Bringing People and Ideas Back in: Historical Research on the European Union

Abstract

Anniversaries remind social scientists, who are preoccupied with explaining the present and looking into the future, that history matters. In the case of the European Union (EU) it would be a fallacy to assume that only its own very short institutional history since the creation of the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1957–8 is relevant. The formation of ‘core Europe’ in the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) already created corridors for European integration through the introduction of the supranational principle and the (self-) exclusion of the United Kingdom, which to many had seemed the obvious leader of (Western) Europe’s economic and political reconstruction for a short time after the end of the Second World War. Moreover, in a longterm perspective which many contemporary historians of European integration neglect at their peril, patterns of economic exchange, social interaction and identities and political conflicts and integration within and across borders from before 1945 have influenced, and are continuing to influence, European politics to the present day. The politics of subsidiarity, for example, may in part be explained by globalisation pressures that have perhaps ‘hollowed out’ the nation state and created incentives for the assertion of regional identities and political claims.