Many view Kaiser Wilhelm II as having personally ruled Germany, dominating its politics, and choreographing its leap to global power, but The Kaiser and the Colonies shows that he played a surprisingly muted role in the German Empire in contrast to the lively, varied, innovative responses to German imperialism from monarchs around the world. A superb work revisiting a major area of traditional Great power history but with an entirely new take, decolonising German colonial history and international relations.