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The role of Jean Monnet

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Extract

The future historian of European integration is likely to suffer from a surplus of documentation and a shortage of facts. If a certain kind of ignorance, as Lytton Strachey once remarked, is essential to the writing of intelligible history, it has little hope of survival amid the vast accumulation of newspaper cuttings, official statistics, policy speeches, annual reports and statesmen's memoirs with which the present-day scholar must contend. One expert has calculated that ‘the volume of official documents produced by the United Kingdom Government and its agencies during the six war years 1939–45 equalled, in cubic content, the volume of all previous archives of the United Kingdom and of its constituent kingdoms England and Scotland that had survived down to the date of the outbreak of war.’

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1967

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References

1 Toynbee, Arnold, A Study of History, London, 1961, Vol. XII, p. 114 Google Scholar, quoting Hancock, K.; cf. Foot, M.R.D., SOE in France, London, 1966, p. 449.Google Scholar

2 Moulin, Léo, La Société de demain dans l'Europe d'aujourd'hui, Milan, 1966, p. 29.Google Scholar

3 Brooks, John, The European Common Market, Buffalo, NY, 1963, p. 67 Google Scholar

4 Fontaine, François, ‘L’Homme qui change le monde sous nos yeux’, Réalités No. 203, 12 1962, Paris, 1962, pp. 96101 Google Scholar Duchene, Francois, quoted by Brooks, op. cit., pp. 6371.Google Scholar A study of Monnet's political ideas is included in Bino Olivi, L'Europa Difficile, Milan, 1964, pp. 69–101.

5 Monnet, Jean, Les états‐Unis d'Europe ont commencé, Paris, 1955 Google Scholar a symposium compiled from early ‘European’ speeches. Monnet's other speeches and articles exist in duplicated form in his secretariat; the statements of the Action Committee to date have been collected as Comité d'Action pour les états‐Unis d'Europe 1955–65, Recueil des Déclarations et Communiqués, Lausanne, 1965. On methods, personal knowledge.

6 Haight, John M., ‘France, the United States, and the Munich Crisis’, journal of Modern History, Vol. XXXII, No. 1, 12 1960, pp. 340–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar ‘Roosevelt and the Aftermath of the Quarantine Speech’, Review of Politics, Vol. XXIV, No. 2, April 1962, pp. 233–59; ‘Les Négociations françaises pour la fourniture d’avions americains (I)', Forces Aériennes Françaises, No. 198, December 1963, pp. 807–39 ‘France’s First War Mission to the United States', The Air‐power Historian, Vol. XI, No. 1 (January 1964), pp. 11–15 ‘Les négociations relatives aux achats d’avions amdricains par la France pendant la période qui précéda immédiatement la guerre', La Revue de l'Histoire de la ze. Guerre Mondiale, No. 58, April, 1965, pp. 1–34 ‘Jean Monnet and the Opening of the American Arsenal’, paper read to the Franco‐American historical colloquium, September 1964.

7 Beloff, Max, ‘The Anglo‐French Union Project of June 1940’, Mélanges Pierre Renouvin, études d'Histoire des Relations Internationales (Publications de la Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines de Paris, Série ‘études et Methodes’ tome 13), Paris, 1966, pp. 199219 Google Scholar Churchill, Winston, The Second World War, Cassell paperback edition, London, 1964, Vol. III, pp. 1837;Google Scholar de Gaulle, Charles, Mémoires de Guerre, Livres de Poche edition, Paris 1959, Vol. I, pp. 80 ff;Google Scholar Tournoux, J.‐R., Secrets d'état. Vol. II: Pétain et de Gaulle, Paris, 1964, pp. 426–41,Google Scholar prints a contemporary account by Rend Pleven, who took part in the project.

8 Cf. Murphy, Robert, Diplomat Among Warriors, London, 1964, pp. 223 ff.Google Scholar, for a somewhat partial account of this episode; on Monnet's career in general, cf. also ‘Then Will It Live…’, Time, Vol. LXXVIII, No. 14, 6 October 1961, pp. 20–7.

9 Hirsch, étienne, ‘L’Angleterre fera‐t‐elle antichambre ?’, Les Cahiers de la République, No. 51, Paris, 01 1963, pp. 916.Google Scholar

10 Davenport, John, ‘M. Jean Monnet of Cognac’, Fortune, Vol. XXX, No. 2, 08 1944, pp. 121216.Google Scholar

11 Cf. Cook, Don, Floodtide in Europe, New York, 1965, pp. 110–12,Google Scholar for a vivid description.

12 Text in L'Année Politique 1950, Paris, 1951, pp. 355–59.

13 On 7 May 1950, in New York, General Clay, former American Commander‐in‐Chief in Germany, proposed re‐arming the Federal Republic.

