcame the social stratification experienced in the industrialized Vaterland.31 It is worth pointing out that such racializing tendencies were, although overwhelmingly in the majority, not monolithic. As such, the article “Civilisation und Wildniß” by the famous travel novelist Friedrich Gerstäcker problematized the binary opposition of the title’s two terms, offering something approaching a critique of racialized, Eurocentric thinking: “Therefore we cannot simply despise the wild, curse its inhabitants as heathens and cannibals and act as if we were something special.” However, this critique appears to have been one of only two such critiques in Die Gartenlaube during the period 1853–1884, and Gerstäcker’s article called not for an end to colonial imperialism, but to the dubious moralizing that surrounded it. At the end of this apparent critique, a reluctant acceptance of the inexorable logic of the genocidal effects of European imperialist progress was conveyed, with Gerstäcker positioning the “extinction” of native populations as the inevitable consequence of a natural law: Nevertheless, civilization will and must necessarily expand further and further and eventually master the entire planet … the Indians will die out, as every dinosaur has … It will all happen, and as an unmistakable necessity too, so that the growing human race has room—room to give for his industrious talents, and he who has room to give—the Indian—falls as a sacrifice …32

Racialized social hierarchies were common within the reports of the Die Gartenlaube, and were often little more than thumbnail sketches of the population of a place, seen for example in sweeping statements such as “The Fellatahs are Mohammedan and from a much nobler, more beautiful (Berber) race than the blacks of other countries,”33 “the black children of Africa bring thousands of workers in Europe their bread,”34 or “the blacks of East Africa are products of their environment, luxuriant and therefore lazy and little disposed to undertake more than is necessary to fill their bellies from day to day.”35 However, often the language of

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science and culture was used to support the Europeans’ imperialist claims to sit at the apex of a global power pyramid, as with the following, in which the ostensible lack of culture of an indigenous population was juxtaposed quite neatly against a convenient quotation from Goethe, which shored up the European claims to cultural superiority: The natural, uncultivated man is and remains a product of the earth … a product of the climate, of landscapes and scenery. For himself, the educated man requires a meaningful moral strength in order to become master of this dependency. “No-one strolls beneath palms unpunished,” quoth Goethe.36

Similarly drawing on the ideas of European culture, this time scientific notions of evolution, was an article in the form of a published letter from Australia. Referring to a photograph accompanying the article, in which the man of culture sat with a controlling hand on the shoulder of the subdued native,37 the writer spoke of an Australian Aborigine in the following terms: “The basket-carrier is known by myself and my wife only as the ‘missing link’ [Uebergang] as one could believe that he is midway between an overgrown chimpanzee and the true homo sapien.”38 Other articles simply added caricatured illustrations to complement their racial theoretics, illustrations that focused on the grotesque and the animalistic.39 Counterpoised against this classification of indigenous peoples was the third mode of reportage, the tales of Germany’s heroic individuals abroad, its explorers, soldiers, surveyors, traders, and even missionaries, who were actively engaged in the project of “opening up” new lands for German advantage. It is here where Belgum’s useful notion that Die Gartenlaube used individuals synecdochically to represent a favored social, cultural, and/or material process can be seen as having operated, as the magazine’s editorial position cast those involved in imperialist exploration, and then later exploitation, in the most favorable of lights, as the heroic representatives of a unified, unproblematic German national character, enacting a national destiny in the wider world. Foremost amongst these national heroes was Dr. Heinrich Barth, who was lauded throughout the decades for his pioneering work in “opening up” Africa. Through him, proclaimed Die Gartenlaube, “Africa has been unlocked and a great path to the center of the secrets of the interior has been discovered.”40 Barth, who explicitly positioned his own work as a contribution to the processes of European expansionism in Africa,41 served as a model for those Germans who sought to expand the trading capacity of the German nation via the establishment of trade routes and trading colonies around the world. These individuals were viewed as strengthening Germany’s position in global trade, and furthering the nation’s reputation as a liberal, mercantile power.42 The assumptions of such activity were explained in manifestly enlightenment terms—“With trade and change, exchange and contact to whites comes culture, peaceful employment and humanity …” Accompanying such claims, however, was the assumption that what had to be found was a way that Europeans could better “use” the indigenous population.43

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Figure 8.1. Die Gartenlaube. No. 44, 1868, p. 700. This rhetorical appeal to the tropes of scientific enlightenment and the production of utilitarian imperialist knowledge of colonized lands and peoples, as both a grounds for German exploration and as a means of expressing Germany’s cultural superiority, was expressed repeatedly in the years between 1849 and 1884, lionizing German explorers as heroes of German science, supported by the entire nation: An enthusiastic movement moved through the German lands … The German people wanted to prove to the world that it knows full well to appreciate that through which it dominates the civilized and educated people of the earth—German science!44 The German expedition is a German affair; it will be a fine victory in a field in which we have never been surpassed; in addition it will contribute to Germany attaining new honor and glory abroad.45

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Figure 8.2. Die Gartenlaube. No. 12, 1856, p. 156–58.

It should be understood that such projects were not merely reported on, but also supported by Die Gartenlaube, with for example one article on an expedition to Africa accompanied by details and prices for membership in the Afrikanische Gesellschaft. In the article itself, apart from the customary personification of German imperial success in the figure of the expedition’s leadership team, the expedition was reported as being purely scientific in nature. However, it was also admitted that such geographical studies, presented as national triumphs, also served an economic end, funded predominantly by donations from the internationally active mercantile middle classes, who stood to gain from such ventures.46 The values, priorities, and interests of Germany’s liberal traders were universalized, or at least nationalized, through their repre-

Figure 8.3. Die Gartenlaube. No. 12, 1856, p. 156–58.

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Figure 8.4. Die Gartenlaube. No. 12, 1856, p.156–58. sentation in Die Gartenlaube, which became part of a network of liberal cultural and political institutions that assisted in preparing the German nation for overseas expansion and dominance. Indeed, in more honest articles, the interests of the German liberal traders who stood behind the façade of the “heroic” individuals, and their connections to and interests in imperialist activity, were more thoroughly spelled out.47 In a fourth mode of reportage, Die Gartenlaube enacted a vicarious imperialism through the empires of other European nations, scrutinizing elements of their rule, as well as the material and cultural benefits they were said to bring. Sometimes critical, particularly when Germany’s interests abroad were seen as running contrary to those of other nations, these reports generally offered a positive appraisal of both how events in the colonies were handled and of the benefits of colonialism. In these articles, the cultural norms of imperialism were transmitted to Germany, most tellingly in the reproduction of the notion that indigenous populations were destined to become a source of labor for Europe, or, as was often reported, were simply going to “die out” or be “necessarily” exterminated.

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In an 1855 report on the Dutch and English in South Africa, the necessity of exterminating an entire indigenous community was explained. In this early report, the English were seen as partially to blame for this “necessity”: If the English had only dealt honestly with the blacks … the conquering of their land for culture would already be complete. However they have made these savages savage, turned the barbarians into wild beasts … From raw materials something can be made, but not from ruined material.48

Faulty logic regarding the nature of indigenous resistance aside, what is striking here is the acceptance of the notion that, as “spoilt” peoples, some Africans necessarily required destroying—an idea reported in the English press and reproduced in Die Gartenlaube: “The Kaffers must be exterminated on the same grounds that one eradicates locusts, bedbugs, fleas and wolves in the interests of the general welfare.”49 If this article pointed to the genocidal potential of imperialism, the harsh realities, the “Schändlichkeit,” of imperialism were, on occasion spelled out and criticized, even as its inevitable, nomistic nature was ultimately reinscribed: Where the whites appear, they come as masters over all that is not their equal, turning the owners of the land into their dependents and slaves, and what appears as their enemies, what will not acquiesce to their commands, they crush and annihilate. For it is the destiny of the white race to conquer the world and to carry the banner of culture throughout all lands, and whether their victory is characterized by the demise of entire peoples, they must fulfill their task, and what races are not comparable in their cultural capacity also have no right to exist as equals.50

Nevertheless, attitudes towards indigenous populations and native insurgency were generally uncompromising, with theories of inevitable decline and disappearance more prevalent, as the bringing of culture, the teaching of “a new world order”51 was consistently positioned as a process complementing the patient (and sometimes impatient) wait for the inevitable Untergang of indigenous peoples. For the indigenous peoples of North America, it was declared in 1874: “The demise of the American Indian approaches inexorably.”52 Similarly, in South America, the concern was whether ethnographers would have the requisite time to properly study the “dying out native population,” the “destined for extinction race of red-skinned natives.”53 From Australia in 1879 came the matter-of-fact report of frontier conflicts, “that will end only with the extinction of the natives.”54 Regarding the seemingly chaotic conditions of the African coast that had interrupted a German expedition, it was declared that these conditions would persist “as long as each misdeed of the natives is not followed by swift punishment, and that can only happen when this important coastal strip is no longer without a master.” That German explorers themselves intended to return in numbers to provide the necessary firm punishment was hinted at in an extensive footnote to the article.55

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Signaling a further hardening of opinion on the question of colonial order was an 1876 report on skirmishes with indigenous Americans, which ended with the stark and unwittingly ironic proposition of the necessity of a war of genocide to ensure the lawful and peaceful nature of America: It is desirable that the first task of the republic in the second century of its existence is to cleanse the land of the Indian plague that has already cost millions and seen the sacrifice of thousands of precious lives! For when this occurs, it will be possible to open up the West, and to live in peace and security under the protection of the laws of the republic.56

Such sentiments, in the context of a family-oriented magazine, represent an acceptance of the notion of imperialism as a conquest underwritten by permissible lethal violence, rightfully unleashed if peaceful means of dispossession had been exhausted. Such “violence of the last resort,” as discussed, at times tacitly, at times overtly, approved by Die Gartenlaube, reveals the well understood genocidal potential of the forms of imperialism that German liberals supported. With the furthering of the liberal commitment to imperialism came an investigation of, and ultimately, support for the violence necessitated by the processes of imperialism. As the pro-colonial propagandist Ernst v. Weber wrote in a Gartenlaube article about the Zulus, colonial powers should first attempt peaceful means of pacification and dispossession; however, should they prove unsuccessful, then radical violence was an acceptable means of ensuring the colonies were properly subdued, until such time as a reversion to the normal modes of domination was possible: The unwise pampering of the black race, which the colonists have had to endure thus far must give way to a strict discipline, a systematic education, that alone is in a position to make a civilized people out of savage peoples … The true interests of the blacks will be served by such a reorientation of government policy. And should such a result spring from the present bloodletting, at least the blood will not have flowed for nothing.57

Political developments within German-speaking lands in Europe, in relation to their commercial, naval, and colonial policies, were reported on in the fifth mode of reportage in Die Gartenlaube related to Deutschtum abroad. Whether in the shape of potted histories of government policy, or support for new government ventures that sought to expand Germany’s engagement with the wider world, these reports were overwhelmingly in favor of Germany becoming a maritime power with a colonial capacity. Marking many of these reports was a nostalgia for the German naval fleet that had been the product of the 1848/49 Frankfurt Nationalversammlung. However, this fond commemoration was more than mere nostalgia, in that while the articles themselves focused on details from the past, their subtext was firmly directed toward future directions. Nostalgia, far from being an end in itself, was strategically used to exhort Germany’s liberal middle classes to support any future or current national naval programs, such as that instigated by the Nationalverein.

