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Example research essay topic: Foreign Policy Socio Economic - 2,201 words

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Kehr's Concept Of The Primacy Of DomesticKehrs Concept Of The Primacy Of Domestic Policy In German Foreign Policy An extreme revisionist, Eckart Kehr? s essays were greeted by contemporaries with disgust. ? Seen as an attempt to denigrate the motives of the men who, before 1914 had laboured faithfully for the national interest: an accusation all the more bitter when aimed at someone of Kehr? s heritage. ? Kehr was the product of a long line of Prussian civil servants on his mother side, the son of the director of the Ritterakademie in Brandenburg an der Havel, the nephew of the Director of the Prussian state archives and the student of Friedrich Meinecke and Hans Rothfels. ?

This is perhaps typical of a historian who acquired a reputation for troublemaking in his short career. ? The resentment of fellow historians was something that Kehr enjoyed inciting, and as a revisionist, Kehr was not scared to make extremist claims in order to make an impact, even when it would seem clear that he lacked sufficient evidence. ? His language, in another example of his revisionism, was not the measured, well-scripted literature of Ranke or Meinecke. ? Often repetitious in a way that does little for his argument, Kehr? s literary style is often terse, dense and difficult to follow. ?

It has been said that Kehr wrote in language more usually found in Marxist tracts than his own SPD-sympathetic sector, notably when he was pursuing his thesis that all foreign policy decisions were subordinate to domestic socio-economic factors. ? These are all factors that, to me, once drawn to my attention, reduced the effectiveness of his arguments, some of which, thanks to their language, are unpersuasive as it is. Kehr? s thesis regarding the domestic primacy over foreign policy is that a foreign policy is a product of its hinterland. ? Kehr believed that one can not only look at the antagonists in a foreign policy situation, but that the social structure of the Reich must also come under scrutiny. ?

Claiming it is a simple, yet often overlooked point, Kehr is keen to remind his reader that the German nation? s social needs and wills were the shareholders in the state? s foreign policy. ? Although he rejects the Versailles guilt clause as? absurd, ? he was prepared to admit that the situation in Germany in the 1890 s set Germany on course for fleet expansion and rejection of alliance with England.

Foreign policy has obvious effects on certain parties and classes, yet any parties within the state will be affected by the social and economic effects of policy first and foremost. ? No revolutions or rebellions have ever occurred because of foreign policy; they occur because of the domestic situation. ? Even conservatives for whom national greatness is to be perceived as a goal, it must be remembered, want national greatness only for propaganda purposes and pursue their warlike goals simply as a means of maintaining the agrarian status quo. ? For bourgeois liberals, the line between foreign and domestic policy, in that both were responses to the socio-economic conditions of the country is blurred, and in 1859, Prussian liberals famously criticised the government for their failure to represent the national interest. ? Attacking Ranke?

s thesis about the unofficial primacy of foreign policy for Germany, Kehr sees the development of foreign policy into the Wilhelmine period as a movement from foreign policy as a weapon of the middle classes against the state as a state weapon against the proletariat. German conservatism carried a hatred of the dark, satanic mills and the urbanized world and its desire to maintain the balance of power in the hands of the rural aristocracy was reflected in foreign policy, and the divide of foreign policy between dealings with rural states and dealings with industrialised estates. ? England, having the most advanced and widespread industrial superstructure, was seen as a hated enemy, whilst the Boers were praised for their ability to keep a land of such fertility and promise from being turned over into industrialisation by greed. ? The values of Prussian conservatives were taken down with their Afrikaans allies at the hands of the industrial, corrupt British. ? Meinecke? s assertion that the Boer War had the same implications for the conservatives as Koeniggraetz had for Napoleon III is possibly a slight overstatement. ?

The? horrible fleet? so detested by the Prussian conservatives coming to the fore as the victorious weapon of the battalions of the industrialised British during the Boer War was another bitter pill to swallow. ? As Kehr himself said, ? only the English victory in the Transvaal made the fleet and weltpolitik acceptable to the eyes of conservatives. ? ? The fear of the East Elbian grain producers of the victory of British industry over the German agrarian could not be allowed to be enacted in the Prussian grain fields. ?

Weltpolitik in this case was a means of class war designed to bolster conservatism, and conservative refusal to ally with England, the industrialists, or Russia, the rival producer, meant that in addition to being militarist, the German aristocracy were also anti-Russian and anti-British. Like some German Hobson, Kehr took the pre-war SPD line that claimed to have identified militaristic policies coming from a resultant unlikely alliance of agrarians and industrialists. The 1890 s were years of great hardship and class conflict. ? In 1879, reconciliation between industry and agriculture occurred despite the attempts of the previous decade by the agrarian sector to sabotage the industrial sector by tariff ing steel. This uneasy alliance, described by Zilch as an expression of 'the aggressive character of the bourgeoisie, allied with the Junkers 'reactionary and dangerous strivings, was dominated by the Prussian aristocrats.

The? New Course? , as he called it, also claimed that militarism was also the product of self-governing government institutions; an argument leaving room for class interest as well as bureaucratic and departmental self-interest. ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? It is certainly no myth that militarism and an aggressive foreign policy could turn the eyes of the public away from insoluble problems. ? Kehr saw the expansion of the fleet as a means for a? successful foreign policy, which in turn was meant to stabilise the internal political and social position of the ruling strata against the threat of social democracy. ? ? He sees the realisation of the Reich government of the power of propaganda and the press as coincidental with this populist placatory policy. ?

