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Podcast: New Books in German Studies
Episode: Jeff Bowersox, “Raising Germans in the Age of Empire: Youth and Colonial Culture, 1871-1914” (Oxford UP, 2013)
Description: Germany embarked on the age of imperialism a bit later than other global powers, and the German experience of empire was much shorter-lived than that of Britain or France or Portugal. Nonetheless, empire was fundamental, Jeff Bowersox argues, to Germans’ self-understanding and sense of place in the world in an era marked by sweeping changes, including rapid industrialization and economic growth; the rise of an urban proletariat in ever-expanding cities; and the emergence of mass consumer culture and mass politics. Indeed, Bowersox notes, a linkage between German identity and empire long outlasted the German Empire itself. Raising Germans in th...