Ideas of European unity before 1948
This article needs additional citations for verification. (June 2007) |
This article aims to cover ideas of European unity before 1948.
Early history
"Europe" as a cultural sphere is first used during the Carolingian dynasty to encompass the Latin Church (as opposed to Eastern Orthodoxy).[citation needed] The first mention of the concepts of "Europe" and "European" dates back to 754 in the Mozarabic Chronicle. The Chronicle contains the earliest known reference in a Latin text to "Europeans" (europenses), whom it describes as having defeated the Saracens at the battle of Tours in 732..[1][2]
Military unions of "Christian European powers" in the medieval and early modern period were directed against the threat of
In 1693, William Penn looked at the devastation of war in Europe and wrote of a "European dyet, or parliament", to prevent further war, without further defining how such an institution would fit into the political reality of Europe at the time.[4]
In 1713,
Some suggestion of a European union can be inferred from Immanuel Kant's 1795 proposal for an "eternal peace congress".
19th century
The concept of "Europe" referring to Western Europe or Germanic Europe arises in the 19th century, contrasting with the Russian Empire, as is evidenced in Russian philosopher Danilevsky's Russia and Europe.
In the 1800s, a
The French
In the conservative reaction after Napoleon's defeat in 1815, the German Confederation (German: Deutscher Bund) was established as a loose association of thirty-eight sovereign German states formed by the Congress of Vienna. Napoleon had swept away the Holy Roman Empire and simplified the map of Germany. In 1834, the Zollverein ("customs union") was formed among the states of the Confederation, to create better trade flow and reduce internal competition. In spite of the allusion by Fritz Fischer in Germany's Aims in the First World War that an extension of this customs union may have become the model for a unified Europe, the ensuing North German Confederation established in 1866 drifted away from the inclusive multinational character of the preceding German Confederation and the early Kingdom of Prussia, taking instead the direction of staunch German nationalism and brutal subjugation of other nations living within the borders of the succeeding German Empire. The then current and influential German ideas of geopolitics and a Mitteleuropa later became increasingly degenerated due to their underlying principle of German national hegemony, a process culminating in the abhorrent vision laid out by the national socialists of European unity understood as universal servitude of the European nations to the Germans (see below), thus contradicting directly the current intellectual framework for European Union.
United States of Europe was also the name of the concept presented by Wojciech Jastrzębowski in About eternal peace between the nations, published 31 May 1831. The project consisted of 77 articles. The envisioned United States of Europe was to be an international organisation rather than a superstate.[7]
Italian writer and politician
The Italian philosopher
As part of 19th c. concerns about an ailing Europe and the threat posed by the
Between the World Wars
Following the catastrophe of the
With a conservative vision of Europe, the
In contrast the Soviet commissar (minister)
Among liberal-democratic parties, the French centre-left undertook several initiatives to group like-minded parties from the European states. In 1927, the French politician Emil Borel, a leader of the centre-left Radical Party and the founder of the Radical International, set up a French Committee for European Cooperation, and a further twenty countries set up equivalent committees. However, it remained an elite venture: the largest committee, the French one, possessed fewer than six-hundred members, two-thirds of whom were parliamentarians.[10] Two centre-left French prime ministers went further. In 1929 Aristide Briand gave a speech in the presence of the League of Nations Assembly in which he proposed the idea of a federation of European nations based on solidarity and in the pursuit of economic prosperity and political and social co-operation. In 1930, at the League's request, Briand presented a Memorandum on the organisation of a system of European Federal Union. The next year the future French prime minister Édouard Herriot published his book The United States of Europe. Indeed, a template for such a system already existed, in the form of the 1921 Belgian and Luxembourgish customs and monetary union.
