Writing the Rules for Europe: Experts, Cartels, and International Organizations(Making Europe)

Technologies have created crucial connections across borders requiring new forms of regulation. This book analyses how experts, cartels and international organizations have written the rules for Europe since around 1850. Based on fresh research in the archives of multiple international organizations and European countries it explores the 'hidden integration' of Europe - forms of integration that were not always visible, but affected the citizens of Europe in their everyday lives. Richly illustrated and engagingly written, the book de-centers the present-day European Union in a new long-term understanding of European integration.

Table of Contents:
Introduction 1. Origins of Technocratic Internationalism 2. The Power and Fragility of Experts 3. From Divided Europe to 'Core Europe' 4. Europe of the Standard Gauge 5. Tensions in Railway Europe 6. Canons and Cartels 7. Technology Cooperation in Steel Europe 8. Towards European Union Hegemony Conclusion

About the Author :
Wolfram Kaiser is Professor of European Studies at the University of Portsmouth, UK, and Visiting Professor at the College of Europe, Belgium. He has published widely on European integration, Christian democracy and the history of globalisation. His books include (with S. Krankenhagen and K. Poehls) Exhibiting Europe in Museums: Transnational Networks, Collections, Narratives and Representations (2014), (ed. with J.-H. Meyer) Societal Actors in European Integration: Polity-building and Policy-making 1958-92, (ed. with A. Varsori) European Union History: Themes and Debates (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Christian Democracy and the Origins of European Union (2007). Johan Schot is Director of the Science Policy Research Unit and Professor in History of Technology at Sussex University, UK. In 2009 he was elected to the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) for his interdisciplinary work. He has published widely in several fields, including Dutch and European history, innovation studies, and sustainable development. His books include (with John Grin, Jan Rotmans) Transitions Towards Sustainable Development: New Directions in the Study of Long Term Transformative Change (2010), and (ed. with Harry Lintsen and Arie Rip), Technology and the Making of the Netherlands: The Age of Contested Modernization, (2010).

Review :
"Writing the Rules for Europe is a brilliant book that uses the history of technology as a foundation to make new sense both of European integration and of contemporary European history, and it will be interest to historians of technology and to the larger community of historians interested in European and transnational history. Kaiser and Schot reveal an expansive, fluid, and layered Europe coalescing, from the mid-19th century, through a growing network of new, overlapping European spaces structured by transport, communication, power, and commerce systems that the public eagerly adopted. Yet this was a 'hidden integration,' created within a culture of technocratic internationalism, by international committees, experts, and cartels working behind closed doors. Kaiser and Schot explain how European Community institutions grew from and remained embedded within this culture of technocratic internationalism. They also make clear, however, that it was a Janus-faced culture: on one side it heralded the vision of European integration as a path to peace and prosperity, but on the other side it was a taproot of the democratic deficit that plagues Europe today. Writing the Rules for Europe thus offers a compelling, powerfully argued, and much-needed rethink of the foundations of an integrating Europe, and readers will appreciate its crisp style and rich selection of illustrations." - Eda Kranakis, University of Ottawa, Canada "Jean Monnet, Konrad Adenauer, and Paul-Henri Spaak - the names of these and several other statesmen of the postwar era are often cited to explain how and when European integration started. This book offers a very different explanation by highlighting the role that experts and technocrats have played in defining and implementing rules of European governance since the mid-19th century. An innovative interpretation, and a very readable and beautifully illustrated book." - Kiran Klaus Patel, Maastricht University, Netherlands