European Coasts of Bohemia

Front matter

Negotiating the Danube-Oder-Elbe Canal in a Troubled Twentieth Century

Jiří Janáč

This publication is made possible by: Eindhoven University of Technology, Foundation for the History of Technology and the Unger - Van Brero Fund.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 5

1 Introduction 9 Infrastructure Historiography 12 Canal as a Laboratory of Europe 20 Sources 24

2 Mittel-Europeanization on Waterways 27 On Mittel-Europeanization 28 Building Mitteleuropa on Waterways before Versailles 35 De-Austrianization: Shaping the Czechoslovak State 45 Mittel-Europeanization beyond the State? — 57 Conclusion 80

Chapter 1 Introduction

"This (the Danube Oder Elbe canal) is a European affair. It makes no sense as a national project. We cannot afford it; such a project is tens or hundreds of billions of crowns. If the European Union recognizes the project is reasonable and is ready to finance it, then it might be realized" Thus argued Pavel Drobil, Czech Environment Minister on August 16, 2010. Drobil agitated for a bold decision: Three months earlier, on May 26, 2010, the caretaker government of the Czech Republic, led by Prime Minister Jan Fischer, decided to extend the building ban in the corridor of the proposed route of the Danube-Oder-Elbe Canal.' The administration took the last possible opportunity to close the debate that had re-opened several years earlier when the Czech Republic entered the European Union (EU). Despite long-running controversy over the idea of building a canal, national authorities, sensing a great funding opportunity from the EU Cohesion Fund, revived the century-old vision of building a canal to link the Elbe, Oder, and Danube rivers.? The proponents saw the opportunity to correct a well-known mistake made by William Shakespeare, who in The Winters Tale famously (and inaccurately) refers to Bohemia as having a coastline. Proponents of the canal wanted to fulfill an old dream to situate Bohemia on European coasts.’

Responding to protests from ecological organizations and in an effort to firm up the idea, the proponents established an inter-sector governmental committee to evaluate the project.* Environmentalists countered that the canal’s construction would endanger water quality in all three river basins as well as their local water cycles. Sketching an image of a gigantic concrete trough slicing deep trenches

1 Czech newspapers such as the leading economic daily Hospodářské noviny, reported on the decision on 24 or 25 May. “Vlada schválila další ochranu pro území kanálu Dunaj-Odra-Labe, Hospodářské noviny, 24 May 2010.

2 “We count on an 85% contribution from the Cohesion Fund,’ said Viktor Meca of the Transport Ministry back in 2005. “Plánovaná stavba kanálu ohrozí přírodu“ Hospodářské noviny, 13 May 2005.

3 Not surprisingly, this error is extremely popular among historians — one of the best works on Czech history available in English, written by Derek Sayer, guotes it directly in the title. So does an article on the Czechoslovak naval fleet in the interwar period. In this book, such an allusion seems even more appropriate — indeed, the only coastlines of the Czech lands are the coasts of Europe. Derek Sayer, The Coasts of Bohemia: A Czech History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998); Stefan Albrecht, “Böhmen Liegt am Meer,” Ósterreichische Osthefte 46, no. 4 (2004): 515-534.

4 Czech Republic Government Resolution no. 561/2006 on the territorial development policy of the Czech Republic.

Vistula

Figure 1.1 - This map illustrates the location of the Danube-Oder-Elbe canal (DOE) in Europes natural river system. The red-dotted line indicates the European watershed, dividing the continent into a northern and a southern part. The DOE canal was designed to overcome this watershed. Source: Drawn by the author [Jiří Janáč].

through the landscape, opponents ofthe project argued that, once constructed, the canal would deprive the lower Morava-Danube junction of its natural cleansing and flood-control capacity. The projected canal would cause the Morava floodplain and the Oder meanders to vanish from the map altogether. Furthermore, the environmentalists felt that river transport would fail to be competitive with other modern modes of freight transportation, thus removing the very economic justification for the potential natural hazards.° Paradoxically, the canal promoters’ main argument for constructing the canal had been environmental. They saw the proposed waterway as a tool of complex water management using natural forces while simultaneously stabilizing the water balances; it would secure optimal conditions for the area's sustainable development. The canal, they said, would furthermore dramatically diminish air pollution by reducing road traffic in the area.^

