Denk, ErdemÇelikdemir, Bihter2022-02-152022-02-152021http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12575/77459This study aims to analyse construction process of the German nation-state in its historical context. For this purpose, historical transformations that led to nation-state building were examined by following a historical sociological approach. In this thesis it is taken as the basic theoretical assumption that both nation-states and the states system develop intertwinedly with the capitalization of production relations. Therefore, it is argued that the social class structure and production relations and the international system mutually determine each other. For this reason, both the transformations in the social structure and production relations in the German geography and the pressure created by the emergence of agricultural capitalism in England at the end of the 17th century on Continental Europe were considered together. Accordingly, the capitalist transformation of economic and social life and the expansionist and competitive nature of capitalist production relations were decisive in the construction of the German nation-state. When capital began to centralize and concentrate with the capitalist transformation of production relations in the European continent, states entered the colonial race in search of new markets. When viewed against this background, the political union established in the form of the German Empire emerged as an unplanned product of economic requirements, since the economic and political interests of the Prussian absolutist state lay in spreading to the other German states. Academic interest in the German Empire mostly stems from the effort to detect a constant deviation from the standard, looking from today to yesterday, when National Socialism took place. The Sonderweg thesis, which has been the dominant paradigm since the 1960s and which considers the historical development of Germany as a deviation from the processes in Great Britain and France, explains the uniqueness of the German nationstate building process with the failure of the bourgeois revolution in 1848 and with ongoing dominance of the landed nobility. In this study, it is observed that what happened in the German geography is a part of the structural transformations of the capitalizing production relations in Europe. The pressure of expansion created by the capitalist market economy has also made social classes adapt themselves to the current conditions. Therefore, contrary to the widespread opinion in the literature, the Prussian Junkers adapted to the changing structure of economic life, becoming commercial entrepreneurs of the time. Again, contrary to the assertion of the dominant paradigm, the German state has not been an instrument of Junker domination. The state bureaucracy has been a medium in which every segment that benefits from the relations of production has reached a compromise. Keywords: German Empire, Nation-State, Relations of Production, Social Structure, Capitalism.trAlman İmparatorluğuUlus-devletÜretim ilişkileridoctoralThesis