‘Peace in our time’? Imagining European Unity

Patrick Pasture

Some questions • Why European unity?

• Since when is there talk about European unity? (Since when does Europe exist ?)

• Key dates/ periods in de history of European ‘integration’ ▫ 1000 AD ▫ 1555/1648 ▫ 1800 ▫ 1950-1960 ▫ 1989?

The Carolingian myth

Europe as Christendom • Christendom vs Scandinavian and

Islamic empires • Christendom as homogenous

Unity seems to be the root of what it is to be good, and plurality the root of what it is to be evil. Dante Alighieri

Europe as Christendom • Christendom = ‘Europe’ • Tension between worldly and ‘spiritual’ power

Emperor Henri IV (1050 -1106) Pope Innocent III (1198-1216)

• European unity: calls for a ‘crusade’ at first sight, manifestos promoting the authority of secular princes at closer look ▫ Pierre Dubois, De Recuperatione Terrae Sanctae,

1306 ▫ George van Podiebrad, Tractatus, 1464

The ‘early modern’ European order • First phase of European expansion • The ‘wars of religion’ (c. 1524 to c. 1648) lead to

the rise of absolutist states and empires in the 17th-18th c. ▫ Confessionalization of Europe

(Cuius regio eius religio) Peace of Augsburg 1555,

Treaties of Westphalia 1648

• Limited and conditional tolerance

• Secularization of international politics

Sebastian Vrancx, Belegering van Esztergom door Franse en Ottomaanse troepen, in 1543 (17e eeuw)

• Modern imperial wars in Europe and the world

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771) depicting the Battle of the Plains of Abraham above Quebec City, Canada during the Seven Years War.

How to maintain peace in Europe? • Balance of power • Organisation of Europe based on a Christian

political order: ▫ A Christian republic of states ‘Projet politique du duc de Sully, ministre d’Henri

IV’(Maximilien de Béthune, 17th c. , published 1788) ▫ A federation of Christian sovereigns Abbé de Saint-Pierre, Projet pour rendre la paix

perpétuelle en Europe (1713); Projet pour rendre la paix perpétuelle entre souverains chrétiens (1717)

New: European institutions and law

• A republican order William Penn, An Essay towards the Present and

Future Peace of Europe by the Establishment of a European Dyet, Parliament or Estates (1693)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, A Lasting Peace Through the Federation of Europe (1756); Jugement sur la paix perpétuelle (1782): the impossible dream

A republican federation: Immanuel Kant, Zum ewigen Frienden (1795) ▫ Peace by reason and interaction, not commerce nor law

▫ Popular sovereignty ▫ Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau

(…)the same Rules of Justice and Prudence, by which Parents and Masters Govern their Families, and Magistrates their Cities, and Estates their Republicks, and Princes and Kings their Principalities and Kingdoms, Europe may Obtain and Preserve peace among the Soveraignties.

▫ Jeremy Bentham, The Principles of International Law 4: A Plan for an Universal and Perpetual Peace, 1789 Decolonization Disarmament in Europe and overseas International arbitration

• A common culture

Europe is well prepared for peace. Law, customs, science and trade unite its inhabitants and create some sort of special society. Even language, which separates one nation from another, does not constitute an important obstacle in the interaction of is inhabitants; in general the languages resemble each other, and some of them can even be used as a common language for all Europeans. Many Europeans have common ancestors, and almost all are mixed. They should be ashamed if they would consider themselves as enemies Vasil F. Malinowski , 1803

The French Revolution and the Napoleonic dream of a ‘nation-empire’

• A European ‘nation-empire‘ ▫ The French Revolution (1789-1799)

In countries that are or will be occupied by the armies of the Republic, the generals will proclaim immediately on behalf of the French nation the sovereignty of the people, the removal of all the established rights, of the tithe, of feudalism, of manorial rights, banal rights, real and personal servitudes, privileges of hunting and fishing, chores of the nobles, ... … They’ll announce to the people that they’ll bring them peace, relief, fraternity, liberty and equality. They’ll convene primary or municipal assemblies Robespierre

The French Revolution and the Napoleonic dream of an ‘nation-empire’

▫ The Carolingean-Napoleonic model:

It would have been possible to carry out the chimera of the beautiful ideal of civilization. In this state of things, there would have been some chance of establishing, in every country, a unity of codes, principles, opinions, sentiments, views, and interests. Then, perhaps, by the help of the universal diffusion of knowledge, one might have thought of attempting, in the great European family, the application of the American Congress, or the Amphictyons of Greece. And then what perspective of strength, size, enjoyment, prosperity [that would offer]! What a great and wonderful spectacle! Napoléon Bonaparte, 1816

