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Discourses of inclusion and exclusion were an integral part of German nation-building after 1871. The paper shows that they were not confined to the metropole but were, in fact, reciprocated abroad. Selected instances of conflict within German migrant communities around the world are taken as a springboard to analyze public contestations of (trans-)national belonging. The sources abound with gossip, aggressive bickering, and official complaints to authorities. Contentious issues cover the areas of politics, religion, class, and language. The case studies engage critically with a number of wider issues. First, they question contemporaneous interpretations of an Imperial diaspora as a unified and Heimat-oriented block. Second, on a theoretical level the article argues that internal ruptures are constitutive elements of diaspora construction and should be considered in concomitant theorizations. Third, the case studies highlight the close connection between diaspora and nation-building. Fourth, the discourses studied took place not only within communities, but also between them, as well as with the metropole, all in multi-directional ways. Questions of belonging were discussed around the world with strikingly similar arguments and terminology. Globalization was at work at the discourse level.

AbstractThis article examines the close connection betweenProtestantism and nationalism inImperialGermany within a transnational context. In the years before 1914, thePrussianStateChurch in particular strengthened the legal and organisational framework for an increasing number of diaspora congregations to become attached. These acted as an important vehicle to embed the nationalist rhetoric produced within theReichinto emigrants' notions of belonging. Whilst previous scholarship has noted this connection in general, the article sheds more detailed light on the mechanics and structure, but also on the limits, of this process. Feedback processes from periphery to centre, in turn, had an impact onGerman national identity construction as that of a nation that was not confined to state borders. Applying a constructionist theoretical framework, the contested question of whether the heterogeneity ofGermans abroad allows for the application of the diaspora concept is answered affirmatively.

"Although civilian internment has become associated with the Second World War in popular memory, it has a longer history. The turning point in this history occurred during the First World War when, in the interests of 'security' in a situation of total war, the internment of 'enemy aliens' became part of state policy for the belligerent states, resulting in the incarceration, displacement and, in more extreme cases, the death by neglect or deliberate killing, of hundreds of thousands of people throughout the world. This pioneering book on internment during the First World War brings together international experts to investigate the importance of the conflict for the history of civilian incarceration"--