The cities in the title of this contribution were the locations of summits at which European Community (EC)/European Union (EU) leaders made historic decisions that shaped the future of the European project. At three of those summits – Maastricht in December 1991, Amsterdam in June 1997 and Nice in December 2000 – leaders agreed on changes to the founding treaties on which the EC and the EU are based. Of the three treaty changes, which subsequently bore the names of the cities themselves, Maastricht was by far the most consequential, not only because it ushered in the EU but also because of its provisions for Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and cooperation on Justice and Home Affairs.

The overwhelming majority of the United Nations’ 193 member states were once colonies of Western empires. Most of these colonies gained independence during the era of decolonization that followed the Second World War. Despite their numbers and their nationalist struggles, these colonies-cum-countries have not attracted much attention in the standard works on nationalism. As the editors of this volume observe, those works are largely Eurocentric in their orientation. They generally portray the rise of nationalism in colonial dependencies as supplemental to, and largely derivative of, nationalism in the Western world.1 Even Benedict Anderson, a specialist on Southeast Asia who was deeply knowledgeable about nationalist movements in the colonial world, characterized these movements in his hugely influential Imagined Communities as conforming to a modular design that originated with American and European nationalism and nations.2

The introduction charts the ways in which literary studies and animal studies have formed a mutually enriching dialogue. Starting with a selection of contemporary short stories, and exploring questions of exploitation, anthropomorphism, and metaphor, it demonstrates how animals alter the way we think about, write, and read literature. The introduction includes a summary of the chapters contained in the book.

On 1 January 1804, General Jean Jacques Dessalines officially declared the independence of Haiti. The decades that followed were critical for the new country’s development and were a period of dynamic change as well as colonial continuities. The struggles and debates of the early decades illustrate the contentious post-colonial process of building a black nation-state in a world dominated by racialized slavery. Jean Jacques Dessalines, the first head of state, and subsequent leaders embarked on a political, economic, and social experiment in the Americas: to establish the first black state and fulfill the radical Age of Revolution promises of freedom and equality. This chapter examines how Haitians sought to interpret their revolution’s ideals, in particular the meaning of liberty, and the competing definitions that shaped the country’s political, social, cultural, and economic development. The chapter begins in 1804 and follows the development of the Haitian nation-state until the Revolution of 1843. Across these four decades, we see how various groups in the new country sought to define its economic and political direction as well as create a new culture. Integral to this work were questions of landownership, the organization of labor, and systems of government.

The Treaty of Maastricht signified an end to the permissive consensus that had characterised the first decades of the European integration project: the European Union (EU) as a political issue not only became more salient, but also aroused more public discontent. From the perspective of the political elite, the 1990s were a decade of optimism focused on deepening and widening the European project, with, for example, the imminent introduction of the euro and the EU enlargement with central and eastern European countries. At the level of the general public, European integration became increasingly contested, and claims about a ‘democratic deficit’ of the EU became ubiquitous. Although the Maastricht Treaty was not the starting point,1 it substantially amplified the democratic debates about the EU.

This chapter focuses on the development, practice and contestation of the European Communities (EC)/European Union (EU) as a global power in the light of ever-more advancing globalisation and European integration. It focuses particularly on the EU’s Common Commercial Policy (CCP) or EU trade policy in the context of a larger set of external actions undertaken by the EU. Thus, this chapter concerns the development of the EC/EU as a global power in terms of its external actions, especially in trade. As this chapter will show, it is especially thanks to the EC/EU’s so-called ‘low’ level of external action, especially its trade policy, that the EC/EU developed as a global power long before the EU contributed to global governance through the so-called ‘high’ foreign policy. At the same time, the ability to perform as a global power in trade – to harness the opportunities of globalisation, but also to answer the challenges of globalisation – has become increasingly dependent on four key dimensions: the EU’s actorness, the EU’s effectiveness, the EU’s coherence and the EU’s democratic legitimacy.