14 Gerbet, Pierre, ‘La Genése du Plan Schuman’, Revue Française de Science Politique, Paris, 1956, Vol. VI, No. 3, pp. 525–53 (P. 544).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Ibid., pp. 543 ff.

16 Allocution de M. Jean Monnet à Scy‐Chazelles le 3 octobre 1965; for date of French cabinet decision, cf. HMSO, Anglo‐French Discussions regarding French proposals for the Western European Coal, Iron and Steel Industries, May‐June, 1950 (Cmd. 7970), p. 3.

17 Schuman, Robert, Pour l'Europe, Paris, 1963, pp. 164–8.Google Scholar

18 Racine, Raymond, Vers une Europe nouvelle par le Plan Schuman, Neuchâtel, 1954, pp. 62 ff.Google Scholar

19 Cmd. 7970 (cf. Note 16, above).

20 Ibid., p. 6.

21 Ibid., p. 7. On Monnet's visit to Adenauer, cf. Adenauer, Konrad, Erinnerungen 19451953, Stuttgart, 1965, pp. 336–7.Google Scholar

22 Ibid., pp. 7, 8.

23 In The Road to Brighton Pier, London 1959, PP. 12–13, Leslie Hunter reports a story told him by Ernest Bevin, according to which, when the Schuman Plan was announced, Kenneth Younger went with Herbert Morrison, then acting Prime Minister, to Bevin's sickbed to discuss it. ‘Bevin, always keen to bring on junior ministers, turned to Younger and asked, “Well, young man, what do you think of it all?” Younger was all for Britain joining in. Bevin listened attentively and then heaved a sigh. “Splash about, young man, you’ll learn to swim in time,” he commented and then turning to Morrison began “Now, ‘Erbert …” and got down to the details of how to keep out of this embarrassing offer.’

24 Cmd. 7970 (cf. Note 16, above), p. 10.

25 Ibid., pp. 11 ff.

26 In a lecture given in 1953 at the College of Europe in Bruges.

27 Kohnstamm, Max, ‘The European Tide’, in Stephen R. Graubard (ed.), A New Europe? Boston, 1964, pp. 140–73 (pp. 151–2).Google Scholar

28 On the Council of Ministers, ibid., p. 152n; quotation from Action Committee for the United States of Europe, Déclaration commune du 26 juin 1962, in Recueil des Declarations et Communiqués, Lausanne, 1965 (cf. Note 5, above), pp. 111–17 (p. 114).

29 He himself took an enforced rest in the summer of 1954.

30 Private information.

31 Duchˇne, Francois, quoted in John Brooks, The European Common Market, Buffalo, N.Y., 1963, p. 67.Google Scholar

32 Kohnstamm, op. cit. (cf. Note 27 above), p. 155

33 Cf. Anouil, Gilles, La Grande‐Bretagne et la Communauté Européenne du Charbon et de l'Acier, Issoudun, 1960, esp. pp. 107 if.Google Scholar

34 Elgey, Georgette, La République des Illusions 19451951, Paris, 1965, p. 462.Google Scholar

35 NATO Information Service, Facts about NATO, Paris, n.d., p. A3 1, 1.

36 Personal knowledge.

37 Mayne, Richard, The Community of Europe, London, 1962, p. 107 and n. 1.Google Scholar

38 Ibid., p. 109; private information.

39 Camps, Miriam, Britain and the European Community 19551963, Princeton/London, 1964, p. 21.Google Scholar

40 Ibid.

41 L'Année Politique 1955, Paris, 1946, p. 381.

42 Ibid., p. 382.

43 Ibid., pp. 375–6.

44 Ibid., pp. 409–13.

45 Ibid., p. 415.

46 Ibid.

47 Ibid., p. 416.

48 Mayne, op. cit. (cf. Note 27, above), pp. 108,117–18.

49 Recueil (cf. Note 18, above), p. II.

50 Ibid., pp. 11–12.

51 Ibid., pp. 13–14, 167–75.

52 ‘Setting the Pace for Unity’, Common Market, Vol. IV, No. 6, the Hague, June 1964, pp. 104–6 (p. 106); for an analysis of the committee's membership and operations, cf. Yondorf, Walter, ‘Monnet and the Action Committee: the Formative Period of the European Communities’, International Organization, Vol. XIX, No. 4, 1965, pp. 885912.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

53 Cf. Recueil (Note 78, above), passim.

54 Personal knowledge.

55 The German socialists had voted against the ECSC, and the French Socialist Party had been split over EDC.

56 Cf. Mayne, op. cit. (Note 27, above), p. 113.

57 Cf. Camps, Miriam, European Unification in the Sixties, New York, 1966, pp. 62 ff.; John Newhouse, unpublished paper in the ‘Tocqueville Series’, passim. For German, Dutch, and Italian positions, cf. Recueil (Note 28, above), p. 136.Google Scholar