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Известия АлтГУ. Исторические науки и археология. 2018. №5 (103)
УДК 94(410) ББК 63.3(4Вел)6
Britain at the Crossroads of History (Review of Monograph: Khakhalkina E.V. Great Britain and the Problems of Integration, Security and Decolonization in the Second Half of the 1940s and Early 1960s. — Tomsk: Tomsk State University Press, 2017. — 384 p.)
Yu.G. Chernyshov1, Yu.A. Gavrilova2 1Altai State University (Barnaul, Russia),
2Kazakh-American Free University (Ust-Kamenogorsk, Kazakhstan)
Британия на перепутье истории (рецензия на монографию: Хахалкина Е.В. Великобритания и проблемы интеграции, безопасности и деколонизации во второй половине 1940-х — начале 1960-х гг. — Томск : Изд-во Томского ун-та, 2017. — 384 с.) Ю.Г. Чернышов1, Ю.А. Гаврилова2
1Алтайский государственный университет (Барнаул, Россия), 2Казахстанско-Американский свободный университет (Усть-Каменогорск, Казахстан)
The review gives a description of Russian and foreign historiography on British research and analyzes the latest work on the history of Great Britain - a monograph by the Tomsk researcher E.V. Khakhalkina. In the text, the novelty of this work is analyzed in comparison with the publications of its predecessors, the originality of the idea and the validity of the application of the problem-chronological principle of the material presentation are estimated. The author, when analyzing the evolution of the British foreign policy and colonial course, shows the complex fusion and continuity of different challenges of the time, including integration, decolonization and security issues (it is these three directions that are put in the title of the work). Exploring the complex intricacies of various events, the author appeals to documentary archival materials enriching already existing ideas about the general logic of developing the foreign policy course of the United Kingdom during the reign of Laborites and Conservatives in 1945-1964. According to the authors of the review, this book proves that the origins of modern challenges faced not only by the UK but also by other countries are directly related to those processes that were spread after the Second World War in the conditions of the collapse of the world colonial systems and beginning of the European integration.
В рецензии дается характеристика отечественной и зарубежной историографии по британским исследованиям и анализируется новейшая работа по истории Великобритании - монография томской исследовательницы Е.В. Хахалкиной. В тексте проанализирована новизна данной работы по сравнению с публикациями предшественников, оцениваются оригинальность замысла и обоснованность применения проблемно-хронологического принципа изложения материала. Автор при анализе эволюции британского внешнеполитического и колониального курса показывает сложный сплав и неразрывность разных вызовов времени, среди которых вопросы интеграции, деколонизации и безопасности (именно эти три направления и вынесены в заголовок работы). Разбираясь в сложных хитросплетениях разных событий, автор апеллирует к документальным архивным материалам, обогащающим уже имеющиеся представления об общей логике выработки внешнеполитического курса Соединенного Королевства в период правления лейбористов и консерваторов в 1945-1964 гг. По мнению авторов рецензии, данная книга доказывает, что истоки современных вызовов, с которыми столкнулись Великобритания и другие страны, имеют прямое отношение к тем процессам, которые получили распространение после Второй мировой войны в условиях распада мировых колониальных систем и начала европейской интеграции в ее самом широком контексте.
Britain at the Crossroads of History...
Key words: European integration, UK, decolonization, se- Ключевые слова: европейская интеграция, Великобри-
curity, immigration. тания, деколонизация, безопасность, иммиграция.
DOI 10.14258/izvasu(2018)5-29
The position of Great Britain regarding European integration for various reasons has always been unique, and recent events (in particular, voting on the country's withdrawal from the European Union), only confirmed this. In the conditions of the upcoming Brexit, a wave of interest in Russian and Western historiography on the question of Britain's participation in European integration emerged. A country that has traditionally positioned itself in supranational structures as a "a surge of interest inspecial" partner, it would seem, naturally leaves the ranks of the European Union.
However, the history of Britain's accession to the European Communities shows that the perception of its position on the European integration as skeptical and "cool" in some cases was exaggerated by both politicians and historians, and the country played a positive role in supranational structures, balancing the Franco-West German tandem and restraining some integration initiatives, urging not to hurry and move forward.
In foreign historiography, a significant amount of work is devoted to the participation of Great Britain in European integration and the complex nature of the British position within the European Communities / European Union. Publications written on the footsteps of the design of the first supranational communities in the 1950s and 1960s, despite the lack of such a solid range of sources available to researchers at present, still differ in the depth of the analysis of work [1-3].
