Book Review

 Blair, Alasdair. The European Union Since 1945 (Pearson Education Limited, 2005). 166 pp, $19.20.

     Europe may have also provided the impetus for a second contemporary convention, globalization, at least on a regional scale. Earlier, European countries dictated global policies and social organization as cumulative efforts in imperialism and colonialism apportioned Africa, Asia, and the Americas, to varying degrees, in servitude. The treaties of World War II required new understanding of the terms "nation" and "empire" as these constructs no longer offered acceptable explanation of Europe's position in the world. After World War II, deliberations over European unity were contentious if not pragmatic. The European nationalism of the 1920s gave way to trans-nationalist cooperation of the 1950s and beyond.

     Economically decimated European countries were forced to abandon nineteenth-century practices and identify new aims of domestic and foreign policy. The attempt to balance inward and outward thinking reflected anxious necessity. Although decades removed, European post-World War II experience shares much in common with contemporary pursuits of globalization as countries today reconcile the galvanized discord between the nationalist and trans-nationalist polemics.

     Alasdair Blair's The European Union Since 1945 accounts for the conception of post-war cooperation as well as brief speculation of continued collaboration in the future. Concise and compact, Blair's narrative of European unity requires eighty pages. Additionally, he devotes twenty pages for maps, acronyms, and chronology; forty for an impressive array of primary sources; and twenty for glossary and directed resources. This study is part of the Seminar Study in History series, general editors Clive Emsley and Gordon Martel, who include over one hundred twenty selections in the series. The editors share that these studies are "written in a clear, jargon-free, and accessible style; however, the dense presentation of evolution in this volume is better appreciated by a specialist rather than by a lay reader.

     Jean Monnet Chair and Reader in International Relations at Coventry University, Blair constructs seven chapters to tell his history. NATO and the Warsaw Pact introduce the first post-war alliance system to the continent. Early chapters relay the call of European leaders to address the economic devastation in western Europe. Fourth Republic France pursues nationalization that features a capitalist planned economy. The United Kingdom ushers in a new Labor Party that introduces a modern welfare state. Other post-war governments present generally central capitalist market mechanisms with commitment to social welfare programs. Each of these developments advances economic over political solutions, necessitated by the Marshall Plan, which required European countries to coordinate use of incoming funds.        

     Whereas economic hardships and rising civilian discontent defined the state of affairs in each country, support for policy and action among countries avoided consensus as leaders entered into debate between protectionism and free trade platforms (23) as well as between general autonomy and federalism. Blair provides sufficient examples to illustrate the tension such as the discord arising from the eventual Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Indeed, the decision today to admit Eastern European countries with large agriculture yields into the European Union presents challenges to current union stability.

     In turn, Blair addresses several topics as European countries considered implications in establishing its regional free-trade union: the ability for France and Germany to maintain hegemony within the alliance, the establishment of single markets, the creation of common currency, and the opportunity for individual countries to adopt a "pick ân' mix approach" that allows countries to support self-interests (90). It is said that such preponderance of economic policy discussion may not be the stuff of great drama; however, Blair accounts effectively for the nuanced deliberation among the participants. The study avoids exploration of the union's important challenges such as successful intervention with the Bosnia conflict. Also absent is a treatment of additional threats to union collaboration including the ability of member nations to opt out of policy; the sovereignty of seats in London, Paris, and Berlin over Brussels; and a corrupt, even undemocratic government structure. Nevertheless, Blair's concluding evaluation of the current state of the European Union suggests that the group may be well positioned to navigate the countercurrents of its members' own isolationist pursuits. The union offers a model of flexibility which occasionally results in ineffectiveness without the necessity of group consensus.

     If the narrative is a bit beyond the grasp of most generalists, the book provides several wonderful features that are useful to most readers. The compendium of primary sources, forty in number, are easily useful for teachers to select for student reading; one specific application is for Advanced Placement teachers of European or World History to use these selections in forming Document Based Questions, a format on AP examinations.

     The combination of flexibility and fixed structure within the European Union provides a model for teachers and students of social studies to apply to other global situations in which countries attempt to negotiate internal priorities with external expansion and diplomacy.

Gregory J. Dykhouse
Black River Public School
Holland, Michigan