Electrifying Europe: The Power of Europe in the Construction of Electricity Networks
Status: Completed
This book sets out to uncover the origins of the idea of a European electricity network. It explores historically the roots of a transnational European system, showing how engineers came to think in terms of 'Europe' already in the 1920s, and how these ideas continued to influence network-building in later decades. This thinking not only corresponded to economic and technical attributes of the system, as first described by Thomas Hughes.1
This thesis claims that a European system was also legitimised by ideological motives, as a complement to - but not always complying with - economic and technical efficiency.
Covering the period between 1918 and 2001 the book provides a detailed analysis of ideas on, and the building of, a European electricity system. By doing so, this thesis makes two original contributions. First, based on extensive archival research, it makes a substantial contribution to the much-neglected history of international collaboration in Europe. Prevailing histories of electricity infrastructures mainly focus on national developments. Second, drawing on a wide variety of historiographical insights, it places this history in the broader historical context of the twentieth century, paying ample attention to the influence of both hot and cold wars, and interwar developments. By combining the specific history of this international collaboration with a more general political and economic history of the twentieth century, Lagendijk explains why a European solution emerged. The thesis primarily focuses on Western European developments and explains how this network took its specific shape through the building of different regional powerpools among national systems. In addition, the thesis presents a contribution to the emerging field of transnational history by focusing on the work and activities of international organisations, without neglecting the power and influence of nation-states.
The book starts by revealing how an international community of electricity entrepreneurs and electrical engineers had existed since the turn of the century. Yet at the same time, national legislations came to limit the extent of international network development and operation. Whereas the first objections to these limitations were general, they became intertwined with the European movement over the course of the 1920s. While engineers proposed bold schemes for European electricity networks, politicians pursued the study of such projects within international organisations. Arguments for a European network cited not only technical and economic reasons of rationality and efficiency, but had idealistic and ideological undercurrents as well. Such a network, it was argued, would contribute to economic and political stability, stimulate renewed international investments, lead to economic rejuvenation of underdeveloped countries in Eastern Europe, and create a strong physical interdependence between countries.
These efforts did not see a European network materialise, however. The idea of organising electricity supply on a European level nevertheless was inscribed into the minds of engineers and policy-makers, also after WWII. Stressing solidarity, both Western European network operators and American Marshall Planners agreed that European collaboration in the field of electricity was essential to make more electricity available for economic recovery and growth, and to make more efficient use of existing and new capacity. Cooperation was shaped by gradually emerging interconnections between national networks. This took place in a framework of close personal relationships between electrical engineers in charge of their respective national systems. Within several international organisations - both technical and political-economic - the very same group of network operators was influential.
The U.S.-led NATO alliance also saw interconnected systems as contributing to Western Europe's defence strength in the light of the Cold War. In order to prevent the antagonistic Soviet bloc from benefitting from Western development, the export of electrical equipment as well as network connections were prevented as much as possible. Still, this exclusion of Central and Eastern Europe was contested. Schemes proposing electricity transmission across the Iron Curtain enjoyed little success before détente in the 1960s. After that, however, the troubled expansion of networks and capacity in Western Europe supported a rapprochement to the East in the 1970s and 1980s. Political and economic turmoil after 1989 in Central and Eastern Europe accelerated this process, leading to an interconnected system encompassing most Western and Eastern European countries by 1995.
The book is published in the Technology and European History series at Aksant.
1 Thomas P. Hughes, Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983).
