Centre Européen de Recherche et d'Enseignement sur la Shoah à l'Est

H-NET BOOK REVIEWPublished by H-Albion@h-net.msu.edu (April 2008)
Jan Rüger. _The Great Naval Game: Britain and Germany in the Age ofEmpire_. Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern WarfareSeries. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. xv +337 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $101.00 (cloth),ISBN 978-0521853532; £18.99 (paper), ISBN 978-0521723435.
Reviewed for H-Albion by Antoine Capet, Department of British Studies,University of Rouen, France
The Navy as Cultural Symbol

In the introduction to _The Great Naval Game_, Jan Rüger indicatesthat his book "is as much influenced by cultural, social and politicalhistory as it is by naval and maritime history" (p. 5).[1] Indeed,this book must not be read as just another "war book" reexamining theline-up in 1914 in terms of tonnage, gun ranges, cannon bore, etc.--what Rüger calls "technology" (p. 209). Instead, he presents thedescent into war, from the elimination of Otto von Bismarck in 1890 tothe first shots (on land) in August 1914, as a spectacle in which mostof the audience and many of the participants were consenting victimsof a national cultural delusion. The "naval race" and the stagemanagement that went with it were pure make-believe, and the "real"war (decided on land, as it turned out and as might have been expectedconsidering Germany's geographical position in Europe) exposed the"fundamental contradiction between the rhetoric of the naval theatreand the reality of international affairs" (p. 243). This "rhetoric" isat the center of the book, and Rüger compares and contrasts theapproach to naval affairs in Britain and Germany in the two decadesthat preceded the First World War in that light (though the epiloguetakes the story to 2005 and the celebrations of Trafalgar).[2]
In Germany, by the early 1910s, a high-ranking personage of theempire, like Ambassador Anton Graf Monts, could deplore that the navalrace was lost, if only because Germany needed to concentrate on armyexpenditure: "The primacy at land _and_ at sea was beyond theresources of even such a great and diligent people as the Germans" (p.242). Why, then, did the kaiser continue to pursue this costlychimera--costly in the prewar years from a financial point of view,and costly in the war years because the German Imperial Navy (apartfrom its submarines) played such a reduced role that it became obviousthat the money would have been better spent on land forces?
Likewise, in Britain, no less than the First Sea Lord complained toAdmiral David Beatty in November 1918 that the Royal Navy had beendeprived of the great decisive battle à la Trafalgar, for which itcraved so much in 1914, and _horribile dictu_ the hero of the Britishpress was not one of them, but Marshal Ferdinand Foch. In Beatty'swords, "The Navy has won a victory even more complete in its effectsthan Trafalgar, but less spectacular, and, because of this _lack ofdisplay_, one feels that the unthinking do not fully realise what thenation--indeed what the whole world, owes to the British Navy" (p.258). Rüger rightly notes the vocabulary, with words like"spectacular" and "display," which reinforces his central argument ofthe theatricality of it all. Admittedly, he states the obvious when hewrites that this insistence on appearances cannot be "divorced fromfundamental political questions," but then he explains that in bothcountries the naval high command "saw the huge potential of thismaritime stage for promoting the navy and the monarchy in the age ofmass politics" (p. 90). Where the two countries differed was in themanipulative tactics used for that promotion.
Fundamentally, in Britain, the Royal Navy was taken for granted as themajor instrument for the defense of the island. There need be no"invention of tradition" to justify the primacy of the navy as such--or was there? Rüger insists on the transformation of the Royal Navy inthose years from an English navy to a British navy, though with theLord Provost of Glasgow, the "Second City of the Empire" and its majorshipbuilding center, showing a dual persona: as first magistrate ofthe city, he welcomed the economic activity generated by the navalrace, but as a prominent British citizen, he deplored it (p. 247).Still, Rüger has no doubt that the mystique of the Royal Navy was apotent factor in reinforcing the union behind its king. Anotherpotential factor for dislocation was the overseas empire, and hereagain Rüger convincingly adduces evidence to show how the politicalleaders of Australia and New Zealand as well as other colonialpoliticians were invited to participate in the frequent Naval Reviewsand other "fêtes" associated with the fleet in London--and how theywent back to their respective countries confirmed in their imperialloyalty. The naming of new ships, after non-English, indeed sometimesnon-British, cities (e.g., _Dublin_) or after imperial territories(e.g., _Zealandia_), was meant to add to this image of indissolubleunion of the British Isles and their overseas empire behind the RoyalNavy.
