Euroscepticism and the culture of the discipline of history

Review of International Studies

Volumn 32, Issue 2, 2006, Pages 309-328

  Daddow, Oliver J ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 33744759016     PISSN: 02602105     EISSN: 14699044     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0260210506007042     Document Type: Review

References (140)

1. Quoted in Roy Perry, 'Priorities in Information Policy', Martyn Bond (ed.), Europe, Parliament and the Media (London: The Federal Trust for Education and Research, 2003), pp. 63-76, at 68. Emphasis in original.
2. Larry Elliott, 'Europe is a battle Blair can't win', Guardian Unlimited, 〈http://politics.guardian.co.uk/columnist/story/0,9321,1201546,00. html〉. Accessed 23 April 2004.
3. On the 1975 referendum see David Butler and Uwe W. Kitzinger, The 1975 Referendum (London: Macmillan, 1976);
4. Robert Jowell and Gerald Hoinville (eds.), Britain into Europe: Public Opinion and the EEC. 1961-75 (London: Croom Helm, 1976).
5. Peter J. Anderson, 'A Flag of Convenience?: Discourse and Motivations of the London Based Eurosceptic Press', European Studies, 20 (2004).
6. Brendan Donnelly, The Politics of the Euro', The Federal Trust for Education and Research, Conference Report, 'Britain and the Euro: An Economic or Political Question?', London School of Economics, 20 July 2004, 5th page.
7. Sean Greenwood, book review, 'Britain For and Against. Europe: British Politics and European Integration (eds.), D. Baker and D. Seawright', Journal of Common Market Studies, 36:4 (1998), pp. 603-4, at 603.
8. Anderson, 'A Flag of Convenience?', pp. 169-70, gives two anonymous examples. One is that of a senior EU Commission official who said in 2000 that he rarely agrees to appear on BBC radio because he assumes that the relevant programme item will be given a Eurosceptic slant and that his presence will be used merely to give it a bogus appearance of balance. The other comes in the form of an official from the European Parliament's audio-visual department telling him that in March 2000 it proved near impossible to persuade ITN to take an interest in the positive aspects of parliamentary business.
9. Charlemagne, 'A Golden Age?', The Economist, 28 February 2004, p. 48.
10. On the past pro-integrationism andpro-Britain-in-Europe stance of The Economist and the Economist Intelligence Unit, see Oliver J. Daddow, Britain and Europe since 1945: Historiographical Perspectives on Integration (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), pp. 89-95.
11. Andrew Marr counted 'five or six serious and genuine single currency sceptics' in the Labour Csibinet holding office prior to the 2001 general election; 'The Political Battleground', in Martin Rosenbaum (ed.), Britain and Europe: The Choices We Face (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 5-13, at 9.
12. The number of such groups flourishing in the global information age may outweigh their impact on voting behaviour: 'in the day and age of the Internet "many" is a relative concept. A good number of these Eurosceptic groups appear only to exist as web pages of single individuals. The established organisations, such as the CIB [Campaign for an Independent Britain] refuse to disclose their membership numbers, a likely sign that the British public are not exactly queuing on their doorsteps.' Menno Spiering, 'British Euroscepticism', European Studies, 20 (2004), pp. 127-49, at 134-5.
13. For more on the growth of support for integration in the CBI during the 1960s see Neil Rollings, "The Confederation of British Industry and European Integration in the 1960s', in Oliver J. Daddow (ed.), Harold Wilson and European Integration: Britain's Second Application to Join the EEC (London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 2003), pp. 115-32.
14. Paul Taggart and Aleks Szczerbiak, 'Supporting the Union? Euroscepticism and Domestic Politics of European Integration', paper delivered at Comparative Euroscepticism Workshop, Maxwell EU Center, Maxwell School of Syracuse University, 21-22 May, 2004, p. 23:
15. Stephen Haseler, The English Tribe: Identity, Nation and Europe (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996), p. 144.
