Europe’s Infrastructure Transition: Economy, War, Nature by Per Högselius, Arne Kaijser, Erik van der Vleuten (review)

If you’re reading this review to find out what Europe’s infrastructure transition was, I have to disappoint you. Because although Europe’s Infrastructure Transition adds significantly to what we know about infrastructure in Europe, it doesn’t defend the notion of a “transition.” The book does, however, give a very extensive account of Europe’s infrastructure. Indeed, it does a masterful job of tracing the roots of the various, ubiquitous large-scale infrastructure systems in Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

One of six volumes in the Making Europe series, the book certainly delivers on the promise of that series, which is to give a different view of European history than political or military by looking through the lens of technology (p. xi). But because of the important role played by nation-states in infrastructure decisions (whether connecting or severing them), it’s hard to see how this is a story that can replace our existing narratives of nation-states, although the book is an inherently (and commendably) transnational one. It is a crucial step on the path to a new story of European integration, but more steps will be needed.

Looking at its infrastructure in detail makes readers aware of how interconnected modern Europe really is. But while it is valuable to map infrastructure systems—and the book well demonstrates how these systems do not necessarily match political maps—a stronger argument needs to be made for their general importance. While delivering royally in terms of empirical work (including both East and West), I’m not sure that the book ever really addresses the problem that the authors set: how has infrastructure impacted European integration?

The first section, Connecting Europe, looks at how various networks emerged across Europe: in transportation (with frequent reference to colonial exploitation), communication, and fuel. The key point is that these systems didn’t emerge according to any master plan. Instead, they were each built for one reason and later (often) interconnected for other reasons, either horizontally (to provide stability in the case of electricity grids, so that a power outage in northern Germany in 2006 could cascade all the way to northern Africa [pp. 66, 102–4]) or vertically (refrigeration, ship, and rail networks transporting meat from South America [p. 120]).

The second section, Economy and War, looks at the way that multiple infrastructure systems were used to create food chains and to fight wars. Networking Nature then looks at the role of nature in building infrastructure systems. Earth, water, and sky are public goods that infrastructure systems have appropriated, thereby often creating future problems. Railroads, for example, are built on the ground and make exploitation of that ground possible, yet the subsequent tendency to monoculture cultivation has also caused problems for biodiversity. Throughout their account, the authors oppose “system builders” (the term is taken from Thomas Hughes, and the volume is dedicated to him)—people and organizations interested in making systems—to “border builders”—those acting to prevent flows across borders.

If the book wants to tell us something about the simultaneous shaping of infrastructure and Europe, it falls short. It explicitly discusses the use of infrastructure to carry out politics by other means—i.e., the fear that the Soviets would use their supply of gas to undermine Western Europe (p. 89)—and observes that infrastructure tends to outlast the politics that give birth to it—thus a pipeline that conformed to the geography of a Nazi Europe went on to be used by Soviet planners, connecting places that weren’t necessarily in the Soviet sphere (p. 86). But it doesn’t explore how the common vulnerabilities created by infrastructure translated into other spheres. If the story of infrastructure is just politics by other means then the book’s implicit Marxian thesis—infrastructure, in forming the foundation for everything, influenced the unification of Europe...