The Naked Nation: Citizenship, Sovereignty, and German State Formation in a Global Age, 1848–85

This paper examines media reports about, and official responses to, the disappearances, deaths, kidnappings, and property losses of German subjects abroad in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. It argues that the ensuing controversy about the fate of Germans in often dangerous areas of the globe (sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, in particular), shaped the process of modern German state formation in decisive ways. It created a sense of expectation in the emerging public sphere that future German statesmen would assume responsibility for protecting the individual rights, personal lives, and financial investments of their citizens abroad, in a manner that emulated British, French, Dutch, American, and Russian imperial practices. It also supported calls for the creation of an interventionist navy, an expanded and consolidated consular corps, and the option of direct colonial control in areas of the world where German rights were felt to be under continuing threat. Drawing on a wide range of print sources and archival record, this paper makes the case for substantial revisions to current understandings of German national unification, which continue to focus exclusively on continental Europe. It outlines in brief a new global narrative for the making of modern Germany, one in which the concerns of the Germans diaspora are for the first time given a prominent place.