The Great Naval Game: Britain and Germany in the Age of Empire (Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare)
Cambridge University Press
Edition: 1st Edition, 6/21/2007
EAN 9780521875769, ISBN10: 0521875765
Hardcover, 356 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.4 cm
Language: English
This book is about the theatre of power and identity that unfolded in and between Britain and Germany in the decades before the First World War. It explores what contemporaries described as the cult of the navy: the many ways in which the navy and the sea were celebrated in the fleet reviews, naval visits and ship launches that were watched by hundreds of thousands of spectators. At once royal rituals and national entertainments, these were events at which tradition, power and claims to the sea were played out between the nations. This was a public stage on which the domestic and the foreign intersected and where the modern mass market of media and consumerism collided with politics and international relations. Conflict and identity were literally acted out between the two countries. By focusing on this dynamic arena, Jan Rüger offers a fascinating new history of the Anglo-German antagonism.
Introduction
1. The rise of the naval theatre
2. Culture, politics and the mass market
3. Bread and circuses
4. Nation, navy and the sea
5. The Anglo-German theatre
Epilogue
No more parades
Bibliography.
'Jan Rüger has written a wonderful book that brings together military, cultural, and comparative history in an exemplary manner. His study offers a new, highly original perspective on the flourishing of the Anglo-German antagonism before the First World War.' Journal of British Studies