Abstract
British reluctance to merge its national identity in an integrated Europe, whether styled a European Union or a United States of Europe, was an obvious consequence of a historical experience very different from that of its continental neighbours and of institutions, political and legal, that were also unique. Its attitudes were also shaped by its more recent experience in the Second World War, the conclusions drawn from the way in which survival and ultimately victory had been achieved, and the massive domestic and external tasks that faced it. But it would be equally mistaken to see the continental countries that made up the original Six and the later Fifteen as having so much in common that their rulers did not need to have regard to their national interests, as perceived by their electorates, when calculating their own attitudes to the process of constructing the new Europe.
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Notes and References
The book Building Post-War Europe: National Decision-Makers and European Institutions, 1948–1963,edited by Anne Deighton (London: St Martin’s Press, 1995), deals with the Italian, Belgian and Dutch contributions to the process as well as the roles of France, Britain and Germany.
See Max Beloff, ‘The Anglo-French Union Project of 1940’, in The Intellectual in Politics (London, 1970).
See François Duchêne, Jean Monnet (London, 1994);
Charles Grant, Delors: Inside the House that Jacques Built (London, 1994);
and the review under the title ‘European Hamiltonians’ by Max Beloff in The National Interest, no. 40, Summer 1995.
See also George Ross, Jacques Delors and European Integration (Oxford, 1995).
See Elizabeth Guigou, Pour les Européens (Paris, 1994). Madame Guigou was one of the two MEPs appointed to the ‘Reflection Group’ set up to prepare for the 1996 Inter-governmental Conference.
A recent work has thrown much light on the role of the Church during the Vichy regime: W. D. Halls, Politics, Society and Christianity in Vichy France (Oxford: Berg, 1995).
Vincent Auriol, Mon septennat, 1947–1954, eds P. Nora and J. Ozouf, abridged edn (Paris, 1970) p. 380.
Benjamin Disraeli, Letters, Vol. 5 (Toronto, 1993) p. 456 n.
See Alan Milward, The European Rescue of the Nation State (London: Roudedge, 1992) pp. 219ff.
See Richard Lamb, The Macmillan Years 1957–1963: The Emerging Truth (London, 1995) pp. 192ff.
I am indebted to Professor David Dilks for letting me have his two unpublished lectures ‘Rights, Wrongs and Rivalries: Britain and France in 1945’ and ‘De Gaulle and the British’. The general course of the negotiations is summarised in John W. Young, Britain, France and the Unity of Europe, 1945–1951 (Leicester, 1984).
See Claude d’Abzac Epezy and Philippe Vial, ‘In Search of a European Consciousness: French Military Elites and the Idea of Europe, 1947–1954’, and Gerard Bossuat, ‘The French Administrative Elite and the Unification of Western Europe, 1947–1958’, in Anne Deighton (ed.), Building Postwar Europe.
René Massigli, Une comédie des erreurs, 1943–1956 (Paris, 1978).
The diaries of Vincent Auriol provide a running commentary on these issues from the point of view of the traditional Left. See Auriol, Mon septennat,and also Jean Lacouture, Pierre Mendés-France (Paris, 1981).
See on this point, R. O. Paxton and Nicholas Wahl (eds), De Gaulle and the United States (Oxford: Berg, 1994) on de Gaulle’s attempt to secure a Three-Power directorate. See Paul-Henri Spaak, Combats inachevés,Vol. 2, pp. 180–7.
See Max Beloff, The United States and the Unity of Europe (Washington, DC, 1963),
and ‘European Hamiltonians’, The National Interest, no. 40, Summer 1995.
The British clearly needed to know what the balance within the Community was likely to be; in answer to Macmillan’s inquiry in 1960 he was informed as follows: ‘The French will have the greatest influence in the next few years and may be able to retain it. But much will depend on the future of France after de Gaulle’s departure and upon developments in Germany. The Germans particularly if there was a swing to the Right backed by industrialists might well make a determined challenge for the leadership’ (CAB 129/102, 1960).
Massigli, Une canédie des erreurs,p. 195. The degree to which the Americans were a driving force behind the movement towards a ‘United Europe’ and of Monnet’s dependence upon US funds has been shown in a convincing fashion in two articles by Richard J. Aldrich, ‘European Integration: An American Intelligence Connection’, in Deighton (ed.), Building Postwar Europe,and ‘OSS, CIA and European Unity: The American Committee on United Europe, 1948–1960’, (unpublished).
See Robert Marjolin, Architect of European Unity, Memoirs 1911–1986, trans. William Hall (London, 1989);
Etienne Hirsch, Ainsi va la vie (Lausanne, 1988);
Hervé Alphand, L’Etonnement dêtre: Journal 1939–1975 (Paris, 1978);
Pierr Uri, Penser pour l’action (Paris, 1991);
and Raymond Poidevin, Robert Schuman, homme d’état, 1886–1963 (Paris, 1986)).
See Jean Lacouture, De Gaulle, 3 vols (Paris, 1984, 1985, 1986);
Michel Debré, Trois Républiques pour une France, Mémoires, 3 vols (Paris 1985–1988);
and Maurice Couve de Murville, Le Monde en face (Paris, 1989).
Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, Le Pouvoir et la vie (Paris, 1988) pp. 119–21.
For a very penetrating examination of Germany’s dilemma over the use of military force and the anxieties its new status has created for the French see Franz-Josef Meiers, ‘Germany: The Reluctant Power’ Survival, vol. 37, no. 3, Autumn 1995.
For the Franco-German treaty of 22 January and de Gaulle’s disappointment when it was watered down by the German Parliament in order to preserve the special nature of Germany’s relation-ship with the United States, see Charles Williams, The Last Great Frenchman: A Life of General de Gaulle (London, 1993) pp. 432ff.
Debré, Memoires,Vol. II, p. 221.
See Milward, The European Rescue of the Nation-State (London, 1992).
The French attached reservations to their signature of the Euratom treaty to prevent it interfering with their military aspiration. Spaak, Combats inacherés,Vol. 2, pp. 188–202.
An interesting first attempt is that of John Laughland, The Death of Politics: France under Mitterrand (London, 1994).
Revealing of Mitterrand’s methods are the diaries of Jacques Attali, Jacques Attali, Verbatim, Vol. 1 (Paris, 1994).
See Pierre Péan, Une jeuncsse française, François Mitterrand, 1934–1947 (Paris, 1994).
The choice of waiting for the convergence of the economies before monetary union was one the French made in the negotiations for Maastricht. The Germans would have been prepared to go ahead with the countries that qualified. See Christiane Saint-Etienne, L’Europe contre le Capitalism (Paris, 1993).
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© 1996 Lord Beloff
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Beloff, L. (1996). Britain, France and European Union. In: Britain and European Union. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24883-4_6
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