5 Milan Janák, Kanál Dunaj-Odra-Labe: příležitost, nebo hrozba? Stanovisko Koalice pro život řek Dunaje, Odry a Labe (Brno: Hnutí Duha, 2004). 6 See the document prepared by Ekotrans Moravia in 1990: “Vodní cesta Dunaj-Odra-Labe, příspěvek k

Both groups sought to mobilize the European authorities i.e. the EU. Environmentalists referred to Brussels, proposing the unification of national legislation and standards in accession countries. With regard to water bodies, such aims were articulated in the Water Framework Directive of 2000." On the other hand, the canal promoters pointed to the European Commission White Paper on transport, a document outlining key priorities for transport policy from 2001 to 2010. This document stated that a key aim was to foster waterway transport as a dynamic alternative in a sustainable transport chain, and considered the canal project worthy of additional study? As a prospective crucial element of the envisioned European waterway network, the Danube-Oder-Elbe canal was included in the Czech Republics EU accession treaty.’

Not only the people involved viewed the canal project as a truly European affair. On second glance, Minister Drobil's perspective was indeed correct. The canal, designed to overcome the main European watershed between three European seas, had never been an exclusively national affair. For most ofthe twentieth century, the entire canal route was situated within a single state (the Austrian Empire, Czechoslovakia, and, for a few years, the Third Reich), but because of the international nature of water bodies, the canals planning had never been never a matter of national policy. By connecting the two rivers, the canal would establish a network stretching across large parts of the continent. Indeed, the twentieth-century history of the Danube- Oder-Elbe Canal project, first enacted by a special law in 1901, records the history of an emerging waterway network in Europe, often imagined but never realized. These plans tell a story of alignment between various perceived regional and national interests and other transnational (border-crossing) geopolitical frames. The canal was never just a canal. It featured in the successive dreams of Mitteleuropa (Central Europe), Grossraumwirtschaft, Sovietisation, and Europeanization, all of which embodied the wishes of various powers to control the region.

The canal, never built but debated for over a century, provides an excellent opportunity to study the intermeshing of historical ideas of a region, nation, and Europe not as abstract ideals but as a concrete project. This book focuses on how evropské integritě" (MZA, H42, b. 338).

7 Maria Kaika, "Ihe Water Framework Directive: A New Directive for a Changing Social, Political and Economic European Framework, European Planning Studies 11, no. 3 (2003): 299-316.

8 European Commission, White Paper: European Transport Policy for 2010: Time to Decide (Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 2001), http://ec.europa.eu/transport/ strategies/doc/2001 white paper/Ib com 2001 0370 en.pdf. 13-14. Accessed 26 May 2008.

9 Treaty Concerning the Accession of the Czech Republic, the Republic of Estonia, the Republic of Cyprus, the Republic of Latvia, the Republic of Lithuania, the Republic of Hungary, the Republic of Malta, the Republic of Poland, the Republic of Slovenia, and the Slovak Republic to the European Union, (European Parliament, 2003), http://www.europarl.europa.eu/enlargement new/treaty/default en.htm. Accessed 25 May 2007.

and why a single waterway situated within the Czech borders was linked to creating these ideals and frameworks, deeply embedded in the geopolitical agendas behind them. Czech hydraulic engineers who promoted the idea and worked on the canal design claimed and mobilized these political frameworks to get the canal built. They offer an excellent entry into the case, articulating relations between various frameworks. Therefore, besides looking at the history of waterway networks, the thesis will also explore the role of experts.

Infrastructure Historiography

The literature on the Danube-Oder-Elbe canal project is rich and has touched on several aspects. Nevertheless, the scholarship shows some major gaps. From the institutional history perspective, the canal was studied as case study of two NGOs involved in its preparation.” Regional historians have also devoted attention to the various canal plans in the local context." Other studies have viewed the canal as an example of political bargaining between Czechoslovakia and its neighbors, including the Third Reich with its Nazi racial policy against the Czech nation." In a laudable effort to see the inter-war canal debate as the creation of Central Europe, another study depicts the issue as a conflict of contradictory national interests." Still another attempt, though modest in its achievements, has sought to apply an environmental history perspective and inquire into the relations between the canal project and the natural environment. Unfortunately, the author Josef Bartoš has refrained from applying any theoretical concepts, simply condemning the project as a threat to nature." Most commonly, the canal’s histories have been written by

