Quest for Modernity and the Tides of History } 763
consequence of the resulting devastation and disunity, while other European
powers—Spain, Portugal, France, Russia, Britain, and the Netherlands—built
national states and then seized vast, far-flung overseas empires, Germany did
not. French policy sought to keep the German lands disunited. Not until 1871
did Germany achieve national unification, several centuries after the other
leading European states. The other powers had not been fair to Germany,
German patriots ardently believed. Germany had been conspired against
and denied her proper place in the sun. People from Germany’s middle class
flocked to patriotic societies that gave voice to these sentiments of grievance
and entitlement. This mobilization of popular patriotic passion encouraged
bold diplomatic moves that won patriotic applause: seizure of a sphere of
influence in China, a naval demonstration in support of the ethnically Dutch
Boer settlers in South Africa, confrontation with France over influence in
Morocco, dispatch of a force to chastise the Boxers in China. Mobilization of
popular patriotic fashion also made it difficult for Germany’s leaders to back
down once they found themselves in the confrontations that often resulted
from bold diplomatic moves against ever more fearful neighboring govern-
ments. Compromise and conciliation were easily depicted as betrayal of the
nation.
The Problem of Great Power and the Need for Caution
From an international perspective, the “problem” of Wilhelmine Germany
was that its strength was so great that, when not used with great restraint, it
frightened its neighbors, causing them to join together against it. This seems
to be a core problem of the contemporary PRC as well. Regarding Germany,
the unification under Prussian tutelage of German states in 1871 created a new
state, Germany, which with a population of 41 million became the most pop-
ulous European country west of Russia. United Germany also had high lev-
els of literacy and education (measured by number of universities and books
published), as well as strong commercial and scientific development. In the
brief forty-seven-year existence of the Wilhelmine regime, scientists from
Wilhelmine Germany received more Nobel prizes than Britain, France, and
the United States combined. Germany was a leading world center in many
areas of scientific and medical research, as well as industrial engineering
and manufacturing. German industrialization proceeded very rapidly after
- By 1913, Germany was the leading industrial power of Europe (although
barely so), with 15.7 percent of world manufacturing, compared to Britain’s
14 percent, France’s 6.4 percent, and Russia’s 6.4 percent.^7 Germany’s army
was also far more potent than those of the other European powers.
Under Wilhelm I and his cautious chancellor Otto von Bismarck, German
foreign policy was successful in reassuring Germany’s neighbors Russia,