The Troubled Origins of European Economic Integration: International Iron and Steel and Labor Migration in the Era of World War I

Abstract

Two WATERSHED YEARS, 1992, the European Community's attempt to achieve total economic integration, and 1989, the dramatic disappearance of the Iron Curtain, have created a new sense of Europe as an economic unit. Rather than orienting themselves to twenty-five individual national economies, business leaders, politicians, and investors have begun to adapt to a truly continental arena. Spain and Hungary compete now for the same investment funds; airlines and insurance companies scramble to find international partners; and professionals, stocks, and credit card information have begun moving across national borders in greater numbers than ever before. In discussing how economic integration occurred in twentieth-century Europe, historians generally refer to two basic literatures. On the one hand, theoretical perspectives have portrayed integration as the natural, logical outcome of long-term economic trends. Once the industrial revolution made national economies dependent on large-scale imports and exports and financial transfers, it was inevitable that, eventually, business organizations and labor would also flow across borders, along with raw materials, goods, and capital investment.' On the other hand, specific studies have discussed how only after World War II, with the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community and Common Market, did meaningful integration in Western Europe take place.2 The disjuncture between