Making Europe

Making Europe is a project initiated by Johan Schot and funded by the Foundation for the History of Technology (SHT). Johan Schot co-authored Writing the Rules for Europe. In this unique decade-long research project, an international and interdisciplinary team of 14 scholars has researched European history on an unprecedented scale. The project resulted in the publication of the Making Europe book series. For its significant collective contribution to the study of innovation and its impact on society, the Making Europe book series has been awarded the prestigious Freeman Award by the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) in 2014.

For more information visit www.makingeurope.eu

the Making Europe book series

Looking through the lens of technology, the authors uncover the stories of the people and practices that shaped European society. Making Europe identifies how institutions, consumption experiences, international relations, infrastructures and communication mechanisms evolved and how Europeans globalised. The 6  volumes of the Making Europe book series take the reader on a discovery journey through 150 years of European advances and disasters, divisions and re-unions. By introducing the experts, innovators, technologies and institutions that fundamentally shaped modern Europe, Making Europe unravels how we all impacted the way it is built and experienced today. 

Making Europe book series
Making Europe authors

With the book series, we want to present the past 150 years of European history in an accessible manner to a broad audience, ranging from historians to social scientists, engineers, students, and policymakers. The stories position the European Union in a broader historical perspective and show that Europe should not be conflated with the European Union.

Writing the rules for europe

Johan Schot is co-editor of the Making Europe book series and co-author of the book “Writing the Rules for Europe: Experts, Cartels, and International Organizations”. Writing the Rules for Europe argues that the future of Europe depends on finding a new arrangement between democracy and technocracy. Drawing on fresh archival evidence and using engaging case studies of steel and railways, this book tells the stories of experts, cartels and international organisations that have written the rules of Europe since around 1850. The book explores the ‘hidden integration’ of Europe – forms of integration that were not always visible but affected the citizens of Europe in their everyday lives. Richly illustrated and engagingly written, the book de-centers the present-day European Union in a new long-term understanding of European integration.

The making Europe Podcast Series

In six podcast episodes, the Making Europe authors challenge listeners’ understanding of modern European history and how the European Union came to be. 

In the Writing the Rules for Europe podcast episode, Professor Schot puts the key findings of his book into perspective. He explains how the EU’s technocratic roots influence what is being played out in present-day Europe and assesses the rise of right-winged populists. Schot exemplifies how current decision making structures in the European Union have been shaped by engineers and why those structures need rethinking. He addresses why it remains so challenging to create a much needed European identity as he calls for the European Union to redefine itself in order to approach the great challenges (migration, climate change and growing inequality) we’re facing today.

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Writing the Rules for Europe: Experts, Cartels and International Organisations

Johan Schot and Wolfram Kaiser
Technologies have created crucial connections across borders requiring new forms of regulation. This book analyses how experts, cartels and international...
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Technology and the Making of the Netherlands: The Age of Contested Modernization

Johan Schot, Harry Lintsen and Arie Rip (eds.)
This study offers both an account of twentieth-century technology in the Netherlands and a view of Dutch history through the...
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The Contested Rise of A Modernist Technology Politics

Johan Schot, 2003
This chapter explores the idea that as part of a modernization process that gained speed in the nineteenth and twentieth...

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