The Hanover Club, Oxford (1911–13): Student Paradiplomacy and the Coming of the Great War*
German Historical Institute, London
karsten.ploeger{at}gmail.com
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Abstract |
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The Hanover Club was a discussion group founded by British and German students at the University of Oxford in 1911 to ‘promote the cause of good-feeling between Germany and England by giving Englishmen and Germans in the University opportunities of meeting and discussing topics of interest and importance to both nations’. Based on the unpublished minutes of its discussions, this article highlights problems of mutual perception among its members by examining the discourse on some key themes: domestic and foreign politics, the future relationship between the two nations, and ‘voices prophesying war’. The paradiplomatic activities and aspirations of the club members are situated in the contexts of pre-1914 pacifism, the conciliation efforts of private Anglo–German pressure groups, and the interaction between students of both nationalities in Oxford in the early twentieth century. It is proposed that the creation of a bilateral network among students was intended to lay the groundwork for a new, more personal and therefore more efficient form of diplomacy. Previous research has been inclined to dismiss the pre-1914 British–German conciliation movement as a fringe phenomenon, and to overlook bilateral contacts at the youth level altogether. By contrast, it is argued here that this movement had the potential to attract future members—both liberal and conservative—of the Wilhelmine and Edwardian power elites. The traditional dichotomies of ‘germanophile’ vs. ‘germanophobe’ and ‘anglophile’ vs. ‘anglophobe’ are shown to be of limited analytical value for a discussion of the complex political situation of the prewar years.
Keywords: First World War, Anglo–German relations, University of Oxford, Pacifism, Albrecht von Bernstorff
* The author is most grateful to Thomas Weber for making parts of his unpublished doctoral thesis (see n. 18) available to him. John Jones, Fellow Archivist, and Anna Sander, Lonsdale Curator of Archives and Manuscripts at Balliol College, kindly provided him with photocopies of the Hanover Club Minute Book. Thanks are also due to Robin Darwall-Smith and Richard Sheppard for their many helpful comments and suggestions.