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Europe's infrastructure both united and divided peoples and places via economic systems, crises, and wars. Some used transport, communication, and energy infrastructure to supply food, power, industrial products, credit, and unprecedented wealth; others mobilized infrastructure capacities for waging war on scales hitherto unknown. Europe's natural world was fundamentally transformed; its landscapes, waterscapes, and airscapes turned into infrastructure themselves. Europe's Infrastructure Transition reframes the conflicted story of modern European history by taking material networks as its point of departure. It traces the priorities set and the choices made in constructing transnational infrastructure connections - within and beyond the continent. Moreover, this study introduces an alternative set of historically-key individuals, organizations, and companies in the making of modern Europe and analyzes roads both taken and ignored.
List of contents
1. Manipulating Space and Time. - 2. Fueling Europe. - 3. Networked Food Economy. - 4. Factory and Finance. - 5. Logistics of War. - 6. Linking Land. - 7. Troubled Waters. - 8. Common Skies
About the author
Per Högselius is Associate Professor at the Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden. His research has focused on international aspects and in particular East-West relations in the history of science, technology, and environment. Most recently he published
Red Gas: Russia and the Origins of European Energy Dependence (2013).
Arne Kaijser is Professor of History of Technology at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden. His main research interests concern infrastructure, institutions, and environment in historical perspective. Together with Erik van der Vleuten he edited
Networking Europe: Transnational Infrastructures and the shaping of Europe, 1850-2000(2006).
Erik van der Vleuten is Professor of History of Technology at Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands, and scientific director of the Foundation for the History of Technology (SHT). In 2013-2015 he chaired the Pan-European research network
Tensions of Europe: Technology and the Making of Europe. With Högselius and Kaijser he authored
Europe's Infrastructure Transition: Economy, War, Nature (2015).
Summary
Europe's infrastructure both united and divided peoples and places via economic systems, crises, and wars. Some used transport, communication, and energy infrastructure to supply food, power, industrial products, credit, and unprecedented wealth; others mobilized infrastructure capacities for waging war on scales hitherto unknown. Europe's natural world was fundamentally transformed; its landscapes, waterscapes, and airscapes turned into infrastructure themselves. Europe's Infrastructure Transition reframes the conflicted story of modern European history by taking material networks as its point of departure. It traces the priorities set and the choices made in constructing transnational infrastructure connections - within and beyond the continent. Moreover, this study introduces an alternative set of historically-key individuals, organizations, and companies in the making of modern Europe and analyzes roads both taken and ignored.
Additional text
“In Europe’s Infrastructure Transition, Högselius, Kaijser, and van der Vleuten have done an impressive job tracing the symbiotic relations between transportation and communication systems, between system-building and border-building, and between technocracy and nature. The writing is highly readable and the arguments compelling. … This book will therefore likely appeal to academic and non-academic readers alike, and is quite suitable for collegiate classroom use. … this is a thoughtful, engaging, and important book.” (Nicholas Ostrum, CritCom, councilforeuropeanstudies.org, June, 2016)
Report
"In Europe's Infrastructure Transition, Högselius, Kaijser, and van der Vleuten have done an impressive job tracing the symbiotic relations between transportation and communication systems, between system-building and border-building, and between technocracy and nature. The writing is highly readable and the arguments compelling. ... This book will therefore likely appeal to academic and non-academic readers alike, and is quite suitable for collegiate classroom use. ... this is a thoughtful, engaging, and important book." (Nicholas Ostrum, CritCom, councilforeuropeanstudies.org, June, 2016)