Did 1968 – a major moment of political and cultural revolt when young people across the globe rallied under the banner of “international solidarity” to challenge the Cold War consensus as well as the authorities of governments, institutions, and ways of thought – spell the end of nationalism?1 The symbolic shorthand “1968,” perhaps more than any other event of the twentieth century, quickly became synonymous with the triumph of internationalism. “National frontiers mean less than generational frontiers nowadays,” the London Times noted with astonishment in May 1968.2 Since then, the notion that the international trumped the national in this era has only become more firmly established in assessments of 1968.

Violence helps to define revolution as a mode of historical change; however, violence is a factor, not an actor, in history. Widespread violence in a variety of forms persisted in France despite three constitutions (1791, 1795, 1799) and their accompanying claims to end the Revolution. The popular violence that began in 1789 helped to eliminate the vestiges of feudalism and abolish inherited privilege. In 1792, rural revolts, urban riots, and foreign war served to bring down the monarchy and promote social leveling. Dismantling the old order provoked widespread resistance, which inspired state-authorized terror, exceptional justice, and mass executions on an unprecedented scale in 1793-94. Royalism, Jacobinism, religious resistance, continuing war, and politicized vigilantism all fueled continuing cycles of violence after 1794. Economic chaos, parlous policing, and partisan judges also prolonged an endemic violence that ranged from solipsistic banditry to armed counter-revolution. These multivalent forces of instability could only be tamed by enhancing and depoliticizing the repressive powers of the state. Efforts both to ensconce the republic and contain violence, notably by militarizing justice, enhancing repression, and limiting democracy, spawned a growing liberal authoritarianism after 1797. Reducing factionalism, banditry, and regional resistance fostered a security state and personal dictatorship in 1802.

European integration is not the result of a preconceived plan. It rather consists of messy procedures and heated discussions. Ad hoc decision-making, crises and even utter chaos have been constants in the history of the European Union (EU). This complex reality has induced scholars to zoom in on its infamous ‘muddling through’ to better understand what is going on in European integration. Consequently, the primary focus of research has been on ways, means and outcomes: inter-state bargaining, and the resulting treaties and European institutions. However, this focus on institutional ways and means, and on the outcomes of inter-state bargaining has implied that ideas about Europe’s future mostly have been treated as proxies of specific, rather one-dimensional, state, or institutional, interests.

Chapter Two examines the various discourses of nature in early Romantic-period scientific, philosophical, religious, and poetic texts, showing how these have contributed to the emergence of the biological sciences and of ecological consciousness. Highlighting interchanges between Germany and Britain, it first looks at definitions of nature in both languages, arguing that the term underwent a semantic explosion between 1750 and 1850. Informed by recent ecocritical theory, it then bases itself on an anonymously published 1783 essay co-authored by G.C. Tobler and Goethe to revise the commonplace idea of Romantic nature as something wild, pure and distinct from culture. Drawing on the ideas of Spinoza and Leibniz via Herder and Schelling, the text imagines nature as an active, self-organising process of becoming in which humans participate. This Naturphilosophie informed an ethos of contemplation often cast in opposition to industrial capitalism. The chapter then discusses Romantic language theories and their relation with the non-human world. It closes with an overview of nature’s spiritual dimension in the theology of Schleiermacher and poetry of William Wordsworth, John Clare, and, again, Blake.

When Britain unilaterally embraced free trade in 1846, proponents at home and abroad widely assumed that the rest of the industrializing world would soon follow suit. But Britain’s economic cosmopolitan trump card received an unanticipated countermove from its competitors; one rival after another instead turned to economic nationalism in order to foster their infant industries at home and to expand their closed colonial markets abroad. Even Britain’s own settler colonies abandoned free trade by the turn of the century. Economic nationalism, not free trade, became the driving political economic force underpinning the century of imperial expansion from the mid-nineteenth century to the Second World War.