Support for the proposals by the French centre-left came from a range of prestigious figures. Many eminent economists, aware that the economic race-to-the-bottom between states was creating ever greater instability, supported the view: these included John Maynard Keynes. The French political scientist and economist Bertrand Jouvenel remembered a widespread mood after 1924 calling for a "harmonisation of national interests along the lines of European union, for the purpose of common prosperity".[11] The Spanish philosopher and politician, Ortega y Gasset, expressed a position shared by many within Republican Spain: "European unity is no fantasy, but reality itself; and the fantasy is precisely the opposite: the belief that France, Germany, Italy or Spain are substantive & independent realities.”[12] Eleftherios Venizelos, Prime Minister of Greece, outlined his government's support in a 1929 speech by saying that "the United States of Europe will represent, even without Russia, a power strong enough to advance, up to a satisfactory point, the prosperity of the other continents as well".[13]
Between the two world wars, the Polish statesman
The Great Depression, the rise of fascism and communism and subsequently World War II prevented the inter war movements from gaining further support: between 1933 and 1936 most of Europe's remaining democracies became dictatorships, and even Ortega's Spain and Venizelos's Greece had both been plunged into civil war. But although the supporters of European unity, whether social-democratic, liberal or Christian-democratic, were out of power during the 1930s and unable to put their ideas into practice, many would find themselves in power in the 1940s and 1950s, and better-placed to put into effect their earlier remedies against economic and political crisis.
World War II
In Britain the group known as Federal Union was launched in November 1938, and began advocating a Federal Union of Europe as a post-war aim. Its papers and arguments became well known among resistants to fascism across Europe and contributed to their thinking of how to rebuild Europe after the war.
Among those who were early advocates of a union of European nations was Hungarian Prime Minister
He foresaw clearly the complete defeat of Nazi Germany, and the European chaos that would result from the war. He believed that no future was conceivable for any of the minor nations in Central and Eastern Europe if they tried to continue to live their isolated national lives. He asked his friends in America to help them establish a federal system, to federate. This alone could secure for them the two major assets of national life: first, political and military security, and, second, economic prosperity. Hungary, he emphasized, stood ready to join in such collaboration, provided it was firmly based on the complete equality of all the members states.[16]
Journalist Dorothy Thompson in 1941 supported the statement of others. "I took from Count Teleki's office a monograph which he had written upon the structure of European nations. A distinguished geographer, he was developing a plan for regional federation, based upon geographical and economic realities."[16] Teleki received no response from the Americans to his ideas and when German troops moved through Hungary on 2–3 April 1941 during the invasion of Yugoslavia, he committed suicide.
In 1943, the German ministers
"A one sided Prussian militarism must never again be allowed to assume power. Only in large-scale cooperation among the nations of Europe can the ground be prepared for reconstruction...Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the protection of individual citizens from the arbitrary will of criminal regimes of violence – these will be the bases of the New Europe."
Aufruf an alle Deutsche! pamphlet by the White Rose, January 1943
One of the most influential figures in this process was
Towards the end of World War II, the Three Allied Powers discussed during the Tehran Conference and the ensuing 1943 Moscow Conference the plans to establish joint institutions. This led to a decision at the Yalta Conference in 1945 to include Free France as the Fourth Allied Power and to form a European Advisory Commission, later replaced by the Council of Foreign Ministers and the Allied Control Council, following the German surrender and the Potsdam Agreement in 1945.
Postwar developments (1945-1948)
History of the European Union |
---|
European Union portal |
After the war on 19 September 1946 Churchill went further as a civilian, after leaving his office, at the
The growing rift among the Four Powers became evident as a result of the rigged
See also
- Continental System
- European integration
- Federal Europe
- History of the European Union
- Pan-European identity
- Universal Monarchy
References
- ^ Kwame Anthony Appiah (2012), "Misunderstanding cultures: Islam and the West", Philosophy and Social Criticism 38(4–5) 425–33.
- ^ Evert Van De Poll (2013), Europe and the Gospel: Past Influences, Current Developments, Mission Challenges (Versita), p. 55.
- ISBN 9781136019845.
- ^ Penn, William; Andrew R. Murphy (2002). "The Political Writings of William Penn". Liberty Fund. Retrieved 21 August 2012.
- Abbot Charles de Saint-Pierre (1713). Projet pour rendre la paix perpétuelle en Europe [Project for bringing about perpetual peace in Europe] (in French). Utrecht: A. Schouten. (cited in The Economist, 21–27 August 2021, page 26)
- ^ Felix Markham, Napoleon (New York: Penguin Books USA Inc., 1966), 257 as quoted in Matthew Zarzeczny, Napoleon's European Union: The Grand Empire of the United States of Europe (Kent State University Master's thesis), 2.
