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DID THE UNITED STATES SCARE THE EUROPEANS? THE PROPAGANDA ABOUT THE “AMERICAN DANGER” IN EUROPE AROUND 1900

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 February 2016

Séverine Antigone Marin
Séverine Antigone Marin*
Affiliation:
University of Strasbourg
*
email: antigonemarin@aol.com
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Abstract

During a brief period—1898 to 1907—the “American danger” proved a powerful slogan in Europe. Propaganda campaigns were launched that targeted the new ambitions of the emerging economic power. Historians have studied this episode but only as one among many examples of anti-Americanism embedded in European intellectual traditions. This paper insists on the distinctive character of this episode. It refutes the notion of anti-Americanism as the explanation most relevant to this episode and even questions the possibility of opposing Europe to the United States at a time of constant transnational circulation inside the “Atlantic world.” Disputing the idea that a common fear of American superiority united Europeans, the study reveals how people in England, France, and Germany used the “American danger” to put forward their own ideas of the national interest, which explains why the theme did not meet with the same success in each of these countries. Finally, the author offers the hypothesis that the “American danger” was less the expression of fear—as the Yellow Peril could be—and more a rallying cry for economic circles motivated by defense of their sectional interests and by a desire for national union in a time of deep political division.

Type
Forum: Theodore Roosevelt and Europe
Information
The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , January 2016 , pp. 23 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2016 

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References

NOTES

1 In 1901–02, “Uncle Sam became a kind of colossus, whose arms encircled the planet in the grip of his sharp claws.” Jacques Portes, Fascination and Misgivings: The United States in French Opinion, 1870–1914, trans. Elborg Forster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 388.

2 Cornelius Torp, Die Herausforderung der Globalisierung: Wirtschaft und Politik in Deutschland, 1860–1914 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2005), 331–42.

3 Marek Czaja, Die USA und ihr Aufstieg zur Weltmacht um die Jahrhundertwende: Die Amerikaperzeption der Parteien im Kaiserreich (Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 2006).

4 Egbert Klautke, Unbegrenzte Möglichkeiten: “Amerikanisierung” in Deutschland und Frankreich (1900–1933) (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2003). Klautke seeks to provide a systematic comparison between French and German discourses on the United States.

5 This is the reason why this paper focuses only on France, Great Britain, and Germany, though Italy would have been important cases to add.

6 In this respect, this paper differs from studies focused on European writers (and travelers) who went to the United States. Though their number increased considerably around 1900, they still represented only a small portion of the European public opinion and of European writing about the United States. Most Europeans were not particularly willing to learn much about the United States but developed nevertheless—thanks to newspapers—ideas and feelings about the international competition, be it political, economic, or military, they saw their country engaged in. See Lessoff, Alan, “Progress before Modernization: Foreign Interpretation of American Development in James Bryce's Generation,” American Nineteenth Century History 1 (Summer 2000): 69–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 For an extensive bibliography on the subject, see Monika Grucza, “Bedrohtes Europa. Studien zum Europagedanken bei Alfons Paquet, André Suarès und Romain Rolland,” (PhD diss., Justus-Liebig University Giessen, 2008).

8 The “American danger” is a good example of the necessity of analyzing discourses not only for the arguments they develop but also for the emotions that underlie them. In this essay, I pursue this goal by, for example, examining science fiction literature for what this reveals about threats that struck an emotional chord with European readers. See “AHR Conversation. The Historical Study of Emotions,” American Historical Review 117 (Dec. 2012): 1487–1531CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Andrei S. Markovits, “European Anti-Americanism (and Anti-Semitism): Ever Present Though Always Denied,” Center for European Studies, Working Paper Series, n. 108, ces.fas.harvard.edu/files/working_papers/CES_WP108.pdf (accessed Nov. 12, 2014). See also Judy Colp Rubin and Barry Rubin, Hating America. A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). For a critical appraising of this historiography, see Pierre Guerlain, ” A Tale of Two Anti-Americanisms,” European Journal Of American Studies 2 (Autumn 2007), ejas.revues.org/1523 (accessed Nov. 14, 2014).

