Cours Magistral de M.Cassagnau “Britain in Europe”
Week 1: Britain and Europe until 1800
The beginnings, Ancient Britain: The British Isles were peopled by so-called « Iberians »,
Homo sapiens who had replaced Neanderthals as early as the late Paleolithic (about 50,000
years ago). These people, who already looked like today Europeans, had the same genetic
traits as other Western Europeans, especially on the Atlantic coasts. (Those genetic
specificities have been best preserved among Basque people till today). Those native
Europeans underwent progressive Indo-European invasions – which started in Central Europe
probably five thousand years ago – and they gradually adopted Celtic culture from 800 BC
onwards. Then the British Isles were controlled by the Roman Empire AD 43-410.
Afterwards, waves of Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian invaders practically until the year 1000
forced the Celts to go west. Some of those Celts (who spoke Brythonic languages) fled to
Armorica between the 5th and the 7th centuries A.D. and Armorica became Brittany. The
various waves of Germanic invaders converted progressively from paganism to Christianity
and, as Christians, took part in the political, economic and religious life of Europe. In
particular, there was a lot of trade going on with the Continent and many Anglo-Saxon
pilgrims travelled to Rome.
Medieval Britain: The arrival of the Normans in 1066 entailed great changes for the social
structure of the British Isles but also great changes for the English language, which
incorporated a growing number of words of Romance origin.
England’s fate became intertwined with that of Continental European monarchies, especially
the French monarchy. Indeed, very soon, the Anglo-Norman aristocracy became entangled in
quarrels on the Continent through the practice of intermarriage.
The Hundred Years’ War and the Renaissance: The Hundred Years’ War took place from
1337 to 1453 between two royal houses for the French throne, the House of Valois and the
House of Plantagenet (/plæn’tædʒɨnɨt/), also known as the House of Anjou. The end of the
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Hundred Years’ War meant that England somehow stopped thinking of itself as a Continental
European actor and started focusing on its maritime power.
The Anglican Reformation under Henry VIII and England’s alliance with other Protestant
powers meant that he rejected Charles V (Charles Quint) and his imperial vision.
Long-lasting isolationism: England (and, from 1707 onwards, the United Kingdom)
considered Europe mainly as a source of problems. In particular, English Protestants feared
Catholic plots orchestrated by France and Spain to overthrow the monarchy. Until 1713 the
Spanish Netherlands were dangerously close to English coasts.
Week 2: 1800-1951
The fear of the extension of the French Revolution and the war against Napoleon’s Empire
(between 1803 and 1815) further isolated Britain from Continental Europe. The Continental
System set up by Napoleon was meant to prevent trade with the United Kingdom but it was
only partially successful. The fact that Napoleon wanted to appear as Charlemagne’s
successor one thousand years afterwards also persuaded the British that ideas of European
unity were definitely dangerous.
The XIXth century was also a time of European disunity because of the rise of nationalism
practically everywhere in Europe (resulting in the formation of true nation-states, especially
after 1848) and because European countries competed – especially in Africa – to conquer
colonies in the second half of the century. The ironical thing is that the Holy Roman Empire
crumbled essentially because of Napoleon’s wars which paved the way for the unification of
Italy and Germany in the 1860s and in the 1870s.
Britain was very concerned with the balance of powers because it was afraid of empires so it
started forming alliances with weaker countries against emerging superpowers. The British
government had a very pragmatic approach in terms of alliances: It fought against the Russian
Empire alongside the French, the Ottomans and the Sardinians between 1853 and 1856 during
the Crimean War but formed the Triple Entente with France and Russia in 1907 against
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Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy. During the XIXth century, Britain tried to make sure
that neither the Germans, the Russians nor the Ottomans would become too powerful in
Europe and create a major confrontation.
The British were particularly worried because those three empires were based on authoritarian
principles at a time when the British democratic system was consolidating itself. In particular,
the Russians and the Ottomans were usually very tough on the populations which revolted
against their rules. For example, Britons were shocked by the savagery of Ottoman
Başıbozuklar (irregular soldiers) when they repressed an uprising in Bulgaria in April 1876.
Overseas it was a different matter, of course, since the British also ruled their colonies
(including Ireland) with an iron hand. For example, in India, the reaction to the sepoy mutiny
of 1857 may have caused hundreds of thousands of deaths.
The UK relied heavily on its colonies and did not believe in the ideal of European integration
which developed on the Continent during the 20th century, for example among some
supporters of the League of Nations in 1919 who also believed in European federalism. The
terrible human cost of the First World War for Britain (nearly one million casualties) and of
the Second World War (nearly half a million people, including over 60,000 civilians) made
British public opinion think once more that Continental Europe was a dangerous place and
that it was definitely better to stay away from any project of political unification. In particular,
the fact that the Nazis had managed to gain support from collaborators outside Germany
during the Occupation caused many Britons to think that Continental Europeans were not very
reliable when it came to defend freedom and that pro-European ideas were spread essentially
by people supporting German supremacy.
Now let us take a look at Europe in 1945 : Huge war destructions had been committed,
commodities were still rationed and there was a need to rebuild many parts of Western
Europe. Politicians did not want to make the same mistakes as after the First World War:
Winston Churchill did not want Germany to be humiliated the way it had been after the
Treaty of Versailles in 1918 because he knew it could cause a rebirth of Nazi ideals, which
were still promoted by a secret resistance organisation called Werwolf. In September 1946 in
Zurich he had mentioned ‘the United States of Europe’ but he did not think that Britain’s
interest was to be part of them.
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The West German Republic (created in 1949) was still occupied by the Americans, the British
and the French, but that was meant to protect it from a Soviet invasion after it had become
clear that Nazism had been completely defeated and that Werwolf (whose influence was
essentially symbolical) had been dismantled. The US needed West Germany for its own
security and also to promote the American capitalistic system in Europe with the Marshall
Plan in 1947-1951. So the Americans needed a united Western Europe for defence and
economic reasons. To begin with, they created the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
(NATO) in 1949.
Week 3: 1951-1952
Some European politicians strongly believed that without any kind of Franco-German
reconciliation, there would be a new war between the two countries. They thought that a
united (preferably federal) Europe would prevent that.
(About federalism, Professor Andrew Geddes once wrote: "In federal systems, such as the
USA and Germany, neither the central nor the regional level of government is supposed to be
subordinate to the other. Federalism is seen as generating effective central power for handling
common problems whilst preserving regional autonomy. Five main features of a federal
system of government can be highlighted: two levels of government, a general and a regional/
formal distribution of legislative and executive authority and sources of revenue between the
two levels/ a written constitution/ a supreme or constitutional court to adjudicate in disputes
between the two levels/ central institutions, including a bicameral legislature within which the
upper chamber will usually embody territorial representation, as is the case with the US
Senate and the German Bundesrat." Andrew GEDDES, The European Union and British
Politics, Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke, 2004, p.43. Other sources in French include books
by Professor Maurice Croisat).
So they decided to help Western Europeans set up two projects:
First, it was the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1951. By mixing coal and
steel resources, Western European countries were supposed to rebuild themselves and protect
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their industries in France, Germany, Belgium, Luxemburg, the Netherlands and Italy. Those
places were known as a kind of ‘fertile crescent’: especially the Ruhr region in Germany,
Lorraine in France and Borinage in Belgium. The project mixed economic survival with the
use of a modern, fashionable subject like sustainable development today. The British were not
interested in joining the ECSC because their industry was strong enough (especially
considering that they had a large market in their former colonial Empire) and also because
they already suspected that there was a project of political integration behind this.