- ISBN 978-80-8105-510-2.
- ^ "Victor Hugo plants his United States of Europe oak". On this day in Guernsey. 14 July 1972. Retrieved 22 October 2022.
- MSZPolish Ministry of foreign Affairs, dual text in French and Polish.
- ^ Guieu, Jean-Michel (2003). ".Le Comité fédéral de coopération européenne". Organisations internationales et architectures européennes (1929–1939): 73–91.
- ^ Jouvenel, Bertrand (1980). Un Voyageur dans le Siècle. Paris. p. 79.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ Ortega y Gasset, José (1998) [1929]. The Revolt of the Masses. Madrid: Editorial Castalia.
- ^ Emm. Papadakis, Nikolaos (2006). Eleftherios K. Venizelos – A Biography. National Research Foundation "Eleftherios K. Venizelos". pp. 48–50.
- ASIN B000WUMLQO.
- ^ Pal Teleki (1923). The Evolution of Hungary and its place in European history (Central and East European series).
- ^ a b c Francis S. Wagner, ed. (1970). Toward a New Central Europe: A Symposium on the Problems of the Danubian Nations. Astor Park, Florida: Danubian Press, Inc.
- ^ ISBN 3-11-009724-9.
- ^ Mark Mazower, Dark Continent, 1.30
- ^ a b "EU Pioneers". European Union. 16 June 2016.
- ISBN 978-1-78673-292-7.
- ^ Churchill, Winston (21 March 1943). "National Address". The International Churchill Society.
- ^ "Speech of Sir Winston Churchill". PACE website. Zürich, Switzerland: Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. 19 September 1946. Archived from the original on 5 October 2013. Retrieved 18 November 2013.
- ^ "Union of European Federalists (UEF): Churchill and Hertenstein". Union of European Federalists (UEF). Retrieved 17 May 2022.
- ^ "Ein britischer Patriot für Europa: Winston Churchills Europa-Rede, Universität Zürich, 19. September 1946" [A British Patriot for Europe: Winston Churchill's Speech on Europe University of Zurich, 19 September 1946]. Zeit Online. Retrieved 13 January 2010.
- ^ Encyclopaedia Britannica (12 September 2019). "Saarland". Retrieved 19 August 2021.
- S2CID 145465919.
- ^ *French proposal regarding the detachment of German industrial regions 8 September 1945
France, Germany and the Struggle for the War-making Natural Resources of the RhinelandLetter from Konrad Adenauer to Robert Schuman (26 July 1949) Warning him of the consequences of the dismantling policy. (requires Flash Player)
Letter from Ernest Bevin to Robert Schuman (30 October 1949) British and French foreign ministers. Bevin argues that they need to reconsider the Allies' dismantling policy in the occupied zones (requires Flash Player)
Further reading
- Dedman, Martin. The origins and development of the European Union 1945-1995: a history of European integration (Routledge, 2006).
- De Vries, Catherine E. "Don't Mention the War! Second World War Remembrance and Support for European Cooperation." JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies (2019).
- Dinan, Desmond. Europe recast: a history of European Union (2nd ed. Palgrave Macmillan), 2004 excerpt. Archived 21 October 2016 at the Wayback Machine
- Heuser, Beatrice. Brexit in History: Sovereignty or a European Union? (2019) excerpt also see online review
- Kaiser, Wolfram, and Antonio Varsori, eds. European Union history: themes and debates (Springer, 2010).
- Patel, Kiran Klaus, and Wolfram Kaiser. "Continuity and change in European cooperation during the twentieth century." Contemporary European History 27.2 (2018): 165–182. online Archived 1 June 2020 at the Wayback Machine
- Pasture, Patrick (2015). Imagining European unity since 1000 AD. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9781137480460.
- Stirk, P.M.R., ed. (1989). European Unity in Context: The Interwar Period (1st ed.). London: Pinter Publishers. ISBN 9780861879878.
- Smith, M.L.; Stirk, P.M.R., eds. (1990). Making The New Europe: European Unity and the Second World War (1st UK ed.). London: Pinter Publishers. ISBN 0-86187-777-2.