16. Christopher Andersen and Braden Smith, 'Mapping Opposition to European Integration', paper delivered at Comparative Euroscepticism Workshop, Maxwell EU Center, Maxwell School of Syracuse University, 21-22 May, 2004, p. 9. They derive four indicators of scepticism from the Eurobarometer questions 'against integration': Britain 34.5% compared to EU average 22%; 'against EU membership': Britain 23.18% compared to EU average 13.12%: 'no benefit from membership': Britain 41.53% compared to EU average 31.82%; 'relieved if scrapped': Britain 24.75% compared to EU average 13%.
17. John Curtice, 'What We Think We Know', in Martin Rosenbaum (ed.), Britain and Europe: The Choices We Face (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 15-20, at 16.
18. Krishan Kumar, The Making of English National Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), gives Euroscepticism a ono-line mention three pages from the end.
19. Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May, Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision-Makers (New York: The Free Press, 1986);
20. Will Durant and Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968):
21. M. T. Finley, The Use and Abuse of History (London: Chatto and Windus, 1975):
22. Marc Ferro, The Use and Abuse of History (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984).
23. Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen, The History of a Lesson: Versailles, Munich and the Social Construction of the Past', Review of International Studies, 29:4 (2003), pp. 499-519.
24. Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975);
25. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London and New York: Verso, 2003), pp. 197-206.
26. Timothy Garton Ash, 'The Gamble of Engagement', in Britain and Europe: The Choices, pp. 39-45.
27. Lord Haskins, The Benefits to Business', in Britain and Europe: The Choices, pp. 49-56, at 51-4.
28. Stephen Haseler equates 'eurosceptic' and 'europhobic' in The Case for a Federal Future', in Ian Taylor, Austin Mitchell, Stephen Haseler and Geoffrey Denton, Federal Britain in a Federal Europe? (London: The Federal Trust for Education and Research, 2001), pp. 51-96, at 71.
29. Developed in Paul Taggart and Aleks Szczerbiak, 'Parties, Positions and Europe: Euroscepticism in the EU Candidate States of Central and Eastern Europe', Sussex European Institute Working Paper no. 46 (2001), 〈http:www.sussex.ac.uk/Units/SEI/pdfs/wp46.pdf〉. First accessed February 2003:
30. Paul Taggart and Aleks Szczerbiak, The Party Politics of Euroscepticism in EU Member and Candidate States', Sussex European Institute Working Paper no. 51. (2002), 〈http:www.sussex.ac.uk/Units/SEI/pdfs/wp51.pdf〉. First accessed February 2003.
31. See more recently Aleks Szczerbiak and Paul Taggart (eds.), Opposing Europe? The Comparative Party Politics of Euroscepticism, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
32. Petr Kopecký and Cas Mudde, "The Two Sides of Euroscepticism: Party Positions on European Integration in East Central Europe', European Union Politics, 3:3 (2002), pp. 297-326.
33. Christopher Flood, 'Euroscepticism: A Problematic Concept', paper presented to the University Association for European Studies 32nd Annual Conference and 7th Research Conference, Queen's University Belfast, 2-4 September 2002, pp. 3-7.
34. A more detailed analysis of the political science approaches appears in Charles Lees, 'Four Dimensions of Party-Based Euroscepticism in the Federal Republic', paper delivered at Comparative Euroscepticism Workshop, Maxwell EU Center, Maxwell School of Syracuse University, 21-22 May, 2004, pp. 2-4.
35. According to Robert Harmsen and Menno Spiering, 'Introduction: Euroscepticism and the Evolution of European Political Debate, European Studies, 20 (2004), pp. 13-35, at 15, the word entered the British journalistic lexicon via an article in The Times in 1986.
36. Anthony Forster, Euroscepticism in Contemporary British Politics: Opposition to Europe in the British Conservative and Labour Parties since 1945 (London: Routledge, 2002).
37. Spiering, 'British Euroscepticism', p. 128.
38. Spiering, 'British Euroscepticism', Ibid., pp. 128-9.
39. David Morgan, 'Media Coverage of the European Union', in Martyn Bond (ed.), Europe, Parliament and the Media (London: The Federal Trust for Education and Research, 2003), pp. 35-54, at 36.
40. In the same collection see Dougall, p. 57, who links Euroscepticism to the anti-Maastricht element on the right, of the Conservative Party.
