Funny friends? Dutch foreign policy, Great Britain and European integration in the ‘long’ 1970s

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article is concerned with the still understudied and frequently misunderstood 1970s. It homes in on Dutch foreign policy regarding Great Britain and European integration to question the long-standing assumption that Dutch policymaking in this period became ‘realistic’ and consumed by a yearning for ‘instrumental supranationalism’. Through a study of Dutch and British government archives, this paper thus lays bare the contradictions that inhered in Dutch visions of European integration and asks how Dutch aims could be squared with support for British accession, ultimately demonstrating why ‘realistic’ and ‘irrational’ are perilous analytical categories when used to interrogate large bureaucratic machineries composed of many individuals with different goals and desires struggling over limited resources.