BRITISH IDENTITY AND THE GERMAN OTHER A Dissertation ...

achieved through war the defensive federal union, top-down reforms and conservative
constitutional monarchy Britain had hoped could be attained peacefully. But, as Frank Lorenz
Müller has written, British observers would be disappointed by the absence of “Whig policies in
a country without Whigs” as well as haunted by how “the spectre of German hegemony” might
unbalance the European system. 34
In February of 1864, the sixteen-year dispute between Denmark and Germany over the
sovereignty and jurisdiction of the duchies of Schleswig-Holstein culminated in the invasion of
Jutland by Prussian forces. Even though Britain, since the days of Palmerston, had acted as a
technically neutral mediator in this quarrel, the sudden transfer of three hundred thousand Danes
to German rule stung British ambassadors with a feeling of diplomatic impotence. Despite
Queen Victoria’s pro-German sympathies, the Danish Wars set off a public reaction in Britain
that revealed an impulsive, irrational anti-Germanism and brought forth displays of animosity
that usually exhibited a complete misunderstanding or ignorance of the complexities of the
situation. 35 Victoria’s influence during the Danish Crisis depended more on the Cabinet’s desire
to avoid an Anglo-German War than from any shared pro-German sentiments, but even the
queen’s attitude toward Prussia changed dramatically after the extinction of petty states,
including Coburg, and the incorporation of larger states, including Hanover, into the North
German Confederation under Prussian control. 36 The Schleswig-Holstein issue remained a bone
34 Britain and the German Question: Perceptions of Nationalism and Political Reform,
1830-63 (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York: Palgrave, 2002), 174, 190-93, 207-8.
35 See Keith A. P. Sandiford, Great Britain and the Schleswig-Holstein Question 1848-64:
a Study in Diplomacy, Politics and Public Opinion (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1975),
81, 116, 145, 150, 155, and chap. 6, “British Reaction to the Dano-German War.”
36 Ibid., 148.
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