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The Myth of the Pro-Colonialist SPD: German Social Democracy and Imperialism before World War I

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 September 2012

Jens-Uwe Guettel
Jens-Uwe Guettel*
Affiliation:
The Pennsylvania State University
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Extract

In his seminal The German Empire, published in German in 1973, historian Hans-Ulrich Wehler posited that in respect to the German Empire's colonial policies only the SPD, unlike all other political parties, “retained its capacity to take a critical view on matters of principle.” Moreover, in Wehler's view, the SPD's critical stance on this and many other political questions along with the party's massive electoral gains in the 1912 parliamentary elections precipitated a situation in the years immediately preceding the Great War that prompted the German Empire's “old elites” to bet increasingly on a major military conflict to solve the Empire's internal political tensions (“leap into darkness”). Thus in Wehler's view the Social Democrats contributed in no small part to Imperial Germany's perceived domestic crisis, which prompted the infamous “old elites” to choose war over domestic reform in 1914.

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Articles
Information
Central European History , Volume 45 , Issue 3 , September 2012 , pp. 452 - 484
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Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 2012

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References

1 Wehler, Hans-Ulrich, The German Empire, 1871–1918 (Dover, NH: Berg Publishers, 1985 [1973]), 196–99Google Scholar. According to the Wehler's Sonderweg thesis, nineteenth-century German history took a wrong turn when Germany's bourgeoisie failed to “fulfill” its historical role to overcome the country's feudal structures. Instead, the German bourgeoisie sold out its “true” interests and became part of a social arrangement (the German Empire after 1871) in which feudal elements remained strong. This development made the German Empire more autocratic than Great Britain, France, and the United States and also led to increasingly severe domestic tensions and crises that resulted in Germany seeking its way out of these problems in 1914 through violent conflict. On the importance of Wehler for and within the Sonderweg debate, see Blackbourn, David and Eley, Geoff, The Peculiarities of German History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 32CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Dahrendorf, Ralf, Society and Democracy in Germany (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1969)Google Scholar; Kocka, Jürgen, “German History before Hitler: The Debate About the German Sonderweg,” Journal of Contemporary History 23, no. 1 (1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kocka, Jürgen, “Asymmetrical Historical Comparison: The Case of the German Sonderweg,” History and Theory 38, no. 1 (1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For Wehler's specific take on the SPD before 1914, see also Wehler, Hans-Ulrich, Sozialdemokratie und Nationalstaat. Nationalitätenfragen in Deutschland 1840–1914 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1971), 219Google Scholar.

2 Blackbourn and Eley, The Peculiarities of German History, 18–20.

3 Conrad, Sebastian, Globalisierung und Nation im Deutschen Kaiserreich (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2006), 85, 301Google Scholar; Conrad, Sebastian and Osterhammel, Jürgen, Das Kaiserreich Transnational. Deutschland in der Welt 1871–1914 (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004)Google Scholar; Ames, Eric, Klotz, Marcia, and Wildenthal, Lora, Germany's Colonial Pasts (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2005)Google Scholar. An important exception to the overall negligence of the SPD in the most recent transnational treatments of the German Empire is Andrew Zimmerman's Alabama in Africa. The book contains a brief but clear delineation of the SPD's anticolonialism. See Zimmerman, Andrew, Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire, and the Globalization of the New South (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 197–98Google Scholar. In Shelley Baranowski's recent synthetic treatment of German colonialism, the SPD's anticolonialism is, understandably, given the book's focus, only addressed briefly; however, Baranowski does, in “Wehler-like” fashion, point out the party's disruptive and anti-status-quo position before World War I: Baranowski, Shelley, Nazi Empire: German Colonialism and Imperialism from Bismarck to Hitler (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011)Google Scholar.

4 In different ways, both Aly and Fischer view the pre-1914 SPD as both directly and indirectly complicit in preparing the ground for the Nazis. Aly, Götz, Warum die Deutschen? Warum die Juden? Gleichheit, Neid und Rassenhass, 1800–1933 (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 2011), esp. 133–34Google Scholar; Fischer, Lars, The Socialist Response to Antisemitism in Imperial Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 228CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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6 Bernstein did not, in fact, belong to the “right wing” of the SPD, even before 1914. In 1917, together with his erstwhile adversary on colonial questions Karl Kautsky, he founded the antiwar Independent SPD.