• Reactions ▫ Nostalgia for Christendom

▫ Diversity in unity: Friedrich Schlegel, Edmund Burke

Those beautiful, magnificent times, when Europe was a Christian land, when one Christianity dwelled on this civilized continent, and when one common interest joined the most distant provinces of this vast spiritual empire. Without great worldly possessions one s overeign governed and unified the great political forces Novalis, 1799

The writers on public law have often called this aggregate of nations a Commonwealth. They had reason. It is virtually one great state having the same basis of general law; with some diversity of provincial customs and local establishments. The nations of Europe have had the very same Christian religion, agreeing in the fundamental parts, varying a little in the ceremonies and in the subordinate doctrines, Edmund Burke, 1796

The ideal … of a free association, which would encompass all nations and states of the educated and civilized world, without sacrificing the unity, the freedom and idiosyncratic national development of each individual nation’ Friedrich Schlegel, 1810

▫ Johann Gottlieb Fichte: incomplete republic (Der Geschlossene Handelsstaat, 1800)

▫ Political and economic Liberalism Benjamin Constant, Principes de Politique

Applicables a Tous les Gouvernements (1806-1810); De l'Esprit De Conquête et L'Usurpation (1813)

Congres of Vienna and the Concert of Europe

The Congress of Vienna by Jean-Bapiste Isabey, (1819).

• The European Concert: peace trough ▫ Balance of power ▫ Alliances Austria + Prussia + Russia + UK (until

1822) + France (1818) (Great Alliance) ▫ International law: Respect of borders;

conferences, diplomats, diplomatic missions, …

◦ Flexibility? ◦ Unification of Italy, Germany ◦ Balkan crisis and Berlin Conference ◦ Minority protection

▫ Common values “In the name of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity” New ideas on mankind: Condemnation of slavery;

protection of Jews Western superiority

Portrait of Prince Metternich by Thomas Lawrence (c. 1825

• Success? The separation of nationalities against one another is no longer possible [because] they all belong to the great European concert. Leopold von Ranke, 1854

Eugène Delacroix - La liberté guidant le peuple (1830)

Nationalism: pacifist or destructive?

Theodoros Vryzakis, La sortie de Missolonghi (détail). (Griekse onafhankelijkheidsstrijd 1820), ca. 1830

• How to bring peace: Alternatives for the Concert ▫ Liberal-nationalistic movements: towards a

brotherhood of European nations Wojciech Jastrzębowski (1799-1882), “The treatise on the

Eternal Union between the Civilised Nations – the Constitution for Europe”, 1831)

Guiseppe Mazzini (1807-1878): Giovine Italia (1831); Giovine Europa (1834): a ‘cosmopolitanism of nations’

Victor Hugo (1848): les États-Unis d'Europe

Un jour viendra où les armes vous tomberont des mains, à vous aussi ! (…) Un jour viendra où vous France, vous Russie, vous Italie, vous Angleterre, vous Allemagne, vous toutes, nations du continent, sans perdre vos qualités distinctes et votre glorieuse individualité, vous vous fondrez étroitement dans une unité supérieure, et vous constituerez la fraternité européenne, absolument comme la Normandie, la Bretagne, la Bourgogne, la Lorraine, l'Alsace, toutes nos provinces, se sont fondues dans la France. Un jour viendra où il n'y aura plus d'autres champs de bataille que les marchés s'ouvrant au commerce et les esprits s'ouvrant aux idées. Un jour viendra où les boulets et les bombes seront remplacés par les votes, par le suffrage universel des peuples, par le vénérable arbitrage d'un grand sénat souverain qui sera à l'Europe ce que le parlement est à l'Angleterre, ce que la diète est à l'Allemagne, ce que l'Assemblée législative est à la France ! (…) Un jour viendra où l'on verra ces deux groupes immenses, les États-Unis d'Amérique, les États-Unis d'Europe (Applaudissements), placés en face l'un de l'autre, se tendant la main par-dessus les mers, échangeant leurs produits, leur commerce, leur industrie, leurs arts, leurs génies, défrichant le globe, colonisant les déserts, améliorant la création sous le regard du Créateur, et combinant ensemble, pour en tirer le bien-être de tous, ces deux forces infinies, la fraternité des hommes et la puissance de Dieu !

