plea for jean baptiste duroselle's brilliant book, europe: a history of its peoples
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DESCRIPTION
The famous French academician Jean Baptiste Duroselle was commissioned by the Commission of the European Union (European Communities at the time) and Jacques Delors personally to author a European History of Europe, which would justify the establishment of the European Union in the 2nd half of the 20th c. as the crown of all earlier efforts to establish one state across the continent. The book was written in French (L'Europe: histoire de ses peuples, Paris, Perrin, 1990, 708 p.) and it was geared to become (as it really did) the basic textbook of European History for the secondary education of all EU member states. For this reason, numerous translations were produced at the local level, and the book became in this manner the cornerstone of the European identity; as regards countries that were not member-states in 1990 but became later, the book was translated to the official language(s) of each country after its adhesion.