Vincent Lagendijk

Technocratic internationalism in the interwar years : building Europe on motorways and electricity networks

Technokratischer Internationalismus in der Zwischenkriegszeit: Die Schaffung Europas durch Autobahnen und ElektrizitatsnetzwerkeDer Artikel zeigt, wie Internationalismus und Technokratie, zwei wich...

Europe's System Builders: The Contested Shaping of Transnational Road, Electricity and Rail Networks

This article explores what kind of ‘Europe’ was produced in the processes of transnational infrastructure building. It focuses on international organisations dedicated to Europes infrastructural integration as a promising research site, where infrastructural collaborations (or the lack thereof) were articulated and negotiated. Case studies of the Bureau International des Autoroutes (1931), the Union for the Coordination of Production and Transport of Electricity (1951) and the European Conference of Transport Ministers (1953) explore the challenges of transnational system building. They also suggest that Europes infrastructural interlacing was a contested process, producing, if successful, multilayered networks in which corporate, national and meso-regional borders remain clearly discernable.

‘An experience forgotten today’: examining two rounds of European electricity liberalization

This paper deals with two phases of liberalization in the field of electricity. It does so by utilizing archival material and quantitative data, combining and contrasting it with work done by scholars of European integration. After an overview of interwar electricity discussions on international governance, it discusses the two post-World War II phases. During the first a non-political organization informally arranged to lift interwar restrictions on international electricity flows, and turn it into a reliable operating system. The second phase brought a complete transformation of the existing regime, initiated by the European Commission, turning electricity exchanges into trade flows.

‘To Consolidate Peace'? The International Electro-technical Community and the Grid for the United States of Europe

Why did engineers and policy-makers together argue for a European electricity network? This article shows, first, how ideas of European cooperation were conceived in both circles, and second, how the two came together in an alliance that brought the idea for European grid into the League of Nations (LoN) and International Labour Organization. Non-government organizations in the field of electricity acted as intermediary platforms, and close links between some engineers and politicians enabled a next step. It argues furthermore that such an alliance was made possible through a set of shared ideas, stressing technical networks as an extension of international politics, viewing ‘Europe’ as an obvious unit of optimization, and relying on a ‘technical’ approach rather than political consultation.

Divided Development: Post-War Ideas on River Utilization and their Influence on the Development of the Danube

In the 1950s the United States feared that the Soviet Union would overtake their leading position in river development. The Tennessee Valley Authority had become a household name across the globe, but now the Soviets, too, began to share their expertise in this field. This article examines how Soviet experiences were applied on the river Danube. It hence discusses the cold-war discourse of modernisation, exemplified by river development, from both the capitalist and Communist perspective. Particular attention is paid to the institutional context of this transfer, the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance, and the attempts of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe to play a role in this process.

Inventing electrical Europe : interdependencies, borders, vulnerabilities

November 4, 2006, late Saturday evening. German electric power transmission system operator E.ON Netz disconnects an extra-high voltage line over the Ems River at the request of a northern German shipyard. This should allow the large cruise ship Norwegian Pearl to pass safely from the yard to the North Sea. Other power lines are supposed to take over the duties of the disconnected line as usual in this routine operation.

New connections for an old continent : rail, road and electricity in the league of nations organisation for communications and transit

During the Second World War, former League of Nations official John E. Wheeler contemplated what international organizations would look like after the war’s end. At that time he was authoring a study for the prestigious London-based Royal Institute of International Affairs on pre-First World War and interwar organizations with a strong focus on infrastructures.1 Wheeler argued that ‘there is no official European body whose field of activity extends to all branches of transport and communications, but the League of Nations Transit Organisation, […], has concerned itself very largely with Europe’.2 The ‘Transit Organisation’ to which Wheeler referred was the Organisation for Communications and Transit (OCT), a body not originally founded with a European scope, but as part of the universal League of Nations (1919).3 Wheeler’s suggestion that the OCT might have been an effective body in dealing with European affairs raises two important and, as we will argue, closely related issues about the League of Nations: its ‘European’ focus and its overall success (or rather failure) as an organization. Both these issues are central to the way in which historical scholarship has framed the League up to now. By taking the OCT’s activities in the field of infrastructure as central rather than peripheral aspects of the League’s method and mission, we look here to revise these narratives. In so doing, we point to the ways in which technology, and in particular technological expertise, formed a central plank in efforts to integrate and unify Europe before the Second World War.

Experimental Spaces: A Decentered Approach to Planning in High Modernity

1 U. Herbert, «Europe in High Modernity. Reflections on a Theory of the 20th Century», Journal of Modern European History 5 (2007) 2, 5–21. 2 L. Raphael (ed.), Theorien und Experimente der Moderne, Cologne 2012; C. Dipper / L. Raphael, «‹Raum› in der europäischen Geschichte. Einleitung», Journal of Modern European History 9 (2011) 1, 27–41; C. Dipper, «Moderne, Version: 1.0», Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte, 25.08.2010, URL: http://docupedia.de/zg/Moderne?oldid=84639 (last visited 24 March 2014); T. Etzemüller (ed.), Die Ordnung der Moderne: Social Engineering im 20. Jahrhundert, Bielefeld 2009. 3 A. Escobar, «Planning», in: W. Sachs (ed.), The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power, London 2010, 146. 4 Escobar, «Planning», 146–147. Recent years have seen a sharp increase in the scholarly interest in planning and social engineering, which became widespread in the Western world as well as the colonies and postcolonial states in the age of High Modernity. This age, covering the years between 1890 and 1970, has been distinguished from other periods, firstly, by the sheer rapidity of economic, social and cultural changes, such as industrialisation, urbanisation, mass emigration, and the «scientification» of society.1 What qualifies this period as distinctively modern, however, is that contemporaries themselves were aware that they were entering a «new» era, which offered increased opportunities to shape their own future.2 The modern became a category of self-identification, combining a sense of crisis with a strong belief in the possibility to perfect society through interventions. Expectations were high: Modernity itself would provide the means, such as scientific knowledge and technological innovations, to channel the sweeping changes and restore a stable order in the post-liberal age. «Planning» as a concept «embodies the belief that social change can be engineered and directed, produced at will».3 Its emergence at the end of the nineteenth century should be attributed to the rise of the modern political economy, which fostered an instrumental attitude towards nature and people. In reaction to the disturbing social consequences produced by laissez-faire capitalism, industrialisation and urbanisation, professionals and experts launched initiatives to improve social conditions, resulting in the rise of town planning and the incipient welfare state. The state – and at times socially minded industrialists too – became the guarantor of social progress.4 Stefan Couperus, Liesbeth van de Grift, Vincent Lagendijk

Biography 1: An Electrifying Legacy: The Long Life of the Oliven Plan

Although Oskar Oliven (born 1870, Breslau) died in 1939, he continues to live on in several ways. For one, he is immortalized in the Dr Oskar Oliven Memorial Scholarship, established in 2003 by his son Gerald and his wife Hedy at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Tel Aviv, Israel. For another, his name repeatedly surfaces in processes of building a European electricity network throughout the twentieth century. That latter legacy dates back to November 1930, when he unveiled a plan for a European electricity system. His ideas were not only about increasing system efficiency. A European system was also connected to peace and prosperity under the aegis of European cooperation. While his plan is relatively well known among historians, the memory of Oliven and his plan has also been frequently invoked by engineers of successive generations, nearly always at moments of important changes in the European electricity network.

Crossing Borders: Social Sciences and Humanities Perspectives on European Energy Systems Integration

Our chapter brings together four Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) scholars into a conversation about their research and policy engagements, working within History, Political Science, Sociology, and Science and Technology Studies. We develop a socio-technical perspective and turn that into a conceptual tool pack, to interrogate and explore the emerging concept of Energy Systems Integration (ESI) with a special interest in European energy integration. Our contributions include, first, advancing the concepts of socio-technical energy system and seamless web for our research topics. Second, we open up select frameworks for ESI using the socio-technical perspective and highlight very different interpretations of systems integration terminologies and their effects. Third, the chapter explores of how the production of scale matters greatly for integrated energy systems, from a variety of infrastructural scales to urban, national, and supranational scales. The chapter rounds up by suggesting ideas for future interdisciplinary research between SSH researchers and designers of more integrated energy systems.