Seminar Questions:

• What were the main developments of German foreign policy between 1890 and 1914?

• How have historians interpreted Wilhelmine foreign policy and colonial history? why is this short period important for our understanding of German history?

• How did German colonial policy play out in the European context?

Reading List:

Required Reading:

• Sebastian Conrad, 'Transnational Germany', in J. Retallack (ed.), Imperial Germany, 1871-1918 (OUP, 2009), pp. 219-241
• Andrew Zimmerman, 'Race and World Politics: Germany in the Age of Imperialism, 1878–1914' in Helmut Walser Smith (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Modern German History (OUP, 2012)

Primary Sources:

• Von Bülow's "Dynamic" Foreign Policy (1899)

• Germany's need for a "Place in the Sun" (1897)

• The Training of Young Diplomats (1903-1904)
• Rosa Luxemburg, "Does Germany Need Colonies?" (1899)

Further Reading: Foreign Policy

• Klaus Hildebrand, German Foreign Policy from Bismarck to Adenauer (Routledge, 1989), pp. 1-118
• E. J. Feuchtwanger, Imperial Germany, 1850-1918 (Routledge, 2001), Chapter 6
• W.J. Mommsen 'Domestic Factors in German Foreign Policy before 1914', Central European History, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1973), pp. 3-43.
• Isabel Hull, Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany (Cornell, UP, 2005), pp. 5-43, 93-109.
• Isabel V. Hull, 'Military Culture and the Production of “Final Solutions” in the Colonies' in Robert Gellately and Ben Kiernan (eds.), The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective (Cambridge UP, 2012), pp. 141-162
• Bernhard von Bülow, Imperial Germany (Cassel, 1914)
• ________________, Memoirs, 1897-1903 (Putnam, 1931)
• ________________, Memoirs, 1903-1909 (Putnam, 1931)
• ________________, Memoirs, 1909-1914 (Putnam, 1931)
• Matthew Fitzpatrick, "A Fall from Grace? National Unity and the Search for Naval Power and Colonial Possessions 1848-1884", German History, Vol. 25, No. 2 (2007), pp. 135-161.

Further Reading: Imperialism

• Edward Ross Dickinson, 'The German Empire: An Empire?', History Workshop Journal, 66 (2008), pp. 129-162
• Dennis Sweeney, 'The Racial Economy of Weltpolitik: Imperialist Expansion, Domestic Reform, and War in Pan-German Ideology, 1894-1918' in Geoff Eley, Jennifer Jenkins; Tracie Matysik (eds.), German Modernities from Wilhelm to Weimar (Bloomsbury, 2016)
• Eric Kurlander 'Between Völkisch and Universal Visions of Empire: Liberal Imperialism in Mitteleuropa, 1890-1918' in Matthew Fitzpatrick (ed.), Liberal Imperialism in Europe (Palgrave, 2012)
• Lora Wildenthal, German Women for Empire (Duke University Press (2001)
• Michael Perraudin; Jurgen Zimmerer; Katy Heady, German Colonialism and National Identity (Routledge, 2011)
• Sara Friedrichsmeyer et al (eds), The Imperialist Imagination: German Colonialism and its Legacy (University of Michigan Press, 1998).

Further Reading: Colonial Empire

• Sebastian Conrad, German Colonialism: A Short History (Cambridge, 2001).
• Arthur J. Knoll; Hermann Hiery, The German Colonial Experience: Select Documents on German Rule in Africa, China and the Pacific, 1884-1914 (University Press of America, 2010)
• Michelle R. Moyd, Violent intermediaries: African soldiers, conquest, and everyday colonialism in German East Africa (Ohio University Press, 2014)
• David Olusoga; Casper W. Erichsen, The Kaiser's Holocaust: Germany's forgotten genocide and the colonial roots of Nazism (Faber, 2010)
• Robert Gerwath and Stephan Malinowski, 'Hannah Arendt's ghosts: reflections on the disputable path from Windhoek to Auschwitz', Central European History, Vol. 42, No. 2, (2009), pp. 279-300.
• George Steinmetz, The Devil's Handwriting : Precoloniality and the German Colonial State in Qingdao, Samoa, and Southwest Africa (University of Chicago Press, c.2007)
• David Ciarlo, Advertising Empire : Race and Visual Culture in Imperial Germany (Harvard UP, 2011)
• Erik Grimmer-Solem, Learning empire: globalization and the German quest for world status, 1875-1919 (Cambridge, 2019)
• Robert Gerwarth, '1918 and the End of Europe's Land Empires' in Martin Thomas; Andrew S. Thompson (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Ends of Empire (OUP, 2018)
• Britta Schilling-Wang, Postcolonial Germany: memories of empire in a decolonized nation (OUP, 2014)
• Heike I. Schmidt, 'Colonial Intimacy: The Rechenberg Scandal and Homosexuality in German East Africa', Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 17, No. 1 (2008), pp. 25-59
• Forum: The German Colonial Imagination, Lora Wildenthal, Jürgen Zimmerer, Russell A. Berman, Jan Rüger, Bradley Naranch, and Birthe Kundrus, German History 26, 2 (2008): 251-271.
• Michael Perraudin and Jürgen Zimmerer (eds.), German Colonialism and National Identity (Routledge, 2011).
• Suzanne Zantop, Colonial Fantasies: Conquest, Family, and Nation in Precolonial Germany, 1770-1870 (Duke UP, 1997).
• Birthe Kundrus, 'Blind Spots: Empire, Colonies and Ethnic Identities in Modern German History' in Karen Hagemann and Jean H. Quataert (eds.), Gendering modern German history : rewriting historiography (Berghahn, 2008), pp. 86-106