BRITISH IDENTITY AND THE GERMAN OTHER A Dissertation ...

enefices of two contributing clerics and a declaration of protest signed by 11,000 English
clergymen. The work also met with disfavor from some prominent political figures, including
abolitionist William Wilberforce, and future Prime Ministers Gladstone and Salisbury. 66 Against
the onslaught of liberal theology and “Higher Criticism” from Germany, the Catholic Church
offered a refuge to the Tractarians of the Oxford movement led by Cardinal Newman, who
decried the dangers of “continental infection” upon hearing that Lutheran bishops from Prussia
sought Anglican ordination. The fact that distrust of German influences coincided with a revival
of orthodox Christianity made the reaction against German theology all the more powerful and
vehement. 67
Despite a long history of theological divergence, disputation and distrust, the argument
for Protestant solidarity reappeared consistently in regard to nineteenth-century Anglo-German
relations. Queen Victoria expressed her willingness to declare England sympathetic to Protestant
Germany in the event of an unprovoked attack by Catholic France, and many, including a
majority of the English press, supported Bismarck’s Kulturkampf against the Ultramontanes and
the doctrine of papal infallibility, at least in purpose if not in method. British ardor cooled
quickly, however, upon consideration of Bismarck’s tyrannical tactics, fears of German
aggression against France and Belgium and, not least, pro-Irish and Catholic sentiments in
Britain. 68
66 Kennedy, Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, 107, indicates a religious component
to Salisbury’s Germanophobia.
67 Mander, Our German Cousins, 150-1. Halevy, Triumph of Reform, 160, 208.
68 Sizeable minorities in each country, Catholics in Germany and Irish in Britain, worked
to counteract already weak Anglo-German Protestant sympathies. See Kennedy, Rise of the
168