Table of Contents

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.

Promotional Information

An innovative study of the cult of the navy in the age of empire.

About the Author

Jan Rüger teaches history at Birkbeck College, University of London. In 2002-3, he was a visiting fellow at the Yale Center for International and Area Studies, Yale University.

Reviews

"Ruger...is skillful in bringing out the navalism and the competition between Britain and Germany." -Jeremy Black, H-Albion "With his first major publication Ruger has contributed richly to our understanding of the uses of fleets in peacetime and to the interpretative prism through which one must view the forces and events that brought on World War I. His book should be widely read and discussed." -Eric C. Rust, The Journal of Military History "It will constitute required reading for specialists of early twentieth-century history as well as comparative European cultural history, and for scholars interested in research on the origins of the First World War, from both the British and German angles. It should, of course, be in all university libraries." -Antoine Capet, H-Albion "Jan Ruger's study of naval ceremony and pageantry in turn-of-the-century Britain and Germany further broadens the scope of naval history in a striking and original fashion. [...]Ruger focuses on the social and, especially, the cultural contexts of the Anglo-German naval race, asking how the political elites tried to mobilize mass support for their fleets, and how the public responded to the propaganda. [...]Ruger's path-breaking study has explored many aspects of the question. One can only hope that others are analysed as comprehensively and persuasively as he has analysed navalism as theatre." -John Beeler, University of Alabama, The International History Review "Students of German or British nationalism, imperialism, militarism, and consumerism will not want to miss this book." -Christopher A. Molnar, H-German