▫ Regional federations Polish messianism Danube-federation (Lajos Kossuth) Mitteleuropa (Friedrich List)

▫ Free trade and non-intervention as pathway to peace: Richard Cobden, 1804-1865

▫ ‘Liberal nationalism’/ ‘national liberalism’: Friedrich List

I perceived that the popular theory took no account of nations, but simply of the entire human race on the one hand, or of the single individual on the other. I saw clearly that free competition between two nations which are highly civilized can only be mutually beneficial in case both of them are in a nearly equal position of industrial development, and that any nation which owing to misfortunes is behind others in industry, commerce, and navigation... must first of all strengthen her own individual powers, in order to fit herself to enter into free competition with more advanced nations. In a word, I perceived the distinction between cosmopolitical and political economy. I felt that Germany must abolish her internal tariffs, and by the adoption of a common uniform commercial policy towards foreigners, strive to attain to the same degree of commercial and industrial development to which other nations have attained by means of their commercial policy. Friedrich List, The National System of Political Economy, 1841

Nationalism and imperialism

Nationalism and imperialism

Philip Veit, Germania, 1848 Friedrich August von Kaulbach, Germania, 1914 Johannes Schilling, Niederwalddenkmal Rüdesheim: Die Figur der Germania; 1877-1883

European peace and unity • Economics ▫ (Manchester) Liberalism Cobden–Chevalier Treaty 1860

Lord Palmerston, House of Commons February 1860, painting by John Phillip (1863).

▫ Latin Monetary Union (1865); Scandinavian Monetary Union (1873)

Pays de l'Union latine Pays signataires: France (1865), Belgique (1865), Italie (1865), Suisse (1865), Grèce (1868) Pays associés (par accords bilatéraux): Autriche-Hongrie, Suède, Russie, Finlande, Roumanie, Espagne, Vatican, St-Marin, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Crète Pays alignés (unilatéralement): Serbie, Bulgarie, Venezuela, Pérou, Rép. Dominicaine, Haïti, Indes occ. Danoises, Argentine, Brésil, Chili, Luxembourg Pays sous statut colonial: Tunisie, Comores, Congo, Porto Rico, Érythrée

▫ European Commercial Treaty System 1891-92 ▫ The American spectre There remains one last option: to strive towards a Central European Customs

Union, that the Western states would join sooner or later, whether they like it or not. (...) The goal would be to create an economic unity that would be equal, perhaps even superior, to the American. Within this union there would be no backward, stagnant and unproductive regions anymore. (...) At the same time the sharpest sting would be taken out of the nationalist hatred of nations. (...) What prevents the nations from trusting each other, to lean on each other, (…) are only indirectly questions of power, of imperialism and expansion: fundamentally they are economic questions. If the European economy merges into a Community, and that will happen sooner than we think, so will politics as well … Walter Rathenau, Dec. 1913

• The pacifist voice Society for the Promotion of Permanent and Universal

Peace 1816 Sir Joseph R. Seeley: a European federation along a global

‘Greater Britain’ federal state (1871)

Ligue internationale de la paix 1867 (Frédéric Passy) Société française pour l’arbitrage entre les Nations, 1870

Ligue internationale de la paix et de la liberté (Genève, 1867, Charles Lemonnier)

In order to be really vigorous and effectual, such a system absolutely requires a federation of the closer kind; that is, a federation not after the model of the late German Bund, but after the model of the United States, — a federation with a complete apparatus of powers, legislative, executive and judicial, and raised above all dependence upon the State governments. (…) The indispensable condition of success in such a system is that the power of levying troops be assigned to the federation only, and be absolutely denied to the individual States.

• Peace by law ▫ International law securing peace between

‘civilized’ nations ▫ Laws of war Peace Conference The Hague 1899

▫ Legal foundations for a European union John Seeley

James Lorimer: a European federation the ‘domestic analogy’

Johann Caspar Bluntschli: a European confederation Gaston Isambert, Projet d’organisation politique

d’une confédération européenne ▫ Executive; International force; incl. Russia and GB

For precluding war it is not sufficient that the power of justice should be a little greater than the power of the disputing parties. Justice must be so overwhelmingly superior that resistance may be out of the question.

• Regional (imperial) federations ▫ Mitteleuropa Paul de Lagarde Constantin Frantz Friedrich Naumann

▫ Multi-ethnic federations in Central and Eastern

Europe Adam Czartoryski; Miklós Wesselényi; Lajos Kossuth; Aurel Popovici, 1906 (Austro-) Marxists

WW I: Europe redrawn

• Ruhr-crisis

▫ Nobel Price for Peace 1925 and 1926 for the architects of the peace

From left to right, Gustav Stresemann, Austen Chamberlain and Aristide Briand during the Locarno negotiations

The war has taught us one thing, namely, that a common fate binds us together. If we go under, we go under together. If we wish to recover, we cannot do so in conflict with each other, but only by working together.

