Abstract
It need hardly be said that Britain’s relationship with Germany and the Germans has been of immense importance historically. In the twentieth century, the contest for power between the two countries helped to push the world to war in 1914; triggered a second more terrible conflict in 1939; led to Britain’s imperial retreat and drove it by necessity into a ‘special relationship’ with the United States after 1941. The origins of this troubled relationship — the 1860–1914 period, which is the focus of this book — is perhaps one of the best-known, but least understood, phases in Britain’s association with Germany, being most meticulously explored in Paul Kennedy’s Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism (1980): still the dominant master-narrative despite three decades of subsequent scholarship. Charting the process by which Britain and Germany became diplomatically and militarily estranged, Kennedy took as his basic purpose to explain why ‘the British and German peoples … went to war against each other’, when they possessed no longstanding tradition of antipathy and indeed had been remarkably close for much of the preceding century.2 The general and ongoing fascination with this apparent paradox has also led popular historians to explore it, and in a sense, every history of the origins of the First and Second World Wars — which constitute entire genres in their own right — can be said to constitute a work on Anglo-German relations.3
It was not part of their blood,
It came to them very late
With long arrears to make good,
When the English began to hate.
They were not easily moved,
They were icy willing to wait
Till every count be proved
Ere the English began to hate.
Rudyard Kipling, 1915.1
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Note
R. Kipling, ‘The Beginnings (from Mary Postgate – A Diversity of Creatures)’, in The Complete Verse, London: Kyle Cathie, 1990, pp. 553–4.
P. Kennedy, The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, 1860–1914, London: Allen & Unwin, 1980, p. 464.
R. K. Massie, Dreadnought: Britain, Germany and the Coming of the Great War, London: Pimlico, 2002; R. K. Massie, Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany and the Winning of the Great War at Sea, London: Jonathan Cape, 2004; P. Padfield, The Great Naval Race: The Anglo-German Naval Rivalry, 1900–1914, London: Hart-Davis, 1974; R. Milton, The Best of Enemies: Britain and Germany – 100 Years of Truth and Lies, London: Icon, 2007.
S. Lee, Victory in Europe? Britain and Germany since 1945, Harlow: Longman, 2001;
S. Lee, An Uneasy Partnership: Anglo-German Relations between 1955 and 1961, Bochum: Brockmeyer Universitätsverlag, 1996.
A. Wright, Literature of Crisis: 1910–1922, London: Macmillan Press, 1984;
P. E. Firchow, The Death of the German Cousin: Variations on a Literary Stereotype, 1890–1920, London: Associated University Press, 1986.
On the political impacts: M. Brechtken, ‘Personality, Image and Perception: Patterns and Problems of Anglo-German Relations in the 19th and 20th Centuries’, in A. M. Birke, M. Brechtken and A. Searle (eds), An Anglo-German Dialogue: The Munich Lectures on the History of International Relations, München: K. G. Sauer, 2000, p. 18. On anti-German feeling in Whitehall:
E. T. Corp, ‘The Transformation of the Foreign Office, 1900–1907’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Kent, 1976;
K. G. Robbins, ‘The Foreign Secretary, the Cabinet, Parliament and the Parties’, in F. H. Hinsley (ed.), British Foreign Policy under Sir Edward Grey, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977, p. 19.
J. Cleese and C. Booth, ‘The Germans’, in The Complete Fawlty Towers, London: Mandarin, 1988, p. 153. Also: J. Ramsden, Don’t Mention the War, London: Abacus, 2007, pp. 362, 385, 387–8).
J. Mander, Our German Cousins, London: John Murray, 1974, p. 2.
T. Kielinger, Crossroads and Roundabouts – Junctions in German-British Relations, D. Ward (trans.), Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1996, p. viii; Ramsden, Don’t Mention the War, pp. ix–x and Chapters 6–10. Emerging at the same time was: Günter Hollenberg, Englisches Interesse am Kaiserreich: Die Attraktivität Preussen-Deutschlands für Konservative und Liberale Kreise in Großbritannian, 1860–1914, Wiesbaden, 1974.
D. Lawson, ‘Saying the Unsayable About the Germans’, The Spectator, 14 July, 1990, pp. 8–10.
Also L. Moyle, ‘The Ridley-Chequers Affair and the German Character’, in C. Cullingford and H. Husemann (eds), Anglo-German Attitudes, Aldershot: Avebury, 1995, pp. 165–80.
