The conclusion looks at how contemporary newspapers begin the effort to historicise 1859 and effectively level out the contours of a very distinctive year, along with some of that year’s voices. There is little here on voting reform or the war in Europe, though the Rifle Volunteers are warmly celebrated. This shows what a year book can achieve in putting lost details and voices back into the narrative, thus becoming an important act of witness, but also showing how specific acts of omission go to make up our history and can slow down change. The first parts of The Mill on the Floss were written during 1859, and we see how that year feeds directly into Eliot’s work. The conclusion ends by suggesting that nature in Eliot is a form of collective inheritance that acts as a synecdoche for custom, which in turn is the foundation of her creativity.

This chapter traces how the issue of mass emigration in the nineteenth century served as a catalyst for Germany’s colonial movement. Advocates of overseas colonies argued that emigrants should be redirected into German settlements abroad, where they could preserve their national identity rather than swell the ranks of rival nations. Settler colonialism was thus imagined not only as a way to relieve social pressures at home but also as a means of extending the nation’s boundaries beyond its ancestral territories. This programme of imperial nationalism, however, clashed with Bismarck’s Europe-centred priorities, which undermined the prospect of timely implementation. While the colonial movement pressed for the acquisition of an overseas empire, the Reich leadership focused instead on consolidating Germany’s national empire, created under Prussian leadership during an earlier phase of empire building.

The conclusion places the findings of this study within contemporary debates about Germany’s colonial past, using the Humboldt Forum as an entry point. It contrasts the official culture of remembrance, shaped by a redemption narrative, with a broader argument about global interconnectedness: German colonialism shaped not only societies in Africa, the Pacific, and China, but also the metropole and its political system. Yet these entanglements remain largely hidden, as their structural effects were absorbed into the institutions of the nation-state. To counter this obfuscation, the study traces the colonies’ imprint on imperial (later presidential) authority, the accountability of political officials, parliamentary leverage, the growth of the federal administration, naval expansion, increasing fiscal centralisation, the nationalisation of citizenship, and the expansion of civil society, revealing these developments as responses to the varied challenges of colonial governance. Taken together, they contributed to Germany’s consolidation as a more centralised nation-state. The argument culminates in a lateral theory of state formation, highlighting the pathways and mechanisms through which cross-border entanglements have shaped European nation-states.

Even as many of its institutional legacies endured, the First World War brought about the collapse of the German colonial empire. The July Crisis of 1914 was triggered by mounting tensions in the Balkans, but colonial rivalries and the naval arms race had already helped to entrench some of the alignments that defined the war. Germany’s bid to construct Mittelafrika and to challenge Britain at sea failed. Most German colonies were conquered early with only Lettow-Vorbeck’s campaign in East Africa continued until 1918. Germany’s war aims combined continental annexations with overseas expansion, but these ambitions collapsed with the military defeat on the Western Front, creating the conditions for the November Revolution. For Germany, the Treaty of Versailles brought a double loss of empire with the cession of its European borderlands and the transformation of its colonies into League of Nations mandates. Reduced to its national core, the Weimar Republic codified a more centralised nation-state, consolidating institutional developments fostered by the colonial empire in preceding decades. At the same time, the loss of imperial status fuelled a politics of resentment that contributed to the erosion of the republican order.

This chapter explores the genesis, structure, and potential of the European Union’s out-of-court dispute settlement bodies (ODSs), a cornerstone of the Digital Services Act (DSA) aimed at regulating social media platforms. As a manifestation of Governance by Emulation, ODSs blend public law principles with private governance, emulating individual rights adjudication to hold platforms accountable. This chapter examines the political context behind their creation, tracing the EU’s regulatory evolution and the legislative battles that shaped Article 21 of the DSA. While hailed as innovative tools for ensuring accountability, ODSs face significant structural limitations, such as non-binding decisions, weak cost incentives, and a narrow enforcement focus. Nonetheless, they present a promising avenue for resolving disputes efficiently and experimenting with integrating large language models in decision-making. Early implementation highlights a mix of creativity and challenges, offering insights into the EU’s broader regulatory ambitions to administrify platform governance and set global standards. By analyzing ODSs’ hybrid institutional design and initial practices, this chapter illustrates their dual potential: advancing accountability while exposing the risks of emulating public law mechanisms in private contexts. It concludes by reflecting on ODSs’ role as Emulated Guardians and their implications for future governance of digital public spaces. European Union

The introduction establishes the book’s central argument: the German nation-state was shaped not only by domestic dynamics but also by its colonial empire. Rather than treating empire and the nation-state as incompatible forms of political organisation, the chapter situates them within a shared global constellation and underscores their historical interdependence. Moving beyond debates that focus exclusively on colonial legacies that mirror colonial structures – such as racism and global inequality – it argues that we must also attend to structural effects of empire that assumed different forms, thereby concealing their colonial origins. The European nation-state exemplifies this apparent paradox: historically shaped by overseas empire building yet appearing as its polar opposite. Against this backdrop, the chapter critically engages with scholarship ranging from Hannah Arendt’s reflections on imperialism to more recent debates on global entanglements, while advancing a mechanism-based approach. Its key conceptual innovation is to introduce challenge and response as a mechanism through which crises in the colonies prompted reforms in the metropole that contributed to the consolidation of the nation-state.

