The Glittery Fog of Civilization: Great Britain, Germany, and International Politics, 1854 - 1902
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The Glittery Fog of Civilization: Great Britain, Germany, and International Politics, 1854 - 1902 Jakob Lehne Thesis submitted for assessment with a view to obtaining the degree of Doctor of History and Civilization of the European University Institute Florence, November, 2015 (defence) European University Institute Department of History and Civilization The Glittery Fog of Civilization: Great Britain, Germany, and International Politics, 1854 - 1902 Jakob Lehne Thesis submitted for assessment with a view to obtaining the degree of Doctor of History and Civilization of the European University Institute Examining Board Prof. Dirk Moses, EUI (supervisor) Prof. Ann Thomson, EUI Dr. Bernhard Struck, University of St. Andrews Prof. Georgios Varouxakis, Queen Mary, University of London © Jakob Lehne, 2015 No part of this thesis may be copied, reproduced or transmitted without prior permission of the author Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor Prof. Dirk Moses and my second reader Prof. Ann Thomson for all the help over the last few years. I would also like to include Dr. Struck and Prof. Varouxakis, whose insightful reports have helped to improve this thesis in the last stages. I am extremely grateful to my family and friends, who have supported me through the sometimes difficult process of writing a Ph.D., but most importantly I am indebted to my wife, Anaïs, without whom I would never have finished it. 1 Abstract The Glittery Fog of Civilization: Great Britain, Germany, and International Politics, 1854 - 1902 For the last twenty years, the rhetoric of civilization has clawed its way back into international discourse, and into books and articles written by political scientists and scholars of international relations. Most of these emphasize the close connection between the concept of civilization and colonialism, suggesting that the main purpose of civilizational language in international relations has always been an imperial one. In this thesis, I argue that such interpretations are mistaken, and use British and German debates to retrace the complex political development of a concept at once popular and indeterminate, which Bismarck referred to as being covered by a 'glittery fog'. I argue that political civilizational language first started to be advanced by European liberals, who were not advocating colonialism, but instead opposing dynastic and non-national politics within Europe. Following these debates, the rhetoric of civilization was first officially employed in the Crimean War, and from then on remained an important fixture primarily of inner-European politics. The wars of the 1860s that followed in its wake were, I argue, as much wars about the correct definition of civilization, as they were about nationalism. It was only in the 1870s that the concept of civilization started to acquire the global profile and sometimes imperial connotation so often associated with it and the nineteenth century in general. But the bloom of this civilizational language was a short one. From the 1880s onwards, the appeal of civilization started to decline as the critique of modernity and its negative effects, first voiced by socialists and radicals, started to reach mainstream liberalism. With the end of the nineteenth century, I argue, the classic language of civilization also came to an end. Larger sections of the European public started to question the ulterior motives behind civilizational language and the main conflicts of the turn of the century, the Boer war and the Boxer rebellion, also produced new discourses of civilizational plurality, through which appeals to the singular of civilization became ever more difficult. 2 Table of Contents Introduction..........................................................................................................................................5 Interpreting the Return of Civilization.............................................................................................5 Questions and Arguments................................................................................................................9 Historiography...............................................................................................................................11 Methodology..................................................................................................................................19 Case Selection and Sources...........................................................................................................23 Conflicts and Outline.....................................................................................................................26 Chapter 1. Civilization: from the Greeks to Guizot and Mill.............................................................30 Introduction....................................................................................................................................30 The Etymological Roots of Civilization and the Problems of Philosophy....................................30 Civilization and the Manipulations of Francisco de Vitoria..........................................................35 The Invention of Civilization in the Eighteenth Century..............................................................41 The Nineteenth Century, Vulgarisation, Guizot, and Mill.............................................................49 Chapter 2. The First War for Civilization...........................................................................................56 Introduction....................................................................................................................................56 Debating Russian Civilization.......................................................................................................57 The Rise of Turcophilism and the Revolutions of 1848................................................................61 The Debates Preceding the Crimean War......................................................................................67 The Crimean War and the Concept of Civilization........................................................................73 Chapter 3. Civilization, Nationalism, and War...................................................................................80 Introduction....................................................................................................................................80 Civilization and Italian Unification...............................................................................................81 The Syllabus of Errors and the War of 1866..................................................................................91 The Civilization of Warfare...........................................................................................................98 Civilization and German Unification...........................................................................................104 Chapter 4. The Development of International Civilization (1870s).................................................110 Introduction..................................................................................................................................110 Old and New Civilizational Debates............................................................................................111 Russia, the East, and the Public Conscience of the World...........................................................122 The Eastern Crisis........................................................................................................................127 Debating the 1877/1878 War and Russia's Mission.....................................................................133 Chapter 5. Spreading and Questioning Civilization (1880s) ...........................................................141 Introduction..................................................................................................................................141 A New European Debate on Civilization.....................................................................................142 The Critique of Civilization Itself................................................................................................148 The Beginnings of the Berlin Conference...................................................................................155 The Conference............................................................................................................................163 Chapter 6. Civilization in Danger: The 'Yellow Peril' and the Hague Conference (1890s).............169 Introduction..................................................................................................................................169 Discussing Culture and Civilization............................................................................................170 Saving Civilization from War......................................................................................................176 Far Eastern Crises and the Rhetoric of Civilization ...................................................................183 The Hague Conference of 1899...................................................................................................190 Chapter 7. Undermining Civilization at the Turn of the Century.....................................................198 Introduction..................................................................................................................................198