10 Both articles follow the narrative contained in the archives. Kateřina Smutná, “Podíl Společnosti dunajsko-oderského průplavu na na přípravě prüplavního propojení Labe, Odry a Dunaje Dějiny věd

a techniky 1989, no. 4 (1989): 223-235; Zdeněk Bičík, “Spolek pro stavbu labsko-oderského průplavu v Pardubicích, in Plavba a obchod po Labi: sborník příspěvků z 1. mezin. symposia o dějinách labské plavby v Děčíně 1969, ed. Helena Smíšková and Miloslav Košťál, Rozpravy Nár. techn. muzea v Praze (Prague: Národní technické muzeum, 1971), 47-53.

11 Mostly regarding consequent spatial planning issues. Josef Bartoš, “Projekty průplavu Odra-Labe- Dunaj na střední Moravě v letech 1938-1945, Střední Morava 6, no. 11 (2000): 37-46; Josef Bartoš, “Město Olomouc a projekty kanálu Odra-Labe-Dunaj,’ Střední Morava 7, no. 12 (2001): 17-26.

12 Andělín Grobelný, “Projekty odersko-dunajského průplavu a československo-německá jednání v meziválečném období, Ostrava: Sborník příspěvků k dějinám a výstavbě města, no. 10 (1979): 312-334; Andělín Grobelný, “Místo odersko-dunajského průplavu v nacistických projektech přestavby vnitrozemské vodní sítě v letech 1939-1941 Časopis Slezského muzea 29, no. 1B (1980): 231-241.

13 Ivan Jakubec, “Idea dunajsko-oderského průplavu v 19. a 20. století a její proměny; in Integration und Desintegration in Mitteleuropa. Plane und Realitüt, ed. Marcella Rossová (Prague; München, 2009), 235-256. 14 Josef Bartoš, “Historické varianty spojení řek Odry, Labe a Dunaje, in Vodní cesta D-O-L. Historie, ekologie, krajina: historická a současná studie a výběr příspěvků ze semináře Vodní cesta D-O-L: Ekonomie, ekologie, krajina v rámci EDO Olomouc 2003, ed. Michal Bartoš (Olomouc: Univerzita Palackého v Olomouci, 2004), 7-37.

engineers, who focus on technicalities and boast the project's positive effects. They claim that time and time again the canal fell victim to ignorance, narrow-mindedness, and politicians incompetence." These papers are full of technical details and follow the logic of linear and unidirectional technological progress, which acts in these writings as a major force behind changes in canal design. Altogether, a lot of paper has been filed in this case, building historical arguments for or against the canal project. However, some crucial questions remained unanswered or, more precisely, have not been asked.

Existing accounts of the canals past suffer from two biases which have been ingrained in waterway histories in general. Although the particular research field has been out of fashion since World War I due to waterways “unattractive and oldfashioned image,’ there is a growing body of works dealing with or closely related to inland navigation.'* Given the truly international character of rivers that flow without respect for borders, the national bias of the majority of these historical writings is quite remarkable. Thus far neither the border-crossing nature of rivers nor the border-crossing aspects of inland navigation have been given their rightful place in the narratives." This paradox can be partly explained by examining the structure of waterway networks. Unlike other forms of transport, navigable rivers and canals never became a completely integrated network; therefore, the economic impact of canals was mostly regional.'* However, “methodological

15 They provided a standardized “promoting progress against the odds” narrative. Most were published

in periodicals; the most notable exceptions being the following monographs, all written by hydraulic engineers actually working on the DOE canal projects: Jaroslav Kubec, Josef Podzimek, and František Nepil, Křižovatka tří moří: vodní koridor Dunaj-Odra-Labe (Prague: Your ARTillery, 2007); Josef Bartovský, Vodní cesty a vodohospodářské plánování v Čechách a na Moravě. Přehled a bilance práce dvou generací, další úkoly dvouletka a pětiletka (Prague: Společnost Dunajsko-oderského průplavu, 1946); Jaroslav Čábelka, “Velký průplav v srdci Evropy - vodohospodářsko dopravní soustava Dunaj-Odra-Labe;' in Plavba a obchod po Labi: sborník příspěvků z 1. mezin. symposia o dějinách labské plavby v Děčíně 1969, ed. Helena Smíšková and Miloslav Košťál, Rozpravy Nár. techn. muzea v Praze (Prague: Národní technické muzeum, 1971), 11-40; Antonín Smrček, Nástin historie vodní cesty Dunaj - Odra - Labe v souvislosti s úpravou řeky Moravy (Prague: privately printed, 1940).