With the development and deepening of integration and the entry of the UK into the European Communities in 1973, Western historians began to explore the British position within unified Europe in a more integrated and objective manner, based on documents that became available, in conjunction with other areas of the British domestic and foreign policy [4-15].
In Russian historiography, the issues of changing Britain's foreign policy after the Second World War have not been sufficiently investigated. During the Soviet period, the attention of historians was attracted by the relationship between the two superpowers; through their prism they considered Anglo-American relations, the "special" cooperation of the two countries within NATO and other military-political blocs. The participation of Great Britain in European economic integration was first perceived by Soviet historians as a peripheral direction, especially given that the country joined the European Economic Community (EEC) only in 1973. Later, when the United Kingdom occupied a prominent place in the European communities, historians were affected by the shortage of archival
sources, a large part of which was declassified in the UK and in other Western countries only after a 30-year period; many documents remain closed so far [16-28].
In the post-Soviet period, when ideological restrictions disappeared, Russian researchers had access to Western archives and the opportunity to work with declassified documents and new literature. In 2007 and 2011 two monographs of the current director of the Institute of World History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, M.A. Lipkin, devoted to the issues of the place and role of European integration in British policy during the period of the Conservative and Labor government in 1957-1974 [29; 30]. A noteworthy event in Russian English studies was the publication in 2016 of a textbook by N.K. Kapitonova and E.V. Romanova [31]. The textbook covers a significant time range — from the early modern times to 2014 and contains information based on a thorough study by the authors of declassified documentary materials and a new comprehension of the already known plots of British history from new positions, free from ideological cliches and political conjuncture.
An important event was the defense of a doctoral dissertation, and then the publication in 2017 of a monograph by Professor of Tomsk State University Elena V. Khakhalkina "Great Britain and the Problems of Integration, Security and Decolonization in the Second Half of the 1940s — Early 1960s" [32]. The novelty of this work has been to focus on the impact of factors such as decolonization and the Anglo-American partnership on British policy in the field of European integration. The author for the first time in Russian historiography shows the interaction and close interweaving of different directions of the British foreign policy, their mutual influence in specific circumstances and taking into account the so-called intervening factors — external and poorly predictable.
The degree of independence of historical work can in many ways be determined by the extent to which the source of research is fundamentally grounded. In this case, it should immediately be noted that one of the merits of the work is the extensive use of unpublished documents, as well as documents in electronic form of storage. Widely used and collections of published documents — such as "British Documents on the End of the Empire", various domestic collections of sources, as well as documents of personal origin, publications in the media, video recordings, etc. The review of Russian and foreign historiography contains quite detailed characteristics of various scientific trends, and it can be noted that a significant part of the works used has been written relatively recently — during the last one and a half decades.
H3Beemfl AmTy. HcropHHecKue HayKH h apxeonoraa. 2018. №5 (103)
Monograph by E.V. Khakhalkina consists of three chapters ("Great Britain after the Second World War — the search for new domestic and foreign policy guidelines (1945-1951)", "The policy of conservative offices of W. Churchill and A. Eden (1951 — early 1957)"; "The governments of G. McMillan and A. Douglas-Hume: balancing between Europe and the Empire (1957-1964)". The division within the paragraphs is distinguished by a balanced volume and problematic formulations that determine the novelty of the work.
The chronology of the work covers fateful foreign policy events in the history of Great Britain connected with the challenges of the collapse of the world colonial system, the construction of a new configuration of the security system after the Second World War, and the tasks of attracting migrants for the reconstruction of the country. At the same time, it should be noted that the author does not limit her attention to events related only to Great Britain, but also tries to take into account the influence of various international factors, as well as changes in the general historical background (for example, parallel processes of decolonization in other countries). This breadth of approach makes research be carried out an appropriate high level of monograph.
In the first chapter, the author describes the key directions of the country's foreign policy after the Second World War (in 1945-1951) under the Laborites, who, due to a lack of political experience and other factors, have made many Tory proposals, primarily in foreign policy. E.V Khakhalkina shows that the beginning ofthe dissolution of the British Empire was accompanied by the attempts of first Labor and then Conservative governments to strengthen Anglo-American relations that were particularly close (and even characterized by the British side as "special") during the period of the Anti-Hitler Coalition to overcome its financial and foreign policy problems.