41. On its multiple connotations in the British debates about Europe see Haseler, The English Tribe, pp. 92-7.
42. For elaboration of the many connotations of 'federalism', see Taylor, Mitchell, Haseler and Denton, Federal Britain, pp. 16-17, 32-3, 55-6, 63, 99-103, 112-13 and 122.
43. For instance John Redwood, 'Sovereignty and Democracy',
44. and William Hague, 'Harmonisation or Flexibility', both in Britain and Europe: The Choices, pp. 87-95 and 287-92 respectively.
45. On disputes over the meaning of 'sovereignty' within the Conservative Party see Philip Lynch, 'Nationhood and Identity in Conservative Politics', in Mark Garnett and Philip Lynch (eds.), The Conservatives in Crisis (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), pp. 182-97, at 183.
46. Andrew Gamble and Gavin Kelly, 'Britain and EMU', in Kenneth Dyson (ed.), European States and the Euro (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 97-119, at 108-13.
47. Perry, 'Priorities in Information Policy', p. 65.
48. Norbert Schweiger, "The Council, the Media and the Public at Large', in Martyn Bond (ed.), Europe, Parliament and the Media (London: The Federal Trust for Education and Research, 2003), pp. 133-55, at 135.
49. Wolfram Kaiser, ' "What Alternative is Open to Us?": Britain', in Wolfram Kaiser and Jürgen Elvert (eds.), European Union Enlargement: A Comparative History (New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 2004), pp. 9-30, at 25.
50. Anderson, 'A Flag of Convenience?', p. 151.
51. Philip Lynch, 'The Conservatives and Europe, 1997-2001', in Garnett and Lynch (eds.), The Conservatives in Crisis, pp. 146-63, at 155.
52. Haseler, The English Tribe, p. 142, observes that in 1994, Norman Lamont, Chancellor of the Exchequer under John Major, became the first senior politician in Britain to raise the possibility of Britain withdrawing from the EU. His bitter experiences with the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in the 1990s are detailed in his memoirs, In Office (London: Little, Brown, 1999).
53. Ian Lustick, 'History, Historiography, and Political Science: Multiple Historical Records and the Problem of Selection Bias', American Political Science Review, 90:3 (1996), pp. 605-18.
54. Patrick Finney eloquently restates the case against, the possibility of definitive histories in 'Introduction: What is International History?', in Patrick Finney (ed.), International History (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 1-35.
55. Daddow, Britain and Europe, pp. 2-5;
56. Peter J. Anderson and Anthony Weymouth, Insulting the Public?: The British Press and the European Union (London and New York: Addison Wesley Longman, 1999), pp. 65-76.
57. The question of which 'nationalism' Eurosceptics are defending - English or British - is certainly interesting but not one I have the time to pursue in this article. It is important to be aware, however, that, the defence of 'British' interests is routinely couched in terms of 'English' identity politics. Kumar, The Making of English National Identity
58. and, on Conservative Party handling of the issue, Lynch, 'Nationhood and Identity', p. 186.
59. The problems of theorising 'nation' and 'nationalism' are taken up in Anderson, Imagined Communities, pp. 3-5.
60. Morgan, 'Media Coverage', p. 37.
61. See also Haseler, The English Tribe, pp. 1-2, 29-33 and 55.
62. James Forder, The Economic Costs of Membership', in Britain and Europe: The Choices, pp. 73-8, at. 73.
63. Guardian, 31 October 2002, p. 21.
64. Anderson, 'A Flag of Convenience?', p. 153.
65. Geoffrey Denton, The Federalist Vision', in Taylor, Mitchell, Haseler and Denton, Federal Britain, pp. 99-153, at 112.
66. Anderson, 'A Flag of Convenience?', p. 154.
67. For the full text of his speech see 〈http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page3787.asp〉, accessed 10 October 2003.
68. On Gaitskell's opposition to the Common Market, and his Empire mentality, see Brian Brivati, Hugh Gaitskell (London; Richard Cohen Books, 1997), pp. 404-31
69. and Haseler, The English Tribe. pp. 53 and 131.
70. This article was written before the results of the 2005 French and Dutch referendums on the Constitution were known. Clearly, they significantly diminish the chances of there even being a referendum in Britain.
