Technology and Culture

Making Europe: Technology and Transformations, 1850–2000, a book series edited by Johan Schot and Phil Scranton, crowns a research effort of two decades. Building on the work of hundreds of scholars in the Tensions of Europe network, this innovative, six-volume synthesis offers "brand-new perspectives on the history, formation, and culture of Europe."¹ It seeks to revise understanding of the history of European integration by charting paths of transnational sociotechnical change, revealing a "hidden integration" of Europe that originated a century before the first steps toward political unification were taken after World War II. This hidden integration was rooted in infrastructure, information, and mobility systems that multiplied and stretched ever further across European borders, transporting people, goods, energy, information, and culture. The systems were "hidden" in that the burgeoning array of experts and system builders who developed and regulated them worked behind the scenes. The public used the systems on a growing scale, but "the machinery behind that integration remained largely invisible."² The series revises European history also by linking it [End Page 212] more closely with globalization. It aims to show that the circulation of people, goods, technology, and ideas between Europe and the rest of the world has shaped Europe's history, from high politics to the modalities and trends of everyday life.

Each volume contributes a crucial element. Consumers, Tinkerers, Rebels: The People Who Shaped Europe, by Ruth Oldenziel and Mikael Hård, looks at the users of sewing machines, household and recycling technologies, railways, bicycles, and computers. This volume shows how users challenged systems that did not meet their needs and applied technologies in innovative and unexpected ways, setting new trends that crisscrossed Europe. Building Europe on Expertise: Innovators, Organizers, Networkers, by Martin Kohlrausch and Helmuth Trischler, centers on the experts—implementers of the knowledge society—who developed new systems, codified and diffused knowledge, and coordinated the embedding of technology into the fabric of collective life, either to enhance democratic possibilities or achieve authoritarian control. Europe's Infrastructure Transition: Economy, War, Nature, by Per Høgselius, Erik van der Vleuten, and Arne Kaijser, studies the technological and energy infrastructures that transformed commerce, finance, and warfare; altered spatial and temporal relationships; and intersected with environmental concerns. Writing the Rules for Europe: Experts, Cartels, and International Organizations, by Wolfram Kaiser and Johan Schot, details efforts going back to the nineteenth century to coordinate cross-border systems such as railways and steel production. They argue that these cooperative, techno-regulatory endeavors, which enabled the systems to operate internationally, were the true roots of European economic and political integration. They fostered a pattern of "technocratic internationalism," establishing institutions and principles now associated with the European Union.³ Communicating Europe: Technologies, Information, Events, by Andreas Fickers and Pascal Griset, concentrates on telecommunications, information processing, and mass media infrastructures (radio and TV), which play a crucial role in governance, business, identity formation, and everyday life. The authors detail the evolution of these infrastructures amid rivalry and cooperation among European states and their contribution to the expansion of a new mobility culture. Finally, Europeans Globalizing: Mapping, Exploiting, Exchanging, by Maria Paula Diogo and Dirk van Laak, discusses flows and linkages between Europe and the rest of the world since 1850. The book focuses especially on Europe's history of imperialism, colonialism, and the way technology bolstered these hegemonic pursuits. It also highlights Europeans' embrace of science and technology as a badge of civilizational superiority.

As each volume of Making Europe has been reviewed in Technology and Culture or elsewhere, this essay focuses on the series' organizational, [End Page 213] conceptual, and historiographical contexts. First, it shows how Making Europe drew on two earlier history of technology series—TIN-19 and TIN-20.⁴ It then contrasts Making Europe with three multivolume surveys of the history of technology published between the 1950s and the 1970s, led by Charles Singer in Britain, Maurice Daumas in France, and Melvin Kranzberg and Carroll Pursell in the United States. These comparisons also serve as a vehicle to highlight the expansion of contextualist approaches in the history of technology up to the 1990s. The...