Europe - on Air

Front matter

Interwar Projects for Radio Broadcasting

Suzanne Lommers

AMSTERDAM

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 5 List of Illustrations 11 Abbreviations 13

1 Introduction: European Broadcasting Visions 15 Unraveling European Broadcasting 21 Transnational Infrastructures in Europe 24 Broadcasting and Society-Building 29 Methodology and Outline 35

2 Elites on the Barricades for Broadcasting 41 Pioneering in the Private Sector 44 Lack of International Regulation 56 Establishing International Broadcasting Union 61 Conclusion 70

Chapter 1 Introduction European Broadcasting Visions

In 1944 the British, Belgian and Polish engineers Peter Pendleton Eckersley, Auguste Hubert and B. Tenenbaum together sought to re-design the existing but by then paralyzed organization of broadcasting in Europe.! The world was at war and the Allied and Axis powers had been fighting one another with the help of modern technologies like radio broadcasting, wireless telephony, and telegraphy. Eckersley, Hubert, and Tenenbaum proposed a ready-made plan for a new start for broadcasting directly after the end of the war. Their “European Broadcasting Alliance” plan described in detail a broadcasting infrastructure that assured free expression to the various rival groups in Europe.” The three men chose the name of their plan with care. It expressed their belief in a diversity of opinions, cultures, and peoples, while pushing for an alliance between Allied and Axis powers that were using broadcasting to attack each other. The combination of diversity and alliance formed the core of the European Broadcasting Alliance plan.

The plan claimed that diversity is served and alliance is built “...ifevery European could be made conscious of his status as a European - a member of a nation within a wider group of nations”? This suggests that Eckersley, Hubert, and Tenenbaum considered it important that radio listeners in Europe were already aware, or would become aware, of their participation and inclusion in European society. In their eyes, broadcasting had an important and powerful role to play in creating this awareness. They therefore designed an internationally owned and operated broadcasting infrastructure that covered all corners of Europe.*

1 The designers of the plan had impressive international curricula vitae. Between 1919 and 1923 Eckersley was head of the experimental section of the design department at the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company, and from 1923 to 1929 the first Chief Engineer of the BBC. Both at the BBC and internationally he widely influenced technological broadcasting developments. Hubert was a Belgian broadcasting pioneer and administrator of Radio-Belgique S.A. He was associated with SAIT (a Belgian Operating Company), was President of the International Radio Maritime Committee, and honorary member of the International Broadcasting Union. Tenenbaum was a Polish radio engineer, of whom little is known. S.n., “Mr. P. P. Eckersley: First Chief Engineer of the B.B.C.? The Times, March 15, 1963; Asa Briggs, “Peter Pendleton Eckersley,’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biographies, 2008, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/37385; S.n., “Real International Broadcasting: Proposals for a European Alliance” Wireless World 50, no. 8 (1944): 234-235.

2 ITU, “Un réseau international de radiodiffusion en Europe; Journal des Télécommunications 12, no. 5 (1945): 62.

3 S.n., “Real International Broadcasting,’ 234.

4 ITU, “Un réseau international de radiodiffusion en Europe’; S.n., “Real International Broadcasting”

The European Broadcasting Alliance plan was for an international European broadcasting network parallel to and explicitly separate from the national broadcasting systems already in place by the 1940s (Figure 1.1). The proposed international network consisted of a web of interconnected landlines, with Bern, Brussels, and Vienna as the main so-called International Radio Centers. Via these international landlines, broadcasters could easily exchange programs that at their destination would be broadcast to listeners by means of a coupling with the wireless national networks. Such a network enabled listeners everywhere in Europe to follow international events live via their radio sets. An immense short wave connection at Tangiers in Africa would in turn link the European network, which included Soviet Russia and Turkey, with the rest of the world, assuring the global diffusion of selected European programs. In the eyes of Eckersley, Hubert, and Tenenbaum, the international service should have precedence at all times over the national wireless services. They thus consciously foregrounded the international part of their plan, and their ideas of a European consciousness, above the national part.

