Transnational Movements and Organisations
Internationalism*
Standardisation in Europe
The establishment of shared concepts and meanings is a precondition for cultural interaction. Therefore, standardisation is an age-old process and has always been a central component of transnational and transcultural exchange. However, in late eighteenth-century Europe, standardisation was for the first time thoroughly systematised. Attempts at large-scale setting of norms and standards gained momentum and introduced an entirely new rationale to the process of standardisation. The thorough revision of French weights and measures starting during the exceptional phase of the French Revolution marks the first instance of a science- and conference-based standardisation that would later become the primary way to set and maintain international standards. This article traces the origins of standardisation in late eighteenth-century France and seeks to explain why the French Revolution provided a rare opportunity for such an endeavour. It then moves on to the following first attempts at international standardisation and briefly discusses three eclectic examples from the nineteenth century dealing with the fields of telecommunication, time and currency – each of which followed a slightly different path.