This assumption was reinforced by the fact that the Rhine region, alongside Northern Italy,
was a Christian-Democratic stronghold (with big Social-Democratic pockets where workers
lived) and the British knew perfectly well that those people supported European federalism,
especially since Rhineland had been the centre of Charlemagne’s empire. Indeed, while
Christian-Democrats are overwhelmingly Catholic, the UK has always had a more Protestant
approach to European politics and the transatlantic relationship, which has always made
negotiations with Continental European Christian-Democrats awkward even when the British
government was Conservative. While Protestants have traditionally linked their faith with the
existence of a nation-state, Catholics have usually had a more complex approach to national
identity, sharing their loyalty between an empire on the one hand (such as the Carolingian
Empire, the Holy Roman Empire and, later, the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and the Pope in
Rome on the other hand. In stark contrast with Continental European habits, Britain's
conception of Europe was that of stable nations competing with one another and forming
strategic alliances rather than achieving political unification. It had not been politically
influenced by Charlemagne’s legacy in the IXth century and it had not experienced the
quarrel between the Guelphs (the supporters of the Popes) and the Ghibellines (the supporters
of the Holy Roman Empire) between the XIth and the XVth centuries.
The second project was the European Defence Community (EDC) in 1952. The USA did not
want to ensure the security of Western Europe alone, they needed the French and the West
Germans to create a European federal army with governmental structures to make it efficient.
However, the EDC project was derailed essentially by the Communists and the Gaullists in
France in 1954 because they opposed two things: the fact that France would be deprived of a
large part of its military sovereignty and the fact that the whole scheme served the interests of
the Americans. In this respect, it is quite ironical to notice that, to compensate for the failure
of the EDC, the Bundeswehr was created in 1955 under the direct influence of NATO. This
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was not the only setback for the French Communists and Gaullists since the new army also
had an open commitment to European integration.
Week 4: The reaction after 1952 until the real turning point of 1957
Because of the failure of the EDC project, Europhiles decided that it was probably better to
care for political and strategic integration later, once economic integration had been achieved.
This is when many of them started realising that it was probably more effective to act fairly
secretely, for example by promoting only economic integration while actually working for
political integration. Also, they said they promoted co-operation between sovereign countries
while they knew full well that, beyond a certain point, it is difficult for tight co-operation not
to turn into integration. What people like Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman wanted to create
was de facto solidarities (“solidarités de fait”) which would later be legitimised by laws,
especially European directives. This is what is called “functionalism” (and, later,
“neofunctionalism”): states become integrated from an economic and technical point of view,
then integration also becomes political as it reaches new domains through what is called
“spillover”, the fact that the new European political élite progressively invest new sectors of
political action.
After having created a common market for coal and steel, Europhiles decided to take it up to
the next level with trade and services. This was decided on at the Messina Conference in 1955
and then inscribed in the Treaty of Rome in 1957. The European Economic Community
(EEC) was created that year, in 1957. The revolutionary aspect of the Common Market was
not just about suppressing tariffs but also about ensuring the free circulation of goods,
services and people barely twelve years after the end of the Second World War and in the
midst of the Cold War. From 1958 onwards, French President Charles de Gaulle worked to
put the Franco-German axis at the centre of the EEC, taking advantage of his good
relationships with West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, a Christian-Democrat from
Cologne. Franco-German reconciliation became official with the signing of the Elysée Treaty
in 1963.
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It is to be noted that the European Economic Community – which became the European
Union (EU) in 1993 – was not simply an economic and commercial organisation since its
architecture was based on a reinforced version of three institutions which had been created at
the time of the ECSC in 1952: an executive body (The European Commission), a
parliamentary body (The European Parliament, which had got only a consultative role) and a
judicial body (The Court of Justice of the European Communities). That shows that the
‘founding fathers’ of the ECSC already had a political Europe in mind, particularly since they
saw the Court of Justice as a future kind of Supreme Court which could force member states
to enforce decisions made at the European level. From the start, the EEC represented a
compromise between those who favoured supranationalism (that is to say a federal Europe)
and those who preferred intergovernmentalism: some domains allowed the use of qualified
majority voting while others demanded unanimity. This constituted in itself the promise of
future clashes between pro-Europeans and Eurosceptics.
