E rik G rimmer -S olem . Learning Empire

In his lengthy study Learning Empire: Globalization and the German Quest for World Status, 1875–1919, Erik Grimmer-Solem sets out to redefine how scholars understand German Weltpolitk (world policy) and consequently German imperialism and the origins of World War I. He argues “that Weltpolitik was an improvised response to opportunities and challenges of globalization that emerged in the 1870s and 1880s.” He contends that Weltpolitik was transmitted to the German population “by university-educated bourgeois scholars who had been living and working overseas” (19). According to Grimmer-Solem, this policy was not intended. Rather, it was the “result of an accretion of insights” that these scholars published in professional journals and used in naval and colonial propaganda. He asserts that these men, a small group of economists, viewed Germany as a rising industrial power in an increasingly global world. He further states that these individuals embodied the core ambitions of German liberal imperialism—namely, “the promise of scientific, technological, and material progress, and greater individual freedom and opportunity, along with the worldwide spread of a supposedly superior bürgerliche Gesellschaft and Kultur” (bourgeois society and culture), which in turn manifested themselves in Weltpolitik (11–12). Grimmer-Solem maintains that these economists maintained active university connections with the United States and Japan and explored overseas opportunities in the Caribbean, Venezuela, and China. Through their time spent overseas, he writes, these individuals developed the concept of Weltwirtschaft (world economy) in the 1880s and 1890s, a concept that laid the foundations for Weltpolitik. He demonstrates that they were able to influence formal policy by connecting these economists’ biographies and prosopographies with Chancellor Bülow, Admiral Tirpitz, Kaiser Wilhelm, and individuals in the Foreign Office.

Bourgeoisie · Colonialism · Economic history · Empire · German · Globalization · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Sociology · Chinese history and philosophy · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies