Making Europe
Inventing Europe builds on the work of over 300 historians over a ten-year period, culminating in the forthcoming six-part book series Making Europe: Technology and Transformations 1850-2000 edited by Johan Schot and Philip Scranton. By focusing on key dimensions of technological change, Making Europe’s six compelling volumes that are being published by Palgrave Macmillan offer broad scope, sharp analysis, and critical knowledge, blending 15 distinguished historians skills. The volumes deal with Consumption, Knowledge Societies,Infrastructure, Governance, Media & Communications, and Globalisation. Order your copies here.
Consumers, Tinkerers, Rebels: The people who shaped europe
By Mikael Hård and Ruth Oldenziel
They all had a dream. Sitting at her Singer sewing machine in 1880, the Turkish woman imagined being invited to the Paris Great Opera in a fancy dress. Setting off on their bicycles in 1893, an American artist-writer couple living in London sought to master the Alps on their iron horses. Standing in line at the post office in 1983, the long-haired… Read more…
Building Europe on Expertise: innovators, organizers, networkers
By Helmuth Trischler and Martin Kohlrausch
The idea of the knowledge society has become central to the self-conception of the European Union and also of Europe in a wider sense. Whereas in the 19th century, scientific and technical superiority stood as the reason and justification for Europe’s global hegemony, a more modest version of Europe as a knowledge society dominates today’s… Read more…
writing the Rules for Europe: Experts, cartels and International Organizations
By Wolfram Kaiser and Johan Schot
Most Europeans have grown up with the notion that their nation-states framed the conditions under which they live. The state provided internal security and domestic welfare. In southern European dictatorships and in East-Central Europe, the state also repressed personal freedoms. Now national sovereignty has eroded and is frequently shared, most… Read more…
Europe’s Infrastructure Transition: Economy, War, Nature
By Per Högselius, Arne Kaijser and Erik van der Vleuten
Europe’s infrastructure transition constituted one of the most pervasive changes ever on the subcontinent. Two hundred years ago, waterways and poorly maintained road networks were the main vectors for Europe’s material integration and fragmentation. Travel was slow and cumbersome. So were flows of energy, information and goods, which… Read more…
Communicating Europe: Technologies, Information, Events
By Andreas Fickers and Pascal Griset
“What hath God wrought?” – these words, sent by Samuel B. Morse via an electromagnetic telegraph line from Washington D.C. to Baltimore on the 24th of May 1844, inaugurated the age of modern communication. Since then, modernity at large is associated with technologies of electronic communication and information, such as the… Read more…
Europe Globalizing: Mapping, Exploiting, Exchanging
By Maria Paula Diogo and Dirk van Laak
How did Europe interact with the rest of the world from 1850 until today? What part did technology play within colonial and other encounters? And how did our globalized world emerge? Since the mid-19th century communication throughout the globe has sped up enormously. Globalization became a fundamental condition for all further developments… Read more…