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Reportage in Die Gartenlaube on the past German fleet conformed to the same rhetorical conditions as those that had marked the discussion on the fleet in 1848/49. A fleet was a symbol of national unity and the dedication of national energies in the pursuit of an active foreign policy. It was above all a symbol of national unity and progress. In 1857, Die Gartenlaube reminded its audience of the immense symbolic importance of a naval fleet as a signifier of liberal nationhood, stressing the intense popular support for the fleet.58 Recounted were the replacing of the Hamburg flag with the German flag, the renaming of the vessel donated by Godeffroy as the “Deutschland,” the oaths of allegiance sworn to a united Germany—all details so moving that the writer was still unable to think about it without the tears welling in his eyes.59 Cheers had been raised in those times, announcing, “There is only one Germany! The German people have a Fatherland! It is armed and fortified on land and sea!” while toasts “to the first naval battle” were made.60 Such politically charged remembrances also appeared in 1859, with the central importance of a German merchant and naval fleet underscored. Sea trade, the article argued, was the most important part of Germany’s past and future industrial progress, while German naval power was seen not only as the protector of German industry abroad, but also as the “pledge of German unity.”61 The disappointment of the demobilization of the German naval fleet was seen as being a temporary state of affairs, with “lively thoughts about German naval prestige … [remaining] alive in the nation.”62 The pro-naval sentiments only strengthened in the ensuing years, as the naval campaign of the Nationalverein got underway, with an 1861 article arguing that the “disgraceful end” to Germany’s first attempts at establishing a naval fleet had only served to strengthen support for a German fleet, this time stemming from the Prussian fleet.63 Far from the subtlety that more usually characterized political pronouncements in the magazine, the conclusion to this article clearly spelled out a liberal position on the interconnectedness between Germany’s global mercantile aspirations, the naval fleet, and German unity, as well as Prussia’s role as the link between the two: That the gift of Germany is coming, that the Prussian citizens in the Nationalverein itself, as Germans, combine their [naval fund] contributions with those of other brothers of German origin and have allowed them to flow as a gift to the entire Fatherland from their own government, must continuously remind us of the end goal, with which the German navy, like everything positive for us, is bound up—the unity of Germany, the securing of which Prussia, due to its historical calling and position of power, owes Germany and itself … Prussian honor is responsible for the redemption of the honor and power of the German Fatherland. We hope to God that we will not be betrayed this time!64

Germany’s naval and imperial aspirations were also revealed through the poetry of Die Gartenlaube, with three poems by Albert Traeger published in 1861, 1863, and 1865, concentrating on German unity, as manifest in its military and navy. The first, “Zur deutschen Flotte,” rather prosaically demanded that “Ger-

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man taxes” be used to establish a German fleet, which, once again operating as a symbol of German unification, could ensure Germany’s international position and internal unity: The sail shall billow with the breath of unity: “The German fleet is in proud arms A united Germany on the oceans wide!” … And where disgrace to German honor threatens, No distant foe may any longer delude themselves unpunished …65

Traeger’s 1865 poem, “Deutschland auf dem Meere,” continued this notion of the fleet as a metaphor for a robust liberal Germany, with the symbol of national unity, the German black, red, and gold flag and the navy abroad bound together in the lines: “Before the German fleet flies / forever the German black red gold!”66 The poem of Traeger’s devoted to the Schleswig-Holstein question, bluntly entitled “Wann, wann marschiren wir gen Norden?”67 was clearly a martial hymn. Its stridency and prominent position amidst Die Gartenlaube’s other tales of romance and derring-do is quite striking, and can only lead to the supposition that this supposedly apolitical liberal organ was firmly committed to united German military action as a means of constituting a hitherto only imagined entity—the German nation.68 As with “Zur deutschen Flotte” and “Deutschland auf dem Meere,” the central poetic fiction was that of a united Germany, poised to militarily intervene abroad. Unable to unite from within, Germany could be seen as a nation only through its external acts, “It is the German nation’s honor / protected by the German nation itself ”69 In the post–1871 era, no large-scale change in the treatment of the naval question was discernible, with the commitment to the establishment of a German fleet, along with the later establishment of a naval college and Ministry, applauded.70 Approvingly quoted was Friedrich Wilhelm Barthold’s 1850 call for “strong territorial unity on our seas, permeated by a proud democratic spirit.”71 According to the periodical, these conditions had now been met. Also applauded was the establishment of a naval hospital in Yokohama, Japan. Viewed not only as a naval hospital for German sailors, but also as of possible use to the navies of other expansionist nations, the hospital was seen as bolstering Germany’s claims as a world power.72 In the 1880s, a different angle of Germany’s overseas mission was covered, this time in the form of an article entitled, “Deutschlands erster Kriegshafen,” a description of Wilhelmshafen.73 Beginning with a panegyric to a sea-power and its role in supporting the German coast and German trading posts around the globe, it moved on to a description of the harbor town that personified Germany’s “jungen Seestreitmacht.” The article’s conclusion spelled out precisely what notions the reader was to have extracted, namely:

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Now we stand before the future … Is it too bold if we imagine this … as rosy and propitious, if we assume that in the future, under Kaiser Wilhelm and for our naval base in the well-suited Fatherland, something still more important awaits? This we believe in: long live the new era!74

With this conclusion, the expansion of Germany’s naval reach was posited as the guarantor of future national success and as an integral component of the “new era” of activity abroad. However, German imperialism was not just confined to naval longings in the pages of Die Gartenlaube, with outright calls for colonialism in evidence, particularly after 1880. In terms of this fifth mode of reportage—the commenting on actual government policy, a practice which had been disavowed by Die Gartenlaube—the articles of, amongst others, the colonial propagandist Ernst v. Weber strengthened the liberal magazine’s commitment to colonialism well before Bismarck’s “conversion” to the imperial cause. Commenting on the precarious situation of the Boers in South Africa, whom von Weber saw as being oppressed by the English, von Weber came up with the suggestion that they should be taken under the protection of the German government, with the German government declaring part of South Africa to be a German protectorate and the Boers becoming quasi-German colonists, a move to which he argued the Boers would be favorably disposed.75 Having introduced the notion of colonialism, von Weber continued to articulate his vision of an aggressive German colonial policy as a contribution to a Malthusian solution to the question of urban poverty: We Germans must assist in the struggle for the freedom of our African blood brothers … for the sympathies that the Boers harbor for Germany will be of great worth to us … to the simultaneous advantage of unbounded expansionist capacity offered by a German national colony, which would assist in the future regular and lasting relief of our Fatherland from its annual worryingly threatening growing proletarian masses, and by their remaining membership to the German economic sphere, bringing about a broadening of the German markets and therefore of our national wealth, whereas the millions of previously emigrated Germans, because of the lack of colonies, have become totally lost to our nation both commercially and national economically.76

Also noting the necessity of maintaining the energies of Germany’s emigrants was an article in 1881, detailing the causes of migration in antiquity. Framing the article within a modern context, the article proclaimed: It is as urgent a task of German politics as numerous others that have been tackled since 1871 to ensure in a comprehensive fashion through colonization that in the future these thousands of German workers will be retained by us and not as previously be lost to competitors, even to become enemies of the German homeland.77

Either anticipating or contributing to the German government’s abrupt change of policy in favor of colonial imperialism, Die Gartenlaube began to more shrilly announce its support for a government policy of colonialism shortly before its

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adoption. Echoing almost half a century of liberal imperialist discourse, the magazine lamented the historical lack of opportunities for German colonizers to create specifically German colonies that enjoyed government protection, blaming it on a lack of political unity: “Sadly, splintered and powerless for centuries, Germany comes too late, after it is finally successful through providence to take its proper position once more, to acquire colonies of its own …” Similarly, the counterfactual question was posed: what would have happened if Prussia had undertaken a colonial policy years earlier?78 In the end, Die Gartenlaube overtly displayed its pro-colonial sympathies at the height of the Kolonialrausch of 1884 by finally shedding its nominally apolitical stance and adding its weight to the mounting pressure on the government to undertake an explicitly expansionist foreign policy. Some few weeks before Bismarck’s pro-colonial parliamentary speech of the 26th of June, an article entitled “Deutschlands Colonialbestrebungen” was published. It was a bold, overtly political piece that unabashedly supported the colonialist movement at a time when its success was not assured and when Bismarck had not yet publicly proclaimed himself in favor of it: … awake in all hearts is the question, whether the time has not finally come, where a bold statesman will take up the legacy of the great Electors. We see in Germany a powerful agitation and hear the loud call for a definitive solution to the colonial question! Here a great field of action has opened up for all, irrespective of party position, and this high end seems to us attainable without the complications posed by war or the sacrifice of human life … With this confidence we depart today from the old Brandenburg fort, to seek new worlds of vitality.79

Clearly, in terms of the five modes of the reportage on matters imperialist in the liberal periodical Die Gartenlaube, it is in the fifth that direct appeals for a more activist form of imperialism on the government’s behalf are to be found, and within the context of the political events of the thirty years between Die Gartenlaube’s founding and the establishment of a German colonial empire, the changes within the magazine’s handling of imperialism are somewhat predictable when seen against the backdrop of political events in the same era. With the retreat from official colonialism in favor of private colonialism that came with the years of the post–1848/49 era, there were no overt calls for statist colonies; rather, the periodical concentrated on Trojan horse civil society projects and private sector initiatives and called for a navy to protect these initiatives and German emigrants. However, with the ascendancy of the National Liberal party in the post–1871 era, naval and colonial imperialism found a voice in the pages of Die Gartenlaube, until in the 1880s, when it was no longer seen as utopian to urge for government supported colonialism. Of the first four modes of reportage it should be said that they offered the German liberal reader a pseudo-scientific understanding of the multifaceted nature of the imperialism, and established an emotional connection between the German nation and Deutschtum abroad. Furthermore, these four modes also cre-

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ated a social space for the celebration of German successes abroad, and left the unposed question hanging, how much more successful could Germany be abroad if it was supported by a sympathetic, that is to say, liberal system of governance? Die Gartenlaube presented German action abroad, and its encounters with alterity, as a crucible in which the mettle of the German nation would be tested and compared with that of its competitor European powers.

The Imperialist Novel Apart from Die Gartenlaube, other forms of mass literature invoked Deutschtum abroad as a form of national identity prior to its formal adoption by the German parliament. In its most benign manifestation, the large number of novels concerning German emigrants became part of the liberal assertion of a united German identity, as Juliane Mikoletzky has shown.80 Not only were the majority of these works written by liberal, middle class authors for liberal, middle class audiences,81 many of these authors included émigrés who had moved abroad as a result of the broad conservative reaction against the events of 1848.82 Taking their politics with them, these articulate members of Germany’s middle classes soon became the dominant voices of Germany’s emigrant population, achieving “an overproportional publicity and great influence over the creation of the opinions of the Germans living there.”83 These authors produced a series of works in which the heroic emigrant went abroad in search of a political and personal freedom unavailable in Germany itself.84 These works, as with Die Gartenlaube, can be seen as an attempt to further the liberal construction of nationhood through the sublimation of endogenous political liberalism into narratives of German liberalism flourishing in German settlements abroad. In these narratives, the domestic locus of liberalism was displaced and relocated to the settlements of Germans abroad at a time in which German liberalism was not as politically dominant as its cultural significance would seem to warrant. With German audiences in mind, émigré liberals constructed a literary template of heroic individuals struggling to achieve personal and political freedom while maintaining their German identity.85 One such author working within the genre of the “travel novel” was Otto Ruppius, whose works in many ways established a standard for novels about the experience of, and imperatives behind, German emigration. The novels of Ruppius, the most famous of which was his 1857 philosemitic86 work Der Pedlar, fall firmly into the category of émigré novels in which a politically persecuted German is forced to seek (a not uncomplicated) political freedom in the New World.87 In Der Pedlar, the central protagonist Helmstedt had been forced to flee Germany as a result of the post–1848 political reaction against German radicals and liberals. As Theodor Graewert pointed out, this motif was constantly repeated throughout Ruppius’ works and directly reflected the circumstances surrounding Ruppius’ own emigration.88 Founder and editor of the Bürger- und Bauernzeitung during