To try and prevent conflicts, a structure in pillars was eventually set up in 1993, when the
EEC became the European Union (EU) under the terms of the Treaty of Maastricht signed in
February 1992: the first pillar was for matters decided on by Community institutions and the
other two (“Common Foreign and Security Policy” and “Police and Judicial Co-operation in
Criminal Matters”) relied upon the intergovernmental co-operation method. However, this
structure in pillars was given up in December 2009, when the Treaty of Lisbon came into
force. The fact that the EU now has got a legal personality and a less clear distribution of
competences seems dangerous to some British Eurosceptics, who are also alarmed at the fact
that the Treaty of Lisbon re-asserts the priority given to European law and to the Court of
Justice (now called “Court of Justice of the European Union”) over state legislations.
So even though the opposition between supranationalism and intergovernmentalism may have
been perfectly valid in the fifties and sixties, it has become largely debatable considering the
hybrid character of the European Union. Today the distinction between ‘soft power’ and ‘hard
power’ seems more acceptable, considering that the European Union is a system in which a
considerable number of autonomous, yet intermingled actors can exert influence on the
decisions which are taken, especially since the division into pillars has disappeared.
Week 5: The long road towards Britain’s accession to the EEC
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At the end of the fifties and at the beginning of the sixties, the Conservatives – who were in
power – were more enthusiastic than Labour politicians about joining the Common Market.
While Conservative politicians under Prime Minister Harold Macmillan (1957-1963) were
enticed by what they perceived as being a way of promoting free trade and capitalism in
Europe, Labour politicians were put off by the fact that joining the EEC would have meant
giving up favourable commercial ties with Commonwealth countries. Indeed, the Common
Agricultural Policy (CAP) meant that British consumers would have to pay more for
European – especially French – products because their prices were guaranteed. So many
Labourites thought that the European Community was “a rich man’s club”, something
dangerous for the working classes. However, when Harold Wilson came to power in October
1964, he chose not to oppose Britain’s possible future membership of the EEC, partly because
he and some other Labour politicians were not against it and partly because he realised that
Europeanisation was inevitable from an economic and technical point of view.
However, Charles de Gaulle refused to let the United Kingdom enter the EEC twice, in 1963
and in 1967, because he feared it would act as a ‘Trojan horse’ of the United States. That
meant that he thought that the British government would do everything it could to use the
EEC in order to serve American interests. De Gaulle favoured France’s military independence
and a Franco-German alliance over the tight military cooperation which the UK practised with
the USA.
De Gaulle also resorted to what was called “the empty chair policy” (“la politique de la chaise
vide”) in 1965-66 in order to prevent the extension of the principle of majority voting to
fields formerly ruled by the principle of unanimity. To do that he made sure that France was
not represented in meetings of the Council of Ministers of the EEC, effectively blocking all
decisions. European integration was also slowed down when he resigned in April 1969 after
having lost a referendum on regionalisation.
Fortunately for the British, his successor – Georges Pompidou – was better disposed towards
them and he was greatly helped by the personality of Wilson’s Conservative successor,
Edward Heath (1970-1974), who was a staunch pro-European and generally got along well
with Christian-Democrats and Social-Democrats. Although Pompidou was still a Gaullist who
preferred intergovernmentalism and not a true Christian-Democratic federalist, he wanted
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European integration to make progress again and he organised a summit of the Six in The
Hague in December 1969. This meeting has often been compared with the Messina
Conference of 1955 and it enabled Pompidou to present his vision of “completion, deepening
and enlargement” (“achèvement, approfondissement et élargissement”) as far as his European
policy was concerned.
In 1972 Pompidou organised a referendum and the French approved the United Kingdom’s
admission into the EEC (alongside The Republic of Ireland and Denmark), which became
effective on January 1st, 1973. At that time, it was considered that British public opinion was
rather pro-European because the Common Market meant economic development without
significant losses of sovereignty, but that changed with Margaret Thatcher’s ascension to the
post of Leader of the Conservative Party in 1975, then to that of Prime Minister in 1979.
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