Introduction

Theaker, Martin

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-73927-4_1

Martin Theaker⁵

Part of the book series: Britain and the World ((BAW))

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Abstract

Theaker notes how the immediate post-war years in Europe were marked by the growth of two parallel phenomena as the headlong pursuit of nuclear technology by the world’s great powers interacted with attempts to rebuild a shattered Europe along peaceful and democratic lines. This introduction surveys the current state of literature on Britain’s civil nuclear energy projects, and highlights the severe lack of interplay between this field and the sizeable body of research on post-war Anglo-European relations. As such, this chapter highlights how civil nuclear energy, as a ground-breaking technology granted the highest priority by politicians during the 1940s and 1950s, provides a valuable lens through which to analyse London’s contemporary relations with its neighbours.

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Notes

1.
John Cockcroft , “The Development and Future of Nuclear Energy,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 6 (1950): 325–331.
2.
John Agar, Science in the Twentieth Century and Beyond (Cambridge : Polity, 2012), 15.
3.
Robert Bud and Philip Gummett, Cold War, Hot Science: Applied Research in Britain’s Defence Laboratories, 1945–1990 (London: Science Museum, 2002), 5–6; David Edgerton, Warfare State: Britain, 1920–1970 (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2006), 103–105.
4.
Oliver Daddow, Britain and Europe since 1945: Historiographical Perspectives on Integration (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004).
5.
Miriam Camps, Britain and European Community, 1955–1963 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964), 47.
6.
Elisabeth Barker, The British Between the Superpowers, 1945–50 (London: Macmillan , 1983), 230.
7.
Max Beloff, New Dimensions in Foreign Policy: A Study in British Administrative Experience, 1947–59 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1961), 99.
8.
Alan S. Milward, The United Kingdom and the European Community, Volume I: The Rise and Fall of a National Strategy, 1945–63 (London: Frank Cass, 2002), 1–9, 16–17.
9.
Ibid., 7–8.
10.
Wolfram Kaiser, Using Europe, Abusing the Europeans: Britain and European Integration, 1945–63 (Basingstoke: Macmillan , 1996), 1–27.
11.
John W. Young, Britain and European Unity, 1945–1999 (Basingstoke: Macmillan , 2002), 48–49.
12.
Ibid., 46, 50–51.
13.
James R.V. Ellison, “Perfidious Albion? Britain, Plan G and European Integration, 1955–1956,” Contemporary British History, 10 (1996), 29.
14.
Ibid., 27–29; N. Piers Ludlow, “A Waning Force: The Treasury and British European Policy, 1955–63,” Contemporary British History, 17 (2003).
15.
Ellison, “Perfidious Albion,” 28.
16.
Daddow, Britain and Europe since 1945, 182–184.
17.
Camps, Britain and the European Community, 1955–63, 48–49.
18.
Young, Britain and European Unity; N. Piers Ludlow, Dealing with Britain: The Six and the First UK Application to the EEC (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1997), 4.
19.
Ludlow, Dealing with Britain, 20–21.
20.
Mervyn O’Driscoll, review of The United States and the Nuclear Dimension of European Integration, by Gunnar Skogmar, The International History Review, 28 (2006), 213.
21.
Wolfram Kaiser and Johan Schot, Writing the Rules for Europe: Experts, Cartels and International Organisations (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan , 2014), 103–108.
22.
Vincent Lagendijk, “‘To Consolidate Peace’? The International Electro-technical Community and the Grid for the United States of Europe,” Journal of Contemporary History, 47 (2012), 402–426.
23.
John Krige, “Historical Synthesis,” in History of European Scientific and Technological Cooperation, eds. John Krige and Luca Guzzetti (Luxembourg : OOPEC, 1997), 439–444.
24.
Dominique Pestre and John Krige, “Some Thoughts on the Early History of CERN ,” in History of European Scientific and Technological Cooperation, eds. John Krige and Luca Guzzetti (Luxembourg : OOPEC, 1997), 37–42.
25.
Keith Hayward, “Airbus : Twenty Years of European Collaboration,” International Affairs, 64 (1987–1988), 11–26.
26.
Michelangelo de Maria and John Krige, “Early European Attempts in Launcher Technology: Original Sins in Eldo’s Sad Parable,” History and Technology: An International Journal, 9 (1992), 116.
27.
Ibid., 130.
28.
Annabelle May, “Concorde —Bird of Harmony or Political Albatross: an Examination in the Context of British Foreign Policy,” International Organization, 33 (1979), 481–508.
29.
Lewis Johnman and Frances M. B. Lynch, “The Road to Concorde : Franco-British Relations and the Supersonic Project,” Contemporary European History, 11 (2002), 229–252.
30.
Margaret Gowing, Britain and Atomic Energy, 1939–45 (London: Macmillan , 1964), 123.
31.
Ibid., 339–340.
32.
Margaret Gowing, Independence and Deterrence: Britain and Atomic Energy 1945–52, Volume I: Policy Making (London: Macmillan , 1974), 152–159.
33.
Septimus Paul, Nuclear Rivals: Anglo-American Atomic Relations, 1941–52 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2000); Martin Sherwin, A World Destroyed: The Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance (New York: Knopf, 1975), 90–114.
34.
