The German Empire was founded in triumph in 1871 and crashed in disaster at the end of the First World War. Imperial Germany focuses on the domestic political developments of the period, putting them into context through a balanced guide of economic and social background, culture and foreign policy. It explores the tension caused within an empire that was formed through war, against the prevailing liberal spirit of the age. Recent debates on the topic are made accessible to English-speaking readers, and the book summarizes the important controversies and competing interpretations of imperial German history.

1 German nationalism between failure and revival 1850-1862 2 The wars of unification 1862-1870 3 Imperial Germany - the liberal phase 1870-1879 4 Bismarck's system in decline 1879-1890 5 The Wilhelmine age 6 Towards Weltpolitik and social imperialism 1890-1909 7 Stagnation at home, 'encirclement' abroad 1909-1914 8 Germany during the war years 1914-1918, Conclusion

Edgar Feuchtwanger has written widely on modern German history and is the author of Prussia: Myth and Reality (1972) and From Weimar to Hitler: Germany 1918-33 (2nd edition 1995) and the editor of Upheaval and Continuity: A Century of German History (1973). He has published biographies of Gladstone and Disraeli and taught German and British history at the University of Southampton.