Acknowledgements

This book stems from more than twenty years of research. I started examining protectionism, industrial policies, cartels, and their connection to international tensions and welfare states in 2002. At the time, during the period of ‘high neoliberalism’, these topics were deeply unpopular, and even considered slightly seditious. Today they have come back to the fore in dramatic fashion.

After my PhD on European history, I made a foray into global history with my book Governing Europe, and by co-founding the first journal of global history, Monde(s). The study of South American, African, and Asian history showed me that what I believed to be a regional phenomenon – European integration – actually had global relevance through its influence on the global economy (and increasingly on its politics), and the fact that it has no counterpart. As a result, ‘provincialising Europe’ does not mean that focusing on Europe is pointless, but that the continent’s experience is a case study that is instructive for all, not just Europeans.

This book is therefore the product of those two decades of enquiry. It is an enriched translation of a work originally published in 2022 in French by CNRS éditions under the title Europe contre Europe. Entre liberté, solidarité et puissance. It has been updated (to include the Russo-Ukrainian War and recent developments in environmental and trade policy up to August 2025), expanded (to include foreign and defence policy), and largely overhauled. While the French expression ‘Europe puissance’ has a specific recognised meaning, its strict English translation, ‘Europe as a Power’, is confusing. Preference has instead been given to the notion of community for this third category. The full list of references has not been reproduced in the print version of the book, but is available on the publisher’s website, as well as my personal site.

The English version grew out of the lively debates sparked by presentations of Europe contre Europe in various academic seminars around the world. While I feel a certain degree of flight shame, I am nevertheless convinced that direct and frank discussions with colleagues over coffee or beer are irreplaceable. It would be hard for me to understand how my American, Japanese, or Chinese colleagues view Europe and the world while comfortably remaining on the banks of the Seine, gazing at the Sainte-Chapelle from my office window.

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to those who have invited me to discuss Europe contre Europe, and more generally to all those who provided thoughtful feedback: Ralf Ahrens, Pierre Alayrac, Jenny Andersson, Nicolas Badalassi, Sebastian Billows, Estelle Brosset, Megan Brown, Éric Bussière, Alain Chatriot, Michelle Cini, Ramona Coman, Amandine Crespy, Nicolas Delalande, François Denord, Michele di Donato, Pierre-Yves Donzé, Mathieu Dubois, Ken Endo, Olivier Feiertag, Maurizio Ferrera, Orfeo Fioretos, Mark Gilbert, Pierre-Cyrille Hautcoeur, Alan Hervé, Liane Hewitt, Haakon Ikonomou, Erik Jones, Wolfram Kaiser, Tomoya Kuroda, Karl Lauschke, Christian Lequesne, Brigitte Leucht, Michel Mangenot, Kathleen McNamara, Lorenzo Mechi, Frédéric Mérand, Guia Migani, Jan-Werner Müller, Philipp Müller, Alexandre Nützenadel, Francesco Petrini, Thomas Piketty, Jan Pomarek, Sigfrido Ramirez-Perez, Andreas Rödder, Eric Roussel, Elke Seefried, Katja Seidel, Glenda Sluga, Céline Spector, Kazuto Suzuki, Mark Thatcher, Philipp Ther, Guido Thiemeyer, Blaise Truong-Loï, Antoine Vauchez, Nicolas Verschueren, Scott Viallet-Thévenin, Blaise Wilfert, and Cornelia Woll.

For the most insightful comments on the main argument of the book, I would like to extend my special thanks to Antoine Acker, Grace Ballor, Benjamin Bürbaumer, Mathieu Fulla, Giuliano Garavini, Hussein Kassim, Sandrine Kott, Justine Lacroix, Piers Ludlow, Sophie Meunier, Andrew Moravcsik, Emmanuel Mourlon-Druol, Craig Parsons, Kiran Klaus Patel, Sabine Pitteloud, Morten Rasmussen, Vera Scepanovic, and Andy Smith. I am also grateful for the perceptive comments from several of my PhD students, including Adeline Afonso, Julien Barbaroux, Fabienne Jouty, Alexandre Lauverjat, Liupeng Wang and Marco Vianelli. More generally, I would like to thank all of my students who helped shape my current approach over the course of two decades of teaching in three different countries. This book was made possible by collecting archival sources in eight countries, for which I would like to express gratitude to archivists as well as my interviewees.

As this project is also a capitalist venture, I acknowledge here the various sources of funding that have enabled this research, in addition to the publication and translation of the book: Sorbonne University, the SIRICE research centre, the GIS EUROLAB, the ANR (through the ANR-DFG ELEMENT project) and the European Union for its funding of the Jean Monnet Chair GreenEUHist. The usual disclaimer applies, for these sources of funding did not interfere with the publication in any way. The book was largely translated and corrected by Arby Gharibian, the translator of Sandrine Kott’s The World More Equal, published by Columbia University Press, one of the few individuals able to understand the intricacies of academic research in this field in both languages. Some chapters were also linguistically corrected by Don Stoudt.

Last but not least, I would like to thank my family for their indispensable support, as well as the late Michel Albert – a pioneer of the ‘varieties of capitalism’ literature – who was kind enough to write a preface to my first book in 2011. His masterpiece Capitalism against Capitalism, a book still widely cited today, inspired this book.