Sonderband 2. International Council on Archives. Dritte Europäische Archivkonferenz, Wien 11. bis 15. Mai 1993. Tagungsprotokolle (1996)

4. Session / Séance. Strategies for Links with Historical Research / Stratégies de Communication envers la Recherche historique - Palayret Jean-Marie: Towards a New History of Europe (integration period) / Pour une nouvelle Histoire européenne. La période de l’intégration) (english 393 - français 413)

4. Session/Séance: Palayret, Towards a new History of Europe

„reserved“, a flood of information thereby became available for research on integration in the early 1980s. The newly opened archives contained the minutes of the ECSC High Authority, and of the inter-governmental discussions among the six countries that in 1958 were to become the first Member States of the Communities, along with reports of certain interministerial conferences, and sometimes even the minutes of meetings of national cabinets.

This „archival revolution“8 for the first time made it possible to devote oneself to detailed analysis of multi-lateral decision-making by the Six in the 1950s. Studies done on the basis of these sources revealed the importance of the confrontation of national interests among national bodies, placing them in the category of „diplomatic history“9. They show how far the 1950 Treaty on the European Defence Community (not ratified) and the 1958 ones on the European Economic Community and EURATOM were the outcome of fiercely debated compromises between highly dis- perate aspirations and interests.

The radical current in this new historiography was and remains illustrated by Alan S. Milword and the economic historians that are today his emulators, like Richard Griffiths, E. Bloemen, R. Ranieri, etc.10 For them, the Treaties of the 1950s were in no way a manifestation of post-war „federalist“ idealism and the mark of abandonment of part of sovereignty by Member States. Quite the contrary, they were seen as instruments of national policies aimed at resolving essentially economic specific problems, and as expressing the will of Nation-States to safeguard their prosperity, and in some cases ensure their survival.

For these authors, the archives revealed not only the absence of a supra-national dynamic, but on the other hand the cynical attempt by Staes to optimize national interests. Schematically, the idea was as follows: if a State is weakened in the exercise of its functions, and gets rid of this problem even at the price of partial abandonment of sovereignty, it is strengthened in the exercise of the remaining functions. Thus far from representing the weakening of a moribund Nation-State, the progressive abandonments of sovereignty only gave it new strength.

The question how a single treaty could reconcile the disparate and divergent goals of six different Nation-States, however, remained unresolved. While interdependence theories assert that the treaties maximize mutual advantage of the parties and attenuate centrifugal forces, this would imply a degree of rational decision-making that remains singularly absent from the archival document.

New approaches founded on the more modest „case by case“ treatment are at present appearing. Here the short term and less totalizing analysis resume their

8 For the archival revolution and the research programme it made possible, see S chwarz, H. P.: Die Europäische Integration als Aufgabe der Zeitgeschichte. Forschungsstand und Perspektiven, in: Vierteljahrshefte fur Zeitgeschichte XXXXI (1983), p. 555-572.

9 Notable in this category are the remarkable biographies presented by P o i d e v i n, R,: Robert Schuhman. Paris 1987, and by S chw arz, H. P.: Konrad Adenauer. 2 vols. 1986 and 1991.

10 Mil ward, Alan S.: The European Rescue of the Nation-State. London 1992, and The Frontier of National Sovereignty: History and Theory, 1945-1992.

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