Out of History and Time: Neighbors with Different Routes and Pathways

Abstract

This chapter offers brief historical sketches of France’s and Germany’s routes to the Cold War world of the 1950s. These succinct portraits of the longer-term evolution of French and German political histories map the contours of the main stages of the two countries’ foreign, security, and military policy over the past centuries. They do not aspire to be detailed histories, nor even complete historical accounts or new historical interpretations. Rather, they seek to outline the grand historical lines and some important milestones, beginning with the two countries’ emergence as foreign policy actors and then focusing on their position and involvement in European and international affairs in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and first half of the twentieth centuries.