Benjamin Grob-Fitzgibbon. Continental Drift

Given the nature of the United Kingdom’s immediate future in Europe, few books written about the past can be as timely as this one. As politicians, commentators, the academy, and the general public all struggle to understand why and how the United Kingdom has come to seek a divorce from the European Union (EU), they can only benefit from reading a book of this quality and length, one tracing the many twists and turns that characterize the relationship between the government in London and its equivalents across the EU. The Grob-Fitzgibbon thesis is that, to understand those twists and turns, British governments’ changing attitudes to UK participation in European institutions are best set against the background of decolonization, the rise and fall of the Cold War, and the maintenance of a special relationship between London and Washington. The text puts it this way: “Britain’s relationship with the European continent has been intimately shaped by the government’s handling of the end of empire, by the public’s changing perceptions of Britain’s place within the world and by the nation’s search to define what it means to be British (and European) in the aftermath of both war and empire” (5).

Decolonization · Economic history · Economics · Empire · European union · Government (linguistics) · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies