Britain And European Integration Since 1945 Analysis

The relationship between United Kingdom and European Union has always been unique. One tried to be closer while the other tried to be distance yet still influential. David Gowland, Arthur Turner and Alex Wright on “Britain and European Integration Since 1945” study the relations between British policy and the process of European Integration since 1945. The study focused on Britain policy that they adopt as the European Union changed. Britain attitude since the end of the Second World War toward the mainland Europe has been indecisive, reactive, and a growing sense of distrust. Yet, Britain continue trying to maximize their influence in the process of European integration while minimizing their commitment to the outcome.
Despite that, in the end, the authors believe, that the important factor of the development of the European integration has been Britain’s absence from the early key schemes of the integration process, such as the Schuman Plan, Treaties of Rome, and the Eurozone. Britain absence, if unintentionally on the British side,
Imagined because people inside even the smallest nation may never know most of their fellow people, meet them, or hear them, yet in their minds, there lives the image of their communion. It is limited because even the largest communities out there has finite, if elastic, boundaries. It also sovereign because the concept of nation born in the age where Enlightenment and Revolution destroyed the legitimacy of the hierarchical dynastic realm. Finally, the most important point is, a nation is imagined as a community because it always developed a deep horizontal comradeship. I agree with Anderson definition of nation, it is bound by comradeship between people, which made this book relevant to the thesis written because through the comradeship nationalism can either be ‘positive’ or