🎧 Talking Politics Guide to … European Union before the EU

Episode summary: We talk to historian Chris Brooke about ideas of a united Europe that long pre-dated the advent of the European Union. Since the eighteenth century philosophers, lawyers, diplomats and revolutionaries have constructed schemes to bring Europe together economically, legally and politically. How do these plans compare with what actually happened? Talking Points: Where does the idea of a union of European nation states come from? - The conversation about union predates the consolidation of European nation-states. - In the 18th century, Britain and France are long-established, but much of the rest of Europe isn’t really what we would call nation states. - The common threads in these earlier projects are the notion of “perpetual peace” and commerce. How do you create a union when some states are much more powerful than others? - You can’t escape geopolitics. - From the 18th century onwards a widespread theme in arguments for European union are fears of growing Russian power. - The European integrationists often…