Abstract
Traditionally seen as the epoch of the nation state, historians have recently begun to question the dominance of this category for those living, working, and travelling in nineteenth-century Europe. Frequently, transnational movement of people, money, and ideas had a greater impact than movement within national boundaries and under the supervision of individual states. As such, the nineteenth century is perhaps better understood as an era of increasing globalisation. While scholars have recently done much to emphasise the importance of supranational contexts in the area of economic transactions, the history of universities and knowledge transfer is still dominated by the category of the nation state. This essay attempts to challenge this tendency by pointing to the creation and growing importance of transnational university networks over the course of the nineteenth century. It focuses in particular on the development of a wide range of contacts between universities based in Britain and Germany including student migration and exchanges, collaborative projects, and joint publications. In particular, it argues that intellectual and cultural links which flourished under older political formations, in particular the eighteenth-century constitutional union between England and the Electorate of Hanover, survived to determine the nature of cultural contact between Britain and Germany in the following century. In the wider context of continental Europe, the essay also points to the longevity of an early-modern paradigm of intellectual relations—the “republic of letters” in which transnational collaboration and exchange played a normal and important part.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Craig 1984; for a more recent endorsement of this view, see Välimaa 2004, pp. 31–36; in the importance it has traditionally conferred upon the nation state, the history of higher education in nineteenth-century Europe fits in well with the wider historiographical tendency to unduly privilege the analytical category of the nation state set out by the editors in the Introduction.
- 2.
Jarausch 1983, p. 9.
- 3.
Readings 1996, p. 40.
- 4.
Ibid., pp. 119–134.
- 5.
In this article, the term ‘transnational’ is generally used to refer to contacts and movements across national-state borders; in line with this definition, the term ‘cross-border’ is sometimes used as a synonym for ‘transnational’. However, when referring to scholarly transfer as producing a genuinely ‘transnational’ space, the term should be understood to carry the additional meaning of ‘supranational’ or a discursive space in which the nation state as category is of only limited or secondary importance.
- 6.
Those interested in pursuing further the relationship between cross-border transfers of knowledge and expertise and the governing of globalization processes should also see the chapters in this collection by Klaus Dittrich and James Casteel.
- 7.
For a useful discussion of the ‘Republic of Letters’ as an Enlightenment ideal, see Goodman 1994, pp. 1–11.
- 8.
For a more detailed discussion of the nature and theoretical opportunities which global history, as an approach, offers, as well as the need to integrate the role of the nation state as both actor and subject within globalization processes, see the editors’ Introduction. For the continuing need to pay attention to the nation state within globalization processes, see also the chapter in this volume by Madeleine Herren.
- 9.
Sidhu 2004, p. 53; for additional analyses of the ways in which a wide range of differing interests may be operating in cross-border connections, see also the chapters in this volume by Guido Thiemeyer and Simone Müller-Pohl.
- 10.
Marginson and Sawir 2005, p. 282.
- 11.
Ibid., p. 281.
- 12.
A useful comparison presents itself here with the group of cable agents working on submarine transatlantic cables between 1858 and 1914, as examined in the chapter in this volume by Simone Müller-Pohl; here we see another group of individuals who developed a comparable sense of professional identity which transcended (and, at times, superseded) loyalty to national (and imperial) interests.
- 13.
- 14.
- 15.
See, for example, Jarausch 1983, p. 35, fn. 39.
- 16.
Rizvi 2009, p. 55.
- 17.
Weber 2008a Our Friend, p. 9.
- 18.
Ibid., 234.
- 19.
Idem
- 20.
For a fairly recent discussion of the relationship between the Enlightenment and the republic of letters, see Brockliss 2002, pp. 1–20.
- 21.
See, for example, the argument put forward in Jarausch 1983.
- 22.
Stuchtey and Wende 2000, p. 3.
- 23.
- 24.
- 25.
