Jan Rüger. The Great Naval Game: Britain and Germany in the Age of Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 356 S. $101.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-521-87576-9.

Reviewed by Christopher Molnar (Department of History, Indiana University)
Published on H-German (January, 2008)

The Naval Theater and Anglo-German Antagonism

In his classic study of Anglo-German antagonism, Paul Kennedy asserted, "the decisive elements in the Anglo-German relationship, and the causes of the rising antagonism, are to be found not among such nebulous elements as race, religion and culture but in the cold world of Machtpolitik."[1] Writing twenty-seven years later, Jan Rueger argues that politics alone cannot explain Germany and Britain's troubled relationship in the three decades before the outbreak of hostilities in 1914. In his book, Rueger describes and analyzes the development of an elaborate "naval theatre" in Germany and Britain. He insists that politics and culture "were inseparable in the celebration of the navy and the sea: ritual and theatre merged with power and politics" (p. 2). The naval theater, according to Rueger, was a public stage on which international relations were acted out and on which both states constructed images of themselves as unified, powerful nations and empires.

During the nineteenth century, royal naval reviews and launches of new warships were transformed from rather modest ceremonies into elaborately choreographed forms of mass entertainment that celebrated monarchical and national power. The transformation was gradual in Britain, but occurred rapidly in Germany with the accession of Wilhelm II to the throne in 1888. Royal fleet reviews, particularly in Britain, had previously been functional. The monarch actually inspected the fleet and navy personnel in order to assess the navy's readiness for war. In both countries the martial function of the reviews was gradually eclipsed by the desire to put on a good show, full of militarily useless mock battles and maneuvers. At the same time, in both states, reviews were staged much more frequently from the late 1880s until 1914 than they ever had been before.

Historians have usually understood the development of highly structured naval theaters in Germany and Britain as "invented traditions," created by monarchs and government leaders in order to manipulate the masses and gain popular support. Rueger argues that the rise of consumerism, the growth of popular entertainment (especially film and the popular press), and the expansion of the franchise created a "mass society" that decisively shaped the naval theater in both states. The popular press, filmmakers, tourist agencies, and tens of thousands of citizens demanded access to fleet reviews and ship launches, and both governments and navies quickly realized that they had to involve the masses and put on a good show if they wanted to avoid negative press coverage. The British Admiralty actively encouraged the popular enthusiasm for the naval theater, while Alfred von Tirpitz's Nachrichtenbureau, which sought to control press coverage, was ultimately less effective in tapping into popular enthusiasm.

Historians of modern Britain and Germany have often interpreted state festivals as modern reincarnations of Roman "bread and circuses," in which the state attempted to gain popular support and distract its citizens from social problems. Rueger, however, argues that "even if the naval theatre was intended by the Admiralty and the Reichsmarineamt to be a modern form of 'bread and circuses', it was just as much shaped by other actors with other agendas," especially local elites and the middle class, who staged extravagant ceremonies in order to celebrate their own social power and to exhibit civic pride (p. 103). Neither state was able to impose its meaning on the naval theater. Many spectators viewed the events as economic opportunities, some attended in protest, and most attendees were driven by the desire to witness the spectacle, which featured dazzling shows of modern technology. The great variety of non-martial meanings Germans attached to the naval theater casts doubt on the notion that German society was characterized by "militarism from below."

In an especially interesting chapter, Rueger asserts that in Britain and Germany "the fleet was a powerful cultural symbol, a 'heterotopia,' which played a particularly important role in the imagination of the 'nation'" (p. 140). Despite unification, Germany was deeply fragmented by region and religion. The naval theater was designed to overcome these divides. Speeches at ship launches frequently depicted Germany as an "imperial mosaic" held together by the kaiser. The naval theater also drew on the history of the Hanseatic League and the German military in order to create an image of a nation with a long history of naval and military achievement. In Britain the navy similarly served as a symbol of British and imperial power and unity. Ships were named for nations within Britain, as well as for colonized territories. Ships and officials from throughout the empire took part in ship launches and fleet reviews, producing an image of a powerful and unified nation and empire.

Germany and Britain played out their rivalry in the naval theater in the two decades before they went to war with each other in 1914. In both states, naval officials and scholars emphasized the role of the navy as a deterrent. In times of peace, displays of naval power became more important than actual power, and these displays were staged in the naval theater. "Warships," Rueger writes, "were floating symbols for the representation of power" (p. 208). Alliances were also staged in the naval theater. At a point when the actual terms of the entente cordial between France and Britain had not been worked out, the alliance was made visible in a series of joint naval and cultural exhibitions. The naval theater was also crucial for building support for the navy in both states, but naval muscle-flexing, intended for the domestic scene, was often taken as evidence of belligerence abroad. The emphasis on deterrence was lost on the popular press, and the rhetoric of national and imperial power created expectations for military achievements and national greatness that neither state could fulfill.

The First World War featured none of the decisive naval campaigns that Germans and Britons had come to expect. The naval theater reopened in Britain in 1924, and naval reviews in the 1930s stressed continuity with the past in the face of new challenges to its empire and to its position in Europe. Germany's fleet was sunk after World War I, but Adolf Hitler immediately revived the naval theater upon coming to power. Ship launches and naval reviews once again became grand state celebrations. Hitler broke with Wilhelmine tradition by emphasizing modern technology, by inviting the masses to be a part of the naval theater, and by representing the Nazi state as a complete break from Germany's imperial past.

Despite this convincing picture, the book has a few minor shortcomings. First, Rueger appears to resist a bit too strongly the idea that the naval theater won each state a measure of popular support for its ambitious foreign policies. He is right to note that the governments could not control the meaning of naval spectacles in the public domain, but one suspects that the few dissenting spectators that Rueger discusses represent an incredibly small minority among the tens of thousands of spectators in Germany, and the millions of spectators in Britain who attended naval celebrations. Not all of these spectators would have upheld their government's foreign policy goals, but the naval theater must have convinced many of them of the importance of national power. Many also must have come to view war as an exciting possibility, a stance that surely contributed to the popular enthusiasm with which many inhabitants of both countries greeted the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914. Second, I would have liked to have learned how attempts to "stage" a unified national and imperial identity were received in places, such as Bavaria and Ireland, that fiercely guarded their distinct identities. Was the naval theater simply a site where the nation could be "imagined," or did it foster actual cultural and social unification in each state?

These minor criticisms are outweighed, however, by the generally convincing quality of the book. A large source base does not in itself make a good book, but one cannot help but be impressed with the volume and variety of source material Rueger consults. His sources include national, state, city, police, and film archives in Germany and Britain, as well as a few Australian archives, and a massive number of newspapers, periodicals, official publications, contemporary printed sources, memoirs, diaries, and letters. More importantly, the book is a well-conceived work that successfully bridges the historiographical divide between military and cultural history. The nearly complete absence of jargon and the subordinate position of cultural theory will endear the book to readers who might normally be wary of such cultural readings of military history, while Rueger's attention to issues such as consumerism, identity, performance, gender, and the rise of "mass society" will attract cultural historians. Students of German or British nationalism, imperialism, militarism, and consumerism will not want to miss this book.

Note

[1]. Paul Kennedy, The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism: 1860-1914 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1980), 410.

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Citation: Christopher Molnar. Review of Rüger, Jan, The Great Naval Game: Britain and Germany in the Age of Empire. H-German, H-Net Reviews. January, 2008.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=14113

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