The Franco-Prussian War

The Franco-Prussian War
Author: Geoffrey Wawro
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2003-08-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521584364

Wawro describes the Franco-Prussian War, 1870-1, that violently changed the course of European history.

The German Diplomatic Service, 1871-1914

The German Diplomatic Service, 1871-1914
Author: Lamar Cecil
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 366
Release: 2015-03-08
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1400867703

In this investigation of the German foreign office from 1871 to 1914, Lamar Cecil focuses on the people who conceived and executed German diplomacy rather than on diplomatic policies and stratagems. The author analyzes the men and their careers, isolating the characteristics common to the diplomats, the reasons for their selection, and the effect on their careers of various considerations of background, personality, and circumstance. His findings are based in part on the papers of Prince Bismarck and his family. The first part of the book discusses the criteria employed in choosing applicants and promoting senior diplomats. The structure of the foreign office and the conditions of entry are examined in detail, as is the association of the novice and more experienced individuals with the military element, which after 1871 found increasing accommodation in all ranks of the diplomatic establishment. The second part considers the problems with sovereigns, chancellors, and other bureaucrats encountered by members of the diplomatic service. Originally published in 1976. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The Inverted Mirror

The Inverted Mirror
Author: Michael Nolan
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 154
Release: 2004-11-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1782386602

It is hard to imagine nowadays that, for many years, France and Germany considered each other as "arch enemies." And yet, for well over a century, these two countries waged verbal and ultimately violent wars against each other. This study explores a particularly virulent phase during which each of these two nations projected certain assumptions about national character onto the other - distorted images, motivated by antipathy, fear, and envy, which contributed to the growing hostility between the two countries in the years before the First World War. Most remarkably, as the author discovered, the qualities each country ascribed to its chief adversary appeared to be exaggerated or negative versions of precisely those qualities that it perceived to be lacking or inadequate in itself. Moreover, banishing undesirable traits and projecting them onto another people was also an essential step in the consolidation of national identity. As such, it established a pattern that has become all too familiar to students of nationalism and xenophobia in recent decades. This study shows that antagonism between states is not a fact of nature but socially constructed.

Franco-German Relations

Franco-German Relations
Author: Alistair Cole
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 189
Release: 2014-09-25
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317882148

Suitable for use as a core text in courses of comparative European politics or in departments of Politics. Can also be used for courses that explore the Political Dynamics of the European Union.Franco-German relations lie at the heart of European integration and are central to an understanding of major issues like monetary union and foreign policy. Based on extensive research, this concise text contains a multi-level analysis of this key topic. Describing historical background and examining contemporary debates, it considers the domestic settings of French and German politics; the internal operation of the Franco-German relationship itself; and the impact of the relationship in the wider European context. Cole provides students with a much-needed accessible introduction, and framework for theoretical analysis.

Three German Invasions of France

Three German Invasions of France
Author: Douglas Fermer
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2013-11-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 178159354X

Tension and rivalry between France and Germany shaped the history of Western Europe in the century from 1860. Three times that hostility led to war and the invasion of France - in 1870, 1914 and 1940. The outcomes of the battles that followed reset the balance of power across the continent. Yet the German invasions tend to be viewed as separate events, in isolation, rather than as connected episodes in the confrontation between the two nations. ??Douglas Fermer's fresh account of the military campaigns and the preparations for them treats them as part of a cycle of fear, suspicion, animosity and conflicting ambitions extending across several generations. In a clear, concise account of the decisive opening phase of each campaign, he describes the critical decision-making, the manoeuvres and clashes of arms in eastern France as German forces advanced westwards. ??As the 100th anniversary of the start of the Great War approaches, this is a fitting moment to reconsider these momentous events and how they fit into the broad sweep of European history.

Diffusion in Franco-German Relations

Diffusion in Franco-German Relations
Author: Eric Sangar
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2021-02-20
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9783030360429

This book analyses and compares instances of the diffusion of political norms and ideas in the history of Franco-German relations. While this relationship is often described as a history evolving from enmity over reconciliation to friendship, the book uses the concept of diffusion as a complementary analytical perspective to emphasize how political norms and ideas originating in one society have influenced the other, especially in periods of intergovernmental conflict. Established in International Relations to explain transnational normative change in contemporary contexts, the framework of diffusion is heuristically useful to explore how various types of actors have contributed, using analytically different mechanisms, to normative change across the Rhine. The book presents eight case studies featuring various contents and mechanisms of ideational diffusion taken from three contexts of Franco-German history, including the French Revolution, the Franco-Prussian War, and Franco-German rapprochement after 1945. Arguing that phenomena that are often seen as genuinely ‘national’ evolutions, such as German nationalism or the French system of primary education, cannot be understood without taking into account the reception and emulation of norms from across the Rhine, the book should help students and scholars to overcome the limits of methodological nationalism when studying bilateral relationships, in the Franco-German context and elsewhere.