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

Jens-Uwe Guettel

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781107024694
• eBook ISBN: 9781139628358
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• German Expansionism, Imperial Liberalism, and the United States, 1776–1945
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• 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 World War I
• 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