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ABIGAIL GREEN, �atherlands: State-Building and Nationhood in Nineteenth-Century
Germany, New Studies in European History (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001), xi + 386 pp. ISBN 0 521
79313 0. US $64.95. £45.00
�atherlands is the fourth book in Cambridge University Press’s New
Studies in European History series. Its distinguished editorial board
and the four excellent titles that have appeared so far promise that it
will be a great success which will make many stimulating contributions
to early modern and modern European history. However, the
series also comes with a serious drawback which requires a few
introductory remarks. As in other recent Cambridge University Press
series, such as Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern
Warfare, editors and publisher permit only English text to appear.
This should be reconsidered in future volumes. In a clear departure
from once universal scholarly standards, foreign-language quotations
no longer appear in the original language, not even in footnotes
or endnotes. It is not clear why this is considered to be an advantage.
The presence of one or the other, in this case German, word would
hardly deter purchasers of specialized works directed at a very
restricted audience by their price, if nothing else. Nor is it conceivable
that production costs would skyrocket if a few footnotes were
slightly longer than they are at present. The disadvantages are obvious
and serious. The loss of the original style and turn of phrase may
be considered a merely aesthetic problem, and therefore negligible.
But quotations are evidence presented to support an argument, and
translating the evidence automatically makes the argument more difficult
to verify. Inevitably, readers will wonder what the original text
was and whether this or that translation is really the best one possible—particularly
when it comes to verse, as on p. 262 of the present
book. It also makes it impossible for scholars operating in other languages
to quote the evidence presented, because they can only guess
at the original text. The banning of foreign text is symptomatic of an
increasing self-imposed insularity of contemporary English-language
scholarship, even that dealing with the histories of other countries.
It is almost as if publishers assume that their books will be read
only in English-speaking countries, and only by people who have no
grasp of the languages of the places they are, after all, for the most
part studying intensely. This attitude may be acceptable in textbooks,
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