The European Rescue of the Nation State [Paperback]

Alan Milward (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 041521629X | ISBN-13: 978-0415216296 | Publication Date: February 2, 2000 | Edition: 2

This newly revised and updated second edition is the classic economic and political account of the origins of the European Community. On one level it is an original analysis of the forces which brought the EC together, on another it is an explanation based on historical analysis of the future relationship between nation-state and the European Union. Combining political with economic analysis, and based on extensive primary research in several countries, this book offers a challenging interpretation of the history of the western European state and European integration.

Editorial Reviews

Review

This volume is very strongly recommended for upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty.
–Choice, 06/00

Reviews of the first edition:.
The enormity of what he has accomplished cannot be contested. Milward has produced a marvelously intelligent reappraisal that examines and analyzes Europe's affirmation of the nation-state as the cardinal organizing unit of mid-century society...mandatory reading for all interested scholars...no other book has given us as definitive an account or as compelling an interpretation as does Milward's prodigious feat of historical scholarship.
–American Historical Review

Well written, thought provoking.
–New Statesman and Society

...as a challenging study of the origins of supranational Europe in the economic sphere this will not easily be bettered.
–German Politics

About the Author

Alan S. Milward is Professor of Contemporary History at the European University Institute, Florence and official historian and Emeritus Professor at the London School of Economics.

Product Details

• Paperback: 488 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 2 edition (February 2, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 041521629X
• ISBN-13: 978-0415216296
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,694,790 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Strength of European Community lies in the weakness of the nation-state, June 8, 2010

By 

Patrick Yeung (Anaheim, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The European Rescue of the Nation State (Paperback)

Milward's thesis was that `the European Community only evolved as an aspect of that national reassertion' and `without the process of integration the west European nation-state might well not have retained the allegiance and support of its citizens in the way that it has. The European Community has been its buttress, an indispensable part of the nation-state's post-war construction.' Furthermore, `the new political consensus on which this rescue was built required the process of integration, the surrender of limited areas of national sovereignty to the supranation. `That the state by an act of national will might pursue integration as one way of formalizing, regulating and perhaps limiting the consequences of interdependence.'

Coal and Belgian nation

Milward identified national survival as the main reasons for the Treaty of Paris: `peace between France and Germany was essential for Belgium's security, and that this was the strongest reason for accession to the treaty.' On perequation and its purpose of restructuring the coal industry, `it was evident that the Belgian government as a whole felt no particular allegiance of principle to the underlying intentions of perequation and was quite prepared to allow the more generous subsidy regime which was its outcome to prop up the industry relatively unchanged, should that prove the easier political choice.' As it turned out, the restructuring failed miserably. Apparently, `the van Acker government appeared quite prepared to continue these subsidies while only half-heartedly carrying out the restructuring programme.'

The Belgium commitment to providing welfare remained central to its domestic policies and supranationality actually enhanced it: `The collapse of the coal market in 1958 was a crisis of the post-war Belgian state, of the post-war consensus on employment in general, and of the internationalization of that consensus through the Community institutions. For all those compulsorily laid off, generous Community provision was made on top of the already extensive social security provision of the Belgian state.'

Lastly, Milward discerned the use of the supranational body to provide political immunity, `the Belgian government always saw the purpose of the supranational authority as a buttress for national policies. It was a source of authority outside the nation which could be appealed to for help, blamed for unpopular policies which were also those of the government itself.' `The High Authority, as the decisions at the end of April 1955 made clear, was not the triumph of functionalism, but a powerful international committee within which separate national representatives argued for separate national policies.'

Foreign trade, economic and social advance, and the origins of the European Economic Community

Germany's export fueled Europe's spectacular post-war growth. `From at least 1890, Germany had been the main European supplier of investment goods (machinery, transport equipment and steel) to other European economies.' In order to expand its export base beyond the `smaller, more trade-dependent economies, one appeal of a customs union was that it would extend that base by forcing down levels of protection in France and Italy, and perhaps eventually the United Kingdom.' Contrary to the British exports market, the Board of Trade inquiry concluded its finding of a `conscious post-war strategy of regarding Europe as the third-best market and its consequences, ceding to Germany the task of re-equipping Europe's investment programme.'

