Networks of powers : railway visions in inter-war Europe

This article analyses two proposals for the construction of large-scale international railway arteries. Both proposals put railways at the service of ideologies of inter-war Europe such as nationalism but also the ideology of European unification. The authors of the two schemes, Henri Bressler and Carlo Enrico Barduzzi, proposed the construction of large-scale works which would promote socio-political stability in the continent. These routes would integrate Europe better into the worldwide commercial system. However, they would primarily benefit certain groups of countries. The projects are important historiographically, since they reveal new horizons and expectations that were opening up for railway development at an international level between the wars, and the potential of railways as an instrument of European and global dominance. Setting the proposals in an international context, it argues that they failed because they were out of tune with the dominant paradigm of European railway developments. Nevertheless both can be seen as a prelude to post-war plans in the context of the European Union.