Harold James: Europe Needs Bold Solutions to Survive This Summer Crisis

Harold James is Professor of History at Princeton University and the European Institute in Florence, and Professor of International Affairs at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

Europe's crisis is now poised at the moment that divides recovery and renewal from decline and death. Whereas a few weeks ago, commentators and financial analysts argued that only a few months remained to rescue Europe, leading politicians, lurching from summit to summit, have recently talked in terms of days.

Summer crises are a familiar feature of European history – and of financial history. Indeed, the 20th century was shaped by three summer crises, whose seriousness was heightened in each case by the absence of major policymakers, who were on vacation.

In two years, Europeans will commemorate the centennial of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28 June 1914, and the subsequent "July crisis" that triggered the first world war that August. On 13 July 1931, the German banking system collapsed, ensuring that what was previously an American economic downturn became the worldwide Great Depression. On 15 August 1971, president Richard Nixon ended the United States' commitment to a fixed gold price, leading to a decade of global currency instability....