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Print Price: $236.50

Format:
Hardback
224 pp.
17 b/w images, colour map section, 156 mm x 234 mm

ISBN-13:
9780198714392

Publication date:
February 2015

Imprint: OUP UK

Mapping the Germans

Statistical Science, Cartography, and the Visualization of the German Nation, 1848-1914

Jason D. Hansen

Series : Oxford Studies Modern European History

Mapping the Germans explores the development of statistical science and cartography in Germany between the beginning of the nineteenth century and the start of World War One, examining their impact on the German national identity. It asks how spatially-specific knowledge about the nation was constructed, showing the contested and difficult nature of objectifying this frustratingly elastic concept. Ideology and politics were not themselves capable of providing satisfactory answers to questions about the geography and membership of the nation; rather, technology also played a key role in this process, helping to produce the scientific authority needed to make the resulting maps and statistics realistic. In this sense, Mapping the Germans is about how the abstract idea of the nation was transformed into a something that seemed objectively measurable and politically manageable.

Jason Hansen also examines the birth of radical nationalism in central Europe, advancing the novel argument that it was changes to the vision of nationality rather than economic anxieties or ideological shifts that radicalized nationalist practice at the close of the nineteenth century. Numbers and maps enabled activists to "see" nationality in local and spatially-specific ways, enabling them to make strategic decisions about where to best direct their resources. In essence, they transformed nationality into something that was actionable, that ordinary people could take real actions to influence.

Readership : Academics, students, and researchers of German and Central European history, the history of nationalism, the study of national borders/identities, and cartography.

Introduction
1. Counting Germans: The Search for a Practical Means to Measure Nationality
2. Mapping Germans: Making the Cultural Nation Visible
3. Radical Germans: Demography and Nationalism, 1880-1914
4. Connecting Germans: The Circuitry of National Knowledge
5. Defending Germans: Strategies of Intervention
Conclusion: Statistics and Cartography, War and Peace
Bibliography

There are no Instructor/Student Resources available at this time.

Jason Hansen specializes in the study of modern Germany and is currently working on a new project which examines the impact of the development of the internet and digitalization on the future of Holocaust memory. Dr Hansen has been the recipient of awards from the Council of European Studies and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).

Writing History - William Kelleher Storey and Towser Jones
States of Division - Sagi Schaefer
The Geography of War and Peace - Edited by Colin Flint
Raising Germans in the Age of Empire - Dr. Jeff Bowersox
Remaking the Rhythms of Life - Dr. Oliver Zimmer
The Oxford Handbook of the History of Nationalism - Edited by John Breuilly

Special Features

Approaches the radicalization of nationalism in nineteenth-century Germany in a completely novel way.
Demonstrates how Europeans learned to see nationality in a spatially specific and manipulable way - important for the understanding of German expansion in both world wars.
Contains many useful maps for a clearer understanding of the subject.
Contains a clear discussion of the build-up of the Imperial German Census Bureau.