ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to describe the liberal or reformist versions of social imperialism to the agenda, both to recover the full repertoire of thinking about the relationship between imperialism and domestic politics and begins with discussion of reformist potential in imperial society. It discusses a longer-term interest in the possibilities for comparison between German and British liberalism, particularly between the 1890s and the First World War. The new emphasis is on ‘modernization’, ‘status-anxiety’ and the social-psychological consequences of the Great Depression, a situation in which German politicians sought ‘to legitimate the social status quo and the political power structure by means of a successful imperialism’. The surrounding context of the Great Depression, it is true, is axiomatic, and Hans-Ulrich Wehler devotes much space to demonstrating its effects on the social thought of the time. When Wehler speaks of ‘slowing down the process of social and political emancipation’, for example, the meaning is ambiguous.