16 Gerald Crompton, “The Tortoise and the Economy’: Inland Waterway Navigation in International Economic History,’ Journal of Transport History 25, no. 2 (2004): 1-22, here 15.

17 This is the case with general transport history. Gijs Mom, “What Kind of Transport History Did We Get?” Journal of Transport History 24, no. 2 (2003): 121-138; Simon P. Ville, Transport and the Development of the European Economy, 1750-1918 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990). An example of the persistence of such attitudes can be found in: Gerald Crompton, ed., Canals and Inland Navigation, Studies in transport history (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1996).

18 Gerard Turnbull, “Canals, Coal and Regional Growth during the Industrial Revolution,” The Economic History Review 40, no. 4 (1987): 537-560. For the highly challenged process of integration of the Danube and Rhine river basins into a single waterway system, see Guido Thiemeyer, “Die Integration der Donau- Schifffahrt als Problem der europáischen Zeitgeschichte; Archiv fiir Sozialgeschichte 49, no. 2 (2009): 303-318; Guido Thiemeyer and Isabel Tólle, "Supranationalitát im 19. Jahrhundert? Die Beispiele der Zentralkomission für die Rheinschiffahrt und des Octroivertrages 1804-1851,” Journal of European Integration History 17, no. 2 (2011): 177-196.

nationalism" also played its part; consider for instance Eckoldťs compendium of German rivers.” Eckoldt included the Elbe and other streams flowing across various national boundaries throughout the last millennia, yet he treated German hydraulic engineering as a relatively autonomous and from the rest of the world isolated phenomenon.

Only recently have water histories taken a transnational perspective and started to follow their research objects across political boundaries. These recent studies include the examination of transnational organizations like Thiemeyer' study of the Danube governance, which analyzes the transformation of river systems into a transnational infrastructural network.? Such a transnational approach to history allows historians to reflect on and go beyond the confines of the nation. While the notion of “transnational" often acquires various and sometimes conflicting meanings, the approachs scholarly contribution remains undisputed.?' Nations are not a natural form of the modern world nor are they an inevitable analytical frame of historical process. With respect to literature, the notion of transnational in this book is important but is employed rather implicitly to describe processes cutting across national borders.

The second bias in the current conceptualization of canals and navigable rivers as an economic activity of inland water transport (or inland waterborne traffic - IWT) has only reinforced the first bias. Best examples would be works from the 1990s, an edited volume on the economic performance of the IWT sector in times of industrialization by Armstrong and Kunz and an analysis of tariff policy on the Elbe during in the inter-war period by Jakubec. In the first case, the nation state forms the unit of analysis, while in the second, nation states are main actors. Both authors focus on the economic aspects of operating inland navigation, while leaving aside other facets of waterways.”

However, as the review of such canal histories shows, waterways cannot be reduced to simple carriers of goods. Even if understood as transport infrastructures, the analysis of their performance would have to include issues such as technological equipment, interferences with other water uses or competition with other forms of transport. In order to decipher the complexity of actors and interests

19 Martin Eckoldt and Hans-Georg Braun, Flüsse und Kanále. Die Geschichte der deutschen Wasserstrassen (Hamburg: DSV-Verlag, 1998).

20 Thiemeyer, “Die Integration der Donau-Schifffahrt als Problem der europáischen Zeitgeschichte?

21 Erik van der Vleuten, "Technological History and the Transnational Challenge: Meanings, Promises, Pitfalls Technology and Culture, no. 4 (2008).

