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

5
Introduction
Anne Deighton
This volume of the Journal of European Integration History is an open one. The
articles in it, however, fall into three groups. The first two articles are published to
coincide with the accession of ten new member states to the European Union in
May 2004. This massive expansion of the Union is of enormous significance to all
those with an interest in the roots and development of European integration. It
opens a new and wider field of research for historians, both of the international
relations of Cold War Europe, and also of the national histories of the new member
states. It has always been argued that enlargement could weaken the Union.
However, thus far, this has not proved to be the case. Both the Journal of European
Integration History, and a number of the edited volumes published by our Groupe
de Liaison have examined the politics and economics of integration since the first
enlargement to Denmark, Ireland and the United Kingdom in 1973. The two
articles in this volume of the Journal are on Poland by Ania Krok-Paszkowska and
Jan Zielonka, and on the Czech Republic by Jan Karlas and Petr Kratochvíl. They
provide historically based accounts of the attitudes and policies of these two
countries towards the European Communities, from the Cold War period to the
present day. They also both give an account of the major secondary works that have
appeared on this subject, as well as describing the accessibility of Polish and Czech
national archives for historians of these topics. They are thus contributions to the
historiography of enlargement, and to the histories of two of the new
member-states. More publications are anticipated in the near future on this same
theme, both relating to the earlier enlargements of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, and
to the latest round of this controversial process.
The second pair of articles reflects another theme of interest to historians: the
role of individuals in the making and implementation of policy. In this case, both
look at the role of British Ambassadors to France during periods of high tension in
Anglo-French relations over the European Communities, and thus offer insights
into the complexities of policy-making within one applicant state. The first of these
articles, by Lasse Boehm, examines the role of Sir Patrick Reilly, whose term of
office coincided with the second attempt by the Labour government of Harold
Wilson to apply to join the EC. Using recently released private papers, it exposes
the difficulties of decision-making in 1966-67, when the political and economic
stakes were so high, and when there were also profound disagreements between
British decision-makers about the intentions of French president Charles de Gaulle
towards the British application. Melissa Pine looks at the so-called ‘Soames affair’
of 1969. Here once again, both the British ambassador to France, Sir Christopher
Soames, British officials in Whitehall, and government ministers all found
themselves trying to second-guess the intentions of the French president, and to
work with the other five members of the EC during the bleak years between the