Frank Schipper

Status: Completed 

This book concerns the relation between European integration and plans for the construction and use of continental road networks. In linking these two phenomena it draws on recent scholarly work that looks at the ‘hidden integration' of Europe, a process in which large-scale infrastructure development has played a key role. A core assumption of this approach is that European infrastructural integration was largely organized outside the European Union and its predecessors and began before the Second World War. The thesis unravels which European highway networks were proposed, by whom and why. It also analyzes ideas about the operation of such networks across national borders. Above all, it scrutinizes the political and economic visions underpinning such plans and proposals. The focus on European road network development makes a transnational contribution to the available literature, which usually remains restricted to national developments and does not analyze how infrastructures function across borders.

The book basically covers the entire twentieth century, but devotes most attention to 1920-1960, a period that was unusually rich in proposals of the kind this research seeks to understand. The thesis identifies a set of international organizations, called ‘Europe's system builders', as crucial actors for European infrastructure development and a strategic research site offering the archival holdings that allow investigating the relation between roads and Europe. The empirical part of the thesis is built around two parallel sets of chapters entitled ‘Setting the Stage' (chapters two and five), ‘Roads to Europe' (chapters three and six), and ‘Driving Europe' (chapters four and seven).

Chapter two starts in the late nineteenth century. It demonstrates how a series of races between European capitals and early motorized tourism highlighted automobility as a phenomenon that cut across national borders. These activities soon lay bare several problems in the cross-border use of roads. Automobile and touring clubs were among the first to seriously attempt to tackle the problems individual motorists ran into. Although the First World War interrupted their activities, these organizations lay the groundwork for post-war discussions. The chapter ends by discussing the origins of the League of Nations. The Geneva organization has often been portrayed as a failed attempt at international cooperation. In contrast this thesis argues that such a portrayal is heavily biased towards the League's political work and does not sufficiently consider its so-called ‘technical' work. The latter has barely received attention at all, a flaw this research has sought to mend with regard to the organization's influence on road networks and traffic in Europe.

Various continental road network plans were discussed in Geneva in the Interbellum. Chapter three contrasts two types of road dreams that came in the wake of a bold proposal for European public works made by Albert Thomas, the active director of the International Labor Organization, in response to Briand's well-known call for a European federation in 1929. The French economist Francis Delaisi inspired the first type. He sketched a plan for farm-to-market roads in Eastern Europe to endow it with the necessary infrastructures to be able to transport its agricultural produce to Western Europe. It thus sought to put an end to the division of the continent in what Delaisi called Les deux Europes. The second type formed a motorway vision of the continent, proposed by an emergent road lobby. The hugely expensive structures were discussed at two international conferences in 1931-1932. Neither plan prospered in the difficult economic and political circumstances of the 1930s. Nevertheless the proposals make clear that the European ideal was explicitly linked to infrastructure networks.

The League of Nations' Committee on Road Traffic preferred tackling issues related to crossing borders by road to discussing expensive road networks, as chapter four demonstrates. The Committee argued that there was no use in talking about roads if diverging regulations curtailed their use across national borders. Having its own roots in a discussion about the international driving license the Committee took up a broad range of issues relating to road traffic. The overall results were poor for commercial motor transport, but more substantial for facilitating private travel. With regard to road safety the Committee found it easier to agree on the harmonization of road traffic signs than on the rules of the road. The mixed results suggest that although the outcomes of its work did not always equal the Committee's wishes, they were not inconsequential either. In any case the investigation reveals that when we take the League's technical work into account, the organization's ‘failed' image in secondary literature does not do justice to the real results of its work and should at the very least be nuanced.

Chapter five discusses what it calls the parade of organizations after the end of the Second World War. Institutional proliferation started during the war itself. The main aim of this chapter is to show the rich variety and complexity of organizations that were in large part dedicated to European integration in one way or another. This muddy complex in part antedated the institutions that stood at the root of the European Union. Infrastructure development stood high on the agenda of such organizations as the Economic Commission for Europe, the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation, the Council of Europe, and the European Conference of Ministers of Transport. As road transport started to receive more attention than other modes of transport, it became a stake that all these organizations wanted to command.

The E-road network of main international traffic arteries was the main European road network
proposal discussed in these settings. Chapter six shows that, although it has been the object of a limited amount of studies, the contours of the continent that lay hidden behind the green E-road signs and the change of its geographic scope over time have remained elusive. In integrating both motorways and ordinary roads into a single European whole, the network combined the two contrasting principles found in its Interbellum counterparts. Although the network consisted of building blocks proposed by the national governments and the centralization of the finance of the network in a European Road Office did not come about, the E-roads expanded and densified across the continent over time. It also gradually improved in quality. Given its loose character the network could become a symbol for European interconnection in Cold War Europe. This quality was particularly useful in the Balkans, as the short case study on road development in that area clearly demonstrates.

Chapter seven rounds off the empirical part of the thesis by scrutinizing the visions of network operation that the E-roads were supposed to support according to their proponents. After a brief period of liberalized international commercial road traffic under the ‘freedom of the road', most European governments wanted to move towards a regime of regulated freedom. The chapter zooms in on two specific issues within this regime deemed crucial in relation to the E-roads, namely a coherent network of long-distance line services of buses, and a European truck standard. By the mid-1950s the first endeavor foundered on member states' reticence to agree on bus licenses in a multilateral setting. Although the European Conference of Ministers of Transport managed to agree upon a common standard in 1960, important countries like Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland did not adhere to it. The difficult negotiations on these specific subjects contrasted with agreement on other subjects and, above all, with the great strides made in facilitating private travel.

This book demonstrates that the analysis of the work of Europe's system builders is a fruitful way to study the relation between roads and Europe. The relatively high incidence of border crossings turned Europe into an area of intense international negotiations concerning continental road plans and cross-border road traffic regulations. The research shows the work of alternative institutional settings that co-existed with the organizations that now dominate the literature on European integration should be taken seriously when we consider infrastructure development. This is a crucial observation, as infrastructures provide the material substructures for any process of integration. Intergovernmental and international non-governmental organizations alike played a major role in shaping infrastructures in Europe in the course of the twentieth century. Moreover this book clearly shows that European integration cannot be limited to a post-war process, but that viewed through the lens of road infrastructures its roots need to be pushed back well before the Second World War.

The book is published in the Technology and European History series at Aksant .