European Politics
The Invention of Peace

Based on Chapter of same name by TR Reid

Chapter begins in Ypres, Flanders
site of more than 170 military cemeteries

The region, obscure to most Americans,
has been Europe's bloodiest battlegrounds for 2000 years

Caesar never able to conquer it

Napoleon's Waterloo here

Spanish aphorism for attempting too much
"Poner una pica en Flanders"
"To station a spearman in Flanders"

Hitler fought here, blinded by British gas attack

WWI WWII

Poetry of the battlefield
Rupert Brooke, wrote for the Wipers Times, WWI

If I should die, think only this of me
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England.  There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware...

Dr. John Mc Rae, poet, surgeon in Canadian Army at Ypres, WWI
author of In Flanders Fields



What's the point of recounting this bloody and tragic past?











Rest of chapter a good readable account of the evolution of the European Union
from ECSC to its 25 member union today


See Appendix 1 for profiles of each member state, good source of data for papers