The novelty of approaches is distinguished by the formulation of research tasks and the reading from a new angle ofview of known subjects. For example, the author, when considering the Suez Crisis of 1956 (1, pp. 177-206), cites materials from new sources, for example, data from declassified Russian archives and collected in the collection "Middle East Conflict: from Documents ofthe Foreign Policy Archive of the Russian Federation. 1947-1967". The Suez crisis without exaggeration, as the author shows, has become a crucial milestone event for British foreign policy and the collective identity of the population. It was this event that prompted the British government to rethink the country's role in European affairs and initiate the so-called grand project, which was about creating an economic and political union.
The "Grand Design" for Britain was an attempt to lead the European integration process, while at the same time slowing down or completely halting the talks of the so-called the Six countries on the creation of new supranational structures — the European Economic Community and the European Atomic Energy Community. Until
now, the question remains as to why the UK failed to implement the "Grand Design" even partially. The author of the monograph insists that the British government, represented by the new Prime Minister H. Macmillan, did not make sufficient efforts to implement this project.
A promising scientific direction is the author's approach to the concept of interdependence. In the second paragraph of the third chapter "Approbation of the Doctrine of Interdependence on Relations with the Soviet Union and the Countries of the Commonwealth" we are talking about a new interpretation of this thesis by the new British government (32, pp. 233-277). The author applies this concept, which the British Prime Minister H. Macmillan put forward for the restoration of Anglo-American relations, shaken by the Suez crisis of 1956, to relations with the USSR and the solution of the German question.
A separate subparagraph, the text of which is written using unpublished materials of the Foreign Policy Archive of the Russian Federation, is devoted to H. Macmillan's visit to the USSR (this was the first visit of the British head of government in peacetime to the Soviet Union) and attempts to mitigate the ultimatum of Nikita S. Khrushchev on the German question (32, pp. 233-255). The British Prime Minister managed during the visit not only to weaken the intensity of Soviet initiatives of an ultimatum nature, but also to agree on holding a summit meeting to resolve the issue of the status of Berlin. The author in this part of the work, which is valuable from the point of view of understanding today's exacerbation of British-Russian relations, draws attention to the difference between the mental attitudes of the two countries, the complicated dialogue on a number of international problems due to differences in culture, way of life and thinking, diplomatic "language". To analyze these differences, the author refers to the memoirs of H. Macmillan, N.S. Khrushchev and especially the memories of his son, Sergey N. Khrushchev, in which special attention is paid to these mentally-worldview differences between the USSR and Great Britain.
In the second subparagraph, the author examines Macmillan's famous trip to Africa in February 1960, which ended in Cape Town, South Africa, with a speech on "the wind of change" (32, pp. 255-277). The British leader in this speech actually recognized the irreversibility of the decolonization processes, which took accelerated pace at the turn of the 1950s-1960s and compared the processes of "liberation" of dependent territories with the processes of the formation of European nation states in the nineteenth century. The head of the British government, realizing the impossibility of further exploitation of the colonies and the preservation of the empire, set the task of its soft, painless transformation into the Commonwealth while maintaining control over the liberated states. It is no coincidence that H. Macmillan repeatedly referred to this thesis about the "interdependence", referring not only to the countries that received independence, but also the Soviet
Britain at the Crossroads of History..
Union again, urging Moscow to join forces in the affairs of Africa. Such a wide use and interpretation of the thesis of interdependence testified to the attempts of the UK to establish a dialogue with different parties and to reduce the overall tension of the Cold War in its interests.
These efforts of the head of the British government corresponded to the "global" policy of Great Britain and represented its application for mediation in the relations of the two superpowers on the solution of the German problem and colonial issues. The British political establishment and the population of the country painfully perceived the loss of the empire and the transition of the country for financial and international reasons to the position of a regional power. Therefore, in the actions of the British leadership, the aspiration was to build a foreign policy course, as before, in global categories. However, the UK no longer had the same resources, and the author convincingly proves this in different parts of the book, in order to fulfill all international obligations in the same volume. Although the political elite of the country and the population for a long time could not accept the fact that the country's influence in the world was weakened, and the current events on the withdrawal of the country from the European Union illustrate this thesis once again.
