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Volume 1
Monographs in German History
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Osthandel and Ostpolitik
German Foreign Trade Policies in Eastern Europe from Bismarck to Adenauer
Robert Mark Spaulding
544 pages, bibliog.
ISBN 978-1-57181-039-7 $180.00/£138.00 / Hb / Published (June 1997)
eISBN 978-1-80073-494-4 eBook
Reviews
“… a monumental long-term study of a century of Germany's East European trade that demonstrates its continued response to political as well as market pressures - under liberal as well as authoritarian régimes, and during good times and bad … Spaulding's history also remains of acute contemporary relevance. • Charles Maier, Harvard University
“A long-term perspective on a topic of vital current and continuing importance, and a major contribution to the study of German-Russian relations.” • Gerald D. Feldman
Description
Eclipsed by the scope of the Atlantic economy, obscured by Anglo-German rivalry, and nearly destroyed by the post-1945 division of Europe, the flow of goods across East Central Europe has been, nonetheless, an immensely significant pattern of European economic exchange. For Germany, the Osthandel (Eastern trade) was both a blessing and a curse; its bounty provided much of the raw material for the rise of German economic and political power in Europe, while its lure tantalized German ambitions to the point of madness. Despite the enduring importance of this commerce, no monograph has yet made this pattern of trade the centerpiece of its treatment of German-East European relations. This study puts this important pattern of German-East European trade into the center of discussion and views an extended period of German foreign policy toward Eastern Europe through this lens.
Robert Mark Spaulding teaches in the Department of History at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.