British Post-war Early Evolution Of European Integration Policy Motivation Interpretation

The Great Britain is a traditional great power of Europe, and now plays a significant role in EU. The relationship between Britain and EC or EU, however, is so complicated in history that it arouses researchers'great enthusiasm to analyze the causes of British policies towards EC or EU. Through systematic analyses of the most important events between Britain and EC from early 1955 to later 1961, which include Britain refused to sign The Treaty of Rome, McMillan Cabinet applied to join the EC in 1961, etc., this dissertation has explored the causes, both hard and soft ones, of the evolutions of British policies towards EC.This paper can be divided into three parts. In the first part, there is a brief introduction about the history of European integration thoughts, and then the paper provides an overview of British attitude to the courses of European integration before 1955. In the second one, the paper focuses on the bifurcations between Britain and other six continental countries during the Messina Negotiation and the following relevant affairs. Through the analyses of these closely related events, this part offers an insight into the causes of British policies at that time. In part three, the paper analyzes the hard and soft causes that drove McMillan Cabinet to submit the application to join the EC on Aug. 9th, 1961.In a word, the theme of this dissertation is to explore hard and soft causes for the evolutions of British policies towards EC from 1955 to 1961. The author just tries not to simply put the various causes together, but bridge the gap between the hard causes and soft ones, which is also the main trait of this paper.In retrospect, the relations between Britain and EC or EU are fairly subtle. At first, Britain held a supercilious attitude towards the movements of continental European integration; however, as time passed on, the great changes of international environments and its own strengths made Britain have no choice but to join EC. While scholars do the researches about the causes of British policies towards EC or EU, they can not ignore the connections between hard and soft ones. If not, they can't totally make clear of what they have studied.