7 Heidegger, Hermann, Die deutsche Sozialdemokratie und der nationale Staat, 1870–1920 (Göttingen: Musterschmidt-Verlag, 1956), 67, 379Google Scholar; Schorske, German Social Democracy, 85, 328.

8 Heidegger, Die deutsche Sozialdemokratie, 67, 379; Schorske, German Social Democracy, 85, 328.

9 Mommsen quoted in Fitzpatrick, Matthew P., Liberal Imperialism in Germany: Expansionism and Nationalism, 1848–1884 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008), 20, note 30Google Scholar. On Wehler's politics, see also Camman, Alexander, “Porträt Hans-Ulrich Wehler,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, October 9, 2011Google Scholar. An example of 1920s Marxist criticism of the SPD's pre-1914 positions is Kurt Mandelbaum's dissertation Die Erörterung innerhalb der deutschen Sozialdemokratie über das Problem des Imperialismus (1895–1914) (Ph.D. diss., Universität Frankfurt am Main, 1926).

10 Schorske's views were referenced repeatedly in English works, most notably in Beverly Heckart's 1974 From Bassermann to Bebel (Heckart in fact repeated Schorske's faulty analysis of the Stuttgart conference almost verbatim), but also in Gary Steenson's “Not One Man! Not One Penny!” (1981). Heckart, From Bassermann to Bebel, 72; Steenson, “Not One Man! Not One Penny!,” 73. Hans-Christoph Schröder's Sozialismus und Imperialismus (1968) argues along similar lines as Schorske, though in nuanced fashion. The book's last chapter concentrates on the “rapprochement” between SPD and German colonialism after 1907. In Schröder's view, Gustav Noske's April 1907 speech on the army budget (three months after the “Hottentot” elections) represented the first sign of the SPD's “coming around” to an acceptance of German colonialism. In fact, however, Schröder contradicts the title of his book's last chapter when he delineates in great detail how, during the 1890s and even during the war in South-West Africa, some Social Democrats occupied an accepting and constructively critical, or at the very least nuanced, stance vis-à-vis Germany's colonial policies. Within this narrative, pointing out the year 1907 as a turning point does not make sense. In addition, Schröder barely addresses SPD Reichstag speeches in respect to colonialism, either by Bebel between 1904 and 1906, or by Ledebour and Alfred Henke, or Wilhelm Dittmann in 1912 and 1914. Nevertheless, Schröder is quite clear on the fact that pro-colonialist positions that actually reflected the party's stance as a whole can only be found after the SPD's split; only in the MSPD; and only after the end of both World War I and, ironically, the German colonial empire. Roger Fletcher's works, while cited (for example by Conrad) as proof of the prominence of pro-colonialist views within the SPD, in fact weaken the case of those historians who assume that Bernstein's pro-colonialist revisionism was dominant within the party before 1914. In Fletcher's view, “the official ideology of the SPD assumed the form of revolutionary attentisme which continued to play [. . .] a dominant role in the life of the party between the turn of the century and the First World War.” Geoff Eley, in his brief references to the SPD's relationship to colonialism before 1914 in his Forging Democracy, also largely relies on Schröder and Fletcher. Schröder, Sozialismus und Imperialismus, 84–85, note 13; 86, note 20; 89, note 41; 183–98; Fletcher, Roger, Revisionism and Empire: Socialist Imperialism in Germany 1897–1914 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1984), 18–19, 183–88Google Scholar; Fletcher, Roger, “Revisionism and Wilhelmine Imperialism,” Journal of Contemporary History 23, no. 3 (1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hyrkkänen, Markku, Sozialistische Kolonialpolitik. Eduard Bernsteins Stellung zur Kolonialpolitik und zum Imperialismus 1882–1914. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Revisionismus (Helsinki: SHS, 1986), 240–43, 54Google Scholar; Conrad, Globalisierung, 85; Eley, Geoff, Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 91, 112Google Scholar.

11 Bonnell, Andrew G., “Was German Social Democracy before 1914 Antisemitic?,” German History 27, no. 2 (2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bloch, Max, “Die Sozialistischen Monatshefte und die Akademikerdebatte in der deutschen Sozialdemokratie vor 1914. Die ‘Fälle’ Göhre, Schipper, Calwer und Hildebrand,” Mitteilungsblatt des Instituts für soziale Bewegungen, no. 40 (2008)Google Scholar. See also Fletcher, Revisionism and Empire; Fletcher, “Revisionism and Wilhelmine Imperialism,” 349; Koller, Christian, “Eine Zivilisierungsmission der Arbeiterklasse? Die Diskussion über einer ‘Sozialistische Kolonialpolitik’ vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg,” in Zivilisierungsmissionen, ed. Osterhammel, Jürgen and Barth, Boris (Constance: UVK Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, 2005), 229–45Google Scholar; Gollwitzer, Heinz, Geschichte des Weltpolitischen Denkens, vol. II (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982), 285–307Google Scholar; Hyrkkänen, Sozialistische Kolonialpolitik.

12 Perras, Arne, Carl Peters and German Imperialism, 1856–1918 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), 216Google Scholar. For the Reichstag debates over the war in German South-West Africa, see, for example, Smith, Helmut Walser, “The Logic of Colonial Violence: Germany in Southwest Africa (1904–1907); the United States in the Philippines (1899–1902),” in German and American Nationalism: A Comparative Perspective, ed. Lehmann, Hartmut and Wellenreuther, Hermann (New York: Berg, 1999)Google Scholar; Smith, “The Talk of Genocide.”

13 Conrad, Globalisierung, 85.

14 Guettel, Jens-Uwe, “From the Frontier to German South-West Africa: German Colonialism, Indians, and American Westward Expansion,” Modern Intellectual History 7, no. 3 (2010): 542CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Perras, Carl Peters, 215–16.

15 Protokoll über die Verhandlungen des Parteitages der Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands. Abgehalten zu Mainz vom 17. bis 21. September 1900 (Berlin: Expedition der Buchhandlung Vorwärts, 1900), 167Google Scholar.

16 Guettel, “From the Frontier to German South-West Africa,” 542.

17 Kautsky, Karl, “Der 25. Januar,” Die neue Zeit. Wochenschrift der deutschen Sozialdemokratie 25, no. 1 (1907): 593Google Scholar; Hoffmann, Adolph, “Ursachen und Wirkungen. Betrachtungen zum 25. Januar 1907,” Die neue Zeit. Wochenschrift der deutschen Sozialdemokratie 25, no. 1 (1907): 639Google Scholar; Mehring, Franz, “Nach den Wahlen,” Die neue Zeit. Wochenschrift der deutschen Sozialdemokratie 25, no. 1 (1907): 651–52Google Scholar.

18 Braun, Adolf, “Die Wahlen in Bayern,” Die neue Zeit. Wochenschrift der deutschen Sozialdemokratie 25, no. 1 (1907): 682Google Scholar.

19 Braun, Otto, “Der 25. Januar in Ostpreußen,” Die neue Zeit. Wochenschrift der deutschen Sozialdemokratie 25, no. 1 (1907): 673–74Google Scholar. On this particular topic, see Anderson, Margaret Lavinia, Practicing Democracy: Elections and Political Culture in Imperial Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 257–58Google Scholar.

20 Schorske, German Social Democracy, 60–63; Steenson, “Not One Man! Not One Penny!,” 48. It should be noted that if the 1907 elections had any influence on the SPD's subsequent “behavior,” they in fact resulted in a left turn of the party that made it harder for revisionists such as Bernstein and other more right-leaning party members to express their opinions, on colonialism as well as other issues. See Bloch, “Die Sozialistischen Monatshefte,” 9.

