Learning Empire

Erik Grimmer-Solem is Professor in the Departments of History and German Studies at Wesleyan University, Connecticut. He is the author of numerous works including The Rise of Historical Economics and Social Reform in Germany (2003). He was a University of Chicago Harper Fellow and has received awards from the Fritz Thyssen Foundation and the Leverhulme Trust, as well as two distinguished teaching prizes from Wesleyan University, Connecticut. His research on the Wehrmacht's involvement in the Holocaust was discussed in the newsweekly Der Spiegel, and debated in German parliament in 2014.

• Introduction; Part I. Absent-Minded Empire, 1875–1897: 1. Frontier empire: the United States; 2. Island empire: Japan; 3. World economy: China and Venezuela; Part II. Empire Imagined, 1897–1907: 4. World policy; 5. The High Seas Fleet and power politics; 6. National efficiency and the new mercantilism; 7. Formal and informal empire; 8. Empire in crisis; Part III. Empire Lost, 1908–1919: 9. Colonial dreams; 10. World policy contained; 11. From world policy to world war; 12. War aims, peace resolutions, and defeat; Epilogue.

'The history of Imperial Germany is currently being re-written, and Learning Empire is the most sustained and profound intervention yet: A magisterial tour-de-force that establishes Germany as a global player in the decades before World War I. Meticulously documented and driven by a strong vision, it reinstates the middle classes, and economic specialists in particular, as the driving forces behind Germany's global quest. Impressive!' Sebastian Conrad, Freie Universität Berlin