Introduction: Outsiders Within

Abstract

This chapter explains the book’s main argument, which is that some of the most influential ideas on European culture and on the peaceful reorganization of an interconnected Europe emerged from Jewish milieus and as a result of Jewish predicaments before and after the First World War. It then introduces the book’s main protagonists, the well-known promoter of Pan-Europe, Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, and his little-known predecessor, Alfred Fried. This is followed by an overview of the book’s key themes: marginality as a context for internationalism, empire and international organization, and the role of social evolutionism in internationalist thought. The chapter concludes with a brief background on the history of ideas for European unification in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.