German Expansionism, Imperial Liberalism and the United States, 17761945 [Paperback]

This book traces the connections between American westward expansion and German colonialism from the late eighteenth century to World War II.This book traces the presence of the United States in German colonial discourse and practice from the late eighteenth century to 1945, focusing on American westward expansion and racial politics. Jens-Uwe Guettel highlights the effects America's expanding borders had on both German liberalism and colonialism before the outbreak of the First World War. Yet because before the First World War American expansionist examples were almost exclusively admired by German liberals, post-1918 plans for the settlement of conquered Eastern European territories as conceived of and espoused by the Nazis had little to do with pre-1914 transatlantic exchanges concerning race and expansionism.This book traces the presence of the United States in German colonial discourse and practice from the late eighteenth century to 1945, focusing on American westward expansion and racial politics. Jens-Uwe Guettel highlights the effects America's expanding borders had on both German liberalism and colonialism before the outbreak of the First World War. Yet because before the First World War American expansionist examples were almost exclusively admired by German liberals, post-1918 plans for the settlement of conquered Eastern European territories as conceived of and espoused by the Nazis had little to do with pre-1914 transatlantic exchanges concerning race and expansionism.This book traces the importance of the United States for German colonialism from the late eighteenth century to 1945, focusing on American westward expansion and racial politics. Jens-Uwe Guettel argues that from the late eighteenth century onward, ideas of colonial expansion played a very important role in liberal, enlightened, and progressive circles in Germany, which, in turn, looked across the Atlantic to the liberal-democratic United States for inspiration and concrete examples. In tl³7