71. Richard Littlejohn, 'How dare Tony Blair call us unpatriotic', 〈http://www/thesun.co.uk/article/0,43-2003251106,00.html〉, accessed 10 October 2003.
72. Daily Mail 31 December 2001, p. 22.
73. For a critique of this view of the 'unpatriotism' of being an enthusiast for integration see Charles Kennedy, 'An End to Vacillation': Britain and Europe: The. Choices, 293-7, at 293,
74. and Haseler, The English Tribe, p. 151.
75. Andorson, 'A Flag of Convenience?', p. 156.
76. Daily Mail, 9 December 2000, pp. 12-13.
77. 'Why the pound is quids in', Daily Mail, 10 June 2003, p. 14.
78. Gertrude Hardt-Mautner, quoted in George Wilkes and Dominic Wring, The British Press and Integration', in David Baker and David Seawright (eds.), Britain For and Against Europe: British Politics and the Question of European Integration (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), pp. 185-205, at 197-8.
79. In the article on the merits of the pound cited above the Daily Mail informs us that, unlike the euro, the pound is not bad for your health. 'According to a study by dermatologists at the University of Zurich, euro coins can trigger skin allergies because they release up to 320 times the amount of nickel allowed under EU safety rules.'.
80. Dougall, 'British Press Coverage', p. 55.
81. See also Olivier Basnée, "The (Non-) Coverage of the European Parliament', in Martyn Bond (ed.), Europe, Parliament and the Media (London: The Federal Trust for Education and Research, 2003), pp. 77-105, at. 92.
82. Haseler, The English Tribe, pp. 14-15.
83. Arthur Bryant eulogises Shakespeare in Set in a Silver Sea: A History of Britain and the British People (London: Book Club Associates edition, 1985).
84. W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman, 1066 And All That (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1900).
85. A good example of a linkage often made between the EU and Napoleon's efforts to dominate the continent, thwarted by the British at Waterloo, can be found in the Cover story of the Sun, 30 March 2004, continued on p. 2: 'Waterloon: Blair will surrender to EU on anniversary of battle victory'.
86. The point was repeatedly made in this programme that stereotypical conceptions of history 'which seem to come from another era were a big factor in causing the English to view their trips to the continent in militaristic terms. BBC Four, Timeshift' documentary, broadcast 31 May 2005.
87. Haseler, The Case for a Federal Future', p. 59.
88. Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837, 2nd edn. (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2005), pp. 1, 5, 17, 24-5, 33-6, 78-9, 86-90, 99, 172, 198, 215-17, 240, 250-3, 285-9, 305-8, 310-13, 322, 358 and 368-71 (this quote from p. 312).
89. For a contrasting approach identifying the closeness of Franco-British relations (at the aristocratic level) in the eighteenth century, centring on the European Enlightenment, cultural and intellectual cosmopolitanism and the work of Voltaire, see Newman, The Rise of English Nationalism, pp. 1-18.
90. Newman, The Rise of English Nationalism, Ibid., p. 6.
91. Anderson and Weymouth, Insulting the Public?, p. 91.
92. Newman, The Rise of English Nationalism, preface pp. 21-3.
93. 'As an historian I regard the abandonment of our sovereignty as being as dangerous as it is needless', proclaims Count Nicolai Tolstoy, UK Independence Candidate for the Wantage constituency, in his campaign leaflet, for the 2005 General Election.
94. On the centricity of the nation-state in early professional historiography, and on the associated primacy of political and diplomatic history, see Richard J. Evans, In Defence of History, 2nd edn. (London: Cranta Books, 2000), pp. 161-4.
95. Keith Jenkins, Refiguring History: New Thoughts on an Old Discipline (London: Routledge, 2003), pp. 17-18.
96. Kumar, The Making of English National Identity, p. 203.
97. Finney, 'Introduction', pp. 5-6. Thus, notes Nigel Gould-Davies, we can argue that much diplomatic history is 'underwritten by an implicit Realism', implying that history was realist before the International Relations Realists were realist.
98. See his 'Ideology', in Firiney (ed.), International History, pp. 105-35, at 112.
99. Beverley Southgate, Why Bother with History? (Harlow: Pearson Education, 2000):
100. Georg G. Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge (Hanover and London: Wesleyan University Press, 1997), p. 2.
