(De-)Europeanization and History: Concepts, Conflicts, Cohesion since 1890

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Europeanization is a complex, dynamic, and ultimately little understood process. In historical studies especially, a thorough conceptual treatment is still lacking. Building on an existing Anglo-German institutional co-operation this proposed scientific network aims at developing and elaborating a historical concept of (de-)Europeanization as a heuristic and analytical tool reflecting the complexities, contradictions and frictions of Europeanization as a historical phenomenon. Our approach is centred along four axes: Nationalization / Modernization, Americanization / Westernization, Globalization / Decolonization and European Integration. We do not intend to replace, but to supplement and complete these competing frames of reference in order to provide a better analytical framework for processes which shaped European history during the "long twentieth century". By focusing on developments of transfer and exchange, emulation and delimitation, the concept of (de-)Europeanization moves beyond national and comparative history. Building on existing notions of Europeanization, it will advance historians' ability to analyse continuity and change, convergence and delimitation in modern Europe. Our concept of (de-)Europeanization is distinguished by the following advantages: • it puts the emphasis on processes, not on results; • it allows for the shifting boundaries of (the notion of) Europe; • it focuses on the interrelation of social practices with social and political identities; • it balances the variety and fragmentation, the contradictions and discontinuities of historical developments with the dynamic of convergence and integration; • it makes visible regional and chronological variations of the intensity of (de-)Europeanizing processes; • it frees existing concepts of Europeanization from seemingly inescapable teleological undercurrents. The network's research will cover most of the continent At the same time, it will deliberately transgress the borders between political, social, economic or cultural history and will encourage interdisciplinary co-operation. Thus, we hope to foster a new culture of co-operation in the humanities and to combine various national methodological traditions and empirical approaches to overcome the "methodological nationalism" still prevalent in the realm of historical research.