This book questions conventional accounts of the history of European integration and British business. Integration accounts normally focus on the nation-state, while Neil Rollings focuses on business and its role in the development of European integration, which business historians have previously overlooked. Business provided a key link between economic integration, political integration, and the process of Europeanization. British businessmen perceived early on that European integration meant much more than the removal of tariffs and access to new markets. Indeed, British entry into the European community would alter the whole landscape of the European working environment. Consideration of European integration is revealed as a complex, relative, and dynamic issue, covering many issues such as competition policy, taxation, and company law. Based on extensive archival research, this book uses the case of business to emphasize the need to blend national histories with the history of European integration.

'British Business in the Formative Years of European Integration, 1945–1972 is an extremely useful book. It starts from the point of view of enterprise, not only of business organisations, such as chambers of commerce; it fulfils its promise to provide 'a key link between economic integration, political integration and the process of Europeanisation'; and not least it argues that we must understand business and its actors in relation to their whole environment.'

Source: Business History Review

'This is a tightly argued book, rich in evidence both quantitative and qualitative, drawn from previously unexplored archival material. Rollings demonstrates that business history has much to offer to historians and social scientists interested in the history of European integration; they will find here much that is new both in terms of evidence and in the author's approach.'

Source: The American Historical Review