journal of european integration history revue d'histoire de l ...

10
Johnny Laursen
historians will hardly claim a veto. British historians will not want to renegotiate
their – admittedly momentous – contribution to European integration history, nor
will Danish historians vote no. In this respect it is encouraging that many of the
contributions to this issue are from younger scholars working on source materials
and subjects other than that of their own nationality. However, there remains an enlargement
issue confronting students of the European integration history. It is important
that EU history should also be seen from the perspective of non-EU countries,
from coming member-countries and that non-EU aspects of European
integration should also be included.
The 1970’s and 1980’s will bring new questions and an expansion of the subject
to new policies, themes and institutions. But empirical, archive-based historical research
is moving slowly and will always be lingering at the threshold of the access
limits to the archives. It is therefore a strength that the field is broader and more
varied than this classical school of historical studies. Other methods and approaches
can – and should – be applied to the recent epochs of European integration
inaccessible for the archive-grinding historian, to the past already covered by this
school of history and to entirely other themes and subject areas of the elusive phenomenon
we know as European integration. It appears that the history of European
integration is, as Ernest Hemingway called his memoirs about the years in Paris, a
moveable feast.
In the 19th century many historians played an important role in laying the foundations
for the emerging nation states not to mention for the emerging European
nationalisms. After the catastrophes of the 20th century the craft attained new functions
as a critical voice that contributed to political and moral reflection in the European
democracies. The painful past, war and peace, the workings of the political
order and the limits of liberty were scrutinized by many political historians. And
rightly so. A functioning democracy needs a critical and inquisitive history writing
in order to stimulate discussion on the workings of the democratic and social institutions.
As the European Union has grown to a political and social factor of the first
rank for many of the European democracies it is now more necessary than ever to
subject the making of European policy in the nation states to the searching light of
historians and other students of the field. Moreover, as the European Union is becoming
a political entity with strong democratic and social institutions also supranational
Europe itself will require such a critical history with an interpretative
framework broader than that of the single nation state. It might well be difficult to
say what conclusions the European Convent will arrive at, but it is a reasonably fair
guess that the proceedings will be wordy and that they will focus on the democratic
institutions. And democracies – also supranational or federal democracies – need
their history.