For the continuing appeal of Göttingen and other German universities for British (especially Scottish) students, cf. Wallace 2006.
- 26.
See, for example, Marginson and Sawir 2005, pp. 287f.; on the importance of asymmetrical political and economic power relations in globalization processes, see also the chapter in this volume by Tomoko Akami.
- 27.
Bryce 1885, p. xiii.
- 28.
The term ‘German university system’ is used here in the sense employed by nineteenth-century British commentators – not to denote a centrally-controlled system of higher education (which did not exist in any sense prior to German unification in 1870) but rather to point to the fact that most (if not all) universities located within the German states shared certain characteristics which distinguished them from higher education institutions in other countries. For this sense, cf., for example, Perry 1845, p. iv.
- 29.
Ibid., p. xvii.
- 30.
Ibid., p. xxiii.
- 31.
Ibid., pp. xviii, xxii.
- 32.
Ibid., p. xx.
- 33.
Bryce 1885, p. xxix.
- 34.
Bynam 1994, p. 96.
- 35.
For the influence of Bunsen, cf., for example, Stark 1999, pp. 24–27.
- 36.
Arnold 1868, p. vi.
- 37.
Ibid., p. vi.
- 38.
Fitzsimons et al. 1954, p. 193.
- 39.
Stubbs 1887, p. 65.
- 40.
Stuchtey and Wende 2000, pp. 14, 18, 20.
- 41.
Ibid., p. 2.
- 42.
Ibid., p. 3.
- 43.
Fruton 1990, p. 51.
- 44.
Idem
- 45.
Perry 1845, pp. 3f.
- 46.
Ibid., p. 4.
- 47.
Ibid., p. 52.
- 48.
Ibid., p. 53.
- 49.
The Times, 22.02.1847, p. 3.
- 50.
Morrell 1972, p. 19.
- 51.
Gooday 2008.
- 52.
Mendes da Costa 2004.
- 53.
Morrell 2004.
- 54.
Challenger 2004.
- 55.
Perkin 1896, p. 620.
- 56.
Weber Our Friend 2008a, p. 58.
- 57.
Ibid., 62.
- 58.
Cited in ibid., p. 64.
- 59.
For the influence of the ‘Humboldtian model’ on university reform in Britain, cf. Schalenberg 2002.
- 60.
Weber 2008a Our Friend, p. 86.
- 61.
Idem
- 62.
Report of Her Majesty’s Commissioners 1852, p. 3.
- 63.
Ibid., pp. 22, 44.
- 64.
Ibid., p. 105.
- 65.
Ibid., p. 454.
- 66.
Idem
- 67.
For a detailed account of government intervention in higher education in Britain in the period between 1850 and the outbreak of the Second World War, see Vernon 2004.
- 68.
Dewey 1973, pp. 274–276; Ellis 2012.
- 69.
- 70.
Hay 1820, p. 447.
- 71.
Ibid., p. 446.
- 72.
Ibid., p. 447.
- 73.
[Alison] 1849, p. 2.
- 74.
Idem
- 75.
Magnus 1898, p. 820.
- 76.
Ibid., p. 832.
- 77.
Ibid., p. 822.
- 78.
Ibid., p. 821.
- 79.
Ibid., p. 827.
- 80.
Ibid., p. 826.
Bibliography
[Alison, Archibald]. 1849. “The Year of Revolutions.” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 65, no. 399, 2–19.
Anderson, Robert D. 2004. European Universities from the Enlightenment to 1914. Oxford: University Press.
Arnold, Thomas. 1868. The History of Rome. New York: Appleton.