10 Paul Hollander, Anti-Americanism: Critiques at Home and Abroad, 1965–1990 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).

11 Michael Adas, “Out of Step With Time: United States Exceptionalism in an Age of Globalization” in Writing World History, 1800–2000, eds. Benedikt Stuchley and Eckardt Fuchs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 137–54.

12 Tyrrell, Ian, “American Exceptionalism in an Age of International History,” American Historical Review 96 (Oct. 1991): 1031–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Gabrielle M. Spiegel, “In the Mirror's Eye: The Writing of Medieval History in North America” in Imagined Histories: American Historians Interpret the Past, eds. Anthony Molho and Gordon S. Wood (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 238–62.

14 Kroes, Rob, “Anti-Americanism in its Cultural Context: The United States and Europe and the Cultural Ties that Bind Them,” Amerika Taiheiyo Kenkyu (Pacific and American Studies) 8:3 (2008): 56Google Scholar.

15 Henri Hauser L'impérialisme américain (Paris: Pageslibres, 1905), 118, already raised this problem.

16 Eugen Wendler, Friedrich List. Leben und Wirken in Dokumenten (Reutlingen: Verlagshaus Reutlingen Oertel u. Spoörer, 1976); Margaret E. Hirst, Life of Friedrich List and Selections from His Writings (London: Smith, 1909). On Anglophobia, Edward P. Crapol, America for Americans. Economic Nationalism and Anglophobia in the Late Nineteenth Century (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1973). John Moser, Twisting the Lion's Tail: American Anglophobia between the World Wars (New York: New York University Press, 1999), insists that an ethnic Anglophobia flourished among Irish emigrants. For a counterpoint, see Daniel Kilbride, “The Ambivalent Anglophobia of American Travelers in Europe, 1783–1820,” paper delivered to the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, Rochester, NY, July 25, 2010.

17 For France, see Philippe Roger, The American Enemy: The History of French Anti-Americanism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).

18 One of the most popular subjects of philosophy during this period was the origin of the differences among nations. See Marc Crépon, Les géographies de l'esprit: Enquête sur la caractérisation des peoples, de Leibnitz à Hegel (Paris : Bibliothèque Philosophique Payot, 1996).

19 Dubost, Jean-François, “Les stéréotypes nationaux à l’époque moderne (vers 1500–vers 1800),” Mélanges de l'Ecole Française de Rome 111 :2 (1999): 667–82Google Scholar. For a general view, see Hans Henning Hahn, “12 Thesen zur Stereotypenforschung” in Stereotypen, Vorurteile, Völkerbilder in Ost und West im Wissenschaft und Unterricht:  Eine Bibliographie, Teil 2, Johannes Hoffman (Wiesbaden: Harassowitz, 2008), xi–xvii.

20 See, for example, Hermann Wellenreuther, “Germans Make Cows and Women Work: American Perceptions of Germans as Reported in American Travel Books 1800–1840,” 41–64; and Jörg Nagler “From Culture to Kultur: Changing American Perceptions of Imperial Germany, 1870–1914,“131–54, in Transatlantic Images and Perceptions: Germany and America since 1776, ed. David E. Barclay and Elisabeth Glase-Schmidt (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997).”

21 Günter Moltmann, “The American Constitutional Model and German Constitutional Politics” in The United States Constitution: The First 200 Years, Richard C. Simmons (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1989), 90–104. Hermann Wellenreuther, “Die USA: Ein politisches Vorbild der bürgerlich-liberalen Kräfte des Vormärz?” 23–42; and Michael Dreyer, “Die Verfassung der USA: Ein Modell für deutsche Verfassungsentwürfe des 19. Jahrhunderts?” 225–46, in Deutschland und der Westen im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, eds. Jürgen Elvert and Michael Salewski (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1993), 225–46.