The European Broadcasting Alliance plan circulated among governments and the international telecommunication community, but eventually failed. When the British government officially turned down the plan, British manufacturers had already proposed another plan.’ In this - “Post War European Broadcasting” - the manufacturers emphasized the inaccuracy of the pre-war broadcasting system that in their eyes had been heavily influenced by political considerations.f The allocation of frequencies on technical grounds should make it possible to avoid quarrelling over “national” channels. Frequencies should be allocated to stations on the basis of their fading radius, irrespective of nation-state boundaries. The power of the existing stations and the way their signals faded away as a result of geophysical circumstances, would then define the borders of Europe's nations.’ In such a way, technology rather than political, ideological, or cultural visions defined the boundaries of European countries.

5 It remains unclear why the 1944 plan failed, and was turned down by the British government. There is reason to believe that Eckersley’s reputation had become or had already been dubious for a while. In 1931 he and his new wife Frances Dorothy joined Oswald’s Mosley’s party. From 1935 onwards they spent their holidays in Germany “where they admired the progress that Germany was making under national socialism.” His wife stayed in Germany after the outbreak of war and would be put on trial in Britain after the war for her international radio activities for Germany. ITU, “Un réseau international de radiodiffusion en Europe”; Asa Briggs, The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom, Volume IIT: The War of Words (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 127n. Quoted from Briggs, “Peter Pendleton Eckersley.”

6 S.n., “Monthly Commentary: The Industry’s Plan for Broadcasting,” Wireless World 51, no. 9 (1945): 257. 7 S.n., “Plan for Europe: Broadcasting Allocations on Engineering Principles” Wireless World 51, no. 9 (1945): 258.

Figure 1.1 - The 1944 European Broadcasting Alliance proposal Source: “Un réseau international de radiodiffusion en Europe,’ Journal des Télécommunications 12, no. 5 (1945), 63.

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Figure 1.2 - Post War European Broadcasting Proposal of 1945 Source: S.n., “Plan for Europe: Broadcasting Allocations on Engineering Principles,’ Wireless World 51, 9 (1945), 261.

The manufacturers approach to broadcasting was technical, bearing in mind their economic motivation. The war was having a considerable impact on their activities. They not only experienced a shortage of labor and materials, but also “a lack of detailed knowledge on conditions of use for which their productions must be designed”? A sub-committee of the British Radio Equipment Manufacturers’ Association designed a plan to solve these war-driven problems. The Radio Industry Council, who finally issued the plan, was trying to avoid large discrepancies between post-war developments and pre-war technology. It wanted to guarantee the accuracy of the existing radio sets which had already been sold.’ The plan encouraged re-allocating the infrastructure of wireless long and medium wave broadcasting which had been disturbed by the war. This infrastructure was already in place in Europe, but would be modified via a different approach to that used in the interwar years (Figure 1.2). The plan tried to resolve in the best possible way the economic slump, warranting the production and market share of the British radio industry.

The 1945 plan took no consideration of European unification. It favored the national above the European despite focusing on all of Europe geographically. Every country would have to be provided with “two ‘national’ programmes, as well as a system of localised transmissions to suit the special needs of any important regions or language groups in each country" The manufacturers thus stressed the need to concentrate on the national as well as the regional and local communities within nation-states. Furthermore, a focus on the technical principles of broadcasting would enhance the quality of reception, provide a solution to interference, and would assure reception of foreign stations for each listener. Therefore listeners could only receive national programs from those foreign stations whose signals they managed to receive. The plan thus did not stipulate the need for reception of a station from each country in Europe, which also included Soviet Russia, Turkey, and all countries bordering the Mediterranean. The British manufacturers’ plan made the national and local significantly more important than international reception or a European broadcasting service. The 1944 and 1945 plans thus proposed a European agenda of a very different nature, making choices that related the creation of broadcasting to European unification efforts in a different way.

8 S.n., “Monthly Commentary,” 257.

9 Briggs shows how the Radio Industry Council in the area of television informed the Television Advisory Committee directly after the war “that it did not favour even minor changes in frequencies if they would mean that tuning changes had to be made to existing sets.” Briggs, The War of Words, quote 181, 169, 173-174.

