British Business in the Formative Years of European Integration, 1945–1973: (Cambridge Studies in the Emergence of Global Enterprise)

This book questions conventional accounts of the history of European integration and British business. Integration accounts normally focus on the nation-state, while Neil Rollings focuses on business and its role in the development of European integration, which business historians have previously overlooked. Business provided a key link between economic integration, political integration, and the process of Europeanization. British businessmen perceived early on that European integration meant much more than the removal of tariffs and access to new markets. Indeed, British entry into the European community would alter the whole landscape of the European working environment. Consideration of European integration is revealed as a complex, relative, and dynamic issue, covering many issues such as competition policy, taxation, and company law. Based on extensive archival research, this book uses the case of business to emphasize the need to blend national histories with the history of European integration.

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction; 2. Trade and protection; 3. Overseas investment, corporate strategy, and European integration; 4. From 1945 to June 1955: the Marshall Plan and the European coal and steel community; 5. The establishment of the common market and the Free Trade Area proposals, 1955–58; 6. Creating EFTA, applying to the EC and de Gaulle's veto, 1958–63; 7. After de Gaulle's veto, the second application and eventual entry, 1963–68; 8. The end game: from the Hague summit to British accession, 1969–73; 9. Competition policy; 10. Indirect taxation; 11. Company law and the European company.

About the Author :
Neil Rollings (b. 1961) is currently Head of Department and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Economic and Social History at the University of Glasgow. Rollings previously held posts at the University of Leeds and the University of Bristol. In 2000–2001 he was Associate Professor in the Institute of Economic Research at Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo. Rollings is currently joint chair of the University of Glasgow Business School Strategic Advisory Board, Treasurer (until June 2007) of the Association of Business Historians, and on the Council of the Economic History Society. Rollings is the joint author of Economic Planning 1943–51 (1992), Economic Policy under the Conservatives 1951–64 (2004), and joint editor of Labour Governments and Private Industry (1992).

Review :
'British Business in the Formative Years of European Integration, 1945–1972 is an extremely useful book. It starts from the point of view of enterprise, not only of business organisations, such as chambers of commerce; it fulfils its promise to provide 'a key link between economic integration, political integration and the process of Europeanisation'; and not least it argues that we must understand business and its actors in relation to their whole environment.' Business History Review 'This is a tightly argued book, rich in evidence both quantitative and qualitative, drawn from previously unexplored archival material. Rollings demonstrates that business history has much to offer to historians and social scientists interested in the history of European integration; they will find here much that is new both in terms of evidence and in the author's approach.' The American Historical Review