22 For an introduction to Frederic Le Play, see Theodore M. Porter, “Reforming Vision: The Engineer Le Play Learns to Observe Society Sagely” in Histories of Scientific Observation, eds. Lorraine Daston and Elizabeth Lunbeck (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 281–302.

23 The promoter of this idea was Rudolf Meyer, Heimstätten und andere Wirtschaftsgesetze (Berlin: H. Bahr, 1883). See Pitt, Alan, “Frederic Le Play and the Family: Paternalism and Freedom in the French Debates of the 1870s,” French History 12 (Mar. 1998): 67–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 See Séverine Antigone Marin, L'apprentissage de la mondialisation : Les milieux économiques allemands face à la réussite américaine (1876–1914) (Bruxelles: P.I.E. Peter Lang S.A. 2012), 280–85.

25 See Cornelius Torp, “Imperial Germany under Globalization” in Imperial Germany Revisited: Continuing Debates and New Perspectives, eds. Sven Oliver Müller and Cornelius Torp (New York: Berghahn, 2010), 297–312. Contrary to a long-held theory, this protectionism had not been the first choice of the Agrarians, who in the 1870s favored a reform of the fiscal system they deemed unfair. See Marin, L'apprentissage de la mondialisation, 256. On revisionist historiography about the “feudalism” of the Prussian nobility, see Stephan Malinowski, “Their Favorite Enemy: German Social Historians and the Prussian Nobility” in Imperial Germany, ed. Müller and Torp, 141–55.

26 Edward P. Crapol, James G. Blaine: Architect of Empire (Wilmington, DE: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999).

27 Alexander Peez, Die Amerikanische Konkurrenz (Wien: Carl Konegen, 1881).

28 Magnus Brechtgen, Scharnierzeit, 1885–1907 (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern Verlag, 2006).

29 Up to 1889, agricultural products represented 85 percent of American exports, with industrial products making only 12 percent. In 1900, the proportions were respectively 61 percent and 31 percent. But these numbers can be misleading, in part because raw materials continued to dominate American exports until the First World War, but also because a big portion of “industrial products” were in fact semi-finished products. See Novack, David and Simon, Matthew, “Some Dimensions of the American Commercial Invasion of Europe 1871–1914: An Introductory Essay,” Journal of Economic History 24 (Dec. 1964): 591–605Google Scholar.

30 David Pletcher, The Diplomacy of Trade and Investment: American Economic Expansion in the Hemisphere. 1865–1900 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998), insists on the difference between proclaimed ambitions and modest results.

31 Theodore Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses (New York: The Century Co., 1900). The titles of the French and German translations illustrate the European perception of Roosevelt as a distinctively American character: Idéal d'Amérique: La Vie Intense, 2 vols. (Paris: E. Flammarion, 1904); and Amerikanismus: Schriften und Reden (Berlin: H. Seemann's Nachfolger, 1903). See Michael Cullinane's essay in this issue.

32 Heinrich Dietzel, Der deutsch-amerikanische Handelsvertrag und das Phantom der amerikanischen Industriekonkurrenz, 2nd ed. (Berlin, 1905), 25.

33 Andrew Carnegie, An American Four-in-Hand in Britain (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1883).

34 Andrew Marrison, British Business and Protection, 1903–1932 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 139–71.

35 Lafargue in particular used Paul de Rousiers, Les industries monopolisées (trusts) aux Etats-Unis (Paris: A. Colin, 1898), a book written in the tradition of the monographs favored by Frederic Le Play, whose disciple he had been. Other historians have underlined the influence of Rousiers's writings on socialist thinkers, such as the heterodox Georges Sorel. Savoye, Antoine, “Paul de Rousiers, sociologue et praticien du syndicalisme,” Cahiers Georges Sorel 6 :6 (1988): 52–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Marin, L'apprentissage de la mondialisation, 418.

