Feuds of a Thousand Years: Explaining Europe via the World System

Authors

Hans Hubbard, University of California, San Diego

Abstract

This paper argues for a more comprehensive study of the European Union that includes consideration, not only of socio-economic and political processes, but also of changing conceptualisations of identity, governance and democratic legitimacy. It argues for a re-examination of traditional narratives that frame the European Union as a response to the cruelties of the Second World War. Several key paradoxes in European history cannot be satisfactorily accounted for through purely intra-European processes: the European idea’s pre-dating the Second World War; the lack of a strong impulse for unified defence; the UK’s late membership and euroscepticism; the desire for a closed-off European system; and the élite nature of the European project. This problematic can be helped by theorising European integration as an event embedded within a larger historical system. Indeed, the roots of the European Union are found in wider, longer-lasting processes related to Europe’s shifting position in the World System.

DOI

10.5642/urceu.201401.10

Rights Information

© 2014 Hans Hubbard

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Recommended Citation

Hubbard, Hans (2014) "Feuds of a Thousand Years: Explaining Europe via the World System," Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union: Vol. 2014, Article 10. DOI: 10.5642/urceu.201401.10
Available at: https://scholarship.claremont.edu/urceu/vol2014/iss1/10