European Integration in Social and Historical Perspective 1850 to the Present

Exploring the historical roots of integration, they trace contemporary integration efforts back to nineteenth-century social action in response to capitalist development. As today, it was a time when internationalism - both that of workers and capitalists - sustained international cooperation and attempted to define a social dimension to economic development and to set universal standards for welfare. The reemergence of an integrated Europe as an alternative to the system of states produced by the settlements of 1918 and 1945 has provided a new opening for internationalism.