37 In fact, when going into detail, the analysis often got confused. Pro-cartel Europeans considered the trust as the negation of the spirit of enterprise because the format seemed to favor directors managers deemed “bureaucrats,” the opposite of the entrepreneur–creator that Joseph Schumpeter would praise a few decades later. But cartels also developed a bureaucracy, as analyzed by Max Weber. Furthermore, Europeans were so fascinated by the personality of the robber barons, that some even came to accept the popular parallel between the most powerful American businessmen and Renaissance princes.

38 Roger, The American Enemy; Czaja, Die USA und ihr Aufstieg zur Weltmacht.

39 For a summary of French and German literature on the subject at the time, see Klautke, Unbegrenzte Möglichkeiten.

40 Torp, “Imperial Germany under Globalization.”

41 Kevin Narizny, The Political Economy of Grand Strategy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007), confirms the growing importance of peripheral markets for American exporters at the turn of the century.

42 Robert E. Lipsey, U.S. Foreign Trade and the Balance of Payments, 1800–1913,” Working Paper 4710, National Bureau of Economic Research, Apr. 1994, http://www.nber.org/papers/w4710 (accessed Nov. 26, 2014).

43 Patrick Verley, “L'insertion de la France dans les réseaux internationaux de l’échange (fin XIXe – début XXe siècle” in L’économie française dans la compétition internationale au XXe siècle, ed. Maurice Lévy-Leboyer (Paris: Comité pour l'histoire économique et financière de la France, 2006), 15–36.

44 The U.S. treaty gave favorable term to imports of French toys, for example, because they represented a far minor threat compared to German toys. The latter suffered several restrictions to the American market because of the alleged danger of their paint. Marin, L'apprentissage de la mondialisation, 409.

45 Portes, Fascination and Misgivings.

46 Octave Noël, “Le péril américain,” Le Correspondant, Mar. 25, 1899.

47 Yves-Henri Nouailhat, “Delcassé, artisan d'un rapprochement franco-américain au début du XXe siècle” in Aux vents des puissances: Hommages à Jean-Claude Allain, ed. Jean-Marc Delaunay (Paris: Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2008), 41–54.

48 Hauser, L'impérialisme américain.

49 Iestyn Adams, Brothers across the Ocean: British Foreign Policy and the Origins of the Anglo-American Special Relationship, 1900–1905 (New York: Tauris, 2005).

50 Jean-Pierre Dormois and Michael Dintenfass, eds., The British Industrial Decline (New York: Routledge, 1999).

51 Frank Trentmann, Free Trade Nation: Commerce, Consumption and Civil Society in Modern Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

52 Ernest Williams, “Made in Germany” (London: William Heinemann, 1896), 11.

53 Frederick Arthur McKenzie, The American Invaders (London: Grant Richards, 1902), 142. This second excerpt also appears in Kathleen Franz and Susan Smulyan, eds., Major Problems in American Popular Culture: Documents and Essays (Boston: Wadsworth, 2012), 91–92, with this commentary: “The following primary sources illustrates how popular culture forms played critical roles in the intense debates about American expansion in this period … [they] exemplif[y] the global reach and visual power of these entertainments.”

54 G. R. Searle, A New England? Peace and War 1886–1918 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 334.

55 John Lukacs, A New Republic: A History of the United States in the Twentieth Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 207–10.

56 Kramer, Paul A., “Empires, Exceptions, and Anglo-Saxons: Race and Rule between the British and United States Empires, 1880–1910,” Journal of American History 88 (Mar. 2002): 1315–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 For an analysis of English liberal views of the United States before 1914, see Lessoff, “Progress before Modernization.”

58 On the “millennial expectancy” that characterizes Stead's final description of an Anglo-Saxon union that would be “an instrument of the Divine Providence,” working for the propagation of civil liberty and thus able to pacify the world, see Richard M. Gamble, “The Americanization of the World : William T. Stead's Vision of Empire,” conference paper available at www.msu.edu/~mageemal/hst201/war for righteousness.html (accessed Nov. 27, 2014).

