Abstract
Reviewed by: Martijn Lak, Erasmus University Rotterdam/The Hague University of Applied Sciences, the Netherlands
Given its enormous influence on Europe and the world as a whole, it is easy to forget that Germany has only been a unified state for around 150 years. The unification of the, to paraphrase Martin Kitchen ‘ramshackle empire’, under the guidance of Bismarck in 1870–1871, all of a sudden made the country the most powerful military and economic state on the European continent, much to the alarm of France and Great Britain, let alone of Germany’s small neighbours like Belgium and the Netherlands.
Traditionally, historians have paid considerable attention to the formation of a German national identity in the years leading up to the First World War. They were correct in doing this, of course, as unifying the country did not immediately mean that its people felt ‘German’ from 1871 onwards. On the one hand, this had to do with the fact that it remained unclear for a long time what being ‘German’ meant (was it above all culture, Germany as the Kulturnation par excellence?). Moreover, there were huge differences within the country itself, for example between Catholics and Protestants. Historians have also emphasized that all this happened against the background of the first wave of globalization at the end of the nineteenth and the start of the twentieth centuries and European imperialism.
Indeed, there is much truth in this. However, it is far from the complete story and above all it seems to be somewhat of a simplification of the complex and intertwined developments that took place between 1870 and 1914. In his impressive and wide-ranging Germany and the Modern World, 1880–1914, historian Mark Hewitson makes clear just how complex this transitional, first ‘globalized’ period indeed was, while at the same time correcting and critically analysing long-held assumptions.
The so-called ‘first wave of globalization’ indeed had strong influences worldwide, no less so on Germany. The new openness brought all sorts of challenges, as Hewitson makes ably clear, that could potentially alter the viewpoints of contemporaries – in his words: ‘mass migration, industrialization and further diversification, labour uncertainty and changes of working practices, the creation of diaspora, new conceptions of territory and citizenship, questions of identity and a racialization of nationalism’ (p. 8), quite like in our current times, one is tempted to say.
However, Hewitson provocatively asks, ‘how far did specifically global events and horizons alter their [Germans’] sense of identity and allegiance, revising their conception of a German nation and state?’ (9). Hewitson makes clear that when it came to the conceptions of ‘others’, ‘the majority of Germans had never seen anyone from Asia or Africa in person’ (127). Moreover, attitudes towards foreigners and other people, for example Poles and Jews, differed considerably across Germany, making it difficult ‘to incorporate [them] into a transnational explanation of radicalized nationalism. How the groups were viewed depended to a significant extent on which political constituency and social milieu the observer came from’ (128).
The same applies to how most Germans saw the political system of the Kaiserreich. Of course, right-wing groups – and there were many of them, for example the Alldeutscher Verband – fulminated against attempts to institute pure parliamentarism, but, Hewitson claims, most Germans simply accepted the Reich’s system of government. In fact, ‘virtually none were willing to die in order to replace it with another type of regime’ (134). As Hewitson shows, even critics of the Kaiserreich were ‘sceptical about the merits of any parliamentary alternative. The force of such a negative argument affected all German parties and helped to convince four out of five of the main groupings in the Reichstag not to introduce a parliamentary regime in Germany over the short term’ (205).
The emotional debate among contemporaries on the German identity, focused on a definition of citizenship based on ethnicity or a myth of common ancestry, makes clear, as Hewitson convincingly states, that there was an uncertain boundary between the cultural and racial foundations of Germany. Like in other European countries of the nineteenth century, ‘character or values were, of course, an artificial construction’ (137); the growth in population was not, however. In seventy years’ time, the German population had doubled (234), although here Germany basically followed the more general European pattern of the so-called demographic transition, France being the main exception. France was not only surpassed in demography, but also economically.
Hewitson has written a very balanced book, full of new and often surprising insights. It is information-packed, and the author shows a great command of both the primary sources (making German sources accessible to the English-speaking audience) and the extensive secondary literature. He debunks many traditional assumptions, and presents interesting contemporary illustrations, although they could have been increased in size.
The author ends with a convincing and elaborate conclusion. One of his most interesting assertions, contrasting earlier findings, is that ‘there is little evidence that radical nationalism had become much more pervasive on the eve of the First World War than it had been over the previous two decades’ (310). Moreover, Hewitson shows that despite all the fuss about imperialism, Weltpolitik, nationalism and ‘the first global age’, for the majority of Germans, ‘the primary political task – or a significant secondary one – was to continue to consolidate a German nation-state in the midst of a familiar local and still largely European “world”’ (317). A timely and welcome book indeed.