Peter Hennessy, Cabinets and the Bomb (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 48; Lorna Arnold, Britain and the H-Bomb (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), 63–67. See also: Peter J. Bowler and Iwan Rhys Morus, Making Modern Science: A Historical Survey (London: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 480.
35.
Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth (New York: Knopf, 1995); Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988); Shane Maddock, Nuclear Apartheid: The Quest for American Atomic Supremacy from World War II to the Present (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 71.
36.
Gabrielle Hecht, The Radiance of France : Nuclear Power and National Identity after World War II (Cambridge , MA: MIT Press, 1998), 97–98.
37.
Lawrence Scheinman, Atomic Energy Policy in France under the Fourth Republic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), 217.
38.
Michael Eckert, “Primacy Doomed to Failure: Heisenberg’s Role as Scientific Adviser for Nuclear Policy in the FRG,” Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences, 21 (1990), 29–58; Astrid Forland, “Norway ’s Nuclear Odyssey: From Optimistic Proponent to Nonproliferator,” The Nonproliferation Review, 4 (1997), 1–16.
39.
Jacob M. van Splunter, “Nuclear Fission across the North Sea: Anglo-Dutch Cooperation on the Peaceful Use of Atomic Energy, 1950–63,” Journal of Contemporary History, 29 (1994), 663–664, 698.
40.
Ibid., 698.
41.
John Gillingham, Coal, Steel and the Rebirth of Europe, 1945–55: The Germans and French from Ruhr Conflict to Economic Community (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1991), 364–372.
42.
Alan S. Milward, The European Rescue of the Nation-State (London: Routledge, 2000), 205–206. See also: Milward, National Strategy, Volume I, 217–218.
43.
Milward, National Strategy, Volume I, 220.
44.
Ibid., 217–228.
45.
Mauro Elli, “A Politically-Tinted Rationality: Britain vs. Euratom , 1955–63,” Journal of European Integration History, 12 (2006), 123–124.
46.
Stuart Butler , “The Struggle for Power: Britain and Euratom , 1955–63,” The International History Review, 36 (2014).
47.
Milward, National Strategy, Volume I, 223; Butler , “The Struggle for Power,” 334; Mauro Elli, “The Suave Nature of Nuclear Power: British Dealings with Euratom , 1957–60,” in Which Europe(s)? New Approaches in European Integration History, eds. K. Rücker and L. Warlouzet (Brussels: PIE, 2006), 198.
48.
Gunnar Skogmar, The United States and the Nuclear Dimension of European Integration (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan , 2004), 6–7.
49.
Ibid., 1–4.
50.
Ibid., 160–161, 225–226, 239–244, 256.
51.
John Krige, American Hegemony and the Postwar Reconstruction of Science in Europe (Cambridge , MA: MIT Press, 2006), 12–13.
52.
Ibid., 255, 265–270.
53.
John Krige, “The Peaceful Atom as Political Weapon: Euratom and American Foreign Policy in the Late 1950s,” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences, 38 (2008), 7.
54.
Ibid., 27–38.
55.
Henry R. Nau, “Collective Responses to R&D Problems in Western Europe: 1955–1958 and 1968–1973,” International Organization, 29 (1975), 623–625.
56.
Roger Williams, The Nuclear Power Decisions: British Policies, 1953–78 (London: Croom Helm, 1980), 60–77.
57.
Ibid., 65–71.
58.
C.M. Buckley and R. Day, “Nuclear Reactor Development in Britain,” in Technical Innovation and British Economic Performance, ed. Keith Pavitt (London: Macmillan , 1980), 262–263.
59.
Duncan Burn, Nuclear Power and the Energy Crisis: Politics and the Atomic Industry (London: Macmillan , 1978), 9.
60.
Ibid., 9–10.
61.
William Walker and Måns Lönnroth, Nuclear Power Struggles: Industrial Competition and Proliferation Control (London: Allen & Unwin, 1983), 24–25.
62.
Robert Boardman and Malcolm Grieve, “The Politics of Fading Dreams: Britain and the Nuclear Export Business,” in Nuclear Exports and World Politics: Policy and Regime, eds. Robert Boardman and James F. Keeley (London: Macmillan , 1983), 116. See also: Joseph Camilleri, The State and Nuclear Power: Conflict and Control in the Western World (Brighton: Wheatsheaf, 1984), 230.
63.
David Edgerton, “Science in the United Kingdom: A Case Study in the Nationalisation of Science,” in Companion to Science in the Twentieth Century, eds. John Krige and Dominique Pestre (Amsterdam: Harwood, 1997), 774–775.
64.
E.N. Shaw, Europe’s Nuclear Power Experiment: History of the OECD Dragon Project (Oxford: Pergamon, 1983).
65.
Milward, National Strategy, Volume I, 224.
66.
Boardman and Grieve, “The Politics of Fading Dreams,” 100; Richard Hewlett and Jack M. Holl, Atoms for Peace and War, 1953–1961: Eisenhower and the Atomic Energy Commission (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 240, 439.
67.
Rowland Pocock, Nuclear Power: Its Development in the United Kingdom (Old Woking: Unwin Brothers, 1977), 87–88.
68.
Elli, “A Politically-Tinted Rationality,” 123–124.

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Martin Theaker

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Theaker, M. (2018). Introduction. In: Britain, Europe and Civil Nuclear Energy, 1945–62. Britain and the World. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73927-4_1

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73927-4_1
Published: 16 March 2018
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-73926-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-73927-4
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