British free traders sought to curb this economic nationalist turn, and the United States, Britain’s resource-rich former colony, seemingly contained the most fruitful soil for free trade’s mid-nineteenth-century transplantation. All the early omens appeared promising.

Chapter Eight revisits several of the same authors and texts as in the previous chapter, but focusses on the complex relation between cosmopolitanism and nationalism, looking at how the modern concept of citizenship emerged in this period as a bridge between Enlightenment and Romantic values. The first par discusses the origins and theoretical foundations of cosmopolitanism, including the notions of Humanität, republicanism, and national culture in works by Kant, Schlegel, and Herder. It then turns to two texts on education written in response to the Revolution by Schiller and Fichte. The latter combines Romantic nationalism with Enlightenment cosmopolitanism in an effort to first liberate the individual nation, then, through moral education, humanity as a whole. In the last part, the author presents three case studies of lived Romantic cosmopolitanism, in which the above ideals are enacted. These include an abolitionist slave narrative by Olaudah Equiano; the Franco-British poet and writer Helen Maria Williams’s radical repo+L22rting from Revolutionary Paris; and German poet and patriot Karl Follen’s early nationalist and later internationalist writing in exile.

The twentieth century witnessed the rise of nationalism associated with decolonization throughout Asia and Africa. Indochina inspired nationalist movements around the world as communist-led movements there scored major victories against French colonialism and American intervention. The phenomenon was complex not only because Indochinese nationalisms were entangled with communism, but also because of their apparently ancient roots.

This chapter aims to explore the origins and nature of nationalisms in Indochina. It examines the processes that gave birth to national consciousness among the people in the Indochinese peninsula. Indochina, a modern name for this region born out of French imperial conquests, consisted of diverse communities of different religions, cultures, and histories. These communities had existed and interacted with each other for centuries prior to their contact with European powers.

In his popular novel, Kürk Mantolu Madonna (Madonna in a Fur Coat), which was first published in Istanbul in 1943, Sabahattin Ali wrote that “for some reason or other people prefer to investigate what they feel sure they will find. It is without doubt easier to find a brave man to descend to the bottom of a well where it is known that a dragon lives than to find a man who will show the courage to descend into a well about the bottom of which nothing is known.”1 This view applies nicely to research into nations and nationalisms, for the bottom of the well is already known: the Ottoman Empire collapsed and was replaced by new nation-states. This collapse has often been taken as the “inevitable” triumph of nation-state over empire, the victory of national identities over other identity constructions.

The beginning of European integration was portrayed as a process of reconciliation among former enemies, Germany and France most prominent among them. Extending cooperation in various functional fields was seen as a step towards eventual unification. Throughout the Cold War, this project was confined to the western part of the continent; the events of 1989, however, changed both the scope and the meaning of integration. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, a broad agreement arose that Europe should be made ‘whole and free’. The eastward enlargement of the European Union (EU) became the main instrument of the continent’s reunification. There was always a clear discrepancy, however, between the political rhetoric of Europe’s reunification and the nitty-gritty of integration. In daily politics, regulatory realignment, expressed in an ever-growing body of laws dealing with disparate issues, dwarfed initiatives in the fields of Europe’s memory, culture and inheritance. While the requirements of institutional integration were clearly spelled out (and imposed on the new candidate states), the question of what a reunified Europe should amount to faded rapidly away.

International migration regimes refer to the way states interact when there are flows or pressures for flows of people with the prospect of lasting settlement across their borders. States generally enforce border checks, recognise only a limited right of residence, reduce social security rights outside the country of employment and deny civic rights for migrants. In Europe in the late 1940s, states routinely responded to migration flows with such cumbersome and arbitrary administrative practices. Today, in contrast, the regime of migration between the member states of the European Union (EU) displays openness. Migrants’ social security rights are exportable, and they benefit from civic rights. Deep closure towards low-skilled migration from outside Europe also characterises this regime, however. During the post-war decades, change has defied continuity, and today’s liberal migration regime has achieved depth, width and longevity, making it without equivalent in modern history.