22 Andreas Kunz and John Armstrong, eds., Inland Navigation and Economic Development in Nineteenth- Century Europe (Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1995); Ivan Jakubec, Zeleznice a labská plavba ve střední Evropě, 1918-1938: dopravněpolitické vztahy Československa, Německa a Rakouska v meziválečném období (Prague: Karolinum, 1997).

involved in waterway construction and operation, and to identify major actors in the process, science and technology studies provide a useful instrument. The Large Technical System (LTS) concept is based on the idea that technological systems are complex entities consisting of technical artifacts, institutional and legislative frameworks, and other components. This concept was originally coined by Thomas Hughes and later adapted to encompass the key collective actors engaging with the system in its sociotechnical complexity. Thus it does not distinguish between traditional analytical categories of a priori technical, social and political aspects of the system. There are several examples available to conceptualize nationally framed water-management systems in terms of LTS. Van der Vleuten and Disco proved that such an approach is not only feasible, but could be extremely valuable.? In water management as well as in inland navigation, key actors in the system development process, so called system builders, had to combine myriads of components to make entire water management systems or shipping on a waterway feasible and profitable.

One more category should be added to the sociotechnical: Nature. From the mid-twentieth century onwards, waterways received some attention in the context of environmentalism as elements of the natural environment.” Environmentally informed writings on rivers as waterways have generally addressed regulations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the subsequent excessive harnessing of the power of rivers in the mid-1900s.? These works tend to tell the story of progress, the technological taming of former wild streams. However, as Sarah Pritchard demonstrated in her masterpiece on the post 1945 history ofthe river Rhone, nature was not simply tamed - it afforded material constraints to technological development and use." Furthermore, she shows how changes in political discourse on rivers and water influenced the continuous material transformation of the Rhone. Pritchard developed a synthesis of LTS tradition with environmental history, situating nature as an independent phenomenon on a par with sociotechnical systems. Building on similar arguments, some scholars positioned the study of waterways within an emerging historical sub-discipline of water history — which, in their approach, roughly stands

23 Erik van der Vleuten and Cornelis Disco, “Water Wizards: Reshaping Wet Nature and Society, History © Technology 20, no. 3 (2004): 291-309; Cornelis Disco and Erik van der Vleuten, "The Politics of Wet System Building: Balancing Interests in Dutch Water Management from the Middle Ages to the Present; Knowledge, Technology © Policy 14, no. 4 (2002): 21-40.

24 Disco and van der Vleuten, "The Politics of Wet System Building," 39.

25 The most notable examples related to Europe are: David Blackbourn, The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape, and the Making of Modern Germany (New York: Norton, 2006); Christof Mauch and Thomas Zeller, Rivers in History: Perspectives on Waterways in Europe and North America (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008).

26 Sara B. Pritchard, Confluence. The Nature of Technology and the Remaking of the Rhóne (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011).

for nature." It is in this stream of scholarship that this book is situated.

Indeed, the two biases, lack of cultural perspective and methodological nationalism, can be overcome if we apply the concept of co-construction. The move towards sociotechnical analysis required the development of new analytical tools. In order to understand the interaction between cultural processes and technological artifacts, scholars in science and technology studies adopted a linguistic approach. They see discursive practices of historical actors as crucial variables in providing meaning to the material world. By deriving their meaning from culture, technological artifacts actually become an active part of it. Existing literature focuses predominantly on "co-construction" of national identities and symbolic technological projects, not offering any solid methodology.” The search to apply this approach to waterways leads us back to Pritchard. While she focused on co-construction of the Rhone and postwar France, this book focuses on the Donau Oder Elbe canal (DOE) and Europe. The designers of the DOE, as well as those transforming the Rhone, had to align changing discourses with technological changes and the natural environment of respective streams.

The history of waterways forms part of a broader history of European infrastructures. In 2005, Thomas J. Misa and Johan Schot articulated a powerful historiographical argument in favor of studying technological change, including infrastructures such as waterways, as a means of understanding the formation of Europe. In order “to situate technology in a broader social and cultural analysis of Europe, they proposed the concept of "hidden (technological) integration/disintegration" and expressed it in contrast to the general image of European integration as a nation-states-led process of political and economic convergence starting in the immediate post-war period. From the position of transnational history, Misa and Schot challenged both the spatio-temporal framework of the process and the position of nation states and their political representations as the basic units of inquiry and virtually the only relevant actors in the study of integration. At the same time, they challenged the widespread assumption that connected the integration of the continent with the emergence of the EU and its predecessors.”

