German Expansionism, Imperial Liberalism and the United States, 1776–1945

This book traces the connections between American westward expansion and German colonialism from the late eighteenth century to World War II.

Jens-Uwe Guettel (Author)

9781107622616, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 8 October 2015

292 pages
22.8 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.44 kg

'This ambitious work is at once a major contribution to transnational history and a provocative meditation on the nature of nineteenth-century German liberalism. In short, Guettel has crafted an insightful, stimulating, and well-argued contribution to the history of ideas.' Larry L. Ping, German Studies Review

This book traces the importance of the United States for German colonialism from the late eighteenth century to 1945, focusing on American westward expansion and racial politics. Jens-Uwe Guettel argues that from the late eighteenth century onward, ideas of colonial expansion played a very important role in liberal, enlightened and progressive circles in Germany, which, in turn, looked across the Atlantic to the liberal-democratic United States for inspiration and concrete examples. Yet following a pre-1914 peak of liberal political influence on the administration and governance of Germany's colonies, the expansionist ideas embraced by Germany's far-right after the country's defeat in the First World War had little or no connection with the German Empire's liberal imperialist tradition - for example, Nazi plans for the settlement of conquered Eastern European territories were not directly linked to pre-1914 transatlantic exchanges concerning race and expansionism.

Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Soil, liberty, and blood: Germans and American westward expansion before 1871
2. From theory to practice: German colonialism and American westward expansion before the Great War
3. The American South and racial segregation in the German colonies
4. America, race, and German expansionism from the Great War to 1945
Conclusion. Imperial liberalism, Nazi expansionism, and the continuities of German history
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Colonialism & imperialism [HBTQ], History: earliest times to present day [HBL], European history [HBJD]