Governing the Rural in Interwar Europe

Description

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. 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