Intellectual framework
The construction of the European Union represents the most profound development in European politics and society in the twentieth century. The dominant image of this topic is one of inspired leaders and competitive nation states engaged in the critical adventure of designing a new Europe, a process that started in the late 1920s, but got momentum after the Second World War. This literature assumes that “Europe” (as a political and cultural entity) was created through the building of economic and political institutions. This view has been criticized by those who observe there is little historical evidence that nation-states and national identities in Europe can be incorporated or subsumed within any larger structure. They maintain that key elements for forming a European state and identity, such as political legitimacy, a shared language, symbols, and a sense of history and memory are missing [1] [2].
This project suggests that important fragments of an emerging European society and identity are embedded in transnational material infrastructures - the wires, pipes, cables, highways, railroads, and information networks that span political borders and connect national infrastructures. The overall research question is:
How did the construction and use of multiple new transnational infrastructures -- for example,
railroads, highways, electricity lines, pipelines, telegraphs, telephone and radio networks -- shape the emergence of Europe in the 20th century?
Approach and subquestions
The approach is characterized by four strategies: 1) it has a research focus on transnational infrastructures; 2) it explicitly considers long-term developments; 3) it views Europe as an "imagined community"; and 4) it includes users of transnational infrastructures as active participants in the creation of Europe in the 20th century and by doing so introduces the concept of a "living community".
Transnational infrastructures
Infrastructures can be defined as geographically spread-out and materially coupled systems: that is, linked networks of artifacts, knowledge, people, organizations, and institutions. For example the railroad infrastructure consists of tracks, trains, railway companies, governmental agencies, railway engineers, etc. Such infrastructures resemble what Thomas Hughes has called large technical systems, but without the limiting assumption of some kind of central control and articulated system goals. [3] Systems in the Hughesian sense are a special case of infrastructures.
Transnational infrastructures are defined as those infrastructures that connect (emerging) nation-states. This research proposal will examine infrastructures that were actually built such as highways, railroad systems, and telecommunication networks. It will examine critical links that were often extensively discussed before building such as the Channel Tunnel. It will also examine influential projects that were never built such as the Atlantropa project to dam the Strait of Gibraltar.
Transnational infrastructures are defined as those infrastructures that connect (emerging) nation-states. This research proposal will examine infrastructures that were actually built such as highways, railroad systems, and telecommunication networks. It will examine critical links that were often extensively discussed before building such as the Channel Tunnel. It will also examine influential projects that were never built such as the Atlantropa project to dam the Strait of Gibraltar.
A long term process
From the mid-nineteenth century onwards, a host of new transnational infrastructures were built that would heavily influence the flow of people, information, energy, goods and services between nation-states. These infrastructures and their resulting flows shaped the boundaries and internal structure of Europe, long before Europe was an explicit political project. To study this process, the research will have to start deep in the second half of the nineteenth century. In this early period, infrastructure building focused mostly on national interests (and nation states). Yet there were several notable attempts to built transnational infrastructures especially in railroads and telegraphs [4].
Issues of how to connect to other states were always asked - and were in some cases answered with iron tracks, wires and cables. For example, in the late 19th and early 20th century Switzerland connected its electricity network to regions in Germany, France and Italy. Several international conferences were held to discuss a large variety of initiatives and plans. Often smaller countries such as Belgium, The Netherlands, and Switzerland took the lead. In 1885, the Belgian government founded the influential Association International des Congrès de Chemins de Fer (AICCF). The Dutch touring club ANWB initiated an international association of touring clubs (Ligue International des Associations Touristes; LIAT), which from 1908 onwards sponsored a series of international road conferences.
From the 1920s onward, authoritarian states developed a number of initiatives. The Comintern built what Lenin called “a newspaper without paper or borders,” involving the world’s most powerful transmitter (1922) broadcasting in many European languages. In the Second World War the Nazis built a trans-European network (Rundfunkbetreuungsstelle) to broadcast Hitler’s speeches.
After each of the two World Wars the structure of the nation-state was questioned and contested, but became dominant again. However, especially after the Second World War, a host of new initiatives for building truly transnational infrastructures were developed by newly emerging European institutions. This was done in Western and Eastern Europe in quite different circumstances, especially during the Cold War. The Dutch initiated a European railway policy that
led to the launch of a Trans-Europe-Express already in 1957. The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), with financial help from the Marshall Plan, developed plans for a European highway network. Meanwhile, a number of transnational energy (gas and electricity) networks were established in Eastern and Western Europe, severing the established infrastructure links and reifying the political divide. In the last decades of the twentieth century, several new developments emerged which have already profoundly
affected the relationships between infrastructure building and the shape of Europe. The most important was the end of the Cold War, signified by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The resulting unification or re-unification of infrastructures between West and East Europe has inevitably led to challenging practical questions about the scope and definition of Europe.