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the 1848/49 uprisings, Ruppius had accused the Prussian minister responsible for dissolving the 1848 Prussian National Assembly of being guilty of high treason, and as deserving nothing less than prison.89 This remark saw him sentenced to nine months in prison, which he escaped through flight to America, where he remained until the Prussian political amnesty saw him return to Germany in 1861 to work with his long-time acquaintance Ernst Keil on Die Gartenlaube.90 Although devoid of overtly propagandistic colonial sentiment, both Ruppius and his novels did illustrate to Germans the potential advantages of colonial life, freed from the constraints of illiberal German society. While not glossing over the difficulties inherent in the life of the emigrant, Ruppius depicted a colonial world whose maintenance had “in large part the German population to thank.”91 In other words, for Ruppius, the emigrant/colony relationship was a symbiotic one in which the colonies offered Germans their freedom, whilst the German colonists underwrote the colonies’ success. The travel novel was consolidated as a genre in Germany in the works of Friedrich Gerstäcker, which continued the foregrounding of the role of Deutschtum abroad. Unlike Ruppius, Gerstäcker’s narratives dealt with conditions and issues not only in North America, but also in South America, Africa, and Australia—indeed, wherever German colonists were to be found. In his depiction of the life of the emigrant, Gerstäcker did not shy away from the hard nature of colonial life; however, he portrayed Germans as particularly suited to colonization. As Anton Zangerl has pointed out, “Wherever an opportunity presented itself, he extolled the virtues (such as hard work and scrupulousness), as well as the mentality of his compatriots.”92 For Gerstäcker, German colonizers were far more adept at transforming the colonial world than the peoples of other colonizing nations: … no other nation gains such attachment to the soil it cultivates as the German, none is so hard working and tireless in its work … Wherever they get to work fertile fields and charming chagras (small estates) grow under their hands; the forests are thinned, swamps are drained, roads are built and thriving trade arises, that the lazier Spanish race never achieved.93

As a committed liberal who “skirmished for a time in the revolution of 1848,”94 Gerstäcker shared the twin liberal convictions discussed broadly in the Frankfurt Nationalversammlung, namely that organized, controlled, and protected colonization was a means of alleviating the widespread poverty of the German working classes,95 and that “emigration would create a united Germany in America.”96 Gerstäcker’s views coincided with the liberal National Assembly’s position on emigration to the extent that it granted him 500 talers to report on German colonial settlements abroad, prompting him to later remark “people say that I’m the only one that ever got anything from the German Reich back then.”97 In his investigative endeavors, Gerstäcker outlasted his Paulskirche employer, by studying and appraising German private sector colonial efforts in Indonesia, Australia, South America, North America, and Africa for three years, a journey that resulted in his five volume work Reisen and a series of novels set in the colonial settings he had seen.98

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It is important to note that Gerstäcker was by no means monolithic in his support for each and every German colonial enterprise; indeed, his descriptions did not shy away from negative descriptions of poorly carried out projects.99 Discerning in his support for German colonial projects, Gerstäcker made the types of acute distinctions between colonial projects that serious German observers of German colonialism at the time were making, as in the case of the various German colonies in Brazil. Whilst recognizing the success of those in the south in his 1864 novel Die Colonie, his 1869 work Ein Parcerie-Vertrag echoed those concerned about conditions in parts of Brazil and warned of the “indentured servitude” that paid-passage emigration entailed.100 Such warnings were, of course, commonplace in liberal publications (such as Die Gartenlaube) and the perception of Brazil as a scene of “white slavery” lay at the heart of the acrimonious dispute between Johann Sturz and Hermann Blumenau. In the discipline of geography, journals had also distinguished between the successes of the south in contradistinction to those in the north.101 Yet, remaining on friendly terms with German colonizers in Brazil such as Hermann Blumenau, in none of his works did criticism of a particular colony amount to an argument against colonialism in the region in toto, but was rather an attempt to ensure its “correct” conduct.102 In his later life, apart from his literary endeavors, including the odd contribution to Ernst Keil’s Gartenlaube,103 Gerstäcker cultivated a commitment to German national unity under the aegis of Prussia that mirrored that of other German liberals, notably Bennigsen’s liberal Nationalverein, and to this end he worked enthusiastically as a war correspondent in the Franco-Prussian War, arguing for the correctness of the Prussian case for war. Faithful to his earlier desires for a German nation able to defend Deutschtum abroad, Gerstäcker emphasized the unificatory aspect of the war, declaring that “The word Germany has become a reality, and we can now confidently look forward to an era of good cheer and happiness.”104 Gerstäcker’s career and popularity is perhaps the most obvious example, in the realm of nineteenth century German literature, of the perceived interconnectedness between liberal politico-economic goals, the liberal sense of nation, and the external world. For Gerstäcker, colonization and emigration represented a chance to alleviate poverty amongst those displaced by Germany’s movement towards an industrialized trade-oriented economy, as well as an opportunity to broaden the prospects for German traders. German colonies also offered a site within which the German national spirit was able, firstly, to manifest itself and, secondly, to demonstrate its inherent superiority and suitability for the colonizing task in comparison with other European colonizing nations, even without the support and protection of a unified German state. In both literary and political terms, Gerstäcker’s literary corpus can be seen as simultaneously drawing upon and contributing to the liberal German enthusiasm for German colonialism at a time in which German liberals, owing to their relative political vulnerability, were unable to translate these desires into material facts through the mechanism of the nation-state.

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Without a doubt, the novels of Karl May represent the most obviously longlived and broadly popular literary presentation of Deutschtum abroad, and in a number of important ways, May’s popular culture representations contributed to the persistence of colonialist enthusiasm in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with their presentations of Germans in American and oriental settings.105 Yet as Jeffrey Sammons, in his idiosyncratic and obviously hostile survey of May has concluded, “it is a question whether May’s fiction is in any intelligible sense about America at all.”106 As is well known, May himself had not seen the American settings of his novels until 1908107—some time after the majority of his works were written—and as Sammons points out, May’s texts “drew substantially from the extant German literature on America.”108 As such, it is fair to say that May’s fiction represents a reworked distillation of earlier impressions and representations by Germans of themselves abroad.109 In effect, Karl May drew upon popular representations and perceptions rather than empirical knowledge. Interestingly, May’s authorial reliance on literary rather than physical experience was mirrored in his novel’s heroes, such as Old Shatterhand, whose colonizing skills surpass those of the most experienced non-German settlers, skills that were accrued, according to May, through the digestion of German colonial literature.110 This self-reflexive claim for the impact of the transmission of imperialist values and culture via colonial textual production demonstrates the way in which the quasi-didactic, propagandistic qualities of works concerned with the successes of Deutschtum abroad were understood by both the composers and consumers of such texts.111 From exactly which German sources May extracted his notional America has been the subject of much discussion, with the most familiar names associated with him (ordinarily as contrasts) being Friedrich Gerstäcker, Balduin Möllhausen, Otto Ruppius, Frederic Armand Strubberg, and Charles Sealsfield.112 However, other more popular avenues of literary knowledge are equally as probable, and May’s initial attempt to have his first piece of fiction published in Die Gartenlaube,113 is a revealing insight into where the youthful May had been exposed to fiction, and it is entirely possible that the types of narratives that had interested the young Karl May were the magazine’s frequent pieces on colonial life.114 Similarly, novels regarding the experiences of Germans in naval settings were also in evidence, as exemplified in Sophie Wörishöffer’s post-unification youth novel Robert der Schiffjunge.115 Mirroring (as many maritime novels did) Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe narrative contrivance, the novel traced the trajectory of a boy forbidden by his parents to undertake a life at sea, but who did so anyway, variously as part of Germany’s merchant and naval fleets. The narrative is best described as episodic; indeed, it is a veritable shopping list of ports, adventures, and descriptions of exotic peoples, however, of interest is the subtext of European rivalry not just in terms of naval strength. In one particular authorial intrusion, the novel’s narrator makes the contest between Germany and Britain clear, in terms of trade and the studying and mapping (and by extension

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controlling) of the world: “The English had sent so many ships one after the other, had made important discoveries and with their dragnets ploughed the sea at a depth of 1500 feet—why then should the Germans do less than that?”116 Although clearly not in the league of Gerstäcker or indeed May in terms of popularity, Wörishöffer’s modestly successful novel117 illustrates the extent to which Germany’s global, maritime task, replete with scenes of the German flag waving in the morning wind,118 had become inscribed in the realm of popular fiction, as well as in the popular press. As a range of textual modes devoted to the presentation of the extra-European world as knowable and controllable, imperialist propaganda, scientific research, the popular media, and the colonial novel as a genre all contributed to the furthering of liberal imperialism, within the context of pre- and post-unification Germany. Whilst aimed at different sections of Germany’s bürgerliche Gesellschaft, together they assisted in the reformulation and transmission of the cultural values associated with German nationalist-liberalism since the Vormärz era. Supporting Bhabha’s reading of the role of colonial texts in constructing the colonial world as knowable and controllable, the popular and scientific texts of pre-colonial Germany both reflected and shaped private and, ineluctably, public attitudes toward the extra-European world. Whether Petermann’s Mittheilungen, Die Gartenlaube or the works of imperialist pamphleteers, theoreticians, and novelists, textual rendering of the extra-European world assisted in the consolidation of liberal imperialist discourse throughout the years of imperialism’s seeming “disappearance” from the national stage. Far from disappearing at any time between 1848 and 1884, liberal imperialist discourse, as preserved in these texts, played a critical role in the reemergence of imperialism as a realizable form of national, statist praxis in the early 1880s.

Notes 1. H. Bhabha. The Location of Culture. pp. 70–71. 2. K. Belgum. Popularizing the Nation: Audience, Representation, and the Production of Identity in “Die Gartenlaube,” 1853–1900. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 1998. p. 12ff. 3. M. Zimmerman. Die Gartenlaube als Dokument ihrer Zeit. Heimeran Verlag, München, 1963. pp. 9–10. H. Gruppe. “Volk” zwischen Politik und Idylle in der Gartenlaube 1853–1914. Peter Lang, Frankfurt a.M., 1976. pp. 29–30. Ernst Keil was also a member of the liberal Nationalverein, attending their fourth General Assembly in his home city of Leipzig. See Chapter Four. 4. M. Zimmerman. Die Gartenlaube als Dokument ihrer Zeit. p. 10. 5. On the close links between Die Gartenlaube, the Nationalverein, the Nationalliberalen, and the German nationalist movement, see H. Gruppe. “Volk” zwischen Politik und Idylle. pp. 27–32, 103. 5. M. Zimmerman. Die Gartenlaube als Dokument ihrer Zeit. p. 10. 6. K. Belgum. Popularizing the Nation. p. 15. “The magazine’s ability to define a national identity in late–nineteenth–century Germany was directly related to its familial appeal … The Garten-

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7.

8. 9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

24

25. 26.