The big difference in Germany is that it had no naval tradition worthmentioning when the kaiser undertook to build an imperial fleet thatwould match the Royal Navy. This uphill task is illustrated in thebook through three main strands: the harking back to the Hanse, theamalgamation of Germany's past glory on land and future glory on thesea, and the assimilation of the Darwinian struggle to finding a placein the sun--at sea. Not unexpectedly, owing to the nonmilitary anddisparate nature of the old Hanseatic league, Rüger sees an "ersatztradition" in the kaiser's effort to present the building of hisimperial fleet "as the logical continuation of the Hanse's attempt atestablishing Germany as a major sea power" (p. 158). More to the pointwas the appeal to the old Germanic notion of a people made up oftribes whose unity was forged by blood and iron. For adherents to thatthesis, like Helmut von Moltke, this legacy could be transposed to thenavy. Rüger speaks of the "projection of military values and armytradition on to the navy," with the idea that "the Imperial Navy wouldrepeat on the sea what the Prussian army had achieved on land" (p. 161).
The interpretation of Darwinism as "the struggle for life" waseminently suited for this "blood and iron" conception, and the bookexcellently explains how the shift to naval tradition operated. Thecentral element was the theory expounded by the human geographerFriedrich Ratzel (who we are told "put the word _Lebensraum_ on to thescholarly map of the nineteenth century" [p. 212]) in his book, _DasMeer als Quelle der Völkergrösse. Eine politisch-geographische Studie_(1900) ("The sea as the source of the greatness of peoples: a politico-geographical study"--reviewer's translation), which rested on twopremises. According to Ratzel, the sea was "'the space in whichnations competed for access to new _Lebensraum_,'" in the form of"'colonies and overseas possessions'"; and it was "'the source notonly of power and wealth, but also of a nation's identity andculture'" (p. 213). In this example, German imperial thinkingconverged with British imperial thinking as forcefully expressed byWinston Churchill in 1909: "the fleet was not just a militaryinstrument, it was an expression of 'English civilization'" (p. 214).
In both countries, this cultural dimension was reinforced by thepageantry and media coverage, openly encouraged in Britain from thestart, but subject to more reticence in Germany. Rüger describes howthe public and the press were invited to attend the magnificent freespectacle of the regular Fleet Reviews on the Thames or in the Solent.Those who could not attend were able to watch the show in cinemas,which were by then thriving. He writes about a "mass market" involving"the popular press, the cinema and the tourist industry," a "dynamicpublic market in which politics and culture were increasinglyinseparable" (p. 55, 54).
In Germany, _Flottenschauspiele_ and _Marineschauspiele_ were therage: the Berlin "Fleet playhouse" that opened in 1904 "could seat upto 4,000 visitors," who could watch large model warships parading onan artificial lake before the imperial yacht (p. 60). In 1911,yielding before this popular enthusiasm for "his" navy, the kaiser--always fearful of spying--finally allowed the presence of an officialpress boat and tourist steamers during Kiel Week, thus formallyopening "a previously private royal and naval ritual to thepublic" (p. 83). Germany also differed from Britain in that thesubsidiary role given to women in naval celebrations was more obvious--as could only be expected in a country whose ideology was dominated bythe _Männerbund_ (which Rüger translates as "male brotherhood" [p.135]).
Yet, however much they may have differed in superficial respects, thetwo countries were animated by the same _forces profondes_, Rügerargues, indirectly referring to the work of Eric Hobsbawm on the"invention of tradition" and that of Linda Colley on forgingBritishness.[3] "Both in Britain and Germany," Rüger states, "the navywas thus a cultural symbol that brought together some of the mostimportant sources of the nineteenth-century construction of thenation: monarchy, empire, technology, gender, war and geography" (p.196).
