Technological Innovation and Transnational Networks. Europe between the Wars - Themenheft des Journal of Modern European History 6 (2008) (original) (raw)

A Book Made of Steel: Rereading the Technological History of Europe’s “Long 20th Century”

2017

Writing the Rules for Europe. Experts, Cartels, International organizations ist das funfte von sechs Buchern aus der Reihe Making Europe: Technology and Transformations, 1850-2000. Als solches bietet es den Lesern eine neue Perspektive auf ihr Europaverstandnis und fordert viele etablierte Wahrheiten in der zeitgenossischen westlichen Geschichtsschreibung heraus. Das Buch von Johan Schot und Wolfram Kaiser wechselt den Blickpunkt von der Politik- zur Technikgeschichte. Es richtet unsere Aufmerksamkeit von den Politikern und Diplomaten zu den internationalen Expert_innen, Ingenieur_innen, Spezialist_innen, Geschaftsleuten, Lobbyist_innen und Innovator_innen um. Ohne sie in Betracht zu ziehen, so die Autoren, wird unser Verstandnis der europaischen Integration, der europaischen Organisationen und sogar der Europaischen Union selbst zutiefst begrenzt sein. Writing the Rules for Europe. Experts, Cartels, International organizations ist ein Leitfaden fur die langfristigen Prozesse, die d...

Making Europe - Looking at the history of Europe in the long twentieth century through the lens of technology

New Narratives of European Integration History, in: Contemporanea. XXIII, n. 1, gennaio-marzo 2020, 2020

Science and technology are at the very heart of the European project. But how to write a history of Europe in the making when using technology as an actor category and lens of analysis? This is the driving narrative behind Making Europe: Technology and Transformations (1850-2000) – a six volume series on the history of Europe in the «long twentieth century».

Technological and geographical knowledge spillover in the German empire 1877-1918

Economic History Review, 2006

We use a newly developed data set of 39,343 high-value patents granted between 1877 and 1918 to demonstrate that technological progress during German industrialization occurred in at least four different technological waves. We distinguish the railway wave (1877-86), the dye wave (1887-96), the chemical wave (1897-1902), and the wave of electrical engineering (1903-18). Evidence is presented that inter-industry knowledge spillovers between technologically, economically, and geographically related industries were a major source for innovative activities during German industrialization. We also show that technological change affected the geographical distribution of innovative regions. Using an index of technologically revealed comparative advantage we find that regions that increased their innovativeness during the waves of technological progress revealed special strength in technological clusters like electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, or chemicals.

Karsten Uhl, Technology in Modern German History: 1800 to the Present, New York: Bloomsbury 2022.

2022

People often associate postwar Germany with technology and with its products of mass consumption, such as luxury cars. Even pop music, most notably Kraftwerk (literally 'power station') with songs such as Autobahn, Radioactivity or We are the Robots, disseminates the stereotype of a close link between German culture and technology. Technology in Modern German History explores various forms of technology in 200 years of German history and explains how technology has been fundamental to the shaping of modern Germany. The book investigates the role technology played in transforming Germany's culture, society and politics during the 19th and 20th centuries. Key topics covered include the different stages of industrialization, the growth of networked cities, and the triumph of a teleological narrative of technology as progress. Moreover, it provides a critical revision of the history of high technology which reveals how high-tech euphoria determined certain paths in history regardless of whether the respective technology proved to be successful. In its second part, the volume introduces new avenues in scholarship. Karsten Uhl examines neglected areas, such as rural technologies or the often-overlooked importance of everyday technologies: How did consumers or workers use new technologies? How did they appropriate and modify them? Lastly, the book considers the final decades of the 20th century and asks if they provided a significant new quality of technological change: To what degree and effects did computerization transform professional and private life in Germany? In culture and politics, reinforced by the German variety of environmentalism, the idea of progress was challenged, as the once prevailing vision of progress gave way to new apprehensions of uncertainty evident to this day.