10 S.n,. “Plan for Europe,” 258.

The 1944 and 1945 plans were the only two which spread to all corners of Europe with the aim of resolving the stalemate in broadcasting caused by the Second World War. Like the 1944 plan, for unknown reasons the 1945 plan failed as well. After the war, broadcasting organizations chose a third option, namely the establishment of two international non-governmental organizations who coordinated an international collaboration of national broadcasters. The Eastern European Organisation Internationale de Radiodiffusion (OIR, later to become OIRT when it started covering television as well) and the Western European Broadcasting Union continued the pre-war broadcasting of international collaboration coordinated by the International Broadcasting Union (IBU), albeit with some modifications." After the war, the EBU and the OIRT and their international networks, Intervision and Eurovision, divided the European landscape into an eastern and a western European bloc.” On January 1, 1993, this bloc was dissolved when the OIRT merged into the EBU, maintaining the name of the EBU and the Eurovision network.”

Like the 1944 and 1945 plans for post-war broadcasting, the EBU initiative made specific choices. These were stressed on the occasion of its twenty-fifth anniversary. The EBU projected its work as a simple programming and engineering job taking place in an environment of pragmatism. According to EBU president Sir Charles Curran, it was “by the scrupulous avoidance of ideologies that we have managed to build a cohesive organization in which the common interest serves to promote mutual tolerance and differences.’ His note should be seen within the context of the War of the Black Heavens that was the Cold War.’ Curran suggests that the EBU tried to stay outside this war by using a non-political and non-ideological approach but his remark nevertheless was political and ideological. The EBU saw itself as an expert organization that connected national differences to

11 For a discussion on the whereabouts of the development of the OIRT and EBU see: Andreas Fickers and Suzanne Lommers, “Eventing Europe: Broadcasting and the Mediated Performances of Europe,’ in Materializing Europe: Transnational Infrastructures and the Project of Europe, ed. Andreas Fickers and Alexander Badenoch (London: Palgrave, 2010), 236-237; Léo Wallenborn, “From IBU to EBU: The Great European Broadcasting Crisis (Part I)? EBU-Review 29 (January 1978): 25-34; Léo Wallenborn, “From IBU to EBU: The Great European Broadcasting Crisis (Part II) EBU-Review 29 (March 1978): 22-30; Charles E. Sherman, “Turmoil and Transition in International Broadcasting Organizations, 1938-50, Journal of Broadcasting 15, no. 3 (1971): 265-273.

12 Rüdiger Zeller, Die EBU - Union Européene de Radio-Télévision (UER) - European Broadcasting Union (EBU): Internationale Rundfunkkooperation im Wandel (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 1999), 38.

13 S.n., “Merger: 1 January 1993: A New Era for Eurovision,” EBU Dossiers: 50 Years of Eurovision, no. 1 (2004): 30-33.

14 EBU, 25 Years European Broadcasting Union (Geneva: EBU, 1974), 3.

15 Michael Nelson, War of the Black Heavens: The Battles of Western Broadcasting in the Cold War (London; Washington: Brassey’s, 1997).

common interests. It fostered the idea of a Europe of peacefully co-existing nation-states with differing traditions, political systems, and economic structures.'® The EBU combined the focus on building Europe through broadcasting as contained in the Broadcasting Alliance plan, emphasizing the technical aspects in the British manufacturers plan.

The intriguing question is why the two failed plans and the EBU related broadcasting initiative refer so explicitly to European unification and to the importance of a technical approach? The answer is that they were building on a rich interwar legacy in which both aspects were central. After all, the EBU took over the activities of the IBU created in 1925. This book can be read as a history of the IBU, but it is more than that. It focuses on initiatives to develop European broadcasting infrastructures. Infrastructure initiatives, not only for broadcasting but also for transport, energy and other communication technologies, are routinely ignored in economic, political and cultural histories of Europe.” In many of these studies, infrastructures are assumed to be there, reducing distance in time and space. Historians often perceive infrastructures as background factors. Thomas Misa and Johan Schot have argued that they should be foregrounded, and studied as vectors for a process they call “the hidden integration of Europe.’ In this process, technical organizations such as the IBU explicitly try to contribute to the construction of Europe through the development of European standards and networks. In this process they follow a strategy of technification or depolitization.!°

