From 1872 to 1917 legislation banned Jesuits from Imperial Germany. Believing the Jesuits sought to control the social, political, and religious realms, the Protestant bourgeoisie championed the ban and promoted a politics of paranoia against the Jesuits. By exploiting widespread fears of the "specter" of Jesuitism, Protestants pushed their own confessional, nationalist, and often liberal agenda. Author Roisin Healy charts the path of anti-Jesuitism against the background of society, politics, and religion in Imperial Germany. The core of the book is evenly divided between an analysis of the political struggle over the passage, gradual dilution, and eventual repeal of the Jesuit Law and the main themes of anti-Jesuitism: the order's internationalism, moral theology, and scholarship. This book will interest all scholars of modern Germany, particularly those specializing in religion, nationalism, liberalism, and political mobilization.

Germany's imperial era (1871-1918) continues to attract both scholars and the general public alike. The American historian Roger Chickering has referred to the historiography on the Kaiserreich as an 'extraordinary body of historical scholarship', whose quality and diversity stands comparison with that of any other episode in European history. This Companion is a significant addition to this body of scholarship with the emphasis very much on the present and future. Questions of continuity remain a vital and necessary line of historical enquiry and while it may have been short-lived, the Kaiserreich remains central to modern German and European history. The volume allows 25 experts, from across the globe, to write at length about the state of research in their own specialist fields, offering original insights as well as historiographical reflections, and rounded off with extensive suggestions for further reading. The chapters are grouped into five thematic sections, chosen to reflect the full range of research being undertaken on imperial German history today and together offer a comprehensive and authoritative reference resource. Overall this collection will provide scholars and students with a lively take on this fascinating period of German history, from the nation’s unification in 1871 right up until the end of World War I.

This book represents the most comprehensive history of Germany during the First World War.

The German Empire, its structure, its dynamic development between 1871 and 1918, and its legacy, have been the focus of lively international debate that is showing signs of further intensification as we approach the centenary of the outbreak of World War I. Based on recent work and scholarly arguments about continuities and discontinuities in modern German history from Bismarck to Hitler, well-known experts broadly explore four themes: the positioning of the Bismarckian Empire in the course of German history; the relationships between society, politics and culture in a period of momentous transformations; the escalation of military violence in Germany's colonies before 1914 and later in two world wars; and finally the situation of Germany within the international system as a major political and economic player. The perspectives presented in this volume have already stimulated further argument and will be of interest to anyone looking for orientation in this field of research.

An international team of twelve expert contributors provides both an introduction to and an interpretation of the key themes in German history from the foundation of the Reich in 1871 to the end of the First World War in 1918.

The Society of Jesus, commonly known as the Jesuits, is the most successful and enduring global missionary enterprise in history. Founded by Ignatius Loyola in 1540, the Jesuit order has preached the Gospel, managed a vast educational network, and shaped the Catholic Church, society, and politics in all corners of the earth. Rather than offering a global history of the Jesuits or a linear narrative of globalization, Thomas Banchoff and José Casanova have assembled a multidisciplinary group of leading experts to explore what we can learn from the historical and contemporary experience of the Society of Jesus—what do the Jesuits tell us about globalization and what can globalization tell us about the Jesuits? Contributors include comparative theologian Francis X. Clooney, SJ, historian John W. O'Malley, SJ, Brazilian theologian Maria Clara Lucchetti Bingemer, and ethicist David Hollenbach, SJ. They focus on three critical themes—global mission, education, and justice—to examine the historical legacies and contemporary challenges. Their insights contribute to a more critical and reflexive understanding of both the Jesuits’ history and of our contemporary human global condition.

While the fate of minorities under Nazism is well known, the earlier expulsions of Germany's unwanted residents are less well understood. Against a backdrop of raging public debate, and numerous claims of a 'state of exception', tens of thousands of vulnerable people living in the German Empire were the victims of mass expulsion orders between 1871 and 1914. Groups as diverse as Socialists, Jesuits, Danes, colonial subjects, French nationalists, Poles, and 'Gypsies' were all removed, under circumstances that varied from police actions undertaken by provincial governors through to laws authorising removals passed by the Reichstag. Purging the Empire examines the competing voices demanding the removal or the preservation of suspect communities, suggesting that these expulsions were enabled by the decentralised and participatory nature of German politics. In a surprisingly responsive political system, a range of players, including the Kaiser, the Reichstag, the bureaucracy, provincial officials, and local police authorities were all empowered to authorise the expulsion of unwanted residents. Added to this, the German press, civic associations, chambers of commerce, public intellectuals, religious societies, and the grassroots membership of political parties all played an important role in advocating or denouncing the measures before, during and after their implementation. Far from revealing the centrality of authoritarian caprice, Germany's mass expulsions point to the diffuse nature of coercive sovereign power and the role of public pressure in authorising or censuring the removals that took place in a modern, increasingly parliamentary Rechtsstaat.

Through a range of case studies from eastern and western Europe, this book breaks new ground in investigating the extent to which European peoples living within Europe were also subjected to the ideologies and practices of colonialism.

In Big Swords, Jesuits, and Bondelswarts, John S. Lowry demonstrates that anti-imperialist resistance movements overseas significantly shaped the course of Wilhelmine domestic politics between 1897 and 1906. In 1898 and 1900, for example, the consequences of Chinese, Cuban, and Samoan resistance permitted Berlin to steer two large naval laws through the Reichstag by enabling the government to garner critical votes from the Catholic Center Party through pro-Catholic gestures overseas, rather than via repeal of the Anti-Jesuit Law at home. By contrast, after 1903 costly uprisings throughout German-occupied Africa generated acute fiscal concerns among Center Party delegates, and African civilian protests against colonial misrule aroused missionary and Centrist ire. Lowry emphasizes that the ensuing Reichstag dissolution of 1906 arose much more directly from African factors than previous scholarship has recognized.

Examines the history of Germany from 1871 to 1945 as an expression of the 'tension of empire'.