number 1 - Centre d'études et de recherches européennes Robert ...

Allegiance – The Past and the Future 9
should start from and perhaps be confined to those areas of state activity which
used to be called 'Die Grosse Politik'.
The timing by which government archives are opened for inspection – almost
nowhere can they be inspected less than thirty years after the event – has enhanced
this trend. The biggest contribution of historical research to European integration
over the last three years has been made by a cluster of publications dealing with the
United Kingdom's first attempt to join the European Economic Community and its
failure in 1963. 4 Without exception these publications have depicted the United
Kingdom's application and its pre-history of negotiation as the attempt of a declining
but still important middle ranking power to retain its worldwide influence by
shifting away from its weakening association with the Commonwealth to closer
links with Europe. The motivation in this case for European integration has been
invariably depicted as an adjustment of the United Kingdom's world strategic position.
Similarly, General de Gaulle's veto on the British entry has been portrayed as
solely a strategic decision. The major event which currently preoccupies historians
in their pursuit of a history of European integration has in fact been analysed as
though it were solely a matter of alliances and nuclear weapons. 5 Interestingly
enough, the official enquiry into the failure of the negotiations undertaken by the
British government immediately came to a similar conclusion. No matter what economic
or institutional concessions the United Kingdom might have made in the
negotiations, it argued, the general would have still forbidden British entry on strategic
and foreign policy grounds.
There can be no doubt that prime minister Macmillan did seek entry into the
EEC for foreign policy purposes, to preserve what he could of the United
Kingdom's world interests. Most of the conversations between de Gaulle and Macmillan,
the sources which have been most used in recent publications, are about
foreign policy and the long-term position of their countries. 6 But to draw the sweeping
inference from this that for de Gaulle the EEC existed primarily for foreign
policy and defence reasons seems unwise and premature. The complexity of the
motives which led France to sign the Treaty of Rome has recently been elaborated.
Although the essential reason for accepting the Treaty was indeed to secure Fran-
4. S. BURGESS and G. EDWARDS, "The Six Plus One: British Policy-Making and the Question of
European Economic Integration, 1955", International Affairs, vol. 64, 1988; A. DOBSON, "The
Special Relationship and European Integration" Diplomacy and Statecraft, vol. 2, no. 1, 1991; S.
GEORGE, Britain and European Integration Since 1945, Oxford, 1991; G. WARNER and A. DEIGH-
TON, "British Perceptions of Europe in the Postwar Period" in R. GIRAULT (ed.), Les Europe des
Européens, Paris, 1993; J.W. YOUNG, Britain and European Unity 1945-1992, London, 1993.
5. On the role of nuclear weapons in the first negotiations for the United Kingdom’s entry into the
EEC, I. CLARK, Nuclear Diplomacy and the Special Relationship. Britain’s Deterrent and America
1957-1962, Oxford, 1994. For an appreciation of the role of the EEC in French security policy, G.G.
SOUTOU, "La France, l’Allemagne et les Accords de Paris, Relations internationales, no. 52, 1987,
and "Les problèmes de sécurité dans les rapports franco-allemands de 1956 à 1963", ibid., no. 58,
1989.
6. It is a mixture of the records of those conversations and private papers left by MacMillan which led
his biographer to this conclusion. A. HORNE, Macmillan, vol. 2, 1957-1986, London, 1989. But
Horne was not concerned with the rest of the government.