The time and space of Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi’s Pan-Europe, 1923-1939
This thesis investigates the historical geographies of the Pan-European Union, and its founder and leader Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, focusing in the main on the period from 1923 to 1939. A mixed-race Austrian aristocrat, philosopher and writer who made it his life’s mission to see Europe poli...
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| Format: | Thesis (University of Nottingham only) |
| Language: | English |
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2018
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| Online Access: | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/51778/ |
| _version_ | 1848798573324402688 |
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| author | Thorpe, Benjamin J. |
| author_facet | Thorpe, Benjamin J. |
| author_sort | Thorpe, Benjamin J. |
| building | Nottingham Research Data Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | This thesis investigates the historical geographies of the Pan-European Union, and its founder and leader Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, focusing in the main on the period from 1923 to 1939. A mixed-race Austrian aristocrat, philosopher and writer who made it his life’s mission to see Europe politically united, Coudenhove-Kalergi’s was a singular life, which he used to his advantage by weaving his life story into his political campaigning. The thesis opens by investigating the relationship between a life lived and a life told, and about the consequences for researchers attempting to recover his biography.
The bulk of the thesis looks at the ways in which Pan-Europeanism both responded and itself contributed to shaping three broad sets of spatial and temporal ideas, each revolving around the notion of a supranational European polity. First, it confronts the way history was invoked both to bring into being a ‘literature’ that would add prestige to its arguments, and to craft a narrative arc that would add the force of apparent inevitability to its arguments. Second, it looks at the way in which Pan-Europeanism employed a form of spatial reasoning that shared many points of reference with the German school of geopolitik, despite a fundamentally incompatible view of international politics. And third, it analyses the Pan-European invention of ‘Eurafrica’ as a neo-colonial system that would offer a ‘third path’ internationalism that fell between the imperialism of the British Empire, and the Mandate-based theory of international governance advocated by the League. Each of these sets of ideas, I argue, persisted both outside the bounds of the Pan-European Union, and after its eventual marginalisation. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T20:21:55Z |
| format | Thesis (University of Nottingham only) |
| id | nottingham-51778 |
| institution | University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus |
| institution_category | Local University |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T20:21:55Z |
| publishDate | 2018 |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | nottingham-517782025-02-28T12:04:44Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/51778/ The time and space of Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi’s Pan-Europe, 1923-1939 Thorpe, Benjamin J. This thesis investigates the historical geographies of the Pan-European Union, and its founder and leader Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, focusing in the main on the period from 1923 to 1939. A mixed-race Austrian aristocrat, philosopher and writer who made it his life’s mission to see Europe politically united, Coudenhove-Kalergi’s was a singular life, which he used to his advantage by weaving his life story into his political campaigning. The thesis opens by investigating the relationship between a life lived and a life told, and about the consequences for researchers attempting to recover his biography. The bulk of the thesis looks at the ways in which Pan-Europeanism both responded and itself contributed to shaping three broad sets of spatial and temporal ideas, each revolving around the notion of a supranational European polity. First, it confronts the way history was invoked both to bring into being a ‘literature’ that would add prestige to its arguments, and to craft a narrative arc that would add the force of apparent inevitability to its arguments. Second, it looks at the way in which Pan-Europeanism employed a form of spatial reasoning that shared many points of reference with the German school of geopolitik, despite a fundamentally incompatible view of international politics. And third, it analyses the Pan-European invention of ‘Eurafrica’ as a neo-colonial system that would offer a ‘third path’ internationalism that fell between the imperialism of the British Empire, and the Mandate-based theory of international governance advocated by the League. Each of these sets of ideas, I argue, persisted both outside the bounds of the Pan-European Union, and after its eventual marginalisation. 2018-07-16 Thesis (University of Nottingham only) NonPeerReviewed application/pdf en arr https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/51778/1/Thesis%20%5B10.05.18%5D.pdf Thorpe, Benjamin J. (2018) The time and space of Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi’s Pan-Europe, 1923-1939. PhD thesis, University of Nottingham. paneuropa union pan-european union european union federation coudenhove-kalergi |
| spellingShingle | paneuropa union pan-european union european union federation coudenhove-kalergi Thorpe, Benjamin J. The time and space of Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi’s Pan-Europe, 1923-1939 |
| title | The time and space of Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi’s Pan-Europe, 1923-1939 |
| title_full | The time and space of Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi’s Pan-Europe, 1923-1939 |
| title_fullStr | The time and space of Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi’s Pan-Europe, 1923-1939 |
| title_full_unstemmed | The time and space of Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi’s Pan-Europe, 1923-1939 |
| title_short | The time and space of Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi’s Pan-Europe, 1923-1939 |
| title_sort | time and space of richard coudenhove-kalergi’s pan-europe, 1923-1939 |
| topic | paneuropa union pan-european union european union federation coudenhove-kalergi |
| url | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/51778/ |