21 Compare Heckart, From Bassermann to Bebel, 72; Bloch, “Die Sozialistischen Monatshefte,” 9.

22 For the standard interpretation of the impact of the “Hottentot elections” on the SPD, see Steenson, “Not One Man! Not One Penny!,” 51, 73; Schorske, German Social Democracy, 60–65; Internationaler Sozialisten-Kongreß zu Stuttgart. 18. bis 24. August 1907 (Berlin: Buchhandlung Vorwärts, 1907), 4Google Scholar.

23 Callahan, Kevin, “‘Performing Inter-Nationalism’ in Stuttgart in 1907: French and German Socialist Nationalism and the Political Culture of an International Socialist Congress,” International Review of Social History 45 (2000): 63–66, 85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Berliner Politische Nachrichten quoted in “Aus der Rubrik. Aus anderen Blättern,” Neue Preußische Zeitung, Aug. 29, 1907; Peters, Carl, Carl Peters Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Frank, Walter, 3 vols., vol. 1 (Munich and Berlin: C. H. Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1943), 449Google Scholar.

25 Cinquième Congrès Socialiste International: Tenu à Paris du 23 au 27 Septembre 1900 (Paris: Société Nouvelle de Libraire et d’Édition, 1901), 106–07Google Scholar; Internationaler Sozialisten-Kongreß zu Stuttgart. 18. bis 24. August 1907, 34, 39. Compare Hyrkkänen, Sozialistische Kolonialpolitik, 242–43. There were, of course, those that argued explicitly for a “socialist” colonialism, among them most prominently the Dutch socialist Henri van Kol. See Zimmerman, Alabama, 197.

26 Internationaler Sozialisten-Kongreß zu Stuttgart. 18. bis 24. August 1907, 34, 36, 38, 40, 130; Verhandlungen der verfassunggebenden Deutschen Nationalversammlung, March 1, 1919, 414. Historian Gary Steenson's evaluation that “on all of these occasions the reformists’ notions of accepting colonies and working for piecemeal reform prevailed over more vigorous opposition” is thus incorrect. Not only did the SPD delegation vote for the final and radically anticolonialist draft of the Stuttgart conference, but for most socialists (German and otherwise) who embraced a radical anticolonialist position, the delegation also did not contradict working for “piecemeal” reforms as long as colonies existed. In fact, the Stuttgart resolution called for exactly that. Compare Steenson, “Not One Man! Not One Penny!,” 73; Heckart, From Bassermann to Bebel, 72; Schorske, German Social Democracy, 79–85.

27 Internationaler Sozialisten-Kongreß zu Stuttgart. 18. bis 24. August 1907, 40; “Tagesfragen,” Deutsche Zeitung, Aug. 23, 1907; Peters, Schriften, 449; “Das Weltparlament,” Kölnische Zeitung, Aug. 27, 1907.

28 Schröder, Sozialismus und Imperialismus, 183–84. The SPD's support of infrastructure projects in the colonies was in keeping with all of the Second International's resolutions on colonialism passed between 1900 and 1907. The last paragraph of the congress's resolution called on socialist parliamentary deputies to work for “reforms that improve the situation of the natives,” a demand that was naturally interpreted to mean that measures such as infrastructure projects could and maybe should be supported since, from the viewpoint of European socialists, they had the potential to improve the socioeconomic situation of the indigenous populations. See Internationaler Sozialisten-Kongreß zu Stuttgart. 18. bis 24. August 1907, 40. A broad literature on the topic of “Rassenmischehen” exists. See, most importantly, Wildenthal, Lora, German Women for Empire, 1884–1945 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 79–131CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Becker, Frank, ed., Rassenmischehen—Mischlinge—Rassentrennung. Zur Politik der Rasse im Deutschen Kolonialreich (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2004)Google Scholar.

29 Reichstagsdebatte, March 7, 1914, 7907.

30 Reichstagsdebatte, May 2, 1912, 1639. Compare Smith, “The Talk of Genocide,” 118.

31 Bloch, “Die Sozialistischen Monatshefte,” 15–16; Verhandlungen des Reichstages. Sprechregister zu den Stenographischen Berichten und den Anlagen, vol. 297 (Berlin: Norddeutsche Buchdruckerei und Verlags-Anstalt, 1914), 9882–86Google Scholar.

