Western Boundary, and Other Essays

Moltke’s The Western Boundary was originally published in the journal Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift in 1841. The essay came in the wake of calls the previous year by Adolphe Thiers—at the time Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of France—to annex the left bank of the Rhine in ‘satisfaction’ after France’s capitulation to Britain and Russia over the ‘Oriental question’. Helmuth von Moltke here examines Franco-German relations from the fall of the Roman Empire to undercut narratives then emanating