The central question in Europe - On Air is how and why those involved in transnational broadcasting tried to contribute to European unification in the interwar years. European unification can refer to any project or process, whether social, cultural, political, and/or economic, which actors articulated in European

16 EBU, 25 Years European Broadcasting Union, 4.

17 Some examples of histories that focus on other areas are: Eric Bussière, La France, la Belgique et lorganisation économique de l’Europe, 1918-1935 (Paris: Comité pour l’histoire économique et financière de la France, 1992); Patricia Clavin, The Great Depression in Europe, 1929-1939 (New York, N.Y.: St. Martin’s Press, 2000); Norman Davies, Europe: A History (London: Pimlico, 1997); Paul Dukes, ed., Frontiers of European culture (Lewiston: E. Mellen Press, 1996); David W. Ellwood, Rebuilding Europe: Western Europe, America and Postwar Reconstruction (London; New York: Longman, 1992); Mary Fulbrook, ed., Europe since 1945 (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Heikki Mikkeli, Europe as an Idea and an Identity (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998); Aviel Roshwald and Richard Stites, eds., European Culture in the Great War: The Arts, Entertainment, and Propaganda, 1914-1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

18 A noteworthy early exception is Albert Carreras, Andrea Giuntini, and Michèle Merger, eds., European Networks, 19th - 20th Centuries: New Approaches to the Formation of a Transnational Transport and Communications System, B8 Proceedings Eleventh International Economic History Congres Milan, September 1994 (Milan: Universita Bocconi, 1994).

19 Thomas Misa and Johan Schot, “Inventing Europe: Technology and the Hidden Integration of Europe. Introduction,” History and Technology 21, no. 1 (2005): 1-22.

terms. I will investigate the main question by focusing on five aspects: building new institutions such as the IBU; the creation of networks and standards; the rivalry amongst various broadcasting organizations in Europe; the attempt to save civilization by means of broadcasting; and finally the making and distribution of specific international programs. These five aspects represent the key areas where broadcasters and other interest groups made crucial choices that shaped the relationship between broadcasting and the process of European unification during the interwar years. The question remains, how do we research such a relationship?

Unraveling European Broadcasting

By following various broadcasting planners, this study examines broadcasting as an infrastructure. At first glance, people often relate broadcasting to entertainment and programs rather than to questions of infrastructure.” The Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History however defines broadcasting as a “means to send out sound and/or (motion) pictures by means of radio waves through space for reception by the general public”? Broadcasting serves as a point-to-mass medium connecting one point to a large mass of people within a circular area like the wireless connection of stations to home sets via long, medium and short waves. On occasion, broadcasting also connects point A to point B via a network such as Eurovision. Europe - On Air therefore regards broadcasting as a spatial and connective technology which joins up various places in Europe and by doing so

20 Fora historical evolution of the concept of infrastructures see: Dirk van Laak, “Infra-Strukturgeschichte, Geschichte und Gesellschaft 27 (2001): 367-393; Dirk van Laak, “Der Begriff ,,Infrastruktur”

und was er vor seiner Erfindung besagte, Archiv fiir Begriffsgeschichte 41 (1999): 280-294; Dirk van Laak, “Technological Infrastructure, Concepts and Consequences,” ICON Journal of the International Committee for the History of Technology 10 (2004): 53-64.