Milward's research showed that `If West Germany were not firmly secured in its place as the pivot of this trade expansion income growth would be less.' `The stabilizing importance of the German market seems to have been the greater in as much as countries whose overall export performance was relatively weak in the 1950s tended to do worse on non-German markets, while the demand for their goods still remained high in Germany. ` `Ultimately, it was not monetary and fiscal policies within the Federal Republic which were responsible for the export surpluses but the insatiable demand from Western Europe for German engineering goods and the interlocking demand in the Federal Republic for imports for metals and machinery.'

The Netherlands and the Origin of the Common Market

`In the integration in the ECSC, the Netherlands had exercised from the start of the negotiations weight and influence beyond its size.' `The Treaty had incorporated most of the safeguards for national political power on which the Dutch negotiators had insisted.' `Dutch diplomacy played, for example, a decisive role.' `It was Dutch Foreign Minister Beyen himself who proposed that the recompense should be that the EPC become a customs union. Furthermore, he proposed that automatic steps by which the tariffs between its member-states would be progressively eliminated should be written in detail into the draft EPC treaty by the assembly. Once the treaty was signed it would, at least between the Six, end the long history of national tariff bargaining.' `After the rejection of the Defense Community, Monnet and Spaak made energetic efforts to keep alive the idea of political union between the Six. But it was not from their efforts that the Treaties of Rome sprang. They sprang from a renewal of the Beyen proposals.' `This belief that the Beyen Plan, if adopted by the Six, could serve as the start of a wider process of tariff-reduction across Europe and thus as the bridge between a more integrated Six and the rest of the continent was important to its advance.'

`Adenauer was unswerving in his idea that Western European integration must be the basis of the Federal Republic's security and that it was ultimately the only chance of German unification.' As for France, almost everything France wanted out of the treaty it got. The supranational authority was weak. The initial stage of the custom union could be prolonged if France had still not brought is manufacturing costs and balance of payments into what was judged a satisfactory state. The treaty made an explicit commitment to maintain the high levels of welfare payments and the short working week to which most French governments had been committed since 1936 and the Popular Front.'

The Europeanization of agricultural protection

Agricultural protection had its roots from a renewed emphasis on land as a national resource and infiltration of agricultural supporters in positions of power. First, `the protection of European agriculture as it developed after 1945 was usually biased towards the interest of arable farmers.' Second, `the farmers' representative organizations became a quasi-official part of the administration in so many countries and farmers were able to gain a position where they regulated themselves.' `It is to be found in the pervasive belief that the land was a national resource which had been long neglected.'

The problems that came with national agricultural management were surpluses and their disposal. For example, `French surpluses of wheat and sugar were increasingly difficult to vent, could only be vented at high cost to the public purse.' Yet, the agricultural policy of `stimulating and directing ever greater output and surpluses left France no choice but to accept the more comprehensive arrangements demanded by its partners in the common market.'

The outcome was that the `Federal Republic was surely importing from Holland and France things which could have been more efficiently produced in Denmark or outside Europe.' `In retrospect therefore, the CAP was the Franco-Dutch agricultural trade bargain for which both countries had been searching for the first revisions of the Monnet Plan in 1948 and the French decision to become a greater food exporter. The outcome of the CAP was much more favorable to the agricultural vested interest than to the planners and economic reformers.'
The Common Agricultural Policy which propelled agriculture into the post-war political consensus demonstrated the `strength which integration would add to the rescue of the nation-state.'

Britain and western Europe

Unlike the other continental powers, in Britain, `trade and industry had a lesser place in policy formulation than the status of the currency and the international financial considerations, on which that was thought to depend.' Therefore, `it is in no way surprising that in Britain the will to national reassertion should have gathered its forces behind the financial service sector. Relative to the rest of the economy it was far more important than in other European economies.'

The British cabinet considered but ultimately rejected Operation Robot, which would have allowed the sterling rate to float with an eye of `reestablishing sterling as an international currency with unrestricted use' and overturning the `long-run fixed exchange rates established at Bretton Woods' so that the `dollar and the pound would be the two major international currencies of the post-war period.' Robot's failure was attributed to the failure of American and international support. Undeterred, Rowan and Bolton pitted the Collective Approach, which `responded to the criticisms of Robot by envisaging a much more managed and restricted float, and thus a smaller potential devaluation. And it was no longer a plan for sterling-dollar convertibility alone but for other major currencies to establish dollar convertibility at the same time as sterling.'

Yet, `there was no support to be found in Western Europe for the way in which the United Kingdom hoped to establish convertibility between European currencies and the dollar, and this inevitably meant that there would be strong objections in America... Read more ›