59 Pollard, Sydney, “‘Made in Germany’: Die Angst vor der deutschen Konkurrenz im spätviktorianischen England,” Technikgeschichte 53:3 (1987): 183–95Google Scholar; Hubert Kiesewetter, “Aspekte der industriellen Rivalität zwischen England und Deutschland im 19. Jahrhundert (1815–1914)” in Struktur und Dimension: Festschrift für Karl Heinrich Kaufhold zum 65. Geburtstag, vol. 2, ed. Hans Jürgen Gerhard (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1997), 31–49.

60 See the analyses made at the time by Halford J. Mackinder, then director of the London School of Economics. These are discussed in Venier, Pascal, “The Geographical Pivot of History and Early Twentieth Century Political Culture,” The Geographical Journal 70 (Dec. 2004): 330–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61 The duke of Schleswig-Holstein accepted the presidency of the new association and, though warned against it by the German government, sought to exert political influence. On the creation of the association, see Hubert Kiesewetter, “Der Mitteleuropäische Wirtschaftsverein: Eine Schweizer Initiative im frühen 20. Jahrhundert” in Europa und die Europäer. Quellen und Essays zur modernen europäischen Geschichte. Festschrift für Hartmut Kaelble zum 65. Geburtstag, eds. Rüdiger Hols, Iris Schröder, and Hannes Siegrist (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2005), 415–21. Though it fell far short of its ambitions, the Verein caught the attention of historians because of the growing success, in the 1920s, of the idea of an economic Mitteleuropa under the aegis of Germany. See Jürgen Elvert, Mitteleuropa! Deutsche Pläne zur europäischen Neuordnung 1918–1945 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1999).

62 Séverine Antigone Marin, “Zollverein, cartels ou coalitions ? Réflexions allemandes sur l'organisation des marchés européens (1880–1914)” in Europe organisée, Europe du libre-échange?, eds. Eric Bussière, Michel Dumoulin, and Sylvain Schirmann (Bruxelles: Peter Lang, 2006), 13–45.

63 Schot, Johan and Lagendijk, Vincent, “Technocratic Internationalism in the Interwar Years: Building Europe on Motorways and Electricity Networks,” Journal of Modern European History 6:22 (2008): 196–217CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

64 Laborie, Léonard, « De quoi l'universel est-il fait ? L'Europe, les empires et les premières organisations internationales », Les cahiers IRICE 9 :1 (2012): 11–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

65 The concept of propaganda can be defined as a structured discourse aimed at educating minds to a new interpretation of the world. Paul Veyne suggests propaganda is didactic and programmatic rhetoric, a definition that allows one to draw a distinction between this notion and publicity or political communication. See Paul Veyne, “Propagande expression roi, image idole oracle,” L'Homme, 114 (avril–juin 1990): 7–26. Regarding “conversion,” I am drawing upon Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes, trans. Konrad Kellen and Jean Lerner (New York: Vintage, 1965). Ellul distinguished between integration propaganda and the propaganda of agitation. The concept of conversion allows one to link propaganda to proselytism and thus to distance oneself from purely pejorative connotations of “propaganda” by reintegrating the to a longer history than the twentieth century.

66 Sönke Neitzel, Weltmacht oder Untergang: Die Weltreichslehre im Zeitalter des Imperialismus (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, 1999).

67 The word Zollverein was officially relinquished by Julius Wolf as early as 1904, though it had been much used by his predecessor Alexander Peez. The reason was that it seemed to imply a political project along the lines of the German Reich. The word went out of favor outside Europe, too. Pan-American projects, which during the 1880s often referred to the Zollverein of 1834, gave it up after 1900, most probably because of a more negative perception of Wilhelmine Germany.

68 Indeed, this campaign proves the religious component of conversion that exists in this type of propaganda. See Paul A. Pickering and Alex Tyrrell, The People's Bread: A History of the Anti-Corn Law League (London: Bloomsbury, 2000), ch. 5, which is entitled, “The Organ of Veneration: The League and Religion.” Also, Norman McCord, The Anti-Corn Law League (London: Allen and Unwin, 1958).