21 Andreas Fickers, “Broadcasting in The Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History, ed. Pierre-Yves Saunier and Akira Iriye (Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 106. Initially radio referred to wireless point-to-point communication, like wireless telegraphy, also known as radiotelegraphy or radiotelephony. Later radio became a means of point-to-mass communication, connecting one point to a mass of people. For a historical development of the definition of “radio” see: Susan Douglas, Inventing American Broadcasting, 1899-1922 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), viii-xix. As the definition in the Palgrave dictionary shows broadcasting nowadays includes television as well. Television developed

in a number of countries during the interwar years and provisions were made internationally to create standards that would facilitate cross-border experimentation. The main cross-border experiments with television would take place after the Second World War and thus falls outside the scope of this research. For the first multi-national cross-border experiments with television see: Andreas Fickers and Suzanne Lommers, “Eventing Europe: Broadcasting and the Mediated Performances of Europe,’ in Materializing Europe: Transnational Infrastructures and the Project of Europe, ed. Andreas Fickers and Alexander Badenoch (London: Palgrave, 2010), 225-251.

creates a specific European geography of connected and not-connected places.”

In order to unravel the relationship between infrastructures and European unification efforts further, Europe - On Air follows Thomas Hughes, and defines infrastructures as socio-technical systems.” Socio-technical systems are mixed systems. They consist among other things of technological and institutional, organizational, and legislative components.” Constructing a European broadcasting infrastructure implies, therefore, creating European institutions and regulations which match. All these components influence relationships between people. The actors involved in the project to construct a European broadcasting infrastructure were thus also engaged in unifying people in Europe, and they knew it. How the various components should fit, however, was not always clear from the start.

As the introductory plans show, infrastructure construction is an actor-driven process with competing designs.” Actors have to negotiate their designs and so the way they construct Europe. Hughes calls these actors system builders.”

Organizations like the IBU and the EBU are such system builders. Individuals like the engineers Eckersley and Hubert or other interest groups like the British radio industry who designed the 1944 and 1945 plans are also such system builders. This study departs from the idea that organizations such as the International Broadcasting Union were Europes system builders. They set up and formed arenas where various actors negotiated the future of transnational broadcasting and Europe simultaneously.” For this reason the IBU is an excellent site for answering my research question.

22 Michael G. Müller and Cornelius Torp, “Conceptualising Transnational Spaces in History,’ European Review of History: Revue européenne d'histoire 16, no. 5 (2009): 613-614.

23 Hughes examined electricity networks as socio-technical systems. His Networks of Power resulted in a new field of study that focused on Large Technical Systems (LTS) that not only concentrated on electricity, but on a wide variety of historical developments. For further reading see: Thomas Hughes, Networks

of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983); Renate Mayntz and Thomas Hughes, The Development of Large Technical Systems (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1988); Erik van der Vleuten, “Infrastructures and Societal Change: A View from the Large Technical System Field,’ Technology Analysis & Strategic Management 16, no. 3 (2004): 395-414; Erik van der Vleuten, “Understanding Network Societies: Two Decades of Large Technical System Studies,’ in Networking Europe: Transnational Infrastructures and the Shaping of Europe, 1850-2000, ed. Erik van der Vleuten and Arne Kaijser (Sagamore Beach: Science History Publications/USA, 2006), 279-314.

24 Thomas Hughes, “The Evolution of Large Technical Systems,’ in The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology, ed. Wiebe Bijker, Thomas Hughes, and Trevor Pinch (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987), 51-82.

25 Erik van der Vleuten and Arne Kaijser, “Prologue and Introduction: Transnational Networks and the Shaping of Contemporary Europe,’ in Networking Europe: Transnational Infrastructures and the Shaping of Europe, 1850-2000, ed. Erik van der Vleuten and Arne Kaijser (Sagamore Beach: Science History Publications/USA, 2006), 1-22; Van der Vleuten, “Understanding Network Societies,” 308-309.

26 Hughes, “The Evolution of Large Technical Systems,” 25-26.

27 Erik van der Vleuten et al., “Europes System Builders: The Contested Shaping of Transnational Road, Electricity and Rail Networks,’ Contemporary European History 16, no. 3 (2007): 328.

It is important to emphasize one important characteristic of these system builders. They have not only been set up by experts, they also bring together experts and help to develop expert communities. Experts are professionals with a recognized expertise and competence in a particular domain and an authoritative claim to knowledge relevant for governments that want to regulate this domain.” They attend conferences and meetings of various governmental and non-governmental organizations that include social events. During these meetings they often developed strong informal and personal relationships that surpass national and institutional boundaries, and create what Christian Henrich Franke calls “a transnational culture” amongst experts.” The concept of expert communities therefore not only emphasizes the formal, but also the personal and informal aspect of these arenas.

