ABSTRACT
The belief that Bismarck’s heavily nationalist and protectionist stance sustained German post-1870 industrialisation and eruption onto world markets has survived the test of time, especially among non-economists and international relations specialists. In so far as Germany became a major player both in international trade relations and on the world stage during the Wilhelminian period, it is a little contradictory to assert that it did so by raising protective trade barriers between herself and the rest of the world. Such contentions, however, are still heard, reinforced as they are by authoritative expert contemporaries and later historians. Thus, Ludwig von Mises railed against the luminaries of the German historical school of his early years:
Most professors [while deprecating] the ‘errors and abstractions of the Classical school’ [. . .] propagated in their writings and in their courses the policies of the imperial government: conservatism, Sozialpolitik, protectionism, huge armaments and aggressive nationalism.
