This book sets out to uncover the origins of the idea of a European electricity network. It explores historically the roots of a transnational European system, showing how engineers came to think in terms of ‘Europe’ already in the 1920s, and how these ideas continued to influence network-building in later decades. This thinking not only corresponded to economic and technical attributes of the system, as first described by Thomas Hughes. This thesis claims that a European system was also legitimised by ideological motives, as a complement to – but not always complying with – economic and technical efficiency.

Covering the period between 1918 and 2001 the book provides a detailed analysis of ideas on, and the building of, a European electricity system. By doing so, this thesis makes two original contributions. First, based on extensive archival research, it makes a substantial contribution to the much-neglected history of international collaboration in Europe. Prevailing histories of electricity infrastructures mainly focus on national developments. Second, drawing on a wide variety of historiographical insights, it places this history in the broader historical context of the twentieth century, paying ample attention to the influence of both hot and cold wars, and interwar developments. By combining the specific history of this international collaboration with a more general political and economic history of the twentieth century, Lagendijk explains why a European solution emerged. The thesis primarily focuses on Western European developments and explains how this network took its specific shape through the building of different regional powerpools among national systems. In addition, the thesis presents a contribution to the emerging field of transnational history by focusing on the work and activities of international organisations, without neglecting the power and influence of nation-states.

The book starts by revealing how an international community of electricity entrepreneurs and electrical engineers had existed since the turn of the century. Yet at the same time, national legislations came to limit the extent of international network development and operation. Whereas the first objections to these limita tions were general, they became intertwined with the European movement over the course of the 1920s.