27.

laube continued to identify the mass readership it gained during its first two decades as a nation living within the private space of home and family.” M. Koch. Nationale Identität im Prozess nationalstaatlicher Orientierung; dargestellt am Beispiel Deutschlands durch die Analyse der Familienzeitschrift Die Gartenlaube von 1853–1890. Peter Lang, Frankfurt a.M., 2003. pp. 189–90. H. Gruppe. “Volk” zwischen Politik und Idylle. p. 37. T. Nipperdey. Deutsche Geschichte 1800–1866: Bürgerwelt und starker Staat. 3. edition. CH Beck, München, 1985. p. 593. Quoted in D. Bendocchi Alves. Das Brasilienbild der deutschen Auswanderungswerbung im 19. Jahrhundert. p. 90. K. Belgum. Popularizing the Nation. especially Ch. 3 & 4. K. Belgum. Popularizing the Nation. Ch. 3. K. Belgum. Popularizing the Nation. pp. 81–82. See for example “Die letzten Tage der deutschen Flotten.” DG. No. 42, 1855. p. 560. K. Belgum. Popularizing the Nation. p. 151. H. Bhabha. “DissemiNation: Time, Narrative and the Margins of the Modern Nation.” In H. Bhabha, ed. Nation and Narration. Routledge, London, 1990. p. 310. For a comprehensive list of Gartenlaube articles dealing with America between 1871 and 1913, see U. Janeck. Zwischen Gartenlaube und Karl May. Deutsche Amerikarezeption in den Jahren 1871–1913. Shaker Verlag, Aachen, 2003. pp. 373ff. “Der Deutsche in Amerika” DG. No. 1, 1853. p. 6. See Chapter One. S. v. Senger und Etterlin. Neu-Deutschland in Nordamerika. passim. For a concise statement of his thesis, see pp. 2–3. “Die Deutschen in Amerika.” DG. No. 8, 1856. pp. 109–111. “In Amerika wird das Germanenthum seine Mission am ersten erfüllen.” “Ein mecklenburgische Colonie in Nordamerika.” DG. No. 9, 1861. p. 140. DG. No. 9, 1861. p. 139. “Ein Denkmal deutscher Eintracht in der Fremde.” DG. No. 5, 1866. pp. 76–78. “Und dieses Denkmal ist nicht allein gebaut für uns in Baltimore. Es ist erricht worden zu Ehren aller Deutschen in Amerika. Könnte ich doch auch meinem alten Vaterlande heute die Worte zurufen: ‘Einigkeit macht stark.’ Möchten meine Worte wiederhallen in den Gauen Deutschlands, daß der Einigkeit auch die Freiheit auf dem Fuße folgt.” “Eine sudamerikanische Hauptstadt.” DG. No. 40, 1868. p. 636. “… sie kennen keinen Particularismus—sie wollen ein einiges, großes, deutsches Vaterland und begrußen mit Jubel jede Nachricht von daheim, die ihnen kündet, daß der norddeutsche—hoffentlich bald der deutsche—Bund wächst und sich kräftigt. Sie wissen am besten, daß nur dann unser Volk, unser Name auch im Ausland geachtet sein kann, wenn wir fest vereinigt stehen und dadurch den Rang unter den Nationen einnehmen, der uns gebührt.” “Das Thor Amerika’s.” DG. No. 31, 1866. p. 477. “New York ist die drittgrößte deutsche Stadt der Welt, soweit die Größe nach der Einwohnerschaft bemessen wird …” “Eine deutsche Colonie in Neuschottland.” DG. No. 51, 1869. p. 809. “In der Vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerika macht das deutsche Element nicht blos einen numerisch sehr bedeutenden Bruchteil der Bevölkerung aus, sondern hat sich auch staatlich allmählich zu einem solchen Einflusse aufgeschwungen, daß es wohl als keine illusorische Hoffnung erscheint, wenn man den Deutschen die Zukunft der großen transatlantischen Republik vindicirt.” “Neu-Deutschlandunter dem Aequator.” DG. No. 52, 1859. pp. 763–64. “Eroberung eines ganzen Landes, daß größer als ganz Deutschland ist … In der That ist die Absicht (wie ich unter dem Siegel der Verschweigenheit mittheile), Ecuador zu einem neuen Deutschland zu machen.” The introduction continues, making a virtue out of necessity, “Keine Nation, keine Regierung der Welt kann sich so vieler festen und sichern, gedeihenden und vergrößerden Colonien rühmen, als Deutschland. Daß sie von Mutter- und Vaterländern zu Hause nicht ‘beschützt’ werden ist just ihre Kraft und Bedeutung.”

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28. “Rettung vor Seelenhandel.” DG. No. 25, 1869. frontispiece. 29. “Vorsicht vor amerikanischen Landagenten!” DG. No. 36, 1873. p. 589. “Die Einwanderungsoder Transportgesellscahften.” DG. No. 4, 1853. p. 41. “Deutsche Colonisation in Brasilien.” DG. No. 29, 1862. pp. 454ff. “Deutscher Kuli–Handel.” DG. No. 22, 1874. p. 358. 30. H. Bhabha. The Location of Culture. Routledge, London, 1994. p. 70. 31. “Das Paradies in Central–Amerika.” DG. No. 36, 1853. p. 389. For racial hierarchy see also No. 26, 1854. p. 307. “Die erste Klass der Bevölkerung hier regiert und thut nichts, die zweite hilft regieren und thut auch nichts, die dritte nur läßt sich regieren und besorgt das Bißchen Arbeit sehr heiter, fleißig und treu.” 32. “Civilisation und Wildniß.” DG. No. 17, 1855. pp. 224–25. “Darum dürfen wir nicht die Wildniß nicht verachten, ihre Bewohner nicht Heiden und Cannibalen schimpfen und selber thun als ob wir etwas ganz Besonderes wären . . . Nichtsdestoweniger wird und muß, in nothwendiger Folgerung, die Civilisation mehr und mehr um sich greifen und nach und nach den ganzen Erdball bewältigen … der Indianer wird aussterben, wie jene Thierkolosse ausgestorben sind … Das alles wird geschehen, und zwar in einer unverkennbaren Nothwendigkeit, dem wachsenden Menschengeschlecht Raum, seinen Körper zu erhalten—Raum für seine strebsame Thatigkeit zu geben, und der eben, der den Raum zu vergeben hat—der Indianer—fällt zum Opfer…” 33. “Der entdeckte Schlüssel zum Herzen Afrika’s.” DG. No. 41, 1856. p. 557. “Die Fellatahs sind Muhamedaner und von einer viel nobleren, schönen (berberischen) Race, als die Neger in andern Staaten.” 34. DG. No. 41, 1856. p. 556. “… die schwarzen Kinder Afrika’s bringen Tausenden von Arbeitern in Europa direkt Brot.” 35. “Die Jagd auf Flußpferde.” DG. No. 43, 1874. p. 698. “… die Neger Ost-Afrika’s sind das Abbild ihrer Heimath, üppig und deshalb faul und wenig geneigt, mehr zu erwerben, als sie zur Füllung ihres Magens von Tag zu Tag bedürfen.” 36. “Die deutschen Fremdenlegion und das Kap der guten Hoffnung.” DG. No. 3, 1857. p. 41. “Der natürliche, unkultivierte Mensch ist und bleibt Produkt des Bodens, … Produkt des Klimas, der Bodenformation und der Landschaftlichkeit. Selbst der gebildete Mensch bedarf einer bedeutenden moralischen Kraft, um dieser Abhängigkeit Herr zu werden. ‘Niemand wandelt ungestraft unter Palmen,’ sagte Goethe.” 37. See Figure 8.1. 38. “Ein deutscher Gruß von Australien her.” DG. No. 44, 1868. p. 700. “Der Korbträger ist von mir und meiner Frau nur als der ,Uebergang” bezeichnet, denn denkt man sich ihn zwischen einen ausgewachsenen Chimpanse und den eigentlichen homo sapiens …” 39. This is evident in the article “Die Azteken, der Buschmann und die Corana.” DG. No. 12, 1856. p.156–58. See Figures 8.2–8.4. 40. “Der entdeckte Schlüssel zum Herzen Afrika’s.” DG. No. 41, 1856. p. 556. “… ist Afrika aufgeschlossen und ein großer, ebener Weg bis mitten in die Geheimnisse des Innern entdeckt worden.” See also p. 559. 41. H. Barth. Travels and Discoveries. p. xxxii. 42. Other individuals lauded by Die Gartenlaube included Theodor v. Heuglin (No. 5, 1862. p. 72), Paul Büßfeldt (No. 38, 1874. p. 613, Eduard & Theodor Vogel (No. 40, 1875. p. 679), C. Wölber (No. 4, 1878. p. 64), Henry Stanley (No. 7, 1878. p. 113.), and of course the nonGerman but nonetheless “heroic” Dr. Livingstone, whose spirit was invoked in not a few of Die Gartenlaube’s articles on imperialist exploration. (e.g., DG. No. 27, 1878. p. 443). 43. DG. No. 27, 1878. p. 558. “Mit Handel und Wandel, Austausch und weißem Verkehr kommt die Kultur, die friedliche Beschäftigung und die Humanität . . .” 44. “Die deutsche Expedition nach Mittelafrika und ihre Gegner.” DG. No. 5, 1862. p. 72. “Eine begeisternde Bewegung ging durch das deutsche Land … Das deutsche Volk wollte der Welt beweisen, daß es Wohl das Eine zu würdigen weiß, durch welches es herrscht unter den gesitteten und gebildeten Menschen der Erde: die deutsche Wissenschaft!” In this article, the

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45.

46.

47.

48.

49.

50.

51. 52.

53. 54. 55.

56.

57.

58.

position of an expedition leader, v. Heuglin, had come under attack by no lesser figure than the great Barth himself. This article sought to both support v. Heuglin while seeking not to undermine Barth. DG. No. 5, 1862. p. 74. “Die deutsche Expedition ist eine deutsche Sache; sie wird ein Sieg mehr fein auf dem Felde, wo wir noch nie geschlagen wurden; sie wird dazu beitragen, dem deutschen Namen im Auslande zu neuer Ehre und zu neuem Ruhme zu verhelfen.” “Die Afrikanische Gesellschaft und die deutsche Expedition nach Loangoküste.” DG. No. 38, 1874. p. 613. “Die von der Geographie eingeleiteten Entdeckungsreisen kommen oftmals weniger ihr selbst als den verwandten Wissenschaften, dem Handel und schließlich der Menschheit zu Gute.” For the expedition’s funding, see p. 614. See also DG. No. 7, 1883. p. 116. “Die weißen Flecken unserer Landkarten.” DG. No. 28, 1875. p. 478. See also “Die Vorgänge in China.” DG. No. 27, 1853. pp. 288–92, “Handelsstationen in Westafrika.” DG. No. 4, 1878. p. 64. “Die Transvaal–Republik im Kafferlande.” DG. No. 32, 1855. p. 425. “Hätten die Engländer nur immer ehrlich gegen die Kaffern gehandelt … wäre die Eroberung des Kaffernlandes für die Kultur wohl schon vollendet. Aber sie haben diese Wilden verwildert, die Barbaren zu Raubthieren gemacht … Aus Rohmaterial läßt sich etwas machen, aus verdorbenem nicht.” DG. No. 32, 1855. p. 425. “Die Kaffern müßten aus demselben Grunden ausgerotten werden, aus welchem man Heuschrecken, Wanzen, Flöhe und Wölfe im Interesse der allgemein Wohlfahrt vertilge.” See also “Die deutsche Fremdlegion und das Kap der guten Hoffnung.” DG. No. 3, 1857. p. 41. “Die nordamerikanischen Indianer der Jetztzeit.” DG. No. 9, 1862. p. 132. “Wo die Weiße auftritt, da kommt sie als Herrscherin über Alles, was nicht ihres Gleichen ist, da macht sie die Eigenthümer des Bodens zu ihren Abhängigen und Sclaven, und was ihr feindlich gegenüber tritt, was ihren Geboten sich nicht fügen will, das zertritt und vernichtet sie. Denn es ist die Bestimmung der weißen Race, die Erde zu erobern und das Panier der Cultur durch alle Länder zu tragen; und ob ihre Siege auch durch den Untergang ganzer Völkerschaften bezeichnet würden, sie muß ihre Aufgabe erfüllen, und was vom Menschengeschlechte nicht gleich mit ihr culturfähig ist, hat auch kein Recht, als Gleichesneben ihr zu bestehen.” “Bilder aus dem Stillen Ocean.” DG. No. 42, 1881. p. 700. “Von der ,rothen Teufeln.” DG. No. 47, 1874. p. 754. “Unaufhaltsam rücken die Indianer Amerikas dem Untergange näher.” The article ends with a dismissal of the “Romantic” ideas about their preservation. See p. 757. “Die weißen Flecken unserer Landkarten.” DG. No. 28, 1875. p. 478. “Australien und die Weltaustellung in Sydney.” DG. No. 21, 1879. p. 353. “Die deutsche Loango–Expedition im Kriege.” DG. No. 21, 1876. p. 348. “So lange nicht jeder schlechter That der Eingeborenen die Strafe auf dem Fuße folgt, und das kann erst geschehen, wenn dieser wichtige Küstenstrich nicht mehr herrenlos ist.” “Neue Indianerkämpfe.” DG. No. 33, 1876. p. 552. “Möchte es doch eine der ersten Arbeiten der Republik im zweiten Jahrhundert ihrer Existenz sein, das Land von der Indianerpest zu reinigen, die schon so viele Millionen verschlungen und so viele Tausende kostbarer Menschenleben zum Opfer gefordert hat! Denn erst wenn dies geschehen, wird es dem Pionier des Westens möglich sein, in Ruhe und Sicherheit unter dem Schutze der Gesetze der Republik zu Leben.” “Die Zulus und der drohende Racenkrieg in Süafrika.” DG. No. 12, 1879. p. 208. “Die unkluge Verhätschelung der schwarzen Race, worunter die weißen Colonisten bisher so schwer zu leiden hatten, wird einer strengen Zucht, einer systematischen Erziehung weichen müssen, die allein im Stande sind, aus einem wilden Naturvolke allmählich ein civilisirtes zu machen. … Den wahren Interessen der Schwarzen selbst würde eine solche Aenderung der Regierrungspolitik nur wohlthätig sein. Und sollte eine solche Frucht aus dem gegenwärtigen blutigen Kriegen entsprießen, so ware das viele Blut wenigstens nicht umsonst geflossen.” “Erinnerungen von der deutschen Flotte.” DG. No. 1, 1857. p. 9. See also “Die letzten Tage der deutschen Flotte.” DG. No. 42, 1855. esp. p. 562.