69 Guieu, Jean-Michel, “Les juristes internationalistes français, l'Europe et la paix à la Belle Epoque,” Relations Internationales 149 :1 (2012): 27–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

70 S. A. Marin, “L’économie cotonnière coloniale. Un enjeu européen au début du XXe siècle” in Koloniale Politik und Praktiken Deutschlands und Frankreichs 1880–1962 / Politiques et pratiques coloniales dans les empires allemand et français 1880–1962, eds. Alain Chatriot and Dieter Gosewinkel (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2010), 129–154.

71 See Georg Kamphausen, Die Erfindung Amerikas in der Kulturkritik der Generation von 1890 (Weislerswist: Velbruck Wissenschaft, 2002).

72 Peter Jelavich, “Am I Allowed to Amuse Myself Here? The German Bourgeoisie Confronts Early Film” in Germany at the Fin de Siècle: Culture, Politics and Ideas, eds. Suzanne Marchand and David Lindenfeld (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004), 227–49. Jäger, Georg, “Der Kampf gegen Schmutz und Schund: Die Reaktion der Gebildeten auf die Unterhaltungsindustrie,” Archiv für Geschichte des Buchwesens 31 (1988): 163–91Google Scholar.

73 Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974).

74 The empire founded in 1871 had eight cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants. By 1910, there were forty-eight cities of this size, particularly around Berlin and in the Ruhr. Jean-Luc Pinol, Le monde des villes au XIXe siècle (Paris: Hachette Education, 1991), 42.

75 See the description of the German capital by a renowned French foreign correspondent: Jules Huret, En Allemagne: Berlin (Paris: Bibliotheque-Charpentier Eugene Fasquelle, 1913), 27–32.

76 Alexander Schmidt-Gernig, “Berlin um 1900. Gesellschaft und Mentalitäten im Spiegel französischer Reiseberichte” in Berlin-Paris (1900–1933): Begegnungsorte, Wahrnehmungsmuster, Infrastrukturprobleme im Vergleich, eds. Hans-Manfred Bock and Ilja Mieck (Bern: Peter Lang, 2005), 105–34.

77 Gustave Le Bon, Psychologie des foules (Paris: Felix Alcan, 1895); Gabriel Tarde, L'opinion et la foule (Paris: Felix Alcan, 1901).

78 Quoting Charles McCarthy, “Shall we always hear the returning travelers’ tales of the improvements throughout the world with a provincial and smug spirit and be foolish enough to believe that we can learn nothing while right in our midst are problems which have confronted every nations at some point in its history?” Daniel Rodgers concludes that “the relationship of New and Old Worlds metamorphosed into a long-distance race down the ways of progress.” Daniel T. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings. Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 142.

79 Wolfram Fischer, “American Influence on German Manufacturing before World War I: The Case of the Ludwig Loewe Company” in Américanisation en Europe au XIXe siècle: économie, culture, politique, vol. 1, eds. D. Barjot, I. Lescent-Giles, and M. De Ferrière Le Vayer (Villeneuve d'Ascq: Centre de Recherches sur l'Europe du nord-ouest, 2002), 59–69.

80 Dienel, Hans-Liudger, “‘Hier sauber und gründlich, dort husch-husch fertig’: Deutsche Vorbehalte gegen amerikanische Produktionsmethode, 1870–1930, Blätter für Technikgeschichte 55 (1993): 11–39Google Scholar. For the 1920s, see Mary Nolan, Visions of Modernity. American Business and the Modernization of Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).”

81 See Report to the American Manufacturers Export Association by the Industrial Commission to France, September–October 1916 (New York: Redfield, Kendrick, Odell, and Co., 1917), cited in Clotilde Druelle-Korn, “Regards et expériences croisés: les milieux économiques français et américains de la Première Guerre mondiale au tournant des années 1920, L'heure de la rationalisation” in Américanisations et Anti-Américanismes comparés, eds. Olivier Dard and Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink (Villeneuve d'Ascq: Centre de Recherches sur l'Europe du nord-ouest 2008), 19–34.

