David Hamlin. Germany’s Empire in the East

David Hamlin’s Germany’s Empire in the East: Germans and Romania in an Era of Globalization and Total War is a must-read for scholars interested in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century German and Eastern European history. The book focuses on Romania and German attitudes and policies toward that country, though Germany’s Empire in the East also includes brief sections on Poland and Ukraine. Much of the book is dedicated to an analysis of Romania’s economic ties to Germany and to other Western European states (even to the United States) before the outbreak of the First World War. With great attention to detail, Hamlin traces how “western markets and the development of industrial capitalism shifted the foundations of the Romanian economy” (33). By the end of the nineteenth century, the growing popularity and profitability of wheat as a cash crop grown for export and Romania’s oil reserves had tied the country’s economy into a network of market relations not only with German companies but also with Belgian, British, and American businesses, among the latter most importantly Standard Oil.

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