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59. DG. No. 1, 1857. p. 9. 60. DG. No. 1, 1857. p. 10. “Es gibt nun ein Deutschland! Das deutsche Volk hat ein Vaterland! Es ist gerüstet und bewehrt zu Land und zu Meer!” 61. “Bilder aus dem Seeleben.” DG. No. 4, 1859. p. 53–54. 62. DG. No. 4, 1859. p. 54. 63. “Die deutsche Flottenmacht.” DG. No. 41, 1861. p. 654. 64. DG. No. 41, 1861. pp. 655–56. “Daß die Gabe von Deutschland kommt, daß die preußischen Staatsangehörigen im Nationalverein selbst, als Deutsche, ihre Beisteuern mit denen ihrer andern deutschen Stammesbrüder einigen und sie mit als Gabe des großen Gesammtvaterlandes der eignen Regierung zufließen lassen, muß diese unausbleiblich an das letzte Ziel mahnen, dem es gilt, in welchem die deutsche Flotte, wie alles Heil für uns, eingeschlossen ist, an die Einigung Deutschlands, deren Erkämpfung Preußen durch seinen geschichtlichen Beruf und seine Machtstellung sich selbst und dem deutschen Volk schuldet … die preußische Ehre haftet fortan als Pfand für die Wiedereinlösung der Ehre und Macht des deutsche Vaterlandes. Wir hoffen zu Gott, daß wir dieses Mal nicht wieder betrogen werden!” The posited role of the Nationalverein here should also be noted. 65. “Zur deutschen Flotten.” DG. No. 44, 1861. p. 696. “Der Hauch der Einheit soll die Segel blähen / Die deutsche Flotte sei in stolzer Wehre / Ein einig Deutschland auf dem weiten Meere! / … Und wo die Schande deutscher Ehre droht, / Kein ferner Feind mag straflos mehr sich wähnen …” 66. “Deutschland auf dem Meere.” DG. No. 45, 1865. p. 708. “Voran der deutschen Flotte fliegen / Soll stets das deutsche Schwarzrothgold!” 67. “Wann, wann marschiren wir gen Norden?” DG. No. 21, 1863. p. 328. 68. It is also calls to mind Schulze-Delitzsch’s view that a conflict with Schleswig-Holstein could turn into a Europe-wide conflict that could force Germany to unite. See Verhandlungen der zweiten Generalversammlung des deutschen Nationalvereins. p. 35. 69. DG. No. 21, 1863. p. 328. “Es sei des deutschen Volkes Ehre / Vom deutschen Volke selbst gewahrt!” Excluded from discussion here is the mass of material focused on the course and importance of the Franco-Prussian war for the German nation. 70. “Die deutsche Seewarte in Hamburg.” DG. No. 12, 1875. p. 195. 71. DG. No. 12, 1875. p. 195. “… starke Territorialeinheit an unseren Meeren, durchdrungen von stolzem demokratischem Geiste.” 72. “Das neue Marinelazareth in Yokohama.” DG. No. 2, 1879. p. 39. 73. “Deutschlands erster Kriegshafen.” DG. No. 8, 1883. p. 132–36. 74. DG. No. 8, 1883. p. 136. “Jetzt stehen wir vor der Zukunft … Ist es zu kühn, wenn wir uns dieses Antlitz rosig und glückverheißend vorstellen, wenn wir annehmen, daß die Zukunft unter Kaiser Wilhelm und im geeigneten Vaterlande unserem Kriegshafen noch herrlicheres vorbehält? Wir glauben daran und darum: es lebe die neue Aera!” 75. “Die neiderdeutschen Bauern (Boers) von Südafrika.” DG. No. 11, 1880. p. 177. That this would necessitate a war with Britain is not mentioned. 76. DG. No. 11, 1880. p. 177. “Den Freiheitstrieb unserer afrikanischen Stammesgenossen müßten wir Deutschen zu fördern suchen … dann werden die Sympathien, welche die Boers für Deutschland hegen, für uns von größtem Werte sein…: zu einer hier zugleich den Vortheil unbeschränkter Ausdehnungsfähigkeit bietenden nationalen deutschen Colonie, die für die Zukunft zur regelmäßigen und dauernden Entlastung unseres Vaterlandes von seinen alljährlich bedenklicher und bedrohlicher anwachasenden Proletariermassen dienen und durch die verbleibende Zugehörigkeit derselben zum deutschen Wirthschaftsgebiete eine Erweiterung des deutschen Absatzmarktes und somit unseres Nationalreichtums herbeiführen würde, während die Millionen von bisher ausgewanderten Deutschen wegen des Mangels eigener Colonien wirthschaftlich und nationalökonomisch unserer Nation vollständig verloren gegangen sind.” Of note here is the incorporation of many of the well-established, economic tropes of liberal imperialist discourse that date back to Friedrich List.

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77. “Vorzeitliche und moderne sociale Probleme. Uebervökerung und Auswanderung.” DG. No. 12, 1881. p. 195. “Es ware eine dringendere Aufgabe der deutschen Politik, als gar manche, welche seit 1871 in Angriff genommen wurde, durch Colonisation im großen Stil dafür zu sorgen, daß in Zukunft wenigstens diese Tausende von deutschen Arbeitern uns erhalten, nicht wie bisher, verloren gegeben, in Concurrenten, ja oft Feinde der deutschen Heimath verwandelt werden.” 78. DG. No. 17, 1884. pp. 283–85. No. 18. pp. 299–302. “Leider kommt Deutschland, seit Jahrhunderten zersplittert und machtlos, nachdem es ihm endlich endlich gelungen durch wunderbare Fügungen die ihm gebührende Stellung wieder zu erlangen, zu spät, um ohne Weiteres eigene Colonien zu erwerben.” 79. DG. No. 21, 1884. p. 351. “… weckt in allen Herzen die Frage, ob nicht endlich die Zeit gekommen ist, wo ein kühner Staatsmann das Vermächtniß des großen Kurfürsten antreten muss. Wir sehen in Deutschland eine mächtige Agitation und hören den lauten Ruf nach endlicher Lösung der Colonialfrage! Hier öffnet sich ein großes Wirkungsfeld für Alle ohne Rücksicht auf Partei–Stellung, und das höhe Ziel dünkt uns erreichbar ohne kriegerische Verwickelungen und Opfer an Menschenleben. … Mit dieser Zuversicht scheiden wir heute von dem alten brandenburgischen Fort, um neue lebenskräftige Schöpfungen aufzusuchen.” 80. J. Mikoletzky. Die deutsche Amerika–Auswanderung des 19. Jahrhunderts in der zeitgenössischen fiktionalen Literatur. Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen, 1988. The following is meant to be an illustrative sketch of the relationship between liberal imperialist ideology and these authors’ works, rather than a substantive, exhaustive study of their works. 81. J. Mikoletzky. Die deutsche Amerika–Auswanderung. pp. 60, 62, 69, 102–103, 317. 82. Mikoletzky includes amongst these émigrés authors such as Baudissin, Dilthey (who also wrote as Julian Werner), Eylert, Griesinger, Solger, Ruppius, and Sealsfeld. J. Mikoletzky. Die deutsche Amerika–Auswanderung. p. 63. 83. J. Mikoletzky. Die deutsche Amerika–Auswanderung. p. 321. See also p. 63. 84. J. Mikoletzky. Die deutsche Amerika–Auswanderung. pp. 138–39. 85. J. Mikoletzky. Die deutsche Amerika–Auswanderung. p. 320. 86. JL Sammons. Ideology, Mimesis, Fantasy: Charles Sealsfield, Friedrich Gerstäcker, Karl May and Other German Novelists of America. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1998. p. 257. 87. T. Graewert. Otto Ruppius und der Amerikaroman im 19. Jahrhundert. Carl Beck Verlag, Eisfeld, 1935. p. 48. See also J. Mikoletzky. Die deutsche Amerika–Auswanderung. p. 63. 88. T. Graewert. Otto Ruppius. pp. 48–49. 89. T. Graewert. Otto Ruppius. pp. 24–25. 90. T. Graewert. Otto Ruppius. pp. 26–27. 91. T. Graewert. Otto Ruppius. p. 51. 92. A. Zangerl. Friedrich Gerstäcker (1816–1872). Romane und Erzählungen. Struktur und Gehalt. Peter Lang, Wien, 1999. p. 247. 93. F. Gerstäcker. Unter den Penhuenchen. Quoted in A. Zangerl. Friedrich Gerstäcker. p. 247. See also p. 248. “… keine andere Nation als die deutsche gewinnt solche Anhänglichkeit für den Boden, den bebaut, keine ist so fleißig und unermüdet in ihren Arbeit … Ueberall, wo sie das Land in Angriff nahmen, wuchsen unter ihren Händen fruchtbare Aecker und freundliche Chagras (kleine Güter) empor; der Wald lichtete sich, Sümpfe wurden ausgetrocknet, Wege gebaut und ein Gewerbfleiß entstand, den die weit trägere spanische Race nie hervorgerufen hätte.” 94. JL Sammons. Ideology, Mimesis, Fantasy. p. 122. 95. JL Sammons. Ideology, Mimesis, Fantasy. p. 117. Sammons relates the tale of Gerstäcker’s suggestion in 1848 that the government sponsor the wholesale emigration of an impoverished community of Saxon lacemakers as a means of bettering their economic position through colonialism. 96. JL Sammons. Ideology, Mimesis, Fantasy. p. 117.

