Les voyages municipaux américains en Europe 1900-1940. Une piste d'histoire transnationale

International audience Transnational perspective at work : municipal American travellers in Europe 1900-1940 The circulation of experiments, people, technical and administrative devices marks the contemporary municipal scene. Those who organised and took part to this work of connections shared the c...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Saunier, Pierre-Yves
Other Authors: Environnement, Ville, Société (EVS), École normale supérieure de Lyon (ENS de Lyon)-École des Mines de Saint-Étienne (Mines Saint-Étienne MSE), Institut Mines-Télécom Paris (IMT)-Institut Mines-Télécom Paris (IMT)-Université Lumière - Lyon 2 (UL2)-Université Jean Moulin - Lyon 3 (UJML), Université de Lyon-Université de Lyon-Institut National des Sciences Appliquées de Lyon (INSA Lyon), Université de Lyon-Institut National des Sciences Appliquées (INSA)-Institut National des Sciences Appliquées (INSA)-Université Jean Monnet - Saint-Étienne (UJM)-École Nationale des Travaux Publics de l'État (ENTPE)-École nationale supérieure d'architecture de Lyon (ENSAL)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:French
Published: HAL CCSD 2002
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Online Access:https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00002798
https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00002798/document
https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00002798/file/JEV_2003.pdf
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Summary:International audience Transnational perspective at work : municipal American travellers in Europe 1900-1940 The circulation of experiments, people, technical and administrative devices marks the contemporary municipal scene. Those who organised and took part to this work of connections shared the conviction that municipal achievements could be imported, transferred and adapted despite radical differences in local contexts or national legislative realities. All along the 20th century, exhibitions, congresses, specialised periodicals and networks or associations of cities adopted this attitude. Perhaps this principle was most intensely developed through the work of American municipal reformers who scoured Europe for ideas and suggestions. This new sort of reforming Grand Tour developed from the years 1880-1890 when more and more American considered that the Old and the New worlds had a common destiny. Those last decades of the 19th century welcomed a considerable growth of the North-Atlantic cultural and intellectual trade, that from the 1930s was completed by an hemispheric concern towards Latin and South America. This article makes use of existing scholarship to map the travelling interests of American municipal reformers between 1890 and 1914, before scrutinising the series of travels carried on by a cluster of professional societies of municipal administrators and technicians in the 1930s. This double endeavour helps to understand the possibilities, constraints and limits of the European municipal travel. For its American visitors, municipal Europe was simultaneously a rhetoric tool, an inspiration and a beachhead to spread the gospel of reformed municipal government towards the rest of the world. La sphère municipale contemporaine est riche de circulations d'expériences, de recettes, d'hommes, de solutions techniques ou réglementaires. Les acteurs de ces circulations partagèrent l'idée que les expériences en matière municipale sont transmissibles, traduisibles et transférables au delà des spécificités ...