Germany in the World

Brilliantly conceived and majestically written, this monumental work of European history recasts the five-hundred-year history of Germany.With Germany in the World, award-winning historian David Blackbourn radically revises conventional narratives of German history, demonstrating the existence of a distinctly German presence in the world centuries before its unificationand revealing a national identity far more complicated than previously imagined. Blackbourn traces Germanys evolution from the loosely bound Holy Roman Empire of 1500 to a sprawling colonial power to a twenty-first-century beacon of democracy. Viewed through a global lens, familiar landmarks of German historythe Reformation, the Revolution of 1848, the Nazi regimeare transformed, while others are unearthed and explored, as Blackbourn reveals Germanys leading role in creating modern universities and its sinister involvement in slave-trade economies. A global history for a global age, Germany in the World is a bold and original account that upends the idea that a nations history should be written as though it took place entirely within that nations borders.