Schulz, Matthias

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suppress heretical opinions in books and pamphlets andto enlist the help of governments in doing so. This at-tempt failed as the spread of heterodox opinions fromplace to place and from country to country via theprinted word proved unstoppable. Moreover, seculargovernments used the religious schism as an opportu-nity to either subordinate the clergy or push them asidealtogether in order to exercise control over the printingpress. In his treatment of England, the author focuseson the collapse of the Licensing Act at the end of theseventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century.According to Tortarolo, this was the result not of a prin-cipled rejection of censorship by Parliament, but ratherof a lack of consensus about how to carry on the tra-ditional system of preventive censorship.The author alludes to the growing importance of themarket in printed books in undermining censorship.This deserved wider and deeper attention, particularlyin relation to the partial emergence in England in thisperiod of something like a civil society in which a partialseparation between religion and the state occurred,while the market likewise assumed greater autonomyand a discourse on individual human rights emerged.Indeed, it is striking how in the throes of these devel-opments contemporaries argued in principle for self-regulation of speech by autonomous individuals or thenotion of judgment by public opinion in deciding whatshould or should not be published or read.Having dealt with England in one chapter, the authordevotes two more to the case of authors and censors inFrance, a state in which the government continued toexercise control over both religion and the market andthere was no breakthrough of civil society until 1789.There were authors like Montesquieu, Helve´tius, andCondorcet who bridled under the censorship andlooked to the freedom of England as their example. ButTortarolo shows that in the face of the development ofthe Enlightenment, many authors and censors werecomplicit in the circulation of ideas—even subversiveideas—as well as the maintenance of preventive cen-sorship. It was always possible for authors to publishabroad or clandestinely, but the official system offeredauthors and printers the advantages of both legal andcommercial protection. Guillaume-Chre´tien de Lamoi-gnon de Malesherbes, who virtually controlled theFrench system of licensing in the mid-eighteenth cen-tury, himself spoke of censorship in France as one ofparticipatory liberty that permitted everything to be dis-cussed except matters which directly threatened themonarchy, religion, public order, and the honor of in-dividuals. Malesherbes’s close associate Franc¸ois Ve´-ron Duverger de Forbonnais insisted on the state’s needto regulate the operation of the market, including themarket in books, in the name of the general interest. Itis important to note that the state of the market inbooks and ideas in France and England is an importantclue to the state of the market overall in these countriesin the early modern period.The author concludes his work by tracing the break-down of the entente between the French regime and itsintellectuals on the eve of the Revolution. He then car-ries us through a short overview of the rules of cen-sorship in central and southern Europe in the eigh-teenth century. There the system of censorship evolvedtoward the French model, which above all involved theelimination of clerical influence and the substitution ofcensorship by the state.HENRY HELLERUniversity of ManitobaDAVID WETZEL. A Duel of Nations: Germany, France,and the Diplomacy of the War of 1870–1871. Madison:University of Wisconsin Press. 2012. Pp. xvi, 310. Paper$26.95, e-book $16.95.While David Wetzel’s Duel of Giants (2001) reexam-ined the origins of the Franco-Prussian War, his sequel,A Duel of Nations, analyzes the diplomacy and politicsof the war. This includes attempts by the French tomake other powers intervene on their side, Otto vonBismarck’s attempts to foreclose outside interferencewhile defending German security interests, and at-tempts to reestablish peace. Drawing from state ar-chives and published documents in France, Germany,Italy, and Austria, as well as contemporary autobiog-raphies and recent studies on various aspects of the sub-ject, Wetzel’s new study combines perceptive analysisof mentalities, insightful interpretations of the main ac-tors’ statecraft, and a profound understanding of howthe European international system operated in the ageof Bismarck.Wetzel’s narrative is structured chronologically ineight chapters. The first introduces the main actors onthe German side: Prussian Prime Minister Bismarck,King William I, and General Helmuth von Moltke.Here Wetzel ably reads and interprets the mind andcharacter of key actors. In the following chapters heintroduces actors of the French republican governmentbefore analyzing Bismarck’s attempts to concludepeace with a French provisional republican governmenthandicapped by a legitimacy deficit, a lack of authority,and increasing internal dissensions. The French firsthad to decide whether they would accept the conse-quences of the folly of Emperor Napoleon III or denyany responsibility and insist on a return to the statusquo. The republican government initially chose the lat-ter course. Both Napoleon, unwilling to contemplatesurrender after the debacle at Sedan, and the EmpressEugenie also refused to contemplate territorial conces-sions at this stage. As Wetzel argues, the failure to cometo terms with sudden defeat prolonged a struggle thatBismarck was ready to end had he received sufficientguarantees for south German security. The continuedunwillingness of the French to accept defeat after thefall of Metz played into the hands of Moltke, who wasbent to continue the war until France was crushed andhad lost its great power status. This Bismarck tried toprevent, as such a destabilization of the European bal-ance of power would almost certainly have triggeredforeign intervention.590 Reviews of BooksAMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW APRIL 2014Although not uncritical of the results of the war, Wet-zel demonstrates