ABSTRACT
The uneven development of the world economy further heightened the tensions of a divided world. With the failure of Stumm’s heavy-handed tactics and the emergence of the world economy from the depression, by 1896 there was a growing determination to overcome the problems of domestic politics by imperialism or, as Wilhelm Liebknecht had put it, ‘to export the social question’. The process of syndicalisation, cartelisation and monopolisation which was so characteristic of the German experience continued apace in the post-Bismarck era. The imperialism and militarism of the 1890s was marked by the growing importance of the interest groups that mobilised mass support for imperialism and the navy programme. Proponents of an unhistorical empiricism still insist that the German battle fleet was built simply because the forceful and ambitious Tirpitz wanted to build ships. According to this version, the naval programme was the result of departmental egotism.
