The grand tour of Daniel Cohn-Bendit and the Europeanism of 1968

Richard I. Jobs

pp. 231-244

in: Julian Jackson, Anna-Louise Milne, James Williams (eds), May 68, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011

Abstract

The events of 1968 marked a turning point in the emergence of a cohort of young people who had come, through travel, to conceive of themselves not merely as members of a particular nation, but as a continent-wide, transnational social group.¹ It was a group based largely on age, and one that professed culturally internationalist sensibilities, in addition to, and often instead of, nationalist sensibilities. As young Europeans travelled between protest sites, they expressed this solidarity explicitly; some even demanded the abolition of national borders and the establishment of a united Europe with unhindered mobility. Thus, one aspect of the general internationalism of 1968 was specifically Europeanist and was expressed within the context of ongoing European integration. The experience of travel within the emergent youth culture helped to shape a politicized European identity among the young protesters of 1968 in Paris and beyond.