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97. JL Sammons. Ideology, Mimesis, Fantasy. p. 123. In addition to this funding, Gerstäcker received 400 talers from Baron v. Cotta, the owner of the liberal Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung. 98. JL Sammons. Ideology, Mimesis, Fantasy. p. 123. 99. See, for example, his first emigration novel Der deutschen Auswanderer Fahrten und Schicksale. Coming out in 1847, ostensibly at the height of early liberal colonial enthusiasm, it painted a bleak picture of the plight of unsuccessful colonizers. See JL Sammons. Ideology, Mimesis, Fantasy. pp. 119–20. 100. JL Sammons. Ideology, Mimesis, Fantasy. p. 120. 101. See for example JJ Tschudi. “Die Brasilianische Provinz Minas Gerae” in Mittheilungen. 1865. pp. 29–31. 102. For Gerstäcker’s correspondence with Hermann Blumenau, see NsSA. 192N. II, 1 (G–K). pp. 222ff. 103. JL Sammons. Ideology, Mimesis, Fantasy. p. 115. See also U. Janeck. Zwischen Gartenlaube und Karl May. pp. 96–97. 104. F. Gerstäcker. Kleine Erzählungen und Nachgelassene Schriften. Cited in JL Sammons. Ideology, Mimesis, Fantasy. p. 125. See also. pp. 124–27. 105. A thorough discussion of May’s work falls outside of the chronological parameters of this study and he is mentioned here only for the sake of completeness. Most of May’s work set in American and oriental settings were actually published during Germany’s colonial era. 106. JL Sammons. Ideology, Mimesis, Fantasy. p. 245. Despite Sammons protestations that his work “is not postanything” (p. xi), his insightful observation that May’s work displays a “provincial introversion underlying its superficial exoticism” (p. 245) corresponds directly with Fanon’s key insight, that discussions of colonial settings revolve around the inscription of meaning for the colonial periphery as determined by concerns within the imperial center. 107. JL Sammons. Ideology, Mimesis, Fantasy. p. 254. 108. JL Sammons. Ideology, Mimesis, Fantasy. p. 253. 109. On early period German colonial fiction set in North America, see W. Kriegleder. “The American Indian in German Novels up to the 1850s.” German Life and Letters 53(4), 2000. pp. 487–98. 110. JL Sammons. Ideology, Mimesis, Fantasy. pp. 231–32. 111. Contra H. Feilitzsch. “Karl May: The ‘Wild West’ as Seen in Germany.” In Journal of Popular Culture 27(3), 1993. pp. 184–85. 112. JL Sammons. Ideology, Mimesis, Fantasy. p. 257. See also U. Janeck. Zwischen Gartenlaube und Karl May. p. 122. 113. V. Griese. Karl May: Personen in seinem Leben. Ein alphabetisches annotiertes Namensverzeichnis. Edition Octopus, Münster, 2003. p. 176. Griese records that May received a four-page letter from Gartenlaube editor Ernst Keil, who pointed out his errors before encouraging him to contribute again later. 114. U. Janeck. Zwischen Gartenlaube und Karl May. p. 79. 115. S. Wörishöffer. Robert der Schiffjunge: Fahrten und Abenteur auf der deutschen Handels- und Kriegsflotte. Velhagen & Klasing, Bielefeld, 1877. 116. S. Wörishöffer. Robert der Schiffjunge. p. 653. “Die Engländer hatten nach einander mehrere Schiffe entsandt, hatten bedeutende Entdeckungen gemacht und mit ihren Schleppnetzen in der Tiefe von 1500 Fuß das Meerdurchpflügt,—weshalb also sollten wir Deutsche weniger thun?” 117. Robert der Schiffjungen was Wörishöffer’s (real name Sophie Andresen) first novel. Its success enabled her to continue with similarly travel-based writing set in exotic locations. 118. S. Wörishöffer. Robert der Schiffjunge. p. 679.

CONCLUSION


I

n discussing the nexus between nineteenth century German liberalism, nationalism, and imperialism, two fundamental questions emerge. Firstly, what evidence exists that will not only demonstrate the existence of such a linkage, but will also demonstrate its longevity and its necessity? Secondly, if this nexus existed, what forces drove and sustained it? That is, what historical forces and pressures necessitated it? To the first question, the narration of the numerous and continuous attempts by German liberals to conflate the three concepts should suffice as an answer. From the Vormärz theorizing of Friedrich List, Hermann Blumenau, Hans Christoph von Gagern, and Johann Sturz, to the pro-naval and pro-colonial discussions and proclamations of the Frankfurt Nationalversammlung, the earliest liberal attempts at enunciating the role, contours, and policy direction of a liberal German nation referred directly to its role as an expansionist naval power able to support the colonies that would supply both raw materials and a home for those displaced by the shift towards a modern, industrial, and capitalist mode of production. Irrespective of the further variegations in their political complexions, liberals of the revolutionary period, whether protectionists or free traders, kleindeutsch or großdeutsch nationalists, accepted imperialism as an integral part of their modernizing agenda. As witnessed in the Frankfurt Nationalversammlung by the near unanimity of opinion in favor of an expansionist naval policy as a tangible manifestation of German political unity, and the frequent pronouncements in favor of German colonies, imperialism, inextricably linked to the struggle for a German act of national unification enacted in accordance with liberal politico-economic priorities, was situated by German liberals as both the foreign policy trajectory and the mythopoeic engine of a liberal German nation. Similarly, the post–1848/49 attempts by representatives of Germany’s Wirtschaftsbürgertum to construct German spheres of influence in various extraEuropean regions—a form of imperialism from below—whether through the Notes for this section begin on page 211.

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establishment of private sector colonies such as Joinville and Blumenau in South America, or the South Pacific and African fiefdoms of the Godeffroy and Woermann trading houses of Hamburg, amounted to Trojan horse enterprises, whereby secure commercial and settler footholds were established in areas where a future liberal German nation could (and in some cases did) construct a Neu-Deutschland in more propitious political times. These expansionist undertakings often took place in a domestic political climate so adverse as to threaten their viability—as the threat to Blumenau’s colony posed by the Prussian Law forbidding the expediting of emigration to Brazil illustrates. Yet, despite governmental sanctions, the Wirtschaftsbürgertum continued to broaden their global influence, either through direct settlement, or alternatively, as in the case of Godeffroy in Samoa, through the thorough reorientation of indigenous societies and economies toward the economic priorities of German commerce. Underwriting these concrete manifestations of a liberal determination to create a German empire was the agitation of pro-imperialist theorizers such as Julius Fröbel, Samuel Kerst, Friedrich Harkort, and Reinhold Werner, whose post-revolutionary tracts and treatises ensured that the principles of imperialist expansion maintained their public profile. At an organizational level, non-state colonial and imperialist ventures were supported by bodies such as the Colonisations-Verein von 1849 in Hamburg, Bennigsen and Miquel’s nationalist Nationalverein, as well as Ernst Hasse’s Südamerikanische Colonisations-Gesellschaft zu Leipzig, the Berlin Centralvereins für Handelsgeographie und Förderung deutscher Interessen im Auslande, Friedrich and Timotheus Fabri’s Westdeutscher Verein für Colonisation und Export, and, the national movement in which they all came to coalesce, the Deutscher Kolonialverein. Germany’s Bildungsbürgertum, in particular scientists in the fields of geography and anthropology, also played a critical role in supporting liberal imperialist aims, as the overwhelming overrepresentation of such academics in colonial organizations attests. The overtly expansionist exploration aims of organizations such as the national Deutsche Afrikanische Gesellschaft, as well as of such individuals as Heinrich Barth, pointed to liberal foreign trade imperatives, whilst the scientific findings of geographers in one of Germany’s premier journals, Petermann’s Mittheilungen, demonstrated a firm commitment to the principle of German expansionism from within the context of ostensibly impartial scientific research. Operating as an imperialist vanguard within academia, these researchers added the weight and prestige of their university chairs and their august publications to the liberal project of nationalist imperialism. In the realm of popular culture, the liberal periodical Die Gartenlaube explained to German families the imperatives behind European and, in particular, German imperialism. Through its simultaneous construction and reflection of bürgerlich attitudes to alterity, Die Gartenlaube proffered a pseudo-scientific anthropological paradigm, which articulated the supposed inferiority of non-Europeans, and critically, the inevitability of the “extinction” of indigenous peoples in the face of colonization by “advanced” European societies. In so doing, they prepared

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a liberal audience for the reception of more overtly imperialist agitation, which required a prior assimilation of the anthropological and scientific intellectual premises of the European claims to global rule. Similarly, the novels of authors such as Otto Ruppius, Friedrich Gerstäcker (both of whom were also important contributors to Die Gartenlaube), and, during the colonial period, Karl May all contributed to the broader picture of extraEuropean lands as a site for German energies and populations. Utilizing the same anthropological paradigm as Die Gartenlaube, colonial fiction presented colonies as a suitable site for the forging of the German nation, and German nationals as uniquely suited to the colonizing project. The combined weight of these material, cultural, and political forces saw the ultimate success of liberalism’s half century of attempts to have an expansionist foreign policy become national foreign policy. Imperialism, firmly enmeshed within the concept of German nationhood, despite varying social and political contexts, maintained its centrality to German liberalism. From the optimism of the Vormärz through to the difficulties of the post–1848/49 era, in the years prior to and after unification, and during the era of progressive liberalism’s strategic refusal of a protectionist, statist, “Bismarckian” colonialism, liberalism, imperialism, and nationalism were posited by various German liberals as the substance of a conceptual triptych that formed the discursive parameters of a totalizing narration of not only the liberal German nation, but a global, liberal German empire. This view, in stark contrast to the prevailing historiographical paradigm, reinstates imperialism as a fundamental constituent of German liberalism. It is an attempt to demonstrate Langewiesche’s declaration that, “A nationalism that had transformed itself into imperialism had no place within a liberal politics of integration,” must be revised and ultimately rejected.1 It is also an attempt to overturn Mommsen’s dictum that imperialism was a late nineteenth century deviation from liberalism’s “true” course,2 which ignores the fact that the social groups historically most vocal in their agitation for a German policy of expansionism before its adoption and after the colonies’ confiscation were Germany’s liberal Wirtschaftsand Bildungsbürgertum.3 Alongside Langewiesche and Mommsen’s historiographical rendering of mid nineteenth century German liberalism as immune to imperialist tendencies, is Hildebrand’s similarly erroneous, neo-Rankean view that colonialism was a not terribly popular Bismarckian innovation, the introduction of which signaled nothing more than a continuation of Bismarck’s Continental strategizing.4 On the other hand, Wehler’s “Bielefeld” or “Kehrite” theory of a “social imperialism” is (justifiably) far more interested in the role that imperialism played in nineteenth century German history,5 yet his periodization of its ascendancy, like that of both Hildebrand and Mommsen, begins far too late—essentially with the publication of Fabri’s Bedarf Deutschland der Colonien—to allow for the importance of liberal attempts to establish imperialist projects before, during, and immediately after the years of 1848 and 1849. Inextricably linked to the notions of a Wirtschaftskrise and the primacy of the socialist threat in liberal decision making,

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Wehler’s theory of imperialism, like that of Klaus Bade,6 is essentially negative; that is, that imperialism was the reaction of a panicked bürgerliche Gesellschaft to a sense of crisis or insecurity. Like Mommsen, Hildebrand, and countless other historians that have followed their otherwise varying historiographical models, Wehler does not take into consideration the idea that imperialism was in essence a positive, i.e., assertive, manifestation of the growing cultural, economic, and, increasingly political hegemony of Germany’s middle classes, which was proud of its own historically expansionist tradition. Against such erroneous readings of German liberal imperialism, a new historiographical paradigm is slowly coming into existence, courtesy of such writers as Hartmut Pogge von Strandmann,7 Hans Fenske,8 and Frank Lorenz Müller.9 These historians have correctly pointed to both the precociousness and the strength of imperialist discourse and praxis in the mid nineteenth century, as well as to its role in constructing a liberal sense of nationhood and national identity. In recognizing the persistence of liberal imperialism, both as a discursive formation and as a set of practices, these works have demonstrated that imperialism was constructed by liberal nationalists as a positive and assertive symbol of a nation unified under the auspices of its bürgerliche Gesellschaft. The question of why the linkage between liberalism and imperialism occurred is perhaps more complex, however, a number of reasons can be posited, including endogenous and exogenous factors. Domestically speaking, as Breuilly has argued,10 the German nation-state was at once historically overdetermined and intrinsically contingent in terms of its final contours, delineating between no discrete linguistic communities, geographical region or political or religious tradition. As an explicitly asserted entity,11 designed to supersede the monarchies, republics, and oligarchies of the individual German states, in the interests of enhancing the international competitiveness of Germany’s Wirtschaftsbürgertum through the harnessing of economies of scale and the removal of legal inconsistencies and duplications, the German nation lacked a single unifying concept that could synecdochically represent the aspirations of an increasingly dominant bürgerliche Gesellschaft. Operating as a nascent nationalist-liberalism’s mythopoeic engine, imperialism, the much vaunted Weltaufgabe of the nation-state, offered a unifying concept and a means of defining the German nation and the German people from within, by reference to its role abroad. Defined in terms of its encounters with, and rule over, the non-European world, the German nation, according to the liberal imperialist meta-narrative, was a political entity that had realized a form of statehood superseding that proffered by agrarian conservatism, which rendered socialist utopianism obsolete and overrode the reluctance to leave out Austria that characterized Catholic particularism, in that it alone, in the eyes of its advocates, offered a complete solution to the problems of social dislocation engendered by the processes of modernization being experienced by the German states. In attempting to overcome the built-in contingency of their version of a future German nation-state by identifying and narrating the nation through its interactions with alterity, German liberals sought

