Fatherlands: State-Building and Nationhood in Nineteenth-Century Germany

Fatherlands is an original study of the nature of identity in nineteenth-century Germany, which has crucial implications for the understanding of nationalism, German unification and the German nation state in the modern era. The book approaches these questions from a new and important angle, that of the non-national territorial state. It explores the nature and impact of state-building in non-Prussian Germany. The issues covered range from railway construction and German industrialisation, to the modernisation of German monarchy, the emergence of a free press, the development of a modern educational system, and the role of monuments, museums and public festivities. Fatherlands draws principally on extensive primary research focusing on the three kingdoms of Hanover, Saxony and Wurttemberg. It is an attempt to ‘join up the dots’ of German history - moving beyond isolated local, regional and state-based studies to a general understanding of the state formation process in Germany.