Johannes Miquel and Prince Below undoubtedly engaged in sabre-rattling in order to strengthen the position of the Conservatives and National Liberals, just as Bismarck had done, and there were undoubtedly people who believed that militarism, and, if necessary, war, would strengthen the patriarchal order and mentality and halt the advance of Social Democracy. The resolutions to expand the fleet were endorsed by the Handelstag, as well as several equivalent independent bodies, such as the group of German industrialists who protested in 1898 at the Kaiserhof in an event organised by the Reich Naval Office. ? The Merchants Corporation was typical of most commercial bodies. It viewed the fleet expansion as a means to increasing the potential size of the German national merchant fleet, and that all other issues were? political?

and outside of its sphere of interest. ? ? The mercantile sector, which Kehr as saw as allied as slowly joining as the junior partner with the needs of big business, threw its lean weight, through the means of petitions to chambers of commerce, behind the drive to build up the fleet. ? This was in response to the seizure of a series of German steamships by a British captain checking for contraband's throughout 1898. ? The Samoan Incident of 1900 prompted further expansion of the navy, with governmental permission for relaxation of the navy act? s proviso limiting the size of the navy. ? The German Right was by no means inventive in its use of an aggressive foreign policy in order to weaken the domestic strength of the left; it had become a set-piece manoeuvre in Napoleon Iii's France and by 1900 it was the motive for much foreign policy.

In 1901, Otto von Sale sent a letter to Tirpitz suggesting an acceleration of building works, not just to increase the profitability of the shipyards (the Howard Shipyard? s shares lost 17 points, which it regained immediately after the second Navy Act sent it more business) but also to counter the growing threat of socialism in a stagnating economy. ? When the request was refused, Kehr notes outrage from the Rheinisch-Westfaelische Zeitung claiming that the? interests of industry, labour and the German war fleet? were being undermined.

There was much less consensus between the agrarians and industrialists than Kehr seemed to think. ? In exemplar, Paasche and Dewitt, two National Liberal deputies for rural wards, were forced by the Agrarian League to rescind membership of the Army League, as the agrarian league thought a bigger army to be too radical an idea. ? That anti-militarism of that calibre lurked in Prussian conservatism means that the idea of a? National Opposition? occupying the Imperial Court in the lead up to the First World War is redundant. ? In 1908, Below, conscious of the possible problem of militarism leading to war, told the Crown Prince that Nowadays no war can be declared unless a whole people is convinced that such a war is necessary and just.

A war, lightly provoked, even if it were fought successfully, would have a bad effect on the country, while if it ended in defeat, it might entail the fall of the dynasty According to Weller, a student of Kehr? s school of thought, the arms contracts won by the industrialists were not only an economic boon, but would also serve as a break on the growing wave of socialism and social democracy within Germany. ? Acting as a drum for the nationalists to beat, a great army or navy could turn attention away from the Reich? s anti-democratic political system, and that was the main motive for the policy of fleet-building. The ship-building was just one facet of the German Anglophobia. ? The ruling strata?

s foreign policy was opposite to the one demanded by the ruled strata. ? Just as the SDP demanded an alliance with England, the conservatives demanded hostile action against England. ? The idea that this clean split along socio-economic lines could be the result purely of interest in governmental issues, and not socio-economics, seems absurd to Kehr, who seems again to over-reach himself in perceiving a cleanliness of division that probably did not exist. The conservatives apparently wanted to protect their status and income by using the navy to shut off all contact with the world economy, an economy that superceded their interests. ? These were people to whom even the national state was just a tool to keep them satisfied. ? This would seem, once again, to be a revisionist over-revising.

Kehr claimed that the theory was best explored in around 1900. ? The tariff and navy laws were admittedly passed out of a sense of class conflict; a conflict that spilt onto the world stage. ? The social crisis of the 1890 s was resolved by the Sammlungspolitik at the expense of the proletariat, in a politik that could not separate the domestic political life from the foreign policies that resulted from them. The Sammlungpolitik which led to an anti-English and anti-Russian mentality was the result of the liberal industrialists wish to eliminate English competition and of the conservative agrarians to eliminate Russian competition. ?

The competition with Russia for grain led to expansion westwards through an increased merchant fleet: a consequence that brought Germany directly into conflict with Britain. ? When the conservatives in the Reichstag Budget Commission supported the battle fleet in 1900, we know that it was in order to win greater subsidies. ? Thus, the agrarians gave up their pastoral outlook, their anti-capitalist, anti-Stock Exchange view, in exchange for national security and money. ? Instead of pouring money into capital-starved Russia, the Germans poured it into a battle fleet? a purchase resonant with the primacy of the agrarians. ?

This conflict with Britain and Russia would force the Entente Cordiale, as the only area on which the agrarians and industrialists agreed was in Anglophobia. ? Although this was briefly forgotten as the greed-driven anti-Russian sentiment overrode the Anglophobia as the English blockade on Russian imports was upheld by Prussia, the East Elbian xenophobia was a dominant theme of the era. ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Kehr does explain this predominance of domestic policy quite simply. ? The placement of the Chancellor as the officer in charge of all things, foreign and domestic, would mean the two would be interlinked. ?

The manipulation of the office by the East Elbian sector and the liberal industrial sector would be the factor that would lead most decisively to the foreign policy of the era, a foreign policy dictated by the needs of these persons at home.


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Research essay sample on Foreign Policy Socio Economic

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