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Britain, Europe, and the Atlantic Community

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

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Extract

It would be difficult to imagine a more inappropriate moment for trying to assess the British role in the evolution of the Atlantic Community. Writing in May 1963, one is all too aware of the importance of the decisions that will still have to be taken to meet the situation that has arisen from the failure of Britain's application to join the Common Market. Both the protagonists of Britain's entry and the opponents of this move, however, drew closer together on at least one point as the long debate over the negotiations went on. Both sides agreed that the decision—one way or the other—would be a major turning point in Britain's history. Indeed, if we omit the crises of two world wars, it would be difficult to think of an adequate parallel. Even the bitterly contested repeal of the Corn Laws in the 1840's— the event which is usually taken as signifying the triumph of industrial over agrarian Britain—was less far-reaching in its implications.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1963

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References

1 On the American view of Britain's role in Europe, see Beloff, Max, The United States and the Unity of Europe (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1963)Google Scholar.

2 The present writer, under the aegis of the International Relations Program of the Rockefeller Foundation, is beginning a study of some of these problems in the hope of producing an account of developments since the 1890's, provisionally entitled “The Twentieth Century Transformation in Britain's World Outlook.”

3 Speech at Manchester, November 15, 1898, quoted in Garvin, J. L., Life of Joseph Chamberlain, Vol. 3 (London: Macmillan, 1937), p. 304Google Scholar.

4 Speech at Birmingham, May 13, 1898, in ibid., pp. 301–302.

5 Speech of June io, 1898, in ibid., p. 303.

6 See “Theodore Roosevelt and the British Empire,” in Beloff, Max, The Great Powers (London: Macmillan, 1959)Google Scholar.

7 See, for instance, Allen's, H. C. history of Anglo-American relations entitled Great Britain and the United States(London: Odhams, 1954)Google Scholar, for a working out of this view in detail.

8 Quoted from the diary of Mackenzie King in Pickersgill, J. W., The Mackenzie King Record, Vol. I (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, and Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1960), p. 253Google Scholar.

9 Ibid., pp. 672–673.

10 See Pelling, Henry, America and the British Left (London: New York University Press, 1956)Google Scholar.

11 See Beloff, Max, New Dimensions in Foreign Policy (London: Macmillan, 1961), pp. 1422, 46–50Google Scholar.

12 Ward, Barbara, “Britain's Interest in Atlantic Union” (Friends of Atlantic Union), p. 20. This pamphlet is undated but would appear to have been published at the turn of the years 1952–1953Google Scholar.

13 Royal Institute of International Affairs, Defence in the Cold War (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1950), p. 121Google Scholar.

14 Royal Institute of International Affairs, Atlantic Alliance (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1952), pp. 105106Google Scholar.

15 Robbins, Lionel (Lord Robbins), “Towards the Atlantic Community,” Lloyds Bank Review, July 1950, pp. 2324Google Scholar.

16 Allen, H. C., “The Anglo-American Relationship in the Sixties,” International Affairs (London), 01 1963 (Vol. 38, No. I), pp. 3748Google Scholar.