Biskup, Thomas. 2007. “The University of Göttingen and the Personal Union, 1737–1837.” In The Hanoverian Dimension in British History, 1714–1837, edited by Brendan Simms and Torsten Riotte, 128–160. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Brockliss, Laurence W.B. 1997. “The European University in the Age of Revolution, 1789–1850.” In The History of the University of Oxford, vol. VI: Nineteenth-Century Oxford Part I, edited by Michael G. Brock and Mark C. Curthoys, 77–133. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Brockliss, Laurence W.B. 2002. Calvet’s Web: Enlightenment and the Republic of Letters in Eighteenth-Century France. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bryce, J. 1885. “Preface.” In The German Universities for the Last Fifty Years, Johannes Conrad. Glasgow: David Bryce.
Bynam, William F. 1994. Science and the Practice of Medicine in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Challenger, Frederick. 2004. “‘Kipping, Frederic Stanley (1863–1949)’, rev. John Shorter.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Accessed 21.02.2010 (http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/34335).
Charle, Christophe. 2004. “Patterns.” In A History of the University in Europe, vol. III: Universities in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (1800–1945), edited by Walter Rüegg, 33–80. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Craig, John E. 1984. Scholarship and Nation-Building: The Universities of Strasbourg and Alsatian Society, 1870–1939. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Davis, John R. 2007. “Friedrich Max Müller and the Migration of German Academics to Britain in the Nineteenth Century.” In: Stefan Manz et al. (eds) Migration and Transfer from Britain to Germany, 1660–1914, 93–106. Munich: Saur.
Dewey, Clive. 1973. “The Education of a Ruling Caste: the Indian Civil Service in the Era of Competitive Examination.” English Historical Review 88, no. 347, 274–276.
Dodd, Charles E.. 1821. An Autumn Near the Rhine, 371–387. London: J. Murray.
Ellis, Heather. Forthcoming 2012. “Efficiency and Counter-Revolution: Connecting University and Civil Service Reform in the 1850s.” History of Education.
Fitzsimons, Matthew A. et al.,eds. 1954. The Development of Historiography. Harrisburg PA: Stackpole Co.
Fremdling, Rainer. 1995. Anglo-German Rivalry on Coal Markets in France, the Netherlands and Germany, 1850–1913. Groningen: University of Groningen.
Fruton, Joseph S. 1990. Contrasts in Scientific Style: Research Groups in the Chemical and Biochemical Sciences, Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society.
“German Universities.” 1819. The Literary Panorama and National Register 9, no. 56, 590–595.
Gooday, Graeme J.N. 2008. “Playfair, Lyon, first Baron Playfair (1818–1898).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Accessed 21.02.2010 (http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/22368).
Goodman, Dena. 1994. The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment. London: Cornell University Press.
Hay, Robert William. 1820. “State of Society, &c. in Germany.” Quarterly Review 23, no. 46, 434–454.
Jarausch, Konrad H. 1983. “Higher Education and Social Change: Some Comparative Perspectives.” The Transformation of Higher Learning, 1860–1930: Expansion, Diversification, Social Opening, and Professionalization in England, Germany, Russia, and the United States, 9–36. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kennedy, Paul. 1980. The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, 1860–1914. London: Allen & Unwin.
Kirchberger, Ulrike. 2000. “Deutsche Naturwissenschaftler im britischen Empire: Die Erforschung der außereuropäischen Welt im Spannungsfeld zwischen deutschem und britischem Imperialismus.” Historische Zeitschrift 271, 621–660.
Kirchberger, Ulrike. 2001. “German Scientists in the Indian Forest Service: A German Contribution to the Raj?.” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 29, no. 2, 1–26.
Levsen, Sonja. 2008. “Constructing Elite Identities: University Students, Military Masculinity and the Consequences of the Great War in Britain and Germany.” Past and Present 198, no. 1, 147–183.
Magnus, Laurie. 1898. “Recent Progress in German Universities.” Nineteenth Century 44, no. 261, 819–834.
Marginson, Simon & Erlenawati Sawir. 2005. “Interrogating Global Flows in Higher Education.” Globalization, Societies and Education 3, no. 3, 281–309.
“Memoir of Charles Louis Sand.” 1820. Edinburgh Monthly Review 3, no. 4, 575–591.
