BRITISH IDENTITY AND THE GERMAN OTHER A Dissertation ...

institutions.
Anglo-German territorial orientations constituted another basis for stereotyped difference,
particularly in the dichotomy taken for granted between British sea and German land power.
Contrary to the alarmism of popular fiction, Britain had no real cause to fear a German invasion
by sea even as the Anglo-German naval rivalry picked up steam at the turn of the century. Nor
did Britain pose any significant military threat to Germany, despite German concerns about
“encirclement.” Culturally and strategically, the idea of a greater Britain, resting on the
world-wide diffusion of Anglo-Saxon emigration and culture, quelled British anxieties about
racial or imperial slippage. Charles Wentworth Dilke’s survey of British dominions in 1868
predicted a triumph of Saxondom over hostile “cheaper” races and a swelling of the English
“race” to 300 million by 1970 that would make European rivals Italy, Spain, France and Russia
seem mere “pigmies.” 93 A German equivalent to this geopolitical security blanket existed in the
Mitteleuropa idea of military and economic hegemony in Eastern Europe, beyond Germany’s
most vulnerable border. 94 Despite these seemingly compatible geopolitical visions, however,
diplomatic conflict came in the form of naval rivalry and European alliances. Up until Britain’s
entry into the Triple Entente with France and Russia in 1907, the staple of British foreign policy
had been maintaining a free hand in the European power balance, but the German naval
challenge, German military influence in Turkey and plans for a Berlin to Baghdad railway
93 Greater Britain: A Record of Travel in English-Speaking Countries During 1866-7, 2
vols. (London: Macmillan; Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1869), 347-48.
94 Gertjan Dijkink, National Identity and Geopolitical Visions: Maps of Pride and Pain
(London; New York: Routledge, 1996), 17-20, 39-42, refers to the popular writing by Friedrich
Ratzel entitled Deutschland: Einführung in die Heimatkunde (1898).
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