European elites and ideas of empire, 1917-1957 / Dina Gusejnova, University of Sheffield.
Series: New studies in European historyPublication details: Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2016 Description: 1 online resource (xlvii, 344 pages) : illustrations, mapsISBN: 1316667804; 9781316667804Subject(s): Supranationalism -- Europe -- History -- 20th century | Imperialism -- Social aspects -- Europe -- History -- 20th century | Transnationalism -- Social aspects -- Europe -- History -- 20th century | Elite (Social sciences) -- Europe -- History -- 20th century | Intellectuals -- Germany -- History -- 20th century | Aristocracy (Social class) -- Germany -- History -- 20th century | Europe -- Politics and government -- 1918-1945 | Europe -- Politics and government -- 1945- | Germany -- Intellectual life -- 20th century | Germany -- Politics and government -- 20th centuryAdditional physical formats: Print version:: No titleDDC classification: 325/.309409041 LOC classification: D727 | .G84 2016ebOther classification: HIS010000 Online resources: Cambridge Open Access Books | Directory of Open Access Books | OAPEN : Open Access Publishing in European NetworksWho thought of Europe as a community before its economic integration in 1957? Dina Gusejnova illustrates how a supranational European mentality was forged from depleted imperial identities. In the revolutions of 1917 to 1920, the power of the Hohenzollern, Habsburg and Romanoff dynasties over their subjects expired. Even though Germany lost its credit as a world power twice in that century, in the global cultural memory, the old Germanic families remained associated with the idea of Europe in areas reaching from Mexico to the Baltic region and India. Gusejnova's book sheds light on a group of German-speaking intellectuals of aristocratic origin who became pioneers of Europe's future regeneration. In the minds of transnational elites, the continent's future horizons retained the contours of phantom empires.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 252-316) and index.
Part I. Celebrity of Decline -- 1. Famous deaths : subjects of imperial decline -- 2. Shared horizons : the sentimental elite in the Great War -- Part II. Power of Prestige -- 3. Soft power : pan-Europeanism after the Habsburgs -- 4. The German princes : an aristocratic fraction in the democratic age -- 5. Crusaders of civility : the legal internationalism of the Baltic Barons -- Part III. Phantom Empires -- 6. Knights of many faces : the dream of chivalry and its dreamers -- 7. Apostles of elegy : Bloomsbury's continental connections -- Epilogue -- Archives.
A study of the genesis of 'European civilisation' as a concept of 20th-C EU political practice & as a specific project of a transnational network of EU elites, examining how they sought to rehabilitate EU identity as a response to a crisis of belonging following the 1917-1920 revolutions & the collapse of the Hohenzollern, Habsburg & RU Empires.