"Stranger than fiction": Anglo-American-German relations and rivalries through invasion literature: 1890-1914

The speculative literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are usually considered escapist fiction and not germane to historical study. This paper proposes that by studying the sub-genre of literature called "Invasion Literature." This paper postulates that one can understand the mindset of a nation's people during the time period the story is written in. Such stories not only influenced public mood but in turn were influenced by this mood, as their popularity during this time period reveals. This paper considers the Invasion Literature of three nations; the United States, Great Britain, and Germany. All three nations were under increasing pressure to either maintain their world power (in the case of Great Britain) or in the case of the United States and Germany, to increase their national power. This competition would result first in a naval arms race and eventually the First World War.