The main difficulty associated with this seductive thesis is theweight of words in different cultural traditions and nationalcontexts. We may accept that the signifiers "technology" and"Technologie" conveyed the same notions in 1913 Britain and Germany--but what about "Empire" and "Reich"? And, did the collectivementalities of the two countries have the same conception of war or ofthe monarchy? Were the perceptions of the importance of geography thesame? Rüger includes a section on the "Island nation," which discussesRudyard Kipling and Henry Newbolt, but curiously he does not mentionWilliam Shakespeare's moat, a source of pride and reassurance to allBritons from their school days. A fundamental difference in theperception of the importance of geography must necessarily have beenthe realization by every thinking German that his country had no suchnatural protection "against the envy of less happier lands."[4]
The book also purports to nuance the common insistence on "Germanpeculiarities" by suggesting that at least in the naval domain the_Sonderweg_, "special path," was not as special as most people think(pp. 7, 94). But, the discussion is never clear on this point, and thereader is at a loss to find a satisfactory answer to the question thatthe author asks, "What does this mean for the long-standing debateabout militarism in Germany" (p. 137). His extremely well-documentedstudy of the "bread and circuses" aspect, which is the object of afull chapter, does not really point to the fact that the "game," whichis the object of his book, turned out in the long run to be a far moredangerous one for the German population.
In his epilogue, sustaining Margaret Anderson's point of view that the_Kaiserreich_'s "worst legacy to the next generation was not itspolitical culture, but its war," Rüger blames "the trauma of the war"for the rise of Adolf Hitler--but one could equally well argue thatthe trauma would not have been so devastating if the expectationsraised by militarist spectacles, like the _Flottenschauspiele_, hadnot been so high (p. 266).[5] If the result had not been such a tragicone for the German people, in 1918 and even more so in 1945, one mightplay on Rüger's own words and say that the German elite had beencaught at their own game. The popular postwar disappointment inBritain over the "land fit for heroes," which did not materialize,was, of course, nothing to compare, at least from the politico-military point of view and the danger to world peace.
I would, therefore, argue that the limits of comparative culturalhistory are once more in evidence in this extremely difficult field ofAnglo-German attitudes to military questions, be they the memory ofbattle in Stefan Goebel's book in the same series or the naval race inthis one.[6] This, of course, does not detract from the high scholarlyvalue of this thoroughly researched monograph, with copious andconvenient footnoting, a superbly comprehensive bibliography ofpublications in both English and German, a carefully selected index,and an uncommon--and therefore extremely informative--choice ofillustrations. It will constitute required reading for specialists ofearly twentieth-century history as well as comparative Europeancultural history, and for scholars interested in research on theorigins of the First World War, from both the British and Germanangles. It should, of course, be in all university libraries.
Notes
[1]. The title of the review is taken from a quotation in this book(p. 3).
[2]. For a more complete discussion and excellent coverage of theceremonies at Trafalgar, see Holger Hoock, ed., _History,Commemoration and National Preoccupation: Trafalgar 1805-2005_(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). For a review on H-Diplo, seeAntoine Capet, "Napoleon Ought Never To Be Confused with Nelson,"review of _History, Commemoration and National Preoccupation_,http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=181221202233548.
[3]. Rüger specifically mentions the following publications: EricHobsbawm, "Mass-Producing Traditions: Europe, 1870-1914," in _TheInvention of Tradition_, ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger(Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 101-164;David Cannadine, "The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual: TheBritish Monarchy and the 'Invention of Tradition,'" in _Invention ofTradition_, 263-307; Linda Colley, _Britons: Forging the Nation,1707-1837_ (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992); andLinda Colley, "Britishness and Otherness: An Argument," _Journal ofBritish Studies_ 31 (1992): 309-329.
[4]. "This precious stone set in the silver sea, / Which serves it inthe office of a wall / Or as a moat defensive to a house, / Againstthe envy of less happier lands, /--This ... England." WilliamShakespeare, _King Richard II_, act 2, scene 1.
[5]. Margaret Anderson, _Practicing Democracy: Elections and PoliticalCulture in Imperial Germany_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press,2000).
[6]. Stefan Goebel, _The Great War and Medieval Memory: War,Remembrance and Medievalism in Britain and Germany, 1914-1940_(Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007). For areview on H-Albion, see Antoine Capet, "Some Are More Medievalist thanOthers," review of _The Great War and Medieval Memory_,http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=15631191169780.


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