Making Europe
A new history of Europe, provisionally entitled Making Europe: Technology and Transformations 1850–2000, is currently being written and is scheduled for publication by Palgrave Macmillan between 2012 and 2014. Since 2010, a team of renowned historians of Europe, including historians of technology, has assembled the six-volume book series and a series of online accessible virtual exhibits about the key role of technological change in the history of Europe. The first virtual exhibits will be launched in the second half of 2011.
Making Europe comes at an opportune time. Although the future of European integration is a prominent issue on the political agenda, it seems to be restricted to the European Union. This project shows that Europe extends far beyond that, and that European integration was part of society as early as the mid-19th century. Making Europe brings themes such as the circulation of goods, people, energy, ideas, and information between countries to the fore. The idea is that Europe was not shaped exclusively by political treaties, but through day-to-day practices via transnational networks and infrastructures. From this perspective, it is self-evident to study the role of technology in this process; not by focusing on technology itself, but on the societal influence of technical change and the role of companies, consumers, governments, universities, and various international organizations.
Scientists and institutes from 12 European countries and the United States are contributing to the project. Teams of authors are compiling the books, while researchers throughout Europe are searching for data in archives and national literature. Johan Schot (TU/e) and Phil Scranton (Rutgers University, USA) are editing the book series. The richly illustrated series promises to become one of the standard works in the field of European history.
The book series consists of six co-authored volumes:
1. Europe in the Global World (by Maria Paula Diogo, Dirk van Laak, and Matthias Middell)
How Europe was imagined and experienced in colonial, developmental, and other global circulations and exchanges.
2. From Nature to Networks: the Infrastructural Transformation of Europe (by Arne Kaijser, Erik van der Vleuten and Per Høgselius)
How Europe (and its landscape) was constituted by the construction and use of transnational communication, energy, and transport infrastructures.
3. European Technological Dramas: Histories of Consumption and Use (by Mikael Hård en Ruth Oldenziel)
How European transnational spaces emerged in the process of producing, distributing, and using a range of consumer goods.
4. Eventing Europe: Electronic Information and Communication Spaces in Europe (by Andreas Fickers, and Pascal Griset)
How Europe was experienced in the production and use of (mass) media.
5. Knowledge Societies, Expert Networks and Innovation Cultures in Europe (by Helmuth Trischler and Martin Kohlrausch)
How Europe became articulated through efforts to construct European standards, expert knowledge, networks (from city planning to computer science) and large-scale projects and artifacts.
6. Governing Europe: Technology, Experts and Networks (by Wolfram Kaiser, Johan Schot and Dagmara Jajeśniak-Quast)
How the emergence of multiple European transnational spaces since 1850 shaped the European integration process. This volume focuses specifically on a reinterpretation of the European integration process.
Making Europe is an initiative of the Foundation for the History of Technology and has been made possible by support of SNS Reaal Fund, the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS), Eindhoven University of Technology, the European Science Foundation, Next Generation Infrastructures, Philips, and EBN.
More information can be found at www.makingeurope.eu