Suchergebnisse

Part III-The texts of ImperialismChapter 6-Expansionist Agitation after 1849; Chapter 7-Geography and Anthropology in the service of imperialism; Chapter 8-Popular culture and the transmission of imperialist values; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index; Related Title of Interest

In the past two decades, colonial studies, the postcolonial turn, the new imperial history, as well as world and global history have made serious strides toward revising key elements of German history. Instead of insisting that German modernity was a fundamentally unique, insular affair that incubated authoritarian social tendencies, scholars working in these fields have done much to reinsert Germany into the broader logic of nineteenth-century global history, in which the thalassocratic empires of Europe pursued the project of globalizing their economies, populations, and politics. During this period, settler colonies, including German South West Africa, were established and consolidated by European states at the expense of displaced, helotized, or murdered indigenous populations. Complementing these settler colonies were mercantile entrepôts and plantation colonies, which sprouted up as part of a systematic, global attempt to reorient non-European economies, work patterns, and epistemological frameworks along European lines. Although more modestly than some of its European collaborators and competitors, Germany joined Britain, France, the Netherlands, and the United States in a largely liberal project of global maritime imperialism.

Victor Klemperer. Munich 1919. Diary of a Revolution. Translated by Jessica Spengler (Cambridge: Polity, 2017), pp.x + 190. Sixteen b/w plates. £15.51 (hb).

Wilhelm II: Into the Abyss of War and Exile, 1900–1941. By John C.G. Röhl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp.1562, AU$97.95 (cloth).

In conquering Egypt, the Roman Empire secured direct access to the centuries-old Indian Ocean trade network that in Roman times brought together China, India, Southeast Asia, Parthia, Arabia, and Africa as well as the Roman Mediterranean. Far from being a product of Schumpeterian objectless expansion, Rome's conquest of Egypt fit into a broader strategic logic that sought to extend Roman control over eastern entrepôts. Despite its centrality to the Mediterranean wing of the world economy and its ability to extract surplus from its own provinces, the hub of this global economy remained India, whose linchpin emporia were able to extract surplus from the Roman Empire.

In chapter eleven ofMein Kampf, Adolf Hitler, having constructed aneal type "culture-bearing" Aryan race,1came to elucidate his views on the history of Jews within Germany. Until the time of Frederick the Great, he argued, "it still entered no one's head to regard the Jews as anything else but a 'foreign' people."2Thereafter, he asserted, came a period of transition wherein Jews had "the effrontery to turn Germanic."3The rest of the chapter, for Hitler, was an attempt to reverse this putative historical mistake, and presents the reader with a vitriolic casting out of Jews, described as "parasites" and a "noxious bacillus," from the German body politic.4The aim of this textual expulsion, Hitler explained, was to ensure that the Germans would not be destroyed from within, as had "all great cultures of the past."5To Hitler, Jews were what Julia Kristeva has called "the abject"6—that which is simultaneously part of the self but radically rejected by the self. In seeking to expel the "Germanic Jews" from theVolkskörper, Hitler sought to expel that part of the German self that, in his view, was a source of weakness and taint.7

This thesis situates the emergence of German imperialist theory and praxis during the nineteenth century within the context of the ascendancy of German liberalism. It also contends that imperialism was an integral part of a liberal sense of German national identity. It is divided into an introduction, four parts and a set of conclusions. The introduction is a methodological and theoretical orientation. It offers an historiographical overview and places the thesis within the broader historiographical context. It also discusses the utility of post-colonial theory and various theories of nationalism and nation-building. Part One examines the emergence of expansionism within liberal circles prior to and during the period of 1848/ 49. It examines the consolidation of expansionist theory and political practice, particularly as exemplified in the Frankfurt National Assembly and the works of Friedrich List. Part Two examines the persistence of imperialist theorising and praxis in the post-revolutionary era. It scrutinises the role of liberal associations, civil society, the press and the private sector in maintaining expansionist energies up until the 1884 decision to establish state-protected colonies. Part Three focuses on the cultural transmission of imperialist values through the sciences, media and fiction. In examines in particular the role of geographical journals and societies and of the periodical Die Gartenlaube. Part Four discusses the post World War I era, and examines liberal attempts to revive German imperialism, within the context of a refusal to accept the Versailles settlement. It also delineates points of convergence and divergence between Nazi and liberal imperialisms. This is followed by a summation of the evidence and arguments, in which it is concluded that the liberal narration of German national identity was predicated both on the objectification of colonised lands and attempts to emulate and ultimately rival British imperial power.

Amidst empires : colonialism, China and the Chinese / Matthew P. Fitzpatrick and Peter Monteath -- Chinese dreams of national strength and global belonging : "iron and blood" and the forces of evolution, 1895-1918 / Clemens Büttner -- "Learning to walk" : Qing constitutional reform and Britain's imperial pedagogy, 1901-1911 / Tom Neuhaus -- Colonial pathways to international education : Chinese students in white Australia in the 1920s / Mei-Fen Kuo and John Fitzgerald -- The legacies of European imperialism : modern art for modern China / Yiyan Wang -- Anti-colonial boycotts and diasporic activism linking interwar China and colonial Indonesia : the Xiao case / Kris Alexanderson -- Between empire and nation(s) : the Peranakan Chinese of the Straits Settlements, 1890-1948 / Bernard Z. Keo -- Lowe Kong Meng and the fluidity of 19th century geopolitical affinity / Paul Macgregor -- Constructing Chinese alterity for Germany's youth (1897-1902) / Yixu Lu -- Who are the barbarians? The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 in the discourse of civilization / Liu Wenming -- Missionaries and Chinese women : the representation and exploitation of vulnerability in British missionary writing / Tamara Cooper -- Peripheries of empire : G. E. Morrison's An Australian in China / Peter Monteath.