Gustav Stresemann, The Times, 2 Dec. 1925, 16

International context

• New international institutions: League of Nations, International Court of Justice; self-determination …

• Revanchism and striving towards regional alliances ▫ Little Entente (Yugoslavia, Rumania,

Czechoslovakia) ▫ Intermare (Polish)

• German attempts to gain ▫ International recognition and recovery ▫ Reconciliation with France ▫ A European construction as condition for peace

and economic recovery ▫ [Rapallo/ Ruhr-crisis]

• ‘The spirit of Locarno’

Dreams of Europe, dreams of peace? • New pacifism ▫ Socialist anti-nationalist and anti-imperialist

revolution Jules Romains, Joseph Caillaux

▫ New European pacifism Louise Weiss, L’Europe nouvelle; Luigi Enaudi, … Alfred Nossig, European Peace Association (1923)

▫ Hope in League of nations (platform for European thinking) Komitee für die Interessengemeinschaft

europäischer Völker (1924; Komitee für europäische Verständigung, 1927)

• Decline and palingenetic rebirth Rudolf Pannwitz, Die Krisis der europäischen

Kultur, 1917 Karl Anton Rohan, Carl Schmitt, Malaparte, … Europäische Kulturbund 1922 / Fédération des Unions

intellectuelles 1923; Europäische Revue / Revue européenne

Abendland-movement

In order to avoid if not the annihilation of Europe then at least its humiliation, [Europe] should close ranks and organize itself as the United States of Europe. Hence we will have the number and we would be able to maintain the prestige of Europe and of Christianity in front of the yellow [races]. Godefroid Kurth, 1918/19

• Paneuropa (Richard N. Coudenhove-Kalergi) Collaboration between European states Solid economic base: custom’s union Eurafrique

▫ Dr. C.F. Heerfordt: Une Europe nouvelle, 1924; 1926): including GB, British dominions, USA

• Regional and economic/ industrial collaboration ▫ Central European economic Union (Elemér Hantos) ▫ European Custom’s Union (1925) ▫ European cartels

• The Briand Plan (Discours People’s League 5 September 1929)

I believe that a sort of federal bond should exist between the nations geographically gathered as European countries; these nations should, at any moment, have the possibility of establishing contact, of discussing their interests, of adopting common resolutions, of creating amongst themselves a bond of solidarity that allows them, on suitable occasions, to face up to serious circumstances, in case they arise. (…) Evidently, the association will take place mainly in the economic domain: this is the most pressing question...

Crisis • New boost to search for ‘European’ solutions to

the economic crisis ▫ ‘Keynesian’ planned labour politics focused on

Europe: ILO, Francis Delaisi, International labour movements

• Eurafrica/ Atlantropa One could conceive a federation of these European countries,

a federation limited to the colonization of Africa. (…) A kind of federal committee of administration could have two important features: firstly, to pursue, in general, the white civilizing mission through protecting and educating the blacks, and secondly to develop the agricultural and mineral richness of these immense territories through major works, with broad views and considerable capital investments (Jules Destrée, 1931)

Crisis • Small state economic co-operation ▫ E. g. Oslo-states

• Monetary co-operation ▫ Bloc d’or (1933)

• Eurofascism and Euronazism ▫ Eurofascism: a Europe based on nation-states and

common fascistic values

▫ Euronazism An ‘organic’, hierarchical Europe

on the basis of race and nation A European Groβraumwirtschaft A Planned economy Monetary union (common financial policy, indexation, …) A ‘labour’ standard

instead of gold standard Germany as sole real ‘European’ nation

La France européenne, 1941; 1942

Europe Pacified

• Pacification and containment through the division of Europe/ Germany (‘Versailles with a vengeance’)

• Division of Europe through the Cold War Cf. OEEC (OECD) NATO, Warsaw Pact

• Recognition of SU safety ▫ Cf. Geneva Conference 1955; Ostpolitik; Helsinki

Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, 1975

L’Europe unifiée est l’exemple de la fausse bonne solution qui attire par son apparente simplicité (Rapport L. Blum-Picard, dec. 1943)

Establishment of European ‘communities’ • Marshal Plan : OEEC • The federalist chimera: the Council of Europe (1949) • Economic and political co-operation ▫ Comecon (1949) ▫ ECSC (1952), European court of justice (1952) ▫ Euratom and EEC (1957) AS Milward, ‘The European Rescue of the Nation State’ Economic boom ‘Années glorieuses’

Regulation of migration ▫ European Communities (1967)

Decolonization

• Decolonization parallel to European integration: interactions? ▫ Europe and Africa: Eurafrique as colonial project ▫ Immigration increased European diversity (after

increased homonenization) • European discourse of peace offers alternative

base for new ideology colonial amnesia

• Desintegration of the Soviet empire ▫ End of the Cold War

• Considerable reinforcement of European institutions ▫ °EU (Maastricht, 1993); European Monetary

Institute (EMI) European Central Bank; Euro (big success!)

▫ Europe (re-)unified?

• Paradoxical loss of significance and legitimation ▫ Legitimacy crisis ▫ Eurocrisis ▫ ‘International dwarf’ Treathened: Russia Refugee crisis

Thank you.