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to solve the conundrum that lay at the nation’s heart—its indeterminate identity, via the assertion of imperialism as the necessary task of the German nation in the world. With regard to internal economic, social, and political developments within the German states, as fundamental economic change forced Germans to cooperate in order to remain internationally competitive, the liberal bourgeoisie saw the realization of this unity as imperative for their own, class specific, long-term prospects. As a result of the actualization of national unity, German liberals became determined to see their material needs secured through the assertion of liberalism as the hegemonic political meta-narrative within the German nation, thereby ensuring the future ordering of German society in accordance with bürgerlich priorities. In terms of the complexion of the social and politico-economic reordering that liberals viewed as being necessitated by the movement into modernity, reliance upon industry and international trade as opposed to agriculture was deemed as essential. Such a movement not only jeopardized the interests of Germany’s traditional social and political elites, whose material position relied upon the continuance of large-scale agribusiness concerns, notably in the East, it also demanded wholesale changes in the distribution of populations within the German-speaking lands. Both industry and trade increasingly required an urbanized population, while an agrarian economy required just the reverse. International trade required a strong, coordinated economy—a national economy, rather than several comparatively weak and uninfluential ones, a fact acknowledged by many German states, as Abigail Green’s analysis of the role of the Zollverein at the World Exhibitions in the mid nineteenth century has illustrated.12 Once again, this placed the interests of Germany’s traditional social elites, who had hitherto preserved their political influence over many individual German states, at odds with the nationalist-liberals. More importantly, the change demanded both by modernization and the agrarian crisis of the early nineteenth century entailed a social reordering, as rural Germans were pushed out of the social arrangements that had sustained the agrarian social model for centuries. Concomitant with urbanization was the gradual marginalization of the rural populace and, in some instances, the complete social dislocation, resulting in, on the one hand, impoverished rural populations, and on the other, the incremental emergence of an economically disenfranchised urban lumpenproletariat, a surplus population with no recognizable role or future within the confines of the new capitalist national economy. Imperialism was liberalism’s longstanding answer to the social problems intrinsic to modernization. It was viewed as providing a fruitful role for displaced populations and even the chance for social mobility, through the effective outsourcing of poverty to colonial settlements, whilst ensuring Germany’s natural resource supply and a reliable market for the surplus production of German industry. In colonization, German liberals saw an answer to the Sozialfrage—which was essentially viewed as a Malthusian problem of demography rather than so-

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cialism—that was posed by the reorientation of German society in line with the demands of the new industry and trade-driven mode of production. This does not equate with a “safety-valve” liberal response to an immediate socialist menace, which in the mid nineteenth century was a lesser threat than the resistance posed by agrarian conservatives and anti-nationalist Catholics. Imperialism was not a product of liberal anxiety, but rather an assertion of their confidence—confidence in their ability to solve all domestic problems through liberal economics and the explanatory and material power of their totalizing sociopolitical meta-narrative, and confidence in their ability to compete successfully abroad with England and, the earlier hegemons of Continental Europe, France. Foremost amongst the exogenous grounds for the embracing of imperialist discourse was the model of Britain, viewed by German liberals as the liberal nation par excellence. At least as early as the 1840s,13 the British model, incorporating elements of parliamentary and judicial accountability, aggressive international trade, and controlled population resettlement in colonial outposts, was, to German liberals, an example of a nation-state that had assimilated the material needs and political priorities of the liberal middle classes as the paradigmatic assumptions of national, political, and economic life. British liberalism, imperialism, and nationalism were positioned by German liberals as necessary, normative aspects of a European nation-state. The perceived lack of all three within Germany was pointed out by German liberals as the grounds for Germany’s relative backwardness. As recent studies into the embourgeoisement of cultural life, the preponderance of liberals in local and state governments, and the scope for increased liberal political agency at the national level have shown, this nineteenth century perception of an illiberal Germany was, and (via Sonderweg historiography) has continued to be, overexaggerated. Both during the nineteenth century, and in twentieth century historiography, arguments foregrounding the persistence of pre-modern elites have largely served the purpose of obscuring the fact that seemingly “illiberal” policies (such as an expansionist Weltpolitik) actually had their origins in the ascendancy of Germany’s middle classes and the emergence of a political liberalism inspired by the British example. Far from a reinscription of Britain as a normative model of development, in a pre-Blackbourn and Eley sense,14 what is critical here is not Britain’s role as an exemplary model of modernization, but rather the perception within Germany that Britain was such a model, worthy of emulation by German liberals. Perhaps partially explaining the Sonderweg argument’s origins, the privileging of the British path to modernity (with its dedication to informal and formal means of expansion) by German liberals, as a template for a modernizing Germany, led to the persistence of the assumption that Britain actually represented a normative model for development. Put simply, nineteenth century German liberals wanted a parliament, because it had been a useful mechanism for the pressing of liberal claims in Britain; they wanted a navy because that had underwritten British trade since the eighteenth century; and they wanted colonies, because they had pro-

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vided Britain with raw materials and markets for its industrializing economy and a useful repository for Britain’s surplus population within the parameters of the globalized British economy. Through an Anglophile mimesis, Germany strove, as Friedrich List had dreamt, to attain at least global parity with Britain, through the creation of a network of informal and formal imperialist arrangements. Due to both internal and external pressures, German liberals saw imperialism as a means of safeguarding the economic security of not only the various arms of the Bürgertum from which they were largely drawn, but of the German nation that they were attempting to forge as a necessary vessel for their material interests. Nationalism, liberalism, and imperialism were the three central pillars of Germany’s bürgerliche Gesellschaft and it was under the auspices of these that Germany’s middle classes pressed their claim to domestic hegemony. In the process, they came to perceive their right to rule over the helotized indigenous societies of the colonies that were to serve them economically within a broader, pan-European, liberal Weltaufgabe, delineated in terms of bringing the Enlightenment values of Kultur, Fleiß, and Vernunft to the world, by the imposition of work discipline through trade and treaties where possible, and by force if necessary. In an era when Germany’s traditional social elites were attempting to preserve their political dominance through agribusiness, and socialists were asserting redistributive politics as the price for the acquiescence of the poor in the shift to industrial modernity, as Catholics and particularists bemoaned the contours of the kleindeutsch nation, Germany’s liberals, through an ostensibly inclusive imperialist discourse and praxis, strove to bury their domestic rivals at sea.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

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INDEX

A Abu-Lughod, Janet, 172n Adalbert v. Preußen, Heinrich, 31–32, 34n, 35n, 103, 155n Africa, 2,4,6,10, 12, 17, 18n, 19n, 21n, 29n, 57, 63, 65, 68n, 83, 85, 87–89, 98n, 99n, 105, 117–119, 123, 128, 130n, 131n, 141, 148, 151, 155n, 160, 162–65, 168–172, 172n, 173n, 174n, 175n, 183–84, 186, 188, 192, 195, 200n, 201n, 206 America. See North America/South America Anderson, Benedict, 14, 23n, 67n, 126, 131n, 152, 159 Australia, 57, 82, 141, 184, 188, 195 Austria. See Habsburg Empire

B Bade, Klaus, 3, 18n, 38, 47n, 48n, 53, 68n, 143–144, 149, 156n, 157n, 208, 211n Bahre, LG, 139, 155n Barth, Heinrich, 164–65, 173n, 176n, 184, 200n, 201n, 206 Belgum, Kirsten, 178–79, 198n, 199n Bennigsen, Rudolf v., 58, 80, 94n, 95n, 101,105–06, 108, 111, 111n, 112n, 113n, 118, 121–122, 163, 196, 206 Berghahn, Volker, 128n, 129n Berlin, 19n, 63–64, 88, 95n, 97n, 109, 115n, 137–38, 154n, 172n, 206 Berlin Africa Conference, 6, 19n, 98n, 116, 131n Bhabha, Homi, 12, 22n, 160–161, 172n, 177, 180, 183, 198n, 199n, 200n Biefang, Andreas, 22n, 23n, 111n, 112n, 113n Bildungsbürgertum, 5, 15, 108, 124, 164, 171, 206–07

Bismarck, Otto v., 2, 3, 12, 18n, 19n, 21n, 22n, 47n, 68n, 87–88, 97n, 98n, 113n, 114n, 115n, 116–125, 127, 129n, 130n, 131n, 143–44, 152, 156n, 192–93, 207, 211n Blackbourn, David, 15, 20n, 22n, 23n, 76, 92n, 93n, 120, 129n, 210, 211n Blumenau (colony), 167–68, 96n, 98n, 174n, 206 Blumenau, Hermann, 6, 28, 43n, 65–67, 69n, 71n, 72n, 80–83, 86, 90–91, 95n, 96n, 136, 139, 147, 166–68, 196, 204n, 205 Böhme Helmut, 23n bourgeoisie, 10, 14–15, 17, 20n, 23n, 28, 42, 54, 66, 67n, 77, 83, 85, 91–92, 120, 122, 127, 146, 178, 209, 210 Brazil, 40, 49n, 64–65, 69n, 78–82, 85–86, 90, 92, 93n, 94n, 95n, 96n, 97n, 98n, 100n, 105, 136, 139, 151, 155n, 166–69, 174n, 182, 196, 199n, 200n, 204n, 206 Breuilly, John, 12, 22, 208, 211n Britain, 1,2,14, 20n, 31, 33–34, 42, 45n, 46n, 53, 55–56, 58, 62, 69n, 70n, 87, 96, 91, 99n, 103–04, 106, 109–10, 112n, 113n, 115n, 119–120, 124, 128, 140, 142, 149, 152, 156n, 170, 172n, 197, 201n, 202n, 204n, 210–11 Bülow, Alexander v., 61–63, 67, 70n, 71n, 97n

C Calhoun, Craig, 22n Canada, 139, 166 Catholicism, 5, 9–10, 20n, 27, 42, 47n, 118, 125, 128, 208, 210–211 Chickering, Roger, 128n

Index | 235

conservatism, 5, 7, 9–10, 23n, 27, 29, 32, 34, 36, 40, 42, 53–54, 60, 75, 98n, 106, 118, 120–21, 123, 127–28, 143, 145, 149–50, 153, 194, 208, 210

D Deleuze, Gilles, 8, 21n Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft. See German Colonial Society Dix, Arthur, 4, 19n Dona Francisca, 85, 168, 174n Droysen, Johann Gustav, 40, 49n, 65, 71n, 76, 81 Duppler, Jörg, 32, 44n, 45n

E Eley, Geoff, 14–15, 22n, 23n, 43n, 86, 92n, 93n, 97n, 120, 128n, 129n, 143, 156n, 210, 211n England. See Britain Evans, Richard J, 20n, 23n, 87, 96n, 98n Eyck, Erich , 120, 128n, 129n, 130n

F Fabri, Friedrich, 7, 18n, 59, 68n, 78, 87, 91, 108–09, 142–151, 153, 156n, 157n, 158n, 163 Fabri, Timotheus, 78, 91, 93n, 108–09 Fanon, Frantz, 4, 19n, 161 Fenske, Hans, 3, 18n, 30, 44n, 67, 67n, 72n, 208, 211n Förster, Stig, 19n, 98n, 128n France, 2, 20n, 31, 35, 42, 53, 55–56, 85, 87, 103–04, 108, 110, 119, 124, 129n, 140, 170, 172n, 210 Franco-Prussian War, 196, 202n Frank, Andre Gunder, 172n Frankfurt National Assembly (Nationalversammlung), 1, 7–8, 28–32, 36, 42, 43n, 45n, 50–51, 54, 58, 62–63, 67, 76, 83, 88, 91, 103, 109, 126, 136–37, 146, 164, 166, 180, 182, 189, 195, 205 Friedrichsmeyer Sara, 19n Fröbel, Julius, 78, 94n, 136–37, 153, 154n, 166, 206 Fröschle, H, 71n, 100n

G Gade, George, 139, 155n Gagern, Hans Christoph v., 6, 39, 43n, 48n, 1136, 150, 205