convincingly that Bismarck’s aim toannex Alsace and parts of Lorraine was not precon-ceived, but rather a result of his attention to south Ger-man security fears raised by the French declaration ofwar. By signaling his aim to secure Germany’s south-western border, Bismarck shaped the expectations andattitudes of the neutral powers, thus preventing thoseleaders who considered joining France at the beginningof the war from doing so. Bismarck’s restraint andFrench military setbacks near Orleans and in Paris fi-nally convinced Adolphe Thiers and Foreign MinisterJules Favre to accept the conditions held out by theGerman chancellor rather than continue a self-destruc-tive war. Thus Bismarck prevailed in the internal strug-gle against Moltke, and brought the war to an end oncethe French government had accepted the annexationsupon which he thought German security depended.Wetzel argues that “the victory over France in 1871and the resulting terms of the [Peace] Treaty . . . gaveGermany more power than it needed” (p. 217), becausethe annexation of Alsace and Lorraine and Germanunification strengthened Europe’s central power. Thistransferred the security dilemma to France. HadFrance been able to keep Metz and an important por-tion of French-speaking Lorraine, this gesture mighthave made military parity easier to achieve, and mighthave made it more difficult for French nationalists tomaintain their antagonistic attitude toward the GermanEmpire. However, the conquest of Metz and subse-quent German victories had raised the price requestedby the military leadership, for whom the return of Metzwould have been an inexcusable betrayal by Bismarck,with a view both to the lives sacrificed to conquer thefortress, and to the fact that this was the territorythrough which prior French rulers had invaded Germanlands during the three preceding centuries.Situating the Peace of Frankfurt in a larger historicalcontext, Wetzel argues that it provided an example ofBismarck’s extraordinary statecraft, for his argumentfor south German security was sufficiently convincingto make the annexation of Alsace and the larger part ofLorraine palatable to the diplomats of neutral powers.Indeed, the newly elected French assembly acceptedthe peace preliminaries immediately, by a huge major-ity. France paid its indemnity within two years of thewar’s end, retained its colonies as well as sovereigntyover its military affairs, and incontestably remained agreat power. French postwar desire for “revenge” wasdue more to the unwillingness to accept defeat than tothe loss of Alsace and Lorraine.While the book does not explicitly situate the greatpowers’ behavior within the nineteenth-century Con-cert tradition of normative thinking and practices ofmediation, emphasizing instead the role of individuals,it does make clear the probability of international me-diation and integrates well the Black Sea Clauses Con-ference. Still, there are a few blind spots. The diplo-macy culminating in the unification of the southGerman states with the North German Confederationand the founding of the German Empire is practicallyabsent from the book, yet undoubtedly was part of thediplomacy of the war. French and German diplomacyvis-a`-vis neutral parties concerning the bombardmentof Paris, which increased the probability of interven-tion, and the “humanitarian diplomacy” involving theRed Cross may also deserve more attention in a com-prehensive study on the diplomacy of the Franco-Prus-sian War.These minor reservations notwithstanding, the bookis a major achievement. It fills an important gap in theliterature, which has not seen such a lucid and well-composed case study on nineteenth-century war and di-plomacy in many years. The bibliographical essay at theend adds to its value by orienting the serious researcher.Brilliantly written, well-edited, balanced, and empa-thetic in its interpretation of individuals and interna-tional relations, the book should figure on any readinglist for advanced courses in nineteenth-century Euro-pean or international history.MATTHIAS SCHULZUniversity of GenevaERIC G. E. ZUELOW, editor. Touring beyond the Nation:A Transnational Approach to European Tourism History.Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate Publishing Company. 2011.Pp. xi, 250. $119.95.At first glance, a book devoted to exploring the trans-nationalism of tourism seems less than original. We al-ready have many studies, to take just one example, ofEuropean elites partaking in the Grand Tours of theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries, of travelers leav-ing home and crossing borders to explore “foreignlands.” A transnational approach to tourism meansmore than the movement of people, however, implyinga broader, multidirectional flow of information, orga-nization, ideology, material items, and images acrossborders. “Tourism was bigger than a series of discretenational stories,” Eric G. E. Zuelow argues in the in-troduction to this interesting edited collection; “it washardly ever entirely the domain of specific state actorsbut was often the result of a larger current of devel-opments.” (p. 7)Part one of the book explores the role of the trans-national in the creation and evolution of tourist spaces.John K. Walton’s essay, “Seaside Resorts and Interna-tional Tourism,” is a history of European seaside re-sorts as spaces of “international” encounter and “cul-tural mixing” (p. 20). Laurent Tissot explores thetransnational circulation of the alpine model, specifi-cally the Swiss Alps. Angela Schwarz examines the im-pact of international exhibitions and world’s fairs on thedevelopment of mass tourism. Each of these interestingcontributions is largely summative, relying primarily,and perhaps understandably, on secondary sources todraw broad conclusions about exchange across multiplecountries and time periods. Stephen L. Harp’s thought-ful case study of the role of other Europeans, especiallyGermans, on the expansion of the French nudist resortEurope: Early Modern and Modern 591AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW APRIL 2014

David Wetzel. A Duel of Nations: Germany, France, and the Diplomacy of the War of 1870-1871

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