Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 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 Reflections 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
2 - The Founding Fathers
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 November 2022
- Frontmatter
- 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 Reflections 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
Summary
To approach history through the lens of personalities, as this essay does, carries with it serious implications of historical interpretation. This is particularly true when we look at the so-called ‘founding fathers’ of what became the European Union. We cannot resolve these issues here, but we will explore the implications so that the reader is aware of the choices that this particular perspective may involve.
One of the most persistent debates in political science literature concerns the dichotomy between structure and agency: the difference between the circumstances shaping history and the agencies or actors enacting change, or not as the case may be. To talk of the ‘founding fathers’ places the discussion squarely in the agency camp. This does not necessarily mean, however, that one has to accept a ‘heroic’ interpretation of the past when great men bent the future to their will. Historians who choose this direction concentrate on the influences that moulded these personalities. Moreover, if we do decide to retain this focus, there are plenty of routes from which to choose. For example, much has been made of the fact that many of the actors had grown up in border areas and were presumably less attached to the concepts of nation states – Robert Schuman in Luxembourg, when it was part of the German Zollverein, Alcide De Gasperi in the Southern Tyrol when it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Konrad Adenauer in the Rhineland. Schuman became foreign minister of France, De Gasperi became prime minister of Italy and, of course, Adenauer became chancellor of West Germany. Another line of thought links their shared Roman Catholicism as a factor binding them together, though quite how this translates into their subsequent adoption of the European cause is less clear. Another link lies less through their religious faith as through the religious-based mass political parties that emerged after the war and the network of contacts that these allowed, which enabled the growth of a shared rhetoric and experience.
There is a more direct route to their shared political goals towards Europe and that is through political ideology.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- 'Thank you M. Monnet'Essays on the History of European Integration, pp. 41 - 54Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2013