82 Aimée Moutet, Les logiques de l'entreprise: La rationalisation dans l'industrie française de l'entre-deux-guerres (Paris: Ed. of the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences, 1997); Marjorie A. Beale, The Modernist Enterprise. French Elites and the Threat of Modernity, 1900–1940 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999).

83 Cornelius Torp briefly discusses the difficulties of German exporters who tried to conform themselves to the rather complicated customs system of ad valorem taxes and to the requirements of the appraiser but without mentioning the propaganda campaigns against “American espionage.” However, this episode is particularly interesting, as one can see the same difficulties in France, prompting identical protests from French exporters, but curiously without the suspicion of espionage. See Druelle-Korn, “Regards et expériences croisés.”

84 Marin, Séverine Antigone, “L'espion américain: Un fantasme de l'industrie allemande vers 1900,” Revue d'Allemagne et des pays de langue allemande 41 (Jan.–Mar. 2009): 19–40Google Scholar.

85 See the introduction to L. Boltanski, E. Claverie, N. Offenstadt, and S. Van Damme, Affaires, scandales et grandes causes: De Socrate à Pinochet (Paris: Stock 2007).

86 These German science-fiction stories are not different from ones found in the United States, for example, in Argosy Magazine and The Popular Magazine. Dina Brandt, Der deutsche Zukunftsroman, 1918–1945: Gattungstypologie und sozialgeschichtliche Verortung (Tübingen: De Gruyter, 2007).

87 On the use of this theme in science-fiction, see Clarke, I. F., “Future-War Fiction: The First Main Phase, 1871–1914,” Science-Fiction Studies 24:3 (Nov. 1997)Google Scholar available at www.depauw.edu/sfs/clarkeess.htm (accessed Nov. 26, 2014). For a study of transnational discourse on the “yellow peril” and the political solutions that were suggested, see Lee, Erika, “The ‘Yellow Peril’ and Asian Exclusion in the Americas,” Pacific Historical Review, 76 (Nov. 2007): 537–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the “yellow peril” in France, see François Pavé, “Le péril jaune à la fin du XIXe siècle, fantasme ou inquiétude légitime?” (PhD diss., Université du Maine, 2011). On this theme in German–American relationships, see Mehnert, Ute, “German Weltpolitik and the American Two-Front Dilemma: The ‘Japanese Peril’ in German-American Relations, 1904–1917,” Journal of American History 82 (Mar. 1996): 1452–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

88 Heinz Gollwitzer, Die Gelbe Gefahr: Geschichte eines Schlagwortes: Studien zum politischen Denkens (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1962), 33.

89 Jack London, “The Unparalleled Invasion,” McClure's, July 1910, 309–16.

90 Clarke, “Future War Fiction.”

91 Michael E. Nolan, The Inverted Mirror: Mythologizing the Enemy in France and Germany, 1898–1914 (New York: Berghahn, 2005).

92 Frevert, Ute, for example, is critical of the fact that “there is a widely held belief (especially among non-Germans) that Germans are particularly prone to angst, that they are fascinated by the uncanny.” Frevert in “Forum: History of Emotions,” German History 28 (Mar. 2010): 75Google Scholar.

93 Frevert, “Forum: History of Emotions,” 78.

94 Schmidt-Gernig, “Berlin um 1900.” This conclusion was not solely the product of theoretical reflections about the life and death of nations. Events such as the 1907 financial crisis also helped reassure Germans in particular about American weaknesses: Marin, L'apprentissage de la mondialisation, 470. Finally, the “Europeanization of the United States” was also a reformulation of the American fear that with the end of the frontier, the country would inevitably lose its exceptionalism; see Lessoff, “Progress before Modernization.”