This book, although now self-standing, started out as part of a much broader project on nationalism – especially liberal nationalism – in Germany between 1848 and the early 1930s. I am still working on the other parts, and the debts that I have incurred are correspondingly large and open-ended.
I wrote much of the volume on a year’s sabbatical funded by UCL and the Arts and Humanities Research Council, as part of its Research Leave Scheme. I am very grateful to both for giving me the opportunity to write for an extended period, rather than for the usual snatched moments during vacations and term, and to concentrate on the minutiae of research instead of the minutiae of departmental and college administration. In a period when funding is increasingly ‘applied’ and ‘collaborative’, the AHRC scheme has continued to provide scholars in the Humanities with time to do what they should, in terms of research, be doing. I hope – but doubt – that the successor scheme will be as successful. I am also indebted, in a much more personal sense, to Matthew D’Auria, Jan Vermeiren and Daniel Laqua for providing teaching cover over the course of my sabbatical and for doing such an excellent job. My colleagues in the German Department and in European Social and Political Studies at UCL have picked up much of the rest of the work that this and other sabbaticals have occasioned, as well as putting up with sporadic moaning about lack of progress. Without such departmental backing (and lack of complaint), I am not sure that I could have completed this volume – certainly not within the decade.
The nature of the subject of the volume (the 1850s and 1860s) has necessarily made the research for it somewhat solitary at times. I am therefore all the more indebted to Rudolf Muhs and John Breuilly, two of a small number of UK scholars who have continued to treat the period seriously, for taking an interest in the project: the former for reading the typescript in its entirety and giving such helpful advice; the latter for his engagement, as an editor and colleague, with all aspects of the book, providing detailed and challenging criticism (in the best sense) of its arguments and evidence. In different ways, both have served as models, at different times, during the difficult transition from the early twentieth to the mid-nineteenth century. In a wider sense, whether with reference to German history or nationalism in Europe, I have also benefited greatly from the comments and help of Tim Baycroft, Stefan Berger, Mary Fulbrook, Egbert Klautke, Eckard Michels, James Retallack, Bernhard Rieger, Jill Stephenson, and all of my Ph.D. students at UCL, especially – in this regard – those working on the national question – Jan, Matthew, and Mark Tilse. Finally, I am thankful for the very constructive suggestions of the anonymous referee and for those of the editorial staff at Palgrave who did not give up the project despite its changing shape.
My main debt, as will always be the case with work that so often ‘comes home’, is to my family. The research and writing of this book has spanned the birth of my two daughters, Anna and Camille. For their support during a very busy time and their toleration of too many working holidays and visits, I wish to thank my own parents and sister, and the parents and family of my partner, Cécile Laborde. Their help has not only made it possible for Cécile and I to continue to research (perhaps more often than we should), it has also enabled us to see each other from time to time. It is principally those times, and our time together with Anna and Camille, that have given me sustenance when confronted with the unwieldier and more tiring aspects of writing, research and teaching. I have dedicated this book to our girls, for their good-natured acceptance of the metaphysics of ‘work’ and for their unstinting energy, affection and inspiration.