Exploring the Anglo-German paradox: more than 300 years of co-operation and conflict

Resumen detallado

Readers looking for a historical explanation of perhaps the most significant relationship in Europe would do well to start with Jan Rüger’s Great Powers: A History of Britain and Germany

Shortly after the 2016 Brexit referendum that initiated Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union, The Economist blamed “mutual incomprehension” between Germany and Great Britain for the referendum’s result. It was “one of the sad if perennial features” of their relationship that Britons and Germans seemed doomed to disagree at major historical junctures. Although “the two countries share so much, in interests and outlook ... their political cultures are so alien to one another”, the magazine wrote.

Jan Rüger, professor of history at Birkbeck College in London, disagrees with that verdict in his excellent new history of Anglo-German relations between 1714 and 2018. Although Britons and Germans often defined themselves in opposition to one another, they were also caught up in an association of “mutual dependence”, he writes.

“At the heart of their relationship”, according to Rüger, “has been the lasting experience of both close co-operation and violent conflict. One can call it the Anglo-German paradox: that two nations so closely enmeshed could simultaneously be each other’s most formidable enemies.”

Great Powers tells the story of this troubled relationship over 300 years, from the early 18th century to the present. The book begins in September 1714, when Georg Ludwig of Hanover travelled to London to be crowned as King George I at Westminster Abbey. He thereby laid the foundations of an Anglo-German dynasty that still rules over the United Kingdom today.

King Charles III is not known to be as overtly Germanophile as his father, but he is still able to address his audiences in perfectly passable German during his state visits to Germany and speeches to the Bundestag.

Rüger’s history of Anglo-German relations and cultural entanglements is organised in three sections – Allies, Opponents and Reconciliation – and suggests that the Anglo-German relationship may have been more significant in European history than the one between France and Germany.

Rüger is particularly…

Rüg…

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