With Bülow becoming chancellor in 1900, Schmoller and his students became advisors to the government in many capacities. The southward shift of German interest into the Yangtze valley advocated by Hermann Schumacher took concrete form during the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion, itself an outgrowth of Germany’s seizure of Kiaochow in 1897 and German railway construction in Shantung. The Boxer intervention led to strained relations with Britain and encouraged an Anglo-Japanese alliance around a common fear of Russia. These developments were also tied up with British anxieties about decline during and after the Boer War in which Germany began to play the role both as model and menace. The writings and activities of Schmoller and his students played an important role in these perceptions. The Bülow tariff of December 1902 likewise contributed to growing trade frictions with Britain that encouraged Joseph Chamberlain’s campaign for tariff reform and imperial federation and the coalescence of a German menace in the minds of many other British observers, misperceptions fed to an unusual degree by German naval propaganda and the rancorous debates over German tariffs.

Germany's naval leap in 1898 concided with the start of the Spanish-American War, revealing the limits of Germany’s diplomatic pull with its still tiny navy. Likewise, tensions with the Americans and British over Samoa demonstrated German weakness in the face of an increasingly aggressive United States aided and appeased by Great Britain. This chapter analyzes these developments, as well as the outbreak of the Boer War, during which the Royal Navy violated German neutral rights by abusing its command of the sea. These developments were important catalysts for naval enthusiasm in Germany, which Schmoller, von Halle, Schumacher, Sering and the other so-called fleet professors helped mobilize during the campaign for the second navy bill in 1899 and 1900. This activity centered on the Free Union for Naval Lectures which organized pro-naval speeches throughout Germany. Likewise, the Germany Navy League, which these men helped transform into a more populist mass organization, grew in size dramatically. This culminated in passage of the second navy bill in June 1900 and in Bernhard Bülow’s appointment as chancellor.