Gagern, Heinrich v., 28, 39–40, 48n, 50, 67 Gaillard, Karl, 63, 71n Gall, Lothar, 2,7, 15, 18n, 20n, 23n, 122, 128n, 129n, 130n Gallagher, John, 22n, 84, 97n Gartenlaube, 7,23n, 111n, 117, 177–198, 198n, 199n, 200n, 204n, 206–07 Geiss, Imanuel, 20n Gellner, Ernest, 12, 22n German Colonial Society (Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft), 51, 97n, 98n, 100n, 111n, 113n, 114n, 115n, 129n, 159n, 173n Germany, passim Gerstäcker, Friedrich, 7, 183, 195–198, 203n, 204n, 207 Gramsci, Antonio, 13,22n, 67n Green, Abigail, 111n, 209, 211n Grimm, Hans, 48n Grosse, Pascal, 3, 19n Gründer, Horst, 3, 17, 18n, 24n, 125, 128n, 129n, 131n, 153, 159n Gruppe, Heidemarie, 178, 198n, 199n Guha, Ranajit, 161–62, 172n

H Habsburg Empire, 27, 208 Hall, Catherine, 6, 20n, 21n, 22n Hamburg, 34–35, 47n, 83–89, 92, 96n, 97n, 98n, 99n, 100n, 102, 108, 112n, 113n, 118–19, 123, 129n, 151, 159n, 162, 164, 170, 172n, 173n, 190, 202n, 206 Hamburg Colonization Association (Hamburger Kolonisationsverein), 6, 78, 83, 86, 90–92, 97n, 109 Harkort, Friedrich, 20n, 140–142, 153, 155n, 156n, 206 Herwig, Holger H., 91, 100n Heyden, Ulrich v.d., 3, 19n, 68n, 99n, 131n, 172n Hildebrand, Klaus, 2–3, 18n, 119, 128n, 129n, 207–208, 211n Hillgruber, Andreas, 131n Hobsbawm, Eric, 21n Holl, Karl, 17n, 18n, 20n Huber, Ernst Rudolf, 30, 44n Hyrkkänen, Markku, 127, 131n

I imperialism, passim

236 | Index

J Janeck, Undine, 199n, 204n Joinville, 85, 206 Jones, Larry Eugene, 20n Junkers, 98n, 140, 143

K Kehr, Eckart, 119 Keil, Ernst, 101, 111n, 178, 195–96, 198n, 204n Kennedy, Paul, 68 Kerst, Samuel, 137–39, 153, 154n, 155n, 206 Koch, Rainer, 45n, 49n Kocka, Jürgen, 23n, 76, 93n Kreuzer, Marcus, 129n Kundrus, Birthe, 3, 18n, 19n, 21n, 24n

L Lambi, Ivo Nicholai, 55–56, 68n Langewiesche, Dieter, 7, 20n, 21n, 45n, 68n, 92, 92n, 93n, 100n, 131n, 207, 211n Lasker, Eduard, 121–123 Leipzig, 21n, 59, 67n, 90–91, 95n, 96n, 100n, 109, 111n, 198n, 206 liberalism, passim List, Friedrich, 2, 6, 28, 53, 55–61, 63–64, 67, 68n, 69n, 70n, 77, 125, 128, 128n, 131n, 136, 142, 147–48, 150, 202n, 205, 211 Lübcke, Alexandra, 28, 43n, 172n lumpenproletariat, 86, 209

M Maltzan, Hermann v., 108, 114n, 115n, 164, 173n May, Karl, 197–98, 199n, 203n, 204n, 207 Mikoletzky, Juliane, 194, 203n Minnerup, Günter, 20n Miquel, Johannes v., 21n, 58, 101, 105–08, 113n, 114n, 119, 123, 129n, 163, 206 Mommsen Wolfgang J., 2, 5, 7, 17n, 18n, 19n, 20n, 21n, 29, 43n, 44n, 93n, 98n, 101, 112n, 131n, 207–08, 211n Müller Frank Lorenz, 3, 19n, 21n, 29, 38, 40, 44n, 48n, 49n, 67, 71, 72n, 131n, 208, 211n

N Na’aman, Schlomo, 111n, 112n Nachtigal, Gustav, 88, 99n Namier, Lewis, 1, 8, 17n, 21n, 41, 49n

National Association (Nationalverein) (German), 7–8, 23n, 58n, 77,79–80, 82, 93n, 94n, 100n, 101–107, 111, 111n, 112n, 113n, 114n, 122, 126, 140, 143, 181, 189–90, 196, 198n, 202n, 206 nationalism, passim Nationalverein. See National Association Nationalversammlung. See Frankfurt National Assembly navy, 5, 29, 31–37, 42–43, 46n, 58, 62, 65– 66, 83, 88, 93n, 101–108, 125, 130n, 135, 139–41, 155n, 190–91, 193, 210 Nipperdey, Thomas, 1, 2, 5, 17n, 178, 199n Nkrumah, Kwame, 89, 99n North America, 38–39, 57–59, 61, 63–64, 79, 81–82, 91, 95, 137, 139, 145, 151, 155n, 180–81, 188, 195, 204n, 70n, 158n Noyes, John Kenneth, 3, 19n, 172n Nuhn, Walter, 88, 99n

O Ottoman Empire, 59, 136, 150–51, 158

P Paraguay, 90, 100, 152, 159n, 166 Peru, 79, 90, 100n, 166 Pitts, Jennifer, 6, 20n, 21n, 22n, 172n Pogge von Strandmann, Hartmut, 3, 19n, 98n, 121, 128n, 130n, 208, 211n proletariat, 14, 36, 38, 47n, 54, 60, 61, 70n, 86, 120, 127 Prussia, 16, 21n, 27, 31, 35, 44n, 48n, 58, 64, 75, 77–78, 82–83, 85–86, 89, 91, 93n 98, 99n, 102, 104, 106, 112n, 114n, 122, 137, 140–42, 155n, 156n, 190, 193, 195–96, 202n, 206

R Robinson, Ronald, 22n, 84, 97n Rochau, August Ludwig v., 22n, 76–77, 92, 93n, 100n, 101, 140 Roscher, Wilhelm, 6, 20n, 59–61, 70n, 136, 142, 157n, 166, 174n Ruppius, Otto, 194–95, 197, 203n, 207 Russia, 1, 31, 119, 146, 150

S Said, Edward, 4, 6, 20n, 24n Sammons, Jeffrey L, 197, 203n, 204n Samoa, 2, 55, 83–84, 88, 108, 114n, 118– 19, 121–23, 129n, 151, 169, 175n, 206

Index | 237

Schoonover, Thomas, 89–90, 99n, 100n Schulze, Hagen, 22n, 23n, 211n Schulze-Delitzsch, Franz Hermann, 80, 93n, 101, 202n Senger und Etterlin, Stefan v., 48n, 180, 199n Sheehan, James, 7, 20n, 21n, 23n, 45n, 68n, 92n, 129n Short, John Phillip, 21n, 67n, 131n Siemann, Wolfram, 43n, 44n, 45n Skřivan, Aleš, 96n, 97n Smith, Woodruff, 22n, 49n, 58, 68n, 69n, 149, 158n social imperialism, 36, 43n, 54, 60, 68n, 86, 119, 120, 129n, 130n, 143–46, 150, 156n, 207 socialism, 5, 9–10, 21n, 27, 37, 42, 54, 60, 86, 118, 120–22, 124, 127–28, 143–146, 149, 156n, 207, 208, 210–211 Sonderweg, 210 South America, 10, 48n, 57, 59–66, 69n, 71n, 78–81, 85, 90–91, 105,137–38, 148, 152, 155, 161, 165–169, 172, 175n, 180–82, 188, 195, 206 Stresemann, Gustav, 29, 43n Sturz, Johann J., 6, 64–65, 67, 69n, 71n, 78–83, 91, 93n, 94n, 95n, 105, 111, 113n, 136, 139, 147–48, 150, 167–69, 182, 196, 205 Sudhaus, Fritz, 92, 94n, 95n, 100n

T Taylor, AJP, 3, 19n, 119–20, 129n Turkey. See Ottoman Empire

U United States, 41, 48n, 66,78–79, 82, 87, 93n, 99n, 136, 139, 142, 152, 156n, 182

Uruguay, 63, 71n, 78, 81, 90, 105, 137–38, 152, 154n, 159n, 165–66, 173n

V Vick, Brian, 27, 43n Vollmer, Renate, 38, 48n

W Weber, Ernst v., 189, 192 Weber, Max, 60–61 Weber, Theodor, 84, 96n Wehler, Hans Ulrich, 3, 18n, 21n, 36, 43n, 44n, 47n, 53–54, 60, 68n, 86, 93n, 97n, 113n, 114n, 115n, 119–122, 128n, 129n, 130n, 131n, 143–46, 149–50, 156n, 207–08, 211n Werner, Reinhold v., 141–43, 155n, 156n, 206 Wigard, Franz, 43n, 45n, 46n, 47n, 48n, 49n Wildenthal, Lora, 3, 19n Wirtschaftsbürgertum, 5, 15, 38, 76, 83, 85, 90, 92, 118, 123–24, 164, 173n, 205–06, 208

Y Young, Robert, 6, 19n, 20n

Z Zangerl, Anton, 195, 203n Zantop, Susannne, 3, 19n, 43n, 131n Zeller, Joachim, 3, 19n, 68n, 99n, 131n, 172n Zimmerer, Jürgen, 3, 19n, 21n, 68n, 131n, 163, 173 Zimmerman, Andrew, 162, 171, 172n, 175n, 198n Zollverein, 83, 111n, 209

Berghahn Books

Related Title of Interest REVISED AND EXPANDED EDITION

IMPERIAL GERMANY 1871–1918 Economy, Society, Culture and Politics Volker R. Berghahn, Professor of History, Columbia University CHOICE OUTSTANDING BOOK OF THE YEAR "... not a conventional political history but a comprehensive account of German society, alive to the conflicts and contradictions in that society and attentive to broader social, economic and cultural developments." — New York Times Book Review "... a milestone in the historiography of the Kaiserreich ... an important and useful book both for teachers and scholars ... Students will be stimulated by the prospect of historiographic debate without being bored or turned off by its arcane twists and turns ... For now and ... for some time to come, [this book] will set the scholarly standard as we as fill a pedagogical void." — The Historian "... the best comprehensive textbook on Imperial Germany available to date. [The author's] self-consciously didactic stance, his clarity of writing, his excellent crossreferencing throughout and ... the marvelous statistical appendix…will recommend the book to undergraduates." — History Today "... a comprehensive, very readable introduction to German society ... Accessible to general readers and undergraduates; recommended for all libraries." — Choice A comprehensive history of German society in this period, providing a broad survey of its development. The volume is thematically organized and designed to give easy access to the major topics and issues of the Bismarkian and Wilhelmine eras. The statistical appendix contains a wide range of social, economic and political data. Written with the English-speaking student in mind, this book is likely to become a widely used text for this period, incorporating as it does twenty years of further research on the German Empire since the appearance of Hans-Ulrich Wehler's classic work. CONTENTS: Introduction — Part I: Economy: Economic Sectors and Structural Change - National and Regional Economic Developments - The Organization of Industry — Part II: Society: Demographic Structure and Development - Social Stratification and Inequalities - Women and Men - Issues of Generation and Socialization - Minorities and Majorities - Basic Patterns of Social Inequality and their Milieus — Part III: Culture: High Culture and Popular Culture - The Sciences and Humanities The Press, Its Readerships, and the Role of Intellectuals — Part IV: The Realm of Politics: The Constitutional Framework - Parties and Elections in a Period of Dynamic Change - Organizations and Movements in the Extraparliamentary Sphere - Structure and Functional Changes in the Executive Branch - The Evolution of Domestic Politics, 1871–1914 - Foreign Policy — Part V: World War I: The July Crisis of 1914 - Strategy, Diplomacy, War Aims As Seen “From Above” - The World War As Experienced “From Below” - Military Defeat and the Collapse of the Hohenzollern Monarchy. 400 pages, 86 tables, bibliog., index ISBN 978-1-84545-011-3 Paperback

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