27 Terje Tvedt et al., A History of Water, 3 vols. (London: I.B. Tauris, 2006).

28 Schueler discusses at length the theoretical debates behind the issue of co-construction as well as existing historical literature on the topic; Judith Schueler, Materializng Identity: The Co-Construction of the Gotthard Railway and Swiss National Identity (Amsterdam: Aksant, 2008), 28.

29 Thomas Misa and Johan Schot, “Inventing Europe: Technology and the Hidden Integration of Europe,’ History © Technology 21, no. 1 (2005): 1-19, here 3. See also Johan Schot, "Transnational Infrastructures and the Origins of European Integration;' in Materializing Europe: Transnational Infrastructures and the Project of Europe, ed. Alexander Badenoch and Andreas Fickers (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 82-112.

Introduction 17

Figures 1.2 - The conflicting image of waterways as industrial highways and clean technology. The first image, used on the cover of the leaflet published by Ostrava mining company in 1966 to promote the construction of the canal emphasizes the industrial background landscape. The second photograph shows the Elbe meandering through Northern Bohemia around 1946. Source: Ostrava hledá přístup k moři (Ostrava Seeks Access to Sea, 1966, NAČR, FMZO, odd. 20, b. 65); NAČR, CPU, b. 96.

Misa and Schoťs starting point was that the processes of integration (as well as fragmentation) on the continent began much earlier than the standard narrative on European integration suggests. Indeed, for instance, the integration of infrastructures (including waterways) on the continent is a long-term process dating back to at least the mid-1800s. Furthermore, integration processes were driven and performed with different visions of integration in mind, which means it is not possible to work with any "pre-defined" spatial or territorial concept of Europe. Finally, transnational collaboration, which carried forward the integration processes, was frequently pursued by non-state actors; in the field of technology, these were mostly expert networks whose activities were not fully under the control of national authorities. Therefore, while the role of nation states must not be underplayed, its assumed primacy does need to be questioned.

Misa and Schot tried to direct the history of technology towards a study of the “emergence of Europe” in the twentieth century as an outcome of contested processes of linking and delinking infrastructures, and the circulation and appropriation of knowledge and artifacts. Emphasizing the non-theological character of the integration process, they proposed looking at the various technology developments as Europe-building practices, which enacted different and often conflicting visions of Europe. Interpreting the linking and delinking in this way enables the researcher to see the process of co-constructing European polity and identity. From this perspective, political post-war integration represented just one episode in the long-term process of the construction of Europe and one particular vision of Europe.

This new vision on how to write European history drew on new developments in infrastructure studies. Following the “transnational turn" that has taken place in historiography since the 1990s, historians of infrastructures have shifted their research focus to the formation of transnational networks and systems. Until the late 1990s, almost all the existing literature on infrastructures in Europe was confined to the national perspective and mostly offered accounts of negotiations among the perspectives and interests of great powers - namely, Germany, Britain, and France - thus excluding large parts of Europe.”

Over the past seven years or so, a distinctive body of literature on "transnational infrastructures and the shaping of contemporary Europe" emerged, to which this research aims to contribute. Historians connected with the Tensions of Europe research network have made significant contributions to this subfield of the history of infrastructures and the history of Europe. Erik van der Vleuten and Arne Kaijser edited a seminal collection concentrating on the infrastructural networking processes in Europe since the 1850s. They studied infrastructures such as the large technical system,?' based on the idea that infrastructures are complex entities consisting of technical artifacts, institutional and legislative frameworks, and other components.” Although their study claimed to have a European focus, it nevertheless mainly included case studies from the western (in the Cold War sense) part of the continent.? The book helped develop a new field and identified promising research sites - most prominently international organizations.

A group of researchers based at Eindhoven University in the Netherlands launched a successor project (the TIE project) focusing directly on the role of transnational organizations in the development of European transport systems."

30 This shift to a transnational perspective was inspired by globalization studies and the concept of a networked society. Armand Mattelart, Networking the World, 1794-2000 (Minneapolis, Mn.: University of Minnesota Press, 2000); Paul Edwards, "Infrastructure and Modernity: Force, Time, and Social Organization in the History of Sociotechnical Systems,’ in Modernity and technology, ed. Thomas J. Misa, Philip Brey, and Andrew Feenberg (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003), 185-226.

