Journal of European Integration History - Centre d'études et de ...

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Book reviews – Comptes rendus – Buchbesprechungen
Valent shows how “public” and “private” dimension – that is foreign and domestic
policy – intertwined in this period, to understand the tangled relationship between
British diplomacy and political world and, more generally, the European and the
Atlantic dimension of Wilson’s policy. With the analysis of British as well as American
primary sources, the volume allows to delineate London’s perception of the outer
world and gives a vivid reconstruction of the internal situation of a country that was
trying to find its own place in a changing international scenario. Apparently, the
United Kingdom was pushed back to January 1963. Yet, this time there was the belief
that British entry was only postponed to a not too distant future. The legacy of this
new attitude would pass on to the Conservative government led by Edward Heath,
when Britain acknowledged that, in order to solve her domestic problems and regain
international prestige, London would not be London without Europe.
Giulia Bentivoglio
University of Padua
Evelina MARTELLI, L’altro atlantismo. Fanfani e la politica estera italiana
(1958-1963), Guerini e associati, Milano, 2008, 478 p. – ISBN 978-88-6250-008-1
– 25,00 €.
Martelli’s book is aimed at giving a precise overview of the Italian foreign policy
over the third democratic parliamentary term (from 1958 through 1963). This period
is commonly referred as a transactional period, in which the bipolar conflicting turns
sour and new approaches for a more comprehensive super-powers dialog are sought.
Simultaneously, the Italian political scenario rapidly shows the necessity to enlarge
the ruling coalition by including the so-called moderate left-wing parties.
The book confirms what the traditional historiography has always highlighted:
the international conditioning pressures over Italian politics. Nevertheless, such a
permeability towards the international issues never led to a complete subordination
of the Italian foreign policy: autonomy and consistency with the national interests
were undeniably kept. Indeed, the interdependent core aspects of this strategy were
the “Atlantism” and the “Europeanism”.
Prime minister Amintore Fanfani plays a relevant role in this historical period and
he is the key figure of Martelli’s book. The book describes the main political decisions
taken by Fanfani on different areas, such as European affairs, Atlantic alliance, East-
West relations, Arabic and Mediterranean affairs and relations with developing countries.
A particular attention is given to both his role in the South Tyrol dispute and
his attempts to ease the diplomatic dialog between the Holy See and the Soviet Union.
The book gives an overview of the five years of the third parliamentary term: when
Fanfani was Prime minister on various alternative periods, but he permanently controlled
the foreign policy. Fanfani followed a different approach to the Atlantism,
which resulted to be more moderate. Here Martelli prefers the term “other Atlantism”
instead of the over-used term “new-Atlantism”. It is evident that this approach was