Also A. M. Birke, ‘Britain and German Unity’, in Deutschland und Großbritannien: Historische Beziehungen und Vergleiche/Britain and Germany: Historical Relations and Comparisons, F. Bosbach and H. Hiery (eds), München: K. G. Sauer, 1999, pp. 279–91;
M. Kitchen, A History of Modern Germany, 1800–2000, Blackwell: Malden, 2006, p. 393.
R. Cooper, ‘The Myth of Prussia’, in C. Buffet and B. Heuser (eds), Haunted by History – Myths in International Relations, Providence: Berghahn Books, 1998, pp. 224, 226–7; C. Clark, Iron Kingdom: the Rise and Downfall of Prussia, London: Allen Lane, 2006, pp. 670–88.
Kielinger, Crossroads and Roundabouts. On persistent stereotypes: J. Theobald, ‘Manufacturing Europhobia out of Germanophobia. Case studies in populist propaganda’, in R. Tenberg (ed.), Intercultural Perspectives: Images of Germany in Education and the Media, Munich, Iudicium, 1999, pp. 30–50.
D. Geppert and R. Gerwarth, Conference Report: ‘Wilhelmine Germany and Edwardian Britain – Cultural Contacts and Transfers, Conference of the GHIL held at University College, Oxford, 23–24 March 2006’, in Bulletin of the German Historical Institute, Vol. XXVIII, No. 2, November 2006, p. 115; Dominik Geppert and Robert Gerwarth (eds), Wilhelmine Germany and Edwardian Britain: Essays on Cultural Affinity, Oxford and London: German Historical Institute and Oxford University Press, 2008.
Thomas Weber, Our Friend ‘The Enemy’: Elite Education in Britain and Germany before World War I, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008; German History, Volume 26, Number 4, October 2008; Central European History, Volume 41, Number 4, December 2008;
Frank Bösch, Öffentliche Geheimnisse: Skandale, Politik und Medien in Deutschland und Großbritannien 1880–1914. München: Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2009;
Martin Schramm, Das Deutschlandbild in der britischen Presse 1912–1919, Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2007;
Gisela Argyle, Germany as Model and Monster: Allusions in English Fiction, 1830s–1930s, Toronto: McGill-Queens, 2002.
Older scholarship: O. J. Hale, Publicity and Diplomacy: With Special Reference to England and Germany, 1880–1914, Gloucester: Peter Smith, 1964;
R. J. Sontag, Germany and England: Background of Conflict, 1848–1894, New York: Russell & Russell, 1964;
E. L. Woodward, Great Britain and the German Navy, London: Cassell & Co., 1964.
Also see J. Joll, The Origins of the First World War, London: Longman, 1984;
R. J. W. Evans and H. Pogge von Strandmann (eds), The Coming of the First World War, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988.
N. Ferguson, The Pity of War, London: Penguin, 1998, pp. 1–30;
H. Strachan, The First World War – Volume I: To Arms, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 161–2; Z. Steiner and K. Neilson, Britain and the Origins of the First World War, Second Edition, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, p. 260; Ramsden, Don’t Mention the War, pp. 95–103.
Mander, Our German Cousins, p. 15; Geppert and Gerwarth, ‘Wilhelmine Germany and Edwardian Britain’, p. 115; A. N. Wilson, The Victorians, London: Hutchinson, 2002, p. 350; Ramsden, Don’t Mention the War, pp. 1, 99; R. Hattersley, The Edwardians, London: Abacus, 2006, pp. 465–6.
J. Ramsden, ‘An Amiable, Unselfish, Kindly People: Jerome K. Jerome and the Germans’, unpublished text of article for German History, p. 1; Ramsden, Don’t Mention the War, p. 65. Also Hattersley, The Edwardians, p. 3; I. F. Clarke (ed.), The Great War with Germany, 1890–1914: Fictions and Fantasies of the War to Come, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1997, p. 10; D. Cruickshank, Invasion: Defending Britain from Attack, London: Boxtree, 2001, pp. 133–6.
K. Robbins, Great Britain: Identities, Institutions and the Idea of Britishness, London: Longman, 1998, p. 224; Steiner and Neilson, Britain and the Origins of the First World War, p. 271.
Other transnational studies of ‘entanglement’ between Britons and Germans include: Panikos Panayi, German Immigrants in Britain during the Nineteenth Century, 1815–1914, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995; Christine Lattek, Revolutionary Refugees: German Socialism in Britain, 1840–1860, Abingdon: Routledge, 2006; Wolfhard Weber, ‘Technologietransfer zwischen Großbritannien und Deutschland in der industriellen Revolution’, in Wolfgang J. Mommsen (ed.), Die ungleichen Partner: Deutsch-britische Beziehungen im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, Stuttgart: DVA, 1999, pp. 65–81; Thomas Weber, ‘Cosmopolitan Nationalists: German Students in Britain—British Students in Germany’, in Geppert and Gerwarth (eds), Wilhelmine Germany and Edwardian Britain, pp. 249–70; Frank Bosch and Dominik Geppert (eds), Journalists as Political Actors: Transfers and Interactions between Britain and Germany since the Late 19th Century, Augsburg: Wissner-Verlag, 2008.