101. Quoted in Kumar, The Making of English National Identity, p. 219.
102. Quoted in Anderson, Imagined Communities, p. 71
103. and Haseler, The English Tribe, p. 41. On public and state school education and the spread of Englishness see the latter, pp. 41-5.
104. Newman, The Rise of English Nationalism, p. 51.
105. Forster, Euroscepticism, p. 51.
106. On Bryant's involvement in the production of and promotion of a romantic sense of Eriglishness, see David Matless, Landscape and Englishness (London: Reaktion Books, 1998), pp. 120-1.
107. Anne Deighton, The Past in the Present: British Imperial Memories and European Question', in Jan-Werner Müller (ed.), Memory and Power in Post-War Europe: Studies in the Presence of the Past (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 100-120, at 103.
108. See also Kumar, The Making of English National Identity, p. 216.
109. Robert Colls, Identity of England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 147.
110. Deighton, The Past in the Present', p. 101.
111. Kaiser, ' "What Alternative is Open to Us?" ', p. 11.
112. Stefan Collini, Public Moralists: Political Thought and Intellectual Life in Britain 1850-1930 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), pp. 342-73.
113. Oliver J. Daddow, "The Ideology of Apathy: Historians and Postmodernism', Rethinking History, 8:3 (September 2004), pp. 417-37.
114. See, for instance, Jeremy Black and Donald M. MacRaild, Studying History, 2nd edn. (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000)
115. and Martha Howell and Walter Prevenier, From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2001).
116. T. G. Otte restates these classic principles of reconstructionist history in 'Diplomacy and Decision-Making', in Finney (ed.), International History, pp. 35-57, at 41-2.
117. For instance Arthur Marwick, The New Nature of History: Knowledge, Evidence, Language (Basingstoko: Palgrave, 2001);
118. Keith Windschuttle, The Killing of History: How Literary Critics and Social Theorists are Murdering our Past (New York: The Free Press, 1997).
119. Hans Kellner, Language and Historical Representation: Getting the Story Crooked (London: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1989).
120. Lynch, 'Nationhood and Identity', pp. 185 and 194.
121. In interview with Steve Richards of the New Statesman and Society, quoted in Kumar, The Making of English National Identity, p. 241.
122. Nick Clegg, 'Restating the Case', in Britain and Europe: The Choices, pp. 271-7, at 276.
123. Haseler, The Case for a Federal Future', p. 93.
124. See also Ian Taylor MP, 'Seen from the Conservative Camp', in Taylor, Mitchell, Haseler and Denton, Federal Britain, pp. 11-21, at 18.
125. Haseler, The English Tribe, pp. 9-11.
126. Kumar, The Making of English National Identity, p. 52.
127. Colley, Britons, p. 8;
128. Haseler, The English Tribe, pp. 112-15.
129. Haseler, The English Tribe, Ibid., pp. 57, 117-9, 128-9, 93-103, p. 187, pp. 192-3 respectively.
130. For a reinterpretation of the bizarre yet widespread reading of the Norman Conquest as a moment in the invention of the English, see Anderson, Imagined Communities, p. 201
131. and Newman, The Rise of English Nationalism, p. 14.
132. 〈http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page1673.asp〉. First accessed January 2004.
133. Denton, The Federalist Vision', pp. 151-2.
134. On the federalist, heritage of 'missed opportunities' discourse about Britain and Europe, notably the role of the Federal Trust for Education and Research, see Daddow, Britain and Europe, pp. 86-90.
135. Hugo Young, This Blessed Plot: Britain and Europe from Churchill to Blair (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998), p. 1.
136. Spiering, 'British Euroscepticism', p. 146.
137. Conrad Black, "The Atlantic. Community', in Britain and Europe: The Choices (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 255-62.
138. Anderson, 'A Flag of Convenience?', p. 169.
139. On the manifold commercial considerations of Press outlets, see Roger Fowler, 'Language in the News: Discourse and Ideology in the Press' (London: Routledge, 1991), pp. 19-25.
140. Haseler, The English Tribe, p. 185.