32 Reichstagsdebatte, April 30, 1912, 1549; Reichstagsdebatte, March 7, 1913, 4342; Schröder, Hans-Christoph, Gustav Noske und die Kolonialpolitik des deutschen Kaiserreichs (Berlin: Dietz, 1979), 44–45, 71Google Scholar. Gustav Noske's Kolonialpolitik und Sozialdemokratie (published in May 1914) shows how carefully he attempted to walk the line between the SPD's official position and his own views; the latter made only veiled appearances in the book. On its cover, we see a German colonial officer resting his foot on a black African field worker, while the book ends with a quote from August Bebel stating that “questions about socialist colonial policies are mere dreams of the future.” Noske, Gustav, Kolonialpolitik und Sozialdemokratie (Stuttgart: J. H. W. Dietz, 1914), 228–29Google Scholar. Compare Markku Hyrkkänen's evaluation of Noske in Hyrkkänen, Sozialistische Kolonialpolitik, 253–54.

33 Reichstagsdebatte, April 29, 1912, 1522.

34 Ibid.; El-Tayeb, Schwarze Deutsche, 70.

35 Smith, “The Talk of Genocide,” 118. Compare also Conrad, Globalisierung, 84–86; El-Tayeb, Schwarze Deutsche, 71; Sobich, “Schwarze Bestien, Rote Gefahr,” 380; Heckart, From Bassermann to Bebel, 72; Schorske, German Social Democracy, 85; Steenson, “Not One Man! Not One Penny!”

36 Reichstagsdebatte, April 29, 1912, 1521.

37 Reichstagsdebatte, May 2, 1912, 1651.

38 Reichstagsdebatte, April 29, 1912, 1522; Reichstagsdebatte, May 7, 1912, 1736.

39 Bundesarchiv Berlin (hereafter BArch) R 1001/7246, 38–39.

40 Guettel, “From the Frontier to German South-West Africa,” 547–48; Reichstagsdebatte, March 7, 1914, 7898.

41 Internationaler Sozialisten-Kongreß zu Stuttgart. 18. bis 24. August 1907, 40; Koller, “Eine Zivilisierungsmission der Arbeiterklasse?,” 237.

42 Reichstagsdebatte, March 7, 1914, 7900.

43 Ibid., 7902, 03. Dittmann was referring to, first, Carl Peters who, while residing near Mount Kilimanjaro in the early 1890s, had ordered the execution of a number of his African servants. Second, Dittmann referenced Heinrich Leist, who in 1893 as acting governor of Cameroon had brutally exploited native women and later, after his actions had caused an uprising, summarily executed the rebels. Third, Dittmann referred to Prince von Arenberg, who had served as vice president of the German Colonial Society. Guettel, “From the Frontier to German South-West Africa,” 540–42; Simo, David, “Colonization and Modernization: The Legal Foundation of the Colonial Enterprise; a Case Study of German Colonization in Cameroon,” in Germany's Colonial Pasts, ed. Ames, Eric, Klotz, Marcia, and Wildenthal, Lora (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2005), 104Google Scholar; Wildenthal, Lora, “‘She Is the Victor’: Bourgeois Women, Nationalist Identities, and the Ideal of the Independent Woman Farmer in German Southwest Africa,” in Society, Culture, and the State in Germany 1870–1930, ed. Eley, Geoff (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1997), 383, note 10Google Scholar.

44 BArch R 1001/7246, 38–39, Reichstagsdebatte, March 7, 1914, 7905, 07; “Editorial Notes and Comments,” United Empire 5, no. 4 (1914)Google Scholar. Compare Koller, “Eine Zivilisierungsmission der Arbeiterklasse?” See Hyrkkänen for an opposite and, given the Colonial Office's and the London Times’s commentary, unconvincing evaluation of Dittmann's speech. Hyrkkänen, Sozialistische Kolonialpolitik, 251.