L. Gardiner, Bartholomew – 150 Years, Edinburgh: J. Bartholomew & Co., 1976, p. 60.
‘Zones of contact’ from David Blackbourn, ‘Taking the Waters: Meeting Places of the Fashionable World’, in Martin Geyer and Johannes Paulmann (eds), Mechanics of Internationalism: Culture, Society, and Politics from the 1840s to the First World War, Oxford, 2001, 435–57; Blackbourn, ‘“As dependent on each other as man and wife”’, p. 26.
A small sample of such literary studies, or histories employing literature as evidence, is as follows: Rosemary Ashton, The German Idea: Four English Writers and the Reception of German Thought, 1800–1860, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980; Rosemary Ashton, ‘England and Germany’, in D. Wu (ed.), A Companion to Romanticism, Oxford: Blackwells, 1998, pp. 495–504; Kennedy, The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, pp. 376–7; Ferguson, Pity of War, p. 1 and following; Ramsden, Don’t Mention the War, pp. 56–8, 71–9. Also D. McCormick, Who’s Who in Spy Fiction, London: Elm Tree, 1977, p. 47; L. Panek LeRoy, The Special Branch: The British Spy Novel, 1890–1980, Bowling Green: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1981, pp. 15, 36; J. Atkins, The British Spy Novel: Styles in Treachery, London: John Chandler, 1984, pp. 24–5 and following; A. J. A Morris, The Scaremongers – The Advocacy of War and Rearmament: 1896–1914, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984, pp. 108–61, 386; C. Andrew, Secret Service: The Making of the British Intelligence Community, London: Heinemann, 1985, pp. 20, 37–85; P. Panayi, The Enemy in Our Midst: Germans in Britain during the First World War, New York: Berg, 1991, pp. 30–9; Marc Schalenberg, ‘“Only Connect”: Personal and Cultural Entanglements in E. M. Forster’s Howards End’, in Geppert and Gerwarth (eds), Wilhelmine Germany and Edwardian Britain, pp. 254–368.
M. Drabble (ed.), The Oxford Companion to English Literature, New Edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 962–3; I. F. Clarke, Voices Prophesying War: 1763–1984, London: Oxford University Press, 1966, pp. 138, 143; I. F. Clarke (ed.), The Tale of the Next Great War: 1871–1914, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1995; Clarke (ed.), The Great War with Germany.
Morris, The Scaremongers, pp. 6–8, 146–62; K. Rohe, ‘British Imperialist Intelligentsia and the Kaiserreich’, in P. Kennedy and A. Nicholls (eds), Nationalist and Racialist Movements in Britain and Germany Before 1914, London: Macmillan, 1981, pp. 134–41; A. Summers, ‘Edwardian Militarism’, in R. Samuel (ed.), Patriotism: The Making and Unmaking of British National Identity, Vol. I, London: Routledge, 1989, p. 246.
P. Bridgewater, Anglo-German Interactions in the Literature of the 1890s, Oxford: Legenda, 1999; Firchow, Death of the German Cousin, pp. 41–2; Argyle, Germany as Model and Monster, p. 163 (note 22).
F. Morris, Artist of Wonderland: The Life, Political Cartoons, and Illustrations of Tenniel, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2005, p. 103; Reinermann, Der Kaiser in England, pp. 37–440; Schramm, Das Deustchlandbild, pp. 73–86.
Childers, Riddle of the Sands, 1999, pp. 80, 239, 47. Childers, Riddle of the Sands, 1910, Plate 1. On ‘thick geography’, see T. Richards, The Imperial Archive: Knowledge and the Fantasy of Empire, London: Verso, 1993, pp. 124, 128.
The phrase ‘flood-tide’ from P. M. Kennedy, ‘“Idealists and Realists”: British Views of Germany, 1864–1939’, in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Fifth Series, Vol. 25, 1975, pp. 146.
Sonja Levsen, ‘Constructing Elite Identities: University Students, Military Masculinity, and the Consequences of the Great War in Britain and Germany’, Past and Present, 198, 2008, p. 182.
‘Psychological preparation’ from Steiner and Neilson, Britain and the Origins of the First World War, p. 260. E. Wingfield-Stratford, Before the Lamps Went Out, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1945, p. 239.
For example R. Kipling, Letter to J. St Loe Strachey, 6 October 1902, in The Letters of Rudyard Kipling, Vol. 3, Thomas Pinney (ed.), Houndmills: Macmillan, 1996, p. 109.
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© 2012 Richard Scully
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Scully, R. (2012). Introduction — ‘The Beginnings’. In: British Images of Germany. Britain and the World. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137283467_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137283467_1
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