Table of Contents

List of Plates
List of Maps
Introduction
1. States and the Nation in the Late-Eighteenth and Early-Nineteenth Centuries
2. Independence and Early South German Particularism
3. Models of German Unification, 1815-1848
4. The Years of Prophecy and Change, 1848-1849
5. Counterrevolution, Reaction and Reappraisals, 1850-1859
6. Six Years of Autumn, 1860-1866
7. The Unification of Germany, 1866-1871
8. Remembering and Forgetting Württemberg, 1871-1914
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Promotional Information

A re-evaluation of the process that led to the unification of Germany in 1871 through the prism one of the smaller German states.

About the Author

Bodie A. Ashton is the Professional Academic Editor for the European Research Council-funded ReConFort project at the Universität Passau, Germany. He is also a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Adelaide, South Australia, and has taught extensively at Adelaide and Flinders University of South Australia in modern European history, imperialism, colonialism, protest, and revolution.

Reviews

Bodie A. Ashton makes an important contribution to the German and regional history of the 19th century with his book. It is recommended.
*H-German*

[The book] offers in a concise way a good overview of Württemberg’s room for manoeuvre and initiatives with regard to the German Question between 1815 and 1871.
*German History*

This comprehensive book represents nothing less than the current state of research on the history of nineteenth-century Württemberg, and it will surely find readers in the other remaining Mittelstaaten as well.
*European History Quarterly*

A succinct book, whose valuable contribution to the transfer of knowledge across different historiographies should be acknowledged.
*German Historical Institute London Bulletin*

This is a clearly presented, well-researched, and very readable account of the multifaceted role the middle-seized German state of Württemberg – the home of Friedrich Schiller, Hermann Hesse, and Albert Einstein – played in the process of German unification. Intimately familiar with the historiography, Bodie Ashton offers a fresh and interesting perspective on this rich topic.
*Hermann Beck, Professor of History and International Studies, University of Miami, USA*

This is a very welcome contribution to nineteenth-century German history. Bodie Ashton's new study of the small South-west German state of Württemberg retells the history of the movement for German unification from an unfamiliar vantage point. In calling into question some of the assumptions of an older body of literature, Ashton gives us the benefit of a more plural and more open-ended history of German unification, at the same time as demonstrating why some alternative ideals of the nation-state ultimately failed.
*Andrew Bonnell, Associate Professor in History, University of Queensland, Australia*

It is hard to give this book sufficient praise; lucid and thoroughly researched, it brings the past to life, and the sections on politics, economic growth (or the absence of it in southern Germany), and warfare are equally effective. If the unification of Germany came in a way that was unexpected (the author notes in closing), what came afterward was equally unpredictable. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.
*CHOICE*