R. de Bruin

‘Gelovige ambachtslieden, bezig met een nuchter handwerk’: De Nederlandse identificatie met Europese integratie in de jaren vijftig

This article takes issue with the dominant ‘realist’ and ‘neo-realist’ views in Dutch historiography, in which a major role is attributed to national interests in the process of integration and which devalues the role of ideas and ideals. The enthusiasm in the Netherlands for the European cause in the 1950s is indicated by a consultative referendum held on 17 December 1952 in Delft and Bolsward, two towns with populations politically and religiously representative of the Netherlands as a whole. The vast majority voted in favour of the idea of a European government, overseen by a democratically elected European Parliament. This article introduces the generation theory into the field of European integration history. It asks whether the enthusiasm for European integration in the 1950s can be attributed especially to the formative experiences of the pre-war generation (1910-29) with the economic crisis of the 1930s and the horrors of totalitarianism during the Second World War.

Indonesian Decolonisation and the Dutch Attitude Towards the Establishment of the EEC’s Association Policy, 1945-1963

Recent research has shown that (neo-)colonial concepts played a larger role in ideas about European collaboration in the 1950s than had been previously assumed. However, this recent international discussion is almost exclusively based on the French case. In contrast with this French case, the Dutch case is highly ambivalent. On the one hand, the Dutch enthusiasm for the European project in the 1950s was a consequence of the (violent) decolonisation of the Dutch East Indies/Indonesia. The EEC’s association policy, which would open the market of the six founding members to non-European countries and territories that had “special relations” with Belgium, France, Italy and the Netherlands, was regarded rather hesitantly before being accepted. There were fears of getting involved financially and politically in new decolonisation wars. On the other hand some Dutch politicians initially seemed to have a keen eye for the utility of the EEC’s association policy and the European Development Fund as a means to remain present in the remaining former imperial regions.

Projector or projection screen? The Portuguese Estado Novo and ‘renewal’ in the Netherlands (1933-1946)

In the 1930s and during the first year after the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands in May 1940, the basic principles of Salazar’s authoritarian Estado Novo were widely discussed and cheered in the Netherlands. Influential Dutch newspapers featured articles about the ‘lessons’ for Dutch politics and society that could be drawn from Portuguese corporatism. This chapter focuses on the idea that the enthusiasm in the Netherlands for Salazar’s system was largely based on the encounter between perceptions of Salazar, images of Portugal and self-images of the Netherlands.