This book examines how rural Europe as a hybrid social and natural environment emerged as a key site of local, national and international governance in the interwar years. The post-war need to secure and intensify food production, to protect contested border areas, to improve rural infrastructure and the economic viability of rural regions and to politically integrate rural populations, gave rise to a variety of schemes aimed at modernizing agriculture and remaking rural society. The volume examines discourses, institutions and practices of rural governance from a transnational perspective, revealing striking commonalities across national and political boundaries. From the village town hall to the headquarters of international organizations, local authorities, government officials and politicians, scientific experts and farmers engaged in debates about the social, political and economic future of rural communities. They sought to respond to both real and imagined concerns over poverty and decline, backwardness and insufficient control, by conceptualizing planning and engineering models that would help foster an ideal rural community and develop an efficient agricultural sector. By examining some of these local, national and international schemes and policies, this volume highlights the hitherto under-researched interaction between policymakers, experts and rural inhabitants in the European countryside of the 1920s and '30s.
Author(s): Liesbeth van de Grift; Amalia Ribi Forclaz
Series: Routledge Studies in Modern European History 48
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2018
Language: English
Pages: xviii+292
Cover
Half Title
Series Information
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of contents
Illustrations
Contributors
Preface
1 The Green Heart of Governance: Rural Europe during the Interwar Years in a Global Perspective
A Rich Bequest
Beefing Up Economic Governance
Flock and Folk, Saat and Staat
Colonies as Laboratories
In Search of Europe
Conclusions
Notes
References
2 Internal Colonization in Weimar Germany: Transnational and Local Approaches to Rural Governance in the 1920s
In Search of Rural Weimar
The Reich Settlement Law and Transnational Perspectives on its Aims and Results
“Getting out of the conference room”: Weimar Internal Colonization in Practice
Conclusions
Notes
References
3 Colonization Projects and Agrarian Reforms in East-Central and Southeastern Europe, 1913–1950
Agrarian Reforms and Nation-Building
Colonization Projects
Post-1918 and Post-1944 Agrarian Reforms and Colonization Projects Compared
Conclusions
Notes
References
4 Cultivating Land and People: Internal Colonization in Interwar Europe
Internal Colonization and the National Project
The “Quality” of Population
Re-conceptualizing the Socio-Economic Order
Planning in Practice
Conclusion
Notes
References
5 The Future of Village Life: Welfare, Planning and the Role of Government in Rural Britain between the Wars
Contexts
Welfare, Amenity and the Character of Village Life
Planning Villages of the Future
Conclusion
Notes
References
6 The “Social Museum” of Village Life: Sociology and Heritage in 1930s Romania
Museums and Social Governance
Exhibiting Peasant Culture in Turn-of-the-Century Romania
Sociology and the Village Museum in Interwar Romania
The Art of Not Being Governed
Conclusions
Notes
References
7 Knowledge and Power in the Making of the Soviet Village
The Agrarian Question in Late Imperial Russia
Rural Policies after the Bolshevik Takeover
Creating Order in the Countryside
Peasant Politics as a Source of Conflict
The Making of the Soviet Village
Conclusions
Notes
References
8 Between Mobilization and De-Politicization: Political Technologies of Rural Self-Government in Weimar Germany
Local Self-Government in Germany and Europe up to the Interwar Years
Rural Self-Government in Democracies: Challenges and Fields of Conflict
Objectives of Self-Government: Loyal Citizens or Harmonious Communities?
Conclusion
Notes
References
9 Governing Rural Exodus in Nazi Germany, 1933 to 1939
The Invention of the “Flight From the Land”
Rural Exodus in the German Reich, 1933–9
Rural Exodus in Niederdonau, 1938–9
Conclusion
Notes
References
10 Guardians of the Countryside: The Associated Countrywomen of the World (ACWW) and International Rural Governance ...
International Rural Governance in the Interwar Years
Representing Rural Women
Internationalizing “Rurality”
Transatlantic Crossings
The ACWW and the Coming of World War II
Conclusion
Notes
References
11 Cartels, Grossraumwirtschaft and Statistical Knowledge: International Organizations and Their Efforts to Govern ...
Forestry and Timber Industry in Europe in the Interwar Period
The Comité International du Bois and the Establishment of International Timber Statistics
Grossraumwirtschaft, the Centre International de Sylviculture and European Wood Balances
Conclusions
Notes
References
12 The Red Peasant International
Cold War Historiography
The Tenacity of Institutions and Agents
Correspondence, Advice and Feedback
Directions for Further Research
Notes
References
Index
