Matthew P. Fitzpatrick lives in Adelaide, Australia and is a lecturer in international history at Flinders University. He has published on German liberalism, nationalism, comparative genocide and on German cultural history. He has been a DAAD visiting postgraduate researcher at the University of Münster in Germany and has also taught at the University of New South Wales, the University of Paderborn and the University of Newcastle.

" This is an important.[and] a very strong book. It successfully challenges older paradigms that separate German liberalism from imperialism or see the conjoining of the two as a late aberration."  ·  German History"The author’s] elegant account…represents a timely and important contribution to the existing literature...[that] represents the most sustained attempt to reframe the argument."  ·  The American Historical Review"...this is a stimulating work with a solid argument and place in the current historiography. In this, it draws attention to the importance of discourse on overseas expansion within many sectors of the German liberal-nationalist movement."  ·  Canadian Journal of History/Annales canadiennes d’histoire"Fitzpatrick's short but hard-hitting book seeks to reinstate imperialism as a fundamental constituent of German liberalism. As such it is a welcome and worthy addition to Berghahn's invaluable 'Monographs in German History' series."  ·  Central European History

• List of AbbreviationsPrefaceIntroductionPART I: A LIBERAL EMPIRE FOR A LIBERAL NATIONChapter 1. National Unification and Overseas Expansion at the Frankfurt National Assembly, 1848 – 1849Chapter 2. Mythopoesis –Imperialism as NationalismPART II: RECONFIGURING EMPIRE IN THE 'POST-LIBERAL' ERAChapter 3. Informal Empire and Private Sector Imperialism, 1849-1884Chapter 4. Bürgerlich Agency and the World of the VereinChapter 5. Bismarck and the Socio-Political Context of the Colonial UmschwungPART III: THE TEXTS OF IMPERIALISMChapter 6. Expansionist Agitation after 1849Chapter 7. Geography and Anthropology in the Service of ImperialismChapter 8. Popular Culture and the Transmission of Imperialist ValuesConclusionBibliographyIndex