Europe - On Air is a transnational history of broadcasting in a two-fold sense.” Firstly, it replaces state-centered history with one that includes state and non-state actors, such as “multinational corporations, religious organizations, regional communities, transnational private organizations, and even stateless persons?! Secondly the benefit of a transnational approach is that it does not privilege a specific spatial frame. It brings together in one setting the global, European, national, and local. This allows us to explore the relationships between these levels and their mutual entwinements. Such an approach implies that creating a European broadcasting space will be put in the context of the simultaneously constructed local, national and global spaces. Europe then becomes a constructive place for “a more precise interrogation of other, more essentialized, scales of the ‘national’ and the ‘global?

In summary: by examining the efforts of the actors involved in transnational broadcasting in their aim to achieve European unification, Europe - On Air

28 Peter M. Haas, “Introduction: Epistemic Communities and International Policy Coordination,” International Organization 46, no. 1 (1992): 1-35. See also: Katrin Steffen and Martin Kohlrausch, “The Limits and Merits of Internationalism: Experts, the State and the International Community in Poland in the First Half of the Twentieth Century,’ European Review of History: Revue européenne d'histoire 16, no. 5 (2009): 716.

29 Christian Henrich-Franke, “Cookies for ITU: The Role of Social Networks in Standardization Processes,” in Bargaining Norms - Arguing Standards: Negotiating Technical Standards, ed. Judith Schueler, Andreas Fickers, and Anique Hommels (The Hague: Stichting Toekomstbeeld der Techniek, 2008), 89.

30 Two articles that critically discuss and further explore the history of transnationalism are: Pierre- Yves Saunier, “Learning by Doing: Notes about the Making of the Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History,’ Journal of Modern Economic History 6, no. 2 (2008): 159-179; Erik van der Vleuten, “Toward

a Transnational History of Technology: Meanings, Promises, Pitfalls,” Technology and Culture 49, no. 4 (2008): 974-994.

31 Akira Iriye, Global Community: The Role of International Organizations in the Making of the Contemporary World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), vii-viii.

32 Alexander Badenoch and Andreas Fickers, “Introduction: Europe Materializing? Toward a Transnational History of European Infrastructures,” in Materializing Europe: Transnational Infrastructures and the Project of Europe, ed. Alexander Badenoch and Andreas Fickers (London: Palgrave, 2010), 9.

studies transnational broadcasting as a socio-technical system with a specific negotiated spatial reach, and organizational structure. It perceives the International Broadcasting Union as one of the main international system builders of the time. The organization provided an arena and formed part of an expert community that negotiated spatial and functional relationships between broadcasting and various forms of European unification. This research strategy implies that alongside negotiations and relationships between actors, my book should also examine their motivations and visions. Ideas, visions and motivations were significant aspects ofinfrastructure design and unification efforts. Eckersley was aware of this aspect of his work. In his memoires he describes himself as “an inventor of mechanisms to serve ideas?” Both the mechanisms and ideas receive ample attention as building blocks for a “hidden” creation of European unification via broadcasting infrastructure development.

Transnational Infrastructures in Europe

This book is one of the products of the research program Transnational Infrastructures and the Rise of Contemporary Europe (TIE). The program began in 2002. It was adopted by the Tensions of Europe scholarly network as part of its research programs to examine the “hidden integration of Europe.” The TIE project examined transnational infrastructures such as railroads, highways, air traffic, tunnels, electricity lines and communication networks as arenas that shaped, negotiated, and contested Europe in the twentieth century.“ Europe - On Air squarely follows this tradition. In this section I summarize the findings that are relevant to my research. On top of that, I explore the history of broadcasting, albeit in a limited sense. I concentrate on studies which address the theme of my book directly. TIE has approached infrastructure construction as non-linear and transnational processes with a special focus on human agency, on system builders.* The construction and use of infrastructures went hand in hand with the creation of a host of new international actors and institutions. In the course of the nineteenth

33 Peter P. Eckersley, The Power Behind the Microphone (London: J. Cape, 1941), 21.

34 The Transnational Infrastructures and the Rise of Contemporary Europe project has been funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) in September 2002, Dossier number: 2777- 53-001. For further information see: www.tie-project.nl where you can find a summary of the project: Johan Schot, “Transnational Infrastructures and the Rise of Contemporary Europe” (Working document no. 1, www.tie-project.nl, 2003). For details on Tensions of Europe see: www.tensionsofeurope.eu.

