The end of the Eighteenth century had seen revolutions in the name of freedom and equality in the New World as well as in France. While the new United States continued to wend its way Westward under basically democratic principles, France's revolution essentially replace a rotten hereditary monarchy for militarism, under the leadership of Napoleon Bonaparte. At the beginning of the century, Germany was not a united nation, but a conglomeration of duchies and principalities, perhaps with a common purpose, and a common language and culture, but separated politically. The idea that, following the uprising at the Bastille and the long march through Europe into Russia, south into Italy and Egypt supposedly heralded the age of the Common Man. Of course, no such thing was possible. "The fortunes of war had restored the monarchies and aristocracies to political control, but the economic power, at least within the society of western Europe, was slowly passing into the hands of the bourgeoisie" (Artz, 1934, p. 23). This was most easily accomplished in Napoleonic and post-Napoleonic times in France, because there was not the concept of "gemutlichkleit"- a sort of smug self-satisfaction with the status quo that seemed to pervade Germany. Until the militaris von Bismarck attained power in what became a united Germany following the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, the Germans were seemingly not concerned with anything more than some sort of economic power over their part of Europe- mostly German-speaking Austria and parts of Czechoslovakia and Hungary. The idea of becoming what we would call "a world power" was not of great interest to either the average German burger, nor to his duke or prince.
At the same time, the end of the Napoleonic era, and the defeat by England, and the costly retreat from Russia had nearly bankrupted France, so its immediate priority was to reestablish its economic growth and stability. Unlike England, population ...