Chapter 8 sets out a reform agenda for a third-generation (3G) UK Stewardship Code, grounded in the book’s normative and empirical analysis. It begins by diagnosing three core limitations of the current regime: conceptual drift; constraints on other-regarding responsibilities linked to materiality and investor duties; and persistent implementation gaps. In response, it proposes reform along two dimensions. First, it calls for a clarified, purpose-driven definition of investor stewardship – centred on a balanced, other-regarding model of enlightened stewardship. This model recognises the interdependence between financial returns and the long-term health of economic, social, and environmental systems, drawing on emerging interpretations of Section 172 of the Companies Act 2006. Second, it advocates strengthening stewardship reporting by embedding reflexivity and institutional learning. The chapter argues that investor stewardship should evolve from a compliance exercise into a credible mechanism for aligning capital with public value. Reimagined in this way, the 3G UK Code offers a forward-looking institutional response to the governance challenges of our time.

Expanding into an increasingly crowded imperial arena, the interests of the colonial powers soon clashed. This chapter explains how they turned to diplomacy to manage these conflicts, beginning with the Berlin Conference of 1884–85. Contrary to a widespread misconception, the conference did not partition Africa but focused instead on free trade in the Congo Basin, navigation on the Congo and Niger, and rules of notification for coastal seizures. With no effective enforcement mechanism and only limited scope – most coastal areas had already been claimed by this stage – its immediate impact was slight. Yet the General Act concluded in Berlin sent an important political signal: it reassured the imperial powers that disputes in the colonial sphere could be resolved by diplomatic means, fostering the mutual trust necessary for more assertive expansion. Partition then unfolded piecemeal through bilateral agreements that defined spheres of influence, based on the principle of mutual non-interference rather than on effective occupation. The chapter offers a detailed account of Germany’s manoeuvring in East Africa, while also tracing parallel developments in other African territories and the Pacific.

The Introduction explores the concept of the year book and some of its recent iterations. It sets out the major concerns of this work, which is essentially to read texts, events, and lives through the shared medium of 1859. It sets out the relationship between the three key themes of the book, that is, custom and the experience of history, the relationship between the individual and the collective, and the life and writings of George Eliot, and introduces the argument that will shape the work. This concerns the workings of history and of its dominant form in 1859: custom. The Preface also sets out the methodology of the book and draws on Raphael Samuel’s description of history as an ‘organic form of knowledge’ that ideally draws on multiple sources of information, and on accounts of lived experience and emotions too. In this last respect, literature clearly acts as a great resource.

As the colonial crisis deepened in 1906, reforms became increasingly imperative. This chapter highlights the legal and administrative responses to mounting challenges, entailing a fundamental rethinking of Germany’s colonial policy. A budget showdown over the Herero and Nama War culminated in the Reichstag’s dissolution, opening the way for a reorganisation of colonial administration. In 1907, the Colonial Department was upgraded to the Imperial Colonial Office, headed by Bernhard Dernburg, who professionalised the administration and inaugurated a turn towards developmentalism. The expansion of infrastructure, intended to promote economic development, went hand in hand with harsher labour and mobility controls, especially in South West Africa after the 1907 Native Ordinances. Meanwhile, in the metropole, the mounting costs of Weltpolitik fed into protracted fiscal debates. Repeated shortfalls in colonial revenues, combined with the naval race and colonial war outlays, drove tax battles and, by 1913, reluctant steps towards more centralised taxation. In parallel, the 1913 Citizenship Act further nationalised German citizenship. It reaffirmed and generalised earlier provisions for direct Reich citizenship, which had been developed in the colonial context to enable naturalisations outside the framework of the Reich’s constitutent states.

Despite Bismarck’s reluctance towards overseas colonies, Germany joined the ranks of the colonial powers in the mid-1880s. Nonetheless, this chapter challenges the notion of a sudden reversal in Bismarck’s stance, showing instead that expansion overseas developed incrementally out of collective dynamics in the international arena that no single country could fully control. Missionaries, explorers, merchants, and lobby groups acted as political entrepreneurs, pressing for Reich protection and creating faits accomplis that governments struggled to ignore. Their initiatives also provoked conflicts with local societies and citizens of rival powers, triggering a self-reinforcing dynamic of competitive expansion. In this international environment, Bismarck’s cautious pragmatism gave way to step-by-step concessions. The chapter provides a detailed historical account of how the Reich came to place Adolf Lüderitz’s acquisitions in South West Africa under its protection, while also tracing parallel developments in West Africa. In this light, the emergence of Germany’s colonial empire appears less the result of deliberate design than an improvised response to dispersed initiatives by non-state actors and the international rivalries they set in motion.