35 Van der Vleuten and Kaijser, “Prologue and Introduction”; Van der Vleuten, “Understanding Network Societies,” 308-309.

and twentieth centuries, a wide variety of people, international governmental as well as non-governmental organizations have worked on infrastructure projects.* A wide number of international expert and often non-governmental international agencies were established to deal with infrastructure related problems that could not be resolved at the national level. In addition, TIE finds a broad involvement of international governmental organizations. In the course of the interwar years in particular, the technical committees of the League of Nations, like the Organization for Communications & Transit, focused on infrastructure development.” These international organizations were Europes system builders, setting up arenas where infrastructures were negotiated in relation to Europe.

The construction and use of these transnational infrastructures have created a specific philosophy on how to work together internationally in Europe. Johan Schot and Vincent Lagendijk label this philosophy technocratic internationalism.” At its basis lies first of all the idea that once they had established a connection, experts thought that their technical links would automatically create feelings of peace and understanding. They would serve public aims. In this tradition the League of Nations aimed to establish Radio Nations in the 1930s.“ Experts believed in the myth of the network. Secondly, such network construction should preferably happen outside the sphere of nation-oriented state power politics. Only by “technifying” their discussions would experts be able to shape these peacepursuing networks internationally in a way they considered suitable. Thirdly and finally, experts “worked in a range of competing and collaborating settings?“ They

36 TIE has resulted in a number of detailed European transnational infrastructure histories: Irene Anastasiadou, Constructing Iron Europe. Transnationalism and Railways in the Interbellum (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012); 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); Judith Schueler, Materialising Identity: The Co-Construction of the Gotthard Railway and Swiss National Identity (Amsterdam: Aksant, 2008); Waqar Zaidi, “Technology and the Reconstruction of International Relations: Liberal Internationalist Proposals for the Internationalisaton of Aviation and the International Control of Atomic Energy in Britain, USA and France, 1920-1950” (Ph.D. diss., University of London (Imperial College), 2008).

37 Frank Schipper, Vincent Lagendijk, and Irene Anastasiadou, “New Connections for an Old Continent: Rail, Road and Electricity in the League of Nations Organisation for Communications and Transit,’ in Materializing Europe: Transnational Infrastructures and the Project of Europe, ed. Alexander Badenoch and Andreas Fickers (London: Palgrave, 2010), 113-143.

38 Van der Vleuten et al., “Europes System Builders.”

39 Johan Schot and Vincent Lagendijk, “Technocratic Internationalism in the Interwar Years: Building Europe on Motorways and Electricity Networks,’ Journal of Modern European History 6, no. 2 (2008): 196-217.

40 Antoine Fleury, “La Suisse et Radio Nations,’ in The League of Nations in Retrospect: Proceedings of the Symposium (Berlin; New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1983), 196-220.

41 Johan Schot and Frank Schipper, “Experts and European Transport Integration, 1945-1958,” Journal of European Public Policy 18, no. 2 (March 1, 2011): 289; Anthony D. Smith, “National Identity and the Idea of European Unity,’ International Affairs 68, no. 1 (1992): 57.

could have national and international roles at one and the same time. Following their multiple roles, they could fine-tune their national and international activities and interests when working on transnational infrastructure projects.“ Over the years the philosophy of technocratic internationalism inspired the emergence of specific kinds of European governance structures, European markets, and a host of European visions, symbols, and images. Jean Monnet idea of a “gradualist and sector-specific approach towards general European unification” for instance, contributed to the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community and is just one of many examples.“