Mendes da Costa, Charlotte. 2004. “Gardner, John (1804–1880).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Accessed 21.02.2010 (http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/10374).
Morrell, Jack B. 1972. “The Chemistry Breeders: The Research Schools of Liebig and Thomas Thomson.” Ambix 19, no. 1, 19–40.
Morrell, Jack B. 2004. “Perkin, William Henry (1860–1929).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Accessed 21.02.2010 (http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/35478).
Padfield, Peter. 1974. The Great Naval Race: Anglo-German Naval Rivalry, 1900–1914. London: Hart-Davis, MacGibbon.
Perkin, William H. 1896. “The Origin of the Coal-Tar Colour Industry, and the Contributions of Hofmann and his Pupils.” Journal of the Chemistry Society 69, 596–637.
Perry, Walter C. 1845. German University Education; Or, the Professors and Students of Germany. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans.
Readings, Bill. 1996. The University in Ruins. London: Harvard University Press.
Report of Her Majesty’s Commissioners Appointed to Inquire into the State, Discipline, Studies and Revenues of the University and Colleges of Oxford: Together with the Evidence and an Appendix. 1852. London.
Rizvi, Fazal. 2009. “Internationalization and the Assessment of Research Quality in Education.” In Assessing the Quality of Educational Research in Higher Education: International Perspectives, edited by Tina Besley, 49–58. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Schalenberg, Marc. 2002. Humboldt auf Reisen?: Die Rezeption des ‘Deutschen Universitätsmodells’ in den Französischen und Britischen Reformdiskursen, 1810–1870. Basel: Schwabe & Co. AG Verlag.
Sidhu, Ravinder. 2004. “Governing International Education in Australia.” Globalization Societies and Education 2, no. 1, 47–66.
Stark, Susanne. 1999. Behind Inverted Commas: Translation and Anglo-German Cultural Relations in the Nineteenth Century. Cleveland: Multilingual Matters.
Stewart, Gordon M. 1979. “British Students at the University of Göttingen in the Eighteenth Century,” German Life and Letters 33, no. 1, 24–41.
Stubbs, William. 1887. Seventeen Lectures on the Study of Mediaeval and Modern History and Kindred Subjects: Delivered at Oxford under Statutory Obligation in the Years 1867–1884. Oxford: The Clarendon Press.
Stuchtey, Benedikt and Peter Wende, eds. 2000. British and German Historiography, 1750–1950: Traditions, Perceptions and Transfers. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
The Times. 22.02.1847.
Välimaa, Jussi. 2004. “Nationalization, Localization and Globalization in Finnish Higher Education.” Higher Education 48, 27–54.
van’t Padje, Willem-Alexander. 2001. At the Heart of the Growing Anglo-German Imperialist Rivalry: Two British Ambassadors in Berlin, 1884–1908. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Oxford.
Vernon, Keith. 2004. Universities and the State in England. London: Routledge.
Wallace, Stuart. 2006. “National Identity and the Idea of the University in Nineteenth-Century Scotland.” Higher Education Perspectives, Special Issue, 124–146.
Weber, Thomas. 2008. Our Friend, ‘The Enemy’: Elite Education in Britain and Germany before World War I. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press.
Weber, Thomas. 2008. “‘Cosmopolitan Nationalists’: German Students in Britain – British Students in Germany.” In Wilhelmine Germany and Edwardian Britain: Essays on Cultural Affinity, edited by Dominik Geppert and Robert Gerwath, 249–270. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ellis, H. (2013). National and Transnational Spaces: Academic Networks and Scholarly Transfer Between Britain and Germany in the Nineteenth Century. In: Löhr, I., Wenzlhuemer, R. (eds) The Nation State and Beyond. Transcultural Research – Heidelberg Studies on Asia and Europe in a Global Context. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32934-0_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32934-0_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-32933-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-32934-0
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawSocial Sciences (R0)