45 Conrad, Globalisierung, 84–86; Sobich, “Schwarze Bestien, Rote Gefahr,” 380; El-Tayeb, Schwarze Deutsche, 71; Smith, “The Talk of Genocide,” 118; Hyrkkänen, Sozialistische Kolonialpolitik, 242; Steenson, “Not One Man! Not One Penny!,” 73; Steinberg, Sozialismus und deutsche Sozialdemokratie, 145–46; Heckart, From Bassermann to Bebel, 70–73; Schröder, Sozialismus und Imperialismus, 183–98. See also Schorske, German Social Democracy, 62; Heidegger, Die deutsche Sozialdemokratie, 67. For other references in this paragraph, see BArch R 1001/7246, 38–39; “Stuttgart,” Deutsche Zeitung, Aug. 23, 1907; Reichstagsdebatte, March 7, 1914, 7907.

46 Steenson, “Not One Man! Not One Penny!,” 72; Bloch, “Die Sozialistischen Monatshefte,” 9; El-Tayeb, Schwarze Deutsche, 71.

47 Dernbach, Andrea, “Sarrazin Bleibt—Nur Links Geht's Raus,” Der Tagesspiegel, May 10, 2011Google Scholar.

48 Steenson, “Not One Man! Not One Penny!,” 72. Compare Conrad, Globalisierung, 85; El-Tayeb, Schwarze Deutsche, 69–75. The USPD, although Bernstein was one of its founders, remained immune to the colonial revisionism embraced by some MSPD members after World War I. Moreover, in 1922 many USPD members, among them the outspoken critic of any kind of colonialism Alfred Henke, rejoined the SPD and therefore brought their viewpoints with them into the reunited party. See also Schröder, Sozialismus und Imperialismus, 198.

49 Reichstagsdebatte, March 7, 1914, 7907.

50 Anderson, Margaret Lavinia and Barkin, Kenneth, “The Myth of the Puttkamer Purge and the Reality of the Kulturkampf: Some Reflections on the Historiography of Imperial Germany,” The Journal of Modern History 54, no. 4 (1982): 649–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51 Both Schorske and Hans-Christoph Schröder relied on Noske's perspective on the relationship between German Social Democracy and colonialism. In turn, Markku Hyrkkänen's account of the 1907 Stuttgart conference draws heavily on Eduard David's personal recollections of the Stuttgart conference, which contradicted the actual minutes of the conference proceedings. Internationaler Sozialisten-Kongreß zu Stuttgart. 18. bis 24. August 1907, 40; Schorske, German Social Democracy, 335; Schröder, Sozialismus und Imperialismus, 183; Hyrkkänen, Sozialistische Kolonialpolitik, 242, note 84.

52 See, for example, Dirk Bönker, “Conference Paper: Global Politics and German Destiny ‘from an East Asian Perspective’: Alfred Von Tirpitz and the Making of Wilhelmine Navalism,” German Studies Association Annual Meeting (Oakland, CA, 2010); Naranch, Bradley, “Made in China: Austro-Prussian Overseas Rivalry and the Global Unification of the German Nation,” Australian Journal of Politics and History 56, no. 3 (2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Torp, Cornelius, “The “Coalition of ‘Rye and Iron’” under the Pressure of Globalization: A Reinterpretation of Germany's Political Economy before 1914,” Central European History 43, no. 3 (2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Guettel, “From the Frontier to German South-West Africa.”

53 Zimmerman, Andrew, “Keynote Address: The German Empire, the Atlantic Revolutions of the Nineteenth Century, and the Colonial Construction of the Precolonial,” in Conference: German Post-/Colonial History in a Global Age (Freie Universität Berlin: Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut, 2011), 1–2, 18–19Google Scholar. Unsurprisingly, one of the few recent publications on German colonialism that at least in passing indicates the Social Democrats’ consistent anticolonialism, Hartmut Pogge von Strandmann's Imperialismus vom grünen Tisch (2009), bucks the transnational historiographical trend by having a decidedly nation-state-centered framework and “classic” institutional focus; von Strandmann, Helmut Pogge, Imperialismus vom grünen Tisch (Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag, 2009), 12–13Google Scholar.

54 Kautsky, Karl, Sozialismus und Kolonialpolitik. Eine Auseinandersetzung (Berlin: Vorwärts, 1907), 19Google Scholar.