The Economic and Social History of Modern Europe series seeks to present research which deals with the history of European interconnections and interdependence, differentiation and division of labour in the 20th century. We are seeking not country comparisons, but rather European studies, including those that use the example of a single county to discuss the European embeddedness of a given nation, but also the European dimensions of the topic at hand. We aim to kick off the series with an overview of key fields of research in European economic and social history after the end of World War II, a period in which Europes history appears to have been dominated by processes surrounding European political integration. Although there can be no pretence of completeness here, this volume is meant to present significant research topics that, in very different ways and on many different levels, have enabled, overstretched, accelerated or at times hindered and in some ways even worked against this process of integration. The articles in the volume offer an overview of key lines of development of European society, economy and financial markets after the Second World War and report on and analyse recent research hypotheses and strategies. They also mark out important desiderata for future research in their respective research areas.