‘Thank you M. Monnet’

Essays on the History of European Integration

Richard Griffiths

• Publisher: Leiden University Press
• Year: 2013
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9789400601079
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

This book collects contributions by Richard T. Griffiths on the history of European integration, some published for the first time in English. The essays range in chronology from the early experiences with the Marshall Plan to the difficulties and opportunities for the EFTA countries afforded by association with the EEC in the 1970s and 80s. The book interprets European integration far wider than simply the current European Union and its forerunners. Thus, it devotes chapters to EFTA, the OECD, and to issues as agriculture, cartels and monetary problems. The volume also contains the essay in the title which poses the question of what would have happened had there been no Schuman Plan back in 1950. This book should appeal to students of contemporary history, especially those interested in EU history, and to political scientists who will discover a rich palette of case studies upon which to test their theories. Its constructively critical slant on developments provides interesting perspectives to those general readers seeking a nuanced approach between the extremes of the current pro- or anti- in the debates on Europe.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 The European Integration Experience, 1945-1958
• 2 The Founding Fathers
• 3 The Marshall Plan and Western European Reconstruction
• 4 The Management of Markets: Business, Governments and Cartels in Post-war Europe
• 5 Europe’s First Constitution: The European Political Community, 1952-1954
• 6 Agricultural Pressure Groups and the Origins of the Common Agricultural Policy
• 7 ‘Thank You, M. Monnet; I’ll Take Care of That’: Some Counterfactual Refl ections on Institutional Creation and the Origins of European Integration
• 8 The Dynamics of Policy Inertia: The UK’s Participation in and Withdrawal from the Spaak Negotiations
• 9 The European Integration Experience, 1958-1973
• 10 ‘An Act of Creative Leadership’: The End of the OEEC and the Birth of the OECD
• 11 The United Kingdom and the Free Trade Area: A Post Mortem
• 12 ‘Two Souls, One Thought’? The EEC, the USA and the Management of the International Monetary System
• 13 A Dismal Decade? European Integration in the 1970s
• 14 EFTA and European Integration, 1973-1994: Vindication or Marginalisation?
• 15 The Concentric Circles of the European Union’s Trade Regime, 1989 to the Present
• 16 Lessons from the Euro Experience
• 17 European Identities
• 18 The Landscape of European Studies
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Publications of Richard T. Griffiths