Historicising European Union
Full course description
This module provides students with in-depth knowledge of central driving forces, turning points, and features in the history of European integration. It applies an interdisciplinary mix and combines approaches from history, international relations, and comparative politics and introduces students to working with primary sources. Thematically, the module focuses on some of the key moments of European integration history (such as The Hague summit of 1969 or the Maastricht Treaty of 1992) and combines this with more thematically organised sessions, e.g. focusing on actors in European integration history. It thus introduces students to the complexity of multi-perspective (and potentially multi-archival, multilingual) European integration history research and its relevance for understanding present-day and future challenges for the EU.
Course objectives
The objective of this course is to introduce participants to a dimension of European integration that is often neglected—the history of the process. It will show students how much history impacts on the present, and that any informed and sophisticated analysis of the European Union has to factor in such a historical dimension.
In more detail, the four main objectives of the module are:
- Firstly, to provide students with insights into the background of analyzing the history of European integration by examining the historical, theoretical, and conceptual issues arising within this context; and hence to integrate and combine substantive knowledge, theories and methods from diverse fields of European studies.
- Secondly, to convey a thorough knowledge of the concrete forms and dynamics of European integration;
- By using theoretical and practical insights gained in the research seminars, to enable students to critically assess an episode in European integration history and to conduct research on a concrete case, demonstrating the ability to identify the relevant sources and actors as well as methodological, theoretical, and historiographical frameworks;
- Finally, to teach students to transfer the knowledge they have learned in this module to other processes, such as other forms of European cooperation or other forms of regional integration.
Prerequisites
There are no formal prerequisites. It is an asset to have several European languages.
Recommended reading
Patel, Kiran Klaus (2020). Project Europe: A History. Cambridge University Press.
James, Harold (2003). Europe Reborn: A History, 1914-2000. Harlow: Longman.
Kaiser, Wolfram, Leucht, Brigitte, and Rasmussen, Morten (eds.) (2009) The History of European Union: Origins of a Trans- and Supranational Polity, 1950-72. New York: Routledge.
Kaiser, Wolfram and Varsori, Antonio (eds.) (2010). European Union History: Themes and Debates. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Milward, Alan (2000, c1992). The European Rescue of the Nation-State. London: Routledge.
Palayret, Jean-Marie, Wallace, Helen and Winand, Pascaline (eds.) (2006). Visions, Votes and Vetoes: The Empty Chair Crisis and the Luxembourg Compromise Forty Years On. Brussels: Lang.
Patel, Kiran Klaus (2013). “Provincialising European Union: Co-operation and Integration in Europe in a Historical Perspective,” in: Contemporary European History 22 (2013), 649-673.
Weiler, J. H. H. (1999). The Constitution of Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- K. van Leeuwen
- C.W. van Leeuwen