Republicanism and Liberalism in America and the German States, 1750-1850

Republicanism and Liberalism in America and the German States represents the cooperative effort of a group of American and German scholars to move the historical debate on republicanism and liberalism to a new stage. Until recently, the relationship between republican and liberal ideas, concepts and world views has almost exclusively been discussed in the context of American revolutionary and late eighteenth-century history. While the German states did not experience successful revolutions like those in North America and France, republican and liberal ideas and ‘language’ deeply affected German political thinking and culture, especially in the southern states. The essays published in this book expand the time frame of the debate into the first half of the nineteenth century, applying an innovative and comparative German-American perspective. By systematically studying the similarities and differences in the understanding of republicanism and liberalism in the United States and German states, the collection stimulates new efforts toward a comprehensive interpretation of political, intellectual, and social developments in the ‘modernizing’ Atlantic world of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.