The Green Heart of Governance: Rural Europe during the Interwar Years in a Global Perspective

This chapter outlines five central dimensions of how the rural was governed during the interwar years. It focuses on the role of the state, and also introduces other actors that contributed to these processes. The chapter assesses the long prehistory of governing the rural, and argues that the countryside has always been central to forms of state governance; in other words, the heart of governance in European history has always been "green". It also assesses new forms of economic intervention characteristic of Europe's interwar years, which revealed a new understanding of the government's functions and public image. Colonization emerged as another characteristic of the period, and the chapter discusses it in both facets: "internal" and overseas colonization. The chapter scrutinizes international cooperation as a phenomenon that assumed a stronger role during the period. It argues that during the interwar years, the countryside became the subject of governance techniques like never before.