Herwig’s study of issues and events that disproportionately affected relations between Germany, Great Britain, the United States, and Venezuela between 1871 and 1914 is impressive. Eschewing a traditional narrative, he employs a thematic and topical approach to unravel complex causes and effects, and make coherent a case study in European imperial motivations. In chapters on trade and investment, emigration, blockade, army missions and armaments, naval expansionism, relations with the United States, and Anglo-German rivalry, Herwig offers fresh perspectives on theories of economic, cultural, military, and territorial imperialism. Europeanists will find this a stimulating work in diplomatic history. Latin Americanists ought to find the methodology and argument applicable to other areas in the region. We still do not have a coherent view of European-Latin American relations during the period in question, but Herwig has made a significant start.
Along the way, he maintains a tough-minded attitude toward sweeping theories of imperialism and confirms the unreliability of monocausal, all-explaining models and arguments. German imperialism comes out as a contextual phenomenon, fanciful and contradictory in inspiration and application, and destined to failure given time, location, and circumstances.
Germany’s place in the Caribbean sun was backward even by Latin American standards, but the Auslandsdeutsche who came there were not at all like those in Alejo Carpentier’s Reasons of State, who “shut themselves up in ‘German Clubs’ and “German Cafes …” (Eng. tr., 1976, p. 104). Germans, whether profit seekers, military missionaries, naval expansionists, settlers, or practitioners of Realpolitik, are portrayed as no less capable than other Northern Europeans in getting by in those exotic, antique lands where, à la Goethe, “the lemon tree grows” and “the gold oranges glow.”
Herwig’s treatment of Deutschtum, Venezuela’s German community, is perhaps the most fascinating part of his book (pp. 47-79 and passim); his discussion of military advisors and naval expansionists the most revealing of German limitations (pp. 110-174); and his chapter on trade and investment the most devastating to theories of imperialism based on economic determinism (pp. 17-46). The chronicling of the Wilhelmstrasse’s maneuverings is rich with irony and replete with revelations of the making and unmaking of diplomacy (pp. 80-109, 175-245). Pride, elitist and racist attitudes toward “Romance” peoples, and Kultur were just as important as motivators of imperialist dreams as were railroads, naval bases, trade, and Weltpolitik.
Herwig shows that ignorance, fancy, wishful thinking, and international distrust were essential ingredients in Venezuela’s becoming a faded vision of empire and a source of U.S. and British ill feeling toward Germany well before they all stumbled into World War I. Instead of a cornerstone of empire, a backwash became a plague to those involved—a lesson in diplomacy unheeded at the time, that applies to other times as well. Based on exhaustive use of German archives, this book is an example of just how rich non-Latin American sources can be in our study of the region. Venezuelan materials might have enriched the mix of documentation, but would not have improved the quality of the result. This is a superior piece of scholarship.