In the monograph, a special place is occupied by immigration subjects, which are directly related to decolonization processes and postcolonial problems of Great Britain and other countries, including those with experience of the colonial past. The author, based on the analysis ofa wide range of sources, including stenograms of the cabinet meeting, the debate of the House of Commons, opinion polls and other sources, traces the logic of the introduction of immigration legislation in the UK in the early 1960s. After World War II, British governments were first forced to recruit foreign labor from the colonies to rebuild Europe's economy (resources for attracting migrants from Eastern European countries were severely limited due to the onset of the cold war), then to maintain the country's image as a "mother" — metropolis for the territories of the empire and the strengthening Commonwealth. Over time, as the demand for the British economy declined in the additional labor force, the growth in the number of immigrants began to cause concern in the British governments. The Commonwealth Migrants Act of 1962 introduced immigration regulation for the first time in British history. Although the number of foreigners with different skin color, religion and culture was relatively low compared to the current rate and number of visitors to the United Kingdom, the erosion of the "white" character of British society caused a surge of racial prejudice among the population and concern for the future of the country. Immigration plots, relevant in our day, are given attention to in all three chapters.
The author, in analyzing the reasons for the introduction of immigration regulation, refers to such subjects as the resurgence of xenophobia in British society in the form
of so-called racist riots in the late 1950s, which the Conservatives used as one of the reasons for introducing legislation. The value of the author's arguments in the monograph lies in the fact that they provide good food for thought and material for analyzing the migration situation at the present time, not only in the UK, but also in other countries ofEurope and the world. If at first immigrants from poor colonies and liberated countries such as the West Indies, India, Pakistan and others came to the United Kingdom to work in their new homeland, now we see another, more consumer and dependent approach of second and third generation immigrants to place of stay.
The unconditional merits ofthe work include the authors appeal in all parts of the work to the so-called bipartisan domestic and foreign policy consensus, which began to form after the Second World War against the British domestic and foreign policy course. In practice, this approach meant that many of the conservative ideas, for example, were picked up and implemented by the Laborites in power, and on the contrary, the Tories, back in power in 1951 under the leadership of W. Churchill, did not hasten to abolish their nationalization and abandon their predecessors from the chosen model of the economy, oriented to building a welfare society in the UK. It is also valuable that the author convincingly and organically showed in the monograph the particularly close interrelation of the British foreign and domestic policies. This interconnection has also been ensured by the bipartisan "link", thanks to which the continuity of the foreign policy positions of the two leading parties became possible.
Talking about the wishes that could be expressed on this paper, we would like to draw attention to the need for a clearer definition of certain terms (such as "empire", "decolonization", "ideology", etc.). For example, the term "ideology" is often used in the work as a key term, and it often coincides with such concepts as "strategic course", "program of actions", "party rhetoric", etc. (32, p. 40 ff.). In the scientific literature there is no unity in understanding the content of the term "ideology": some authors, for example, use it in a very broad sense, with reference to any "system of ideas", others consider only "ideological" whole ideological systems. There is no unity in the classification of ideologies: along with the main political ideologies — such as conservatism, liberalism, socialism — they often talk about the ideologies of colonialism, imperialism, nationalism, etc. The author should give a clear definition of the meaning that is put into the concept of "ideology". This is necessary because many researchers, speaking of British specifics, emphasize that the Conservative Party is characterized more as pragmatic than "ideological", and conservatives themselves often deny that their political beliefs constitute an ideology" [33, p. 57]. The author recognizes this specificity of British conservatism, but a clear delineation of "ideology" and "political program" in the work is still not given.
Известия АлтГУ. Исторические науки и археология. 2018. №5 (103)
One more remark is connected with the fact that only works in English are considered in foreign historiography. In our opinion, it would be interesting to compare the assessments that were expressed by other historians — in particular, representatives of French and German historiography. This would be useful, for example, in covering such subjects discussed in the monograph as the Suez crisis, attempts to solve the German question, and so on.
Thus, monograph of E.V. Khakhalkina introduces a new understanding in seemingly well-known historical plots.
The monograph clarifies the complex nature of Britain's relationship to European integration in the first post-war decades and gives an insight into the origins of Britain's "special" position in the integration sphere and the subtleties of "withdrawal" from imperial identity to the identity of the leading post-imperial power.
The study can be useful to all who are interested in the problems of European integration, security, Anglo-American relations, immigration and decolonization.
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