oa Europa vóór de Europese Gemeenschap van Kolen en Staal

Europe before the European Coal and Steel Community. Dutch civil society organisations in the interwar period

Before Robert Schuman proposed the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1950, European cooperation had been long discussed, in particular by civil society actors. If we follow the New Political History approach and understand European integration as a process rather than as a set of events that started in the late ’40s, we need to analyse the interaction between state and civil society actors and examine this from a longer-term and global perspective.

The period after World War I saw intense debate on how to prevent war in Europe and about the changing position of Europe in the world. Ideas of European cooperation were central to these debates. This article will analyse the interaction between grass roots and elite activists in the interwar Dutch European movement. It will show how objectives and imaginations of a European future differed, included colonial arguments, and how this activity prepared the ground for initiatives after 1945.