European unity is a dream that has appealed to the imagination since the Middle Ages. Its motives have varied from a longing for peace to a deep-rooted abhorrence of diversity, as well as a yearning to maintain Europe's colonial dominance. This book offers a multifaceted history that takes in account the European imagination in a global context.

European unity is a dream that has appealed to the imagination since the Middle Ages. Its motives have varied from a longing for peace to a deep-rooted abhorrence of diversity, as well as a yearning to maintain Europe's colonial dominance. This book offers a multifaceted history that takes in account the European imagination in a global context.

Which European and non-European ideas and practices facilitated the shaping of European unity? Or rather, which pursuits led to deadlocks in the cooperation between states? The book seeks answers to these questions by surveying the historical attempts at realizing supranational patterns of governance in Europe since the Middle Ages. The main focus is on the nineteenth and twentieth century organizational models of European unification. The analysis draws on an abundance of historical and legal source material. While the author encourages critical thinking about European integration, the exploration is admittedly based on specific values. Éva Bóka claims that the struggle for the humanization of power with its democratic creative force has been the major driver in the development of the system of liberties and the idea of European unity. The analysis of the historical process up to the Lisbon Treaty (2007) with the recognition of common, shared, and supported competences meets the author’s set of values to a great extent. The last part of the book examines whether the European Union can serve as a political and economic organizational model for other parts of the world.

Volume I considers the history of the European Union from an outside-in perspective, evaluating which outside forces shaped and guided the process of European integration. Taking an innovative, thematic approach, this volume will be of interest to students and researchers of European integration.

In this highly provocative and documented book, Thibault Muzergues describes how war in Europe is now more likely than it has been for at least the past 30 years, how it might come back to Europe and what Europeans can do to avoid getting drawn again in fratricide conflicts. Many consider Europe a continent of peace, with NATO guaranteeing its security and the EU providing the political glue for a Europe Whole and Free. But what if this was not the case anymore? What if, after a decade of crisis, today’s Europe was much more fragile than we thought? The author challenges our assumptions about peace in Europe and forces us to face the realities of a world that has become much more dangerous. Far from being apocalyptic, this book serves as an advance warning to the dangers, both internal and external that are now closing in on Europe – and suggests solutions to avoid them. This book will be key reading for those interested in European politics and history, the European Union, security, and strategic studies, and more broadly to current affairs and international relations.

This collection explores how Christian individuals and institutions – whether Churches, church-related organisations, clergy, or lay thinkers – combined the topics of faith and national identity in twentieth-century Europe. "National identity" is understood in a broad sense that includes discourses of citizenship, narratives of cultural or linguistic belonging, or attributions of distinct, "national" characteristics. The collection addresses Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox perspectives, considers various geographical contexts, and takes into account processes of cross-national exchange and transfer. It shows how national and denominational identities were often mutually constitutive, at times leading to a strongly exclusionary stance against "other" national or religious groups. In different circumstances, religiously minded thinkers critiqued nationalism, emphasising the universalist strains of their faith, with varying degrees of success. Moreover, throughout the century, and especially since 1945, both church officials and lay Christians have had to come to terms with the relationship between their national and "European" identities and have sought to position themselves within the processes of Europeanisation. Various contexts for the negotiation of faith and nation are addressed: media debates, domestic and international political arenas, inner-denominational and ecumenical movements, church organisations, cosmopolitan intellectual networks and the ideas of individual thinkers.

This book is a detailed and original look at the radical reorganisation of French heavy industry in the turbulent period between the establishment of the Vichy regime in 1940 and the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the forerunner to the European Union, in 1952. By studying institutions ranging from Vichy’s Organisation Committees to Jean Monnet’s Commissariat Général du Plan (CGP), Luc-André Brunet challenges existing narratives and reveals significant continuities from Vichy to post-war initiatives such as the Monnet Plan and the ECSC. Based on extensive multi-archival research, this book sheds important new light on economic collaboration and resistance in Vichy, the post-war revival of the French economy, and the origins of European integration.

Visions and Revisions of Europe offers a multidisciplinary debate on the various political, social, and cultural issues that are at the heart of contemporary European discourse, with a focus on the relations between the so-called “New” and “Old” Europe. A range of possible scenarios for the future of the EU, as well as a discussion of the factors affecting current crises are at the forefront of the debate, which lead the reader to reflect upon often overlooked aspects of European integration, such as Germany’s hegemonic role in the Union, or historical narratives and myths that need to be deconstructed and critically analysed. Contemporary populist movements also play a key role, as do the often difficult processes of migration and EU mobility, which reveal the tensions, fears, and lines of exclusion in contemporary European societies. Finally, the role of values – namely an adherence to human rights and responsibility over the global social order – which in the 1970s was a cornerstone of EU discursive action and identity building, serves as a lasting point of reflection on the uncertain future of the EU’s axio-normative direction(s).

This pertinent and highly original volume explores how ideas of Europe and processes of continental political, socio-economic, and cultural integration have been intertwined since the nineteenth century. Applying a wider definition of Europeanization in the sense of "becoming European", it will pay equal attention to counter-processes of disentanglement and disintegration that have accompanied, slowed down, or displaced such trends and developments. By focusing on the practices, agents, and experience of Europeanization, the volume strives to bring together the history of ideas and the history of human actions and conduct, two approaches that are usually treated separately in the field of European studies.

This monograph addresses mobility and migrations as contributing phenomena in shaping contemporary Europe after 1945, in connection with decolonisation and the creation of the European Community. The disappearing of the colonial empires caused a large movement of people (former colonizers as well as formerly colonized people) from the extra-European countries to the "Old continent"; while the European integration project encouraged the movement of the citizens within the Community. The book retraces how, in both cases, migrations and mobility impacted the way national communities, as well as the European one, have been defining themselves and their real and imaginary boundaries.