Taking a long-term perspective on these developments will make it possible to compare different infrastructures and to analyze the vicissitudes of their construction and use. A long-term perspective is also particularly relevant because some of these projects have been debated over many decades (for example the Channel Tunnel and Øresund bridge). Two different periods can be identified and compared: an early period in which nation-states were emerging and created a certain bias and commitment in infrastructure development, and a later period in which an explicit European project created new directions for infrastructure development. However, the new “European” projects were rarely developed from scratch. They were grounded in the existing
infrastructures of the earlier phase, and their scope and definition as well as their success or failure, were crucially dependent on these earlier infrastructures.
Imagined communities
The concept “imagined community” is grounded in the now seminal work of Anderson on nationalism and the rise of nation-states. [5] He coined this concept in order to consider nations separate from nation-states. Nations are communities that emerge from a set of nation-building practices such as mass education, conscript armies, taxation, the standardization of vernacular language, the mobilization of myths and symbols, and the invention of tradition. [6] These new practices laid the foundations for the emergence of the nation-state.
Although it is neither a nation nor a nation-state, Europe can still be seen as an imagined community and the construction of transnational infrastructures as a Europe building practice. Many actors are involved in the construction process, ranging from engineers, government officials, companies, and user organizations; and they often imagine different communities and different infrastructures. Differences might refer to a preference for specific connections, excluding certain regions, users, or nation-states; also, there are often sharp differences over plans for a decentralized or centralized structures. Such differences often relate to particular visions of why specific networks are needed (for example tourism or transport of goods).
The project will analyze these differences and subsequent discussions, negotiations, and controversies. It will make visible that transnational infrastructures and the Europe that they helped shape could have been constructed in many different ways. For example the Danes, Swedes and Germans were involved in negotiations on exporting Norwegian hydropower, but for nearly half a century Norway’s political and popular resistance to exporting electricity produced a situation of non-linking. Since 1965, connections with several other South-European infrastructures were added, but the Nordic co-operation Nordel –the most integrated transnational electricity market in the world – is still poorly linked to the continent. [7]
Since infrastructure building has often been a contested process, the project will provide a window to contrasting visions and the plurality of Europe. Europe was always a ‘tidal Europe’ whose frontiers ebb and flow, ranging from the Atlantic to the Urals and beyond. This is
reflected in the impossibility of providing a precise (time-independent) definition of Europe.[8]
Living communities
Visions of Europe as embodied in transnational infrastructures will have very real and powerful implications. However, their nature will depend on how the infrastructures were actually taken up by a range of users. The construction of Europe cannot be reduced to the politics of
“imagined Europe” materialized in transnational infrastructures; the research needs to take into account how a range of users appropriated them. Here, appropriation refers to the
process in which users signify, reproduce, communicate, explore, and integrate these infrastructures in their daily life. In doing so, users create living communities of trading and traveling while building new identities, experiences and relationships across Europe.
“imagined Europe” materialized in transnational infrastructures; the research needs to take into account how a range of users appropriated them. Here, appropriation refers to the
process in which users signify, reproduce, communicate, explore, and integrate these infrastructures in their daily life. In doing so, users create living communities of trading and traveling while building new identities, experiences and relationships across Europe.
[1] Alan S. Milward, The European Rescue of the Nation-state (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992); Anthony D. Smith, 'National identity and the idea of European unity', International Affairs,
Vol. 68, no. 1 (1992); Cris Shore, Building Europe. The Cultural Politics of European Integration (London and New York, 2000).
[2] For this notion of hidden integration see Thomas J. Misa and Johan Schot, ‘Inventing Europe: Technology and the Hidden Integration of Europe’, in: special issue of History and Technology edited by Johan Schot, Thomas J. Misa and Ruth Oldenziel, Tensions of Europe. The Role of Technology in the Making of Europe, vol. 21 (2005) 1 , (forthcoming); [see Publications]
[3] Thomas P. Hughes, Networks of Power (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983).
[4] For an more elaborate periodization see Erik van der Vleuten and Arne Kaijser, ‘Networking Europe’, in special special of History of Technology, edited by Johan Schot, Thomas J. Misa and Ruth Oldenziel, Tensions of Europe. The Role of Technology in the Making of Europe, vol. 21 (2005) 1, (forthcoming); [see Publications]
[5] Benedict Anderson, Imagined communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991).
[6] Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition Cambridge University Press, 1983).
[7] Arne Kaijser, 'Trans-border Integration of Electricity and Gas in the Nordic Countries, 1915-1992', Polhem.Tidskrift för teknikhistoria, Vol. 15, 1997).
[8] Norman Davies, Europe: a History (London: Pimlico, 1996).
