Europeanization through Violence? War Experiences and the Making of Modern Europe

Abstract

Unlike the more ambivalent transnational concepts of ‘Americanization’ and ‘Globalization’, the increasingly popular term ‘Europeanization’ is generally used to describe unambiguously positive processes of political, socio-economic and cultural integration within the institutional framework of the European Union.1 Peaceful forms of cross-cultural encounters, shared values, free trade, transnational exchanges of ideas, a culture of compromise, and increasing inter-state cooperation are, or so it seems, at the heart of what we commonly perceive as ‘Europeanization’; a transnational process that culminated in the EU, a realm of peace and prosperity in which the demons of a nationalist past have become history.2