The Challenges of Globalization Economy and Politics in Germany, 1860-1914 [Hardcover]

In the mid nineteenth century a process began that appears, from a present-day perspective, to have been the first wave of economic globalization. Within a few decades global economic integration reached a level that equaled, and in some respects surpassed, that of the present day. This book describes the interpenetration of the German economy with an emerging global economy before the First World War, while also demonstrating the huge challenge posed by globalization to the society and politics of the German Empire. The stakes for both the winners and losers of the intensifying world market played a major role in dividing German society into camps with conflicting socio-economic priorities. As foreign trade policy moved into the center stage of political debates, the German government found it increasingly difficult to pursue a successful policy that avoided harming German exports and consumer interests while also seeking to placate a growing protectionist movement.
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Cornelius Torpis Lecturer in the Department of History at the Martin Luther University of Halle (Germany). He is the editor ofImperial Germany Revisited: Continuing Debates and New Perspectives(with Sven Oliver M?ller, 2011) and the author ofMax Weber und die preu?ischen Junker(1998).(
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This book will serve as an eminently useful touchstone, not only for German, economic, and comparative history, but also for studies in political economy and for globalization generally. Useful for graduate students, faculty, and research libraries especially.? Choice

& an admirable book in many respects. Its author displays great sensitivity to the political complexities involved in? making economic policy and a willingness to concede that economic factors, whether underlying or manifest in specific interests, do not always explain policy chanl£5