Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2012 British identity and the German other William F. Bertolette Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Bertolette, William F., "British identity and the German other" (2012). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 2726. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/2726 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. BRITISH IDENTITY AND THE GERMAN OTHER A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of History by William F. Bertolette B.A., California State University at Hayward, 1975 M.A., Louisiana State University, 2004 May 2012 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank the LSU History Department for supporting the completion of this work. I also wish to express my gratitude for the instructive guidance of my thesis committee: Drs. David F. Lindenfeld, Victor L. Stater and Meredith Veldman. Dr. Veldman deserves a special thanks for her editorial insights and recommendations concerning organization of the material. W. F. B. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS................................................................................................................ii LIST OF TABLES............................................................................................................................v LIST OF FIGURES.........................................................................................................................vi ABSTRACT...................................................................................................................................vii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................................1 2 HISTORY AND PSYCHOLOGY OF NATIONAL IDENTITY.......................................35 National Cultures and Citizenship.................................................................................... 39 Recent Historiography on National Identity......................................................................47 National Identity and the Brain..........................................................................................58 The Illusion of National Character.....................................................................................63 The Psychology of Stereotyping........................................................................................67 3 BRITISHNESS, ENGLISHNESS AND GERMAN OTHERNESS....................................75 British and English Identity...............................................................................................76 British/English Individualism and European Holism........................................................87 The Jewish Other in Europe and Britain...........................................................................92 Temporal and Spatial Difference in British and German Identities.................................102 4 EMPIRE, RACE AND NATIONAL IDENTITY IN VICTORIAN BRITAIN.................110 Victorian Mentalities, National Myth and Empire...........................................................113 Comparisons with Antiquity............................................................................................118 The Racial Argument.......................................................................................................125 Conscious Stereotyping in the Nineteenth Century.........................................................137 5 STEREOTYPES OF OLD GERMANY............................................................................143 The Moral Barbarian........................................................................................................143 The German Boor.............................................................................................................152 The Pious/Godless German..............................................................................................159 iii British Reactions to German Literature...........................................................................169 Backward Germany..........................................................................................................180 6 NEW GERMANY: STEREOTYPES AND CHANGING PERCEPTIONS OF GERMANY DURING THE NINETEENTH CENTURY..........................................184 The Unpolitical German...................................................................................................187 Early Nationalism, German Students and Dueling........................................................188 Old German Passivity and Servility: 1830-1848............................................................195 Unrevolutionary Germany: 1848...................................................................................200 Bismarckian Germany....................................................................................................205 New Germany and the Old Stereotype.............................................................................211 7 IMPERIAL RIVALRY AND DIPLOMATIC ANTAGONISM........................................222 Anglo-German Colonial Rivalry......................................................................................223 Economic Rivalry.............................................................................................................229 The Diplomatic Antagonism............................................................................................231 8 CONCLUSION..................................................................................................................243 BIBLIOGRAPHY.........................................................................................................................259 VITA.............................................................................................................................................295 iv LIST OF TABLES 1. Periodical Sources Used—Great Britain up to 1914..................................................................23 2. German Stereotype Context Categories......................................................................................29 3. Macnamara’s Racial Characteristics of Europeans...................................................................130 v LIST OF FIGURES 1. Periodical Peak Circulations......................................................................................................26 2. Percentages of Stereotypes by Context...................................................................................... 29 3. Stereotypes by Context Over Time............................................................................................30 4. Contextual Shift in the German Stereotype................................................................................31 5. “John Bull As Others See Him.”..............................................................................................138 6. “From the Fatherland.” The German Michael.........................................................................182 vi ABSTRACT British identity evolved through conscious comparisons with foreigners as well as through the cultivation of indigenous social, economic and political institutions. The German other in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain, like the French other in previous centuries, provided a psychological path toward unity against a perceived common enemy. Because German stereotypes brought into sharp focus what the British believed themselves not to be, they provided a framework for defining Britishness beyond Britain’s own internal divisions of race, ethnicity, class, religion, gender and politics. Post-World War II devolution and European integration have since revived British internal national divisions. The image of innocuous Old Germany as England’s “poor relation,” a backward cluster of feudal states, gave way during the nineteenth century to the stereotype of New Germany, Britain’s archenemy and imperial rival. After unification in 1871, German economic growth and imperial ambitions became hot topics for commentary in British journals. But the stereotypical “German Michael,” or rustic simpleton, and other images of passive Old Germany lingered on as a “straw man” for alarmists to dispel with New German stereotypes of aggressive militarism and Anglophobic nationalism. Some Germanophobes, however, and many Germanophiles, clung to older stereotypes as a form of escapism or wishful thinking, the former believing that national character deficiencies would foil German ambitions, the latter that German idealism and good sense would eventually resolve Anglo-German disputes. vii The British entente with France in 1904, and Russia in 1907, ended more than a decade of Anglo-German alliance attempts. These missed opportunities were thwarted by mutual distrust, opposing geopolitical strategies, diplomatic maneuvering and, ultimately, naval