Histories of European Integration and Disintegration

Catalog description

As Monty Python put it, European history is a long story of people finding ever more creative ways to slaughter each other. Europe’s present, however, is marked by the remarkable feat of European integration, which since World War II has made peace rather than war the norm. This recent integration of the continent not only demands historical explanation. It also offers an opportunity to reflect on the deeper forces of integration and disintegration that have shaped the continent in the last few centuries. This course places European integration in a much wider perspective, including that of the opposite tendency, towards periodic disintegration. Readings focus on important classic texts as well as the best recent works of European history that deal with unifying and fragmenting tendencies in the development of the continent’s institutions, politics, culture, social life, regions, and economic and class structure.