31 Erik van der Vleuten, "Understanding Networked Societies: Two Decades of Large Technical Systems Studies; in Networking Europe: transnational infrastructures and the shaping of Europe, 1850-2000, ed. Erik van der Vleuten and Arne Kaijser, History © Technology (Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History Publications, 2006), 279-314.

32 Thomas Parke Hughes, Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983).

33 Erik van der Vleuten and Arne Kaijser, eds., Networking Europe: Transnational Infrastructures and the Shaping of Europe 1850-2000 (Sagamore Beach, MA: Science and History Publications, 2006).

34 The “Transnational Infrastructures and the Rise of Contemporary Europe" research project has a well

This project studied organizations such as the European Conference of Transport Ministers (ECMT) or the Bureau International des Autoroutes as arenas in which international collaboration and transnational, "European" standards were articulated and negotiated. These international organizations, which were dedicated to infrastructural integration, aimed to facilitate the construction of trans-border interconnections and acted at continental or regional level as "system builders;" that is, crucial actors who aligned diverse interests and technical constraints towards realization of the integrated system. At these organizations, different interests — internationalist, nationalist and sectoral — were aligned and negotiated, together with diverging perceptions and visions of Europe. Recently published results offer an alternative history of European infrastructures not based on the idea of dominating nation states and their foreign policies or on tracing the prehistory of post-war EEC/EU common transport policy. They tell the story of the contested shaping of European systems and their governance.”

The study of European system builders revealed crucial aspects of the construction of transnational infrastructural systems in Europe. The most critical factor in establishing the system involved setting common parameters. However, this was never simply a technical issue, as various social, cultural, and political factors usually come into play. The parameters comprised a set of measures aimed at facilitating the trans-border operation of a given infrastructural system. This not only required the simple material inter-linking of existing national or local/ regional systems and their technical compatibility, but also the establishment of transnational regulatory regimes.

Furthermore, the negotiations at these various organizations also involved the scope of the integration; that is, the spatial extent of the network. To some degree, this was a consequence of negotiations with various conflicting interests and technological demands. Many European international organizations embodied and promoted a certain wider geopolitical agenda; typical examples are the ECMT or maintained and regularly updated website: http://www.tie-project.nl/. Accessed 2 May 2012.

35 The Eindhoven group produced a series of articles, edited volumes, and books (PhD theses). See, among others, Erik van Der Vleuten et al., "Europe's System Builders: The Contested Shaping of Transnational Road, Electricity and Rail Networks,’ Contemporary European History 16, no. 3 (2007): 321-347. A special issue of Journal of Transport History entitled "European Infrastructures,” edited by Johan Schot, 28, no. 2 (2007); an edited volume by Alexander Badenoch and Andreas Fickers, Materializing Europe: Transnational Infrastructures and the Project of Europe (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). And five monographs: Vincent Lagendijk, Electrifying Europe: The Power of Europe in the Construction of Electricity Networks, (Amsterdam: Aksant, 2008); Frank Schipper, Driving Europe: Building Europe on Roads in the Twentieth Century (Amsterdam: Aksant, 2008). Irene Anastasiadou, Constructing Iron Europe: Transnationalism and railways in the Interbellum (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012); Suzanne Lommers, Europe - On Air: Interwar Projects for Radio Broadcasting (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012); Schueler, Materializng Identity: The Co-Construction of the Gotthard Railway and Swiss National Identity (Amsterdam: Aksant, 2008).

Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon), which operated on opposite sides of the Iron Curtain during the Cold War.

However, the politically induced territorial delimitation of the developed system did not necessarily have the desired effect. Besides the official goals declared by the given international body, experts participating at these organizations pushed their own specific agenda, for which Schot and Lagendijk coined the term "technocratic internationalism.” Having to cope with two limitations — one concerning their actual capability to influence the general mission of these organizations and the other related to the minimal decision-making power of these organizations — experts had developed strategies to pursue their own interests. In particular, they attempted to present their agenda as purely technical in order to keep politicians and diplomats disinterested. These experts preferred to advance their own vision of the network, based on the presumption that inherent factors of each networktechnology should delimit the final shape of the network and not politics. This leads us to the question of how the present book contributes to this new historiography on the co-construction of infrastructures and Europe.