This thesis examines the nature of the relationship between migrants’ ideology and the dominant political culture in their host country, exploring what happened to German liberal migrant politicians in 19th century Wisconsin and Queensland. It does this by using Louis Hartz’s fragment theory which he developed in The Liberal Tradition in America and The Founding of New Societies. Hartz argues that the crucial factor in the political development of the new settler new societies was the migration of a fragment of European society bound by a common Weltanschauung or world view. In the United States, Hartz identifies the relevant group as the Puritans who fled Britain in the 17th century, and whose Calvinism he links to Lockean liberalism. Hartz and his collaborator Richard Rosecrance, who wrote the Australian section of New Societies, argue Australia was shaped by the lower-middle and working-class migrant fragment, inspired by political reform movement in England, and who arrived in the first half of the 19th century armed with a utilitarian-radical ideology. With no strong opposition these fragments congeal without reference to Europe and stagnate into monolithic political cultures where all the disparate elements merge into a broad - although at times quarrelsome – national consensus. According to Hartz, this consensus is re-enforced by the individualist capitalism of The American Dream or the radical collectivism of The Australian Legend – which become the foundation of the two nations’ respective national character. Hartz acknowledges that the new migrant from Europe is a constant threat to this political-cultural status quo. However, he says by “consciously articulating the fragment ethic”, the new migrant is absorbed, keeping in check the ideological challenges inherent in migration. This thesis argues that, in the case of the German liberals, who left their homeland in the 1840s and 1850s, the process was more complex than the one Hartz describes. In Wisconsin, German liberalism was most aligned to Jeffersonian democracy and the Germans either rejected outright or never fully embraced other strands within the political consensus such as Puritan moralism, Jacksonian democracy and Hamiltonian federalism. In Queensland their German liberalism was most compatible with utilitarianism and the Germans rejected most elements of classical liberalism, the evangelical element within social liberalism and the working-class radicalism of the Labor Party. They accepted Jeffersonian democracy and utilitarianism in their respective new homes because they were closest to their core German liberal principles of secularism, the primacy of the rule of law, romanticism, opposition to the aristocracy, and an aversion to rampant capitalism. Most important, however, were their attitudes towards the Staat and Volk. The Staat was both as a potential enemy and also a vital ally in liberal reform and the Volk were seen as potential colleagues in a liberal state but also as a danger to stability. Over the course of their careers they ideologically realigned, leaving parties and factions whenever challenged and using their German liberal ideals as their political reference point.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/279300 |
| Creators | Christopher Herde |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Detected Language | English |
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