Dr James Ellison

I concentrate on the history of Britain’s relationships with Europe and the United States after 1945 and, more widely, on the history of the Cold War and European integration. I have written two books. The first, Threatening Europe: Britain and the Creation of the European Community, 1955-58 (link is external), asked why the British did not join the European Economic Community at its inception. The second, The United States, Britain and the Transatlantic Crisis: Rising to the Gaullist Challenge, 1963-1968 (link is external), examined how the Americans and the British defended Atlantic partnership, European security and unity in 1960s Cold War Europe. I am now moving on to the post-Cold War era to write about the Anglo-American relationship and the Iraq War.

• Post-1945 international history
• Modern and contemporary American and British foreign policies
• Anglo-American relations
• Britain and European unity

• 'Rethinking Britain and Europe, 1945-73’, in Martina Steber (ed.), Understanding Brexit (Oxford: OUP, forthcoming 2022)
• 'Clinton, Blair and Bush, 1997-2007: the Search for Order’, in Michael Cullinane and Martin Farr (eds), The Palgrave Handbook of Presidents and Prime Ministers: from Cleveland and Salisbury to Trump and Johnson, 1895-2020 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2021)
• 'The search for world order and the wars in Kosovo and Iraq', Britain and the World, 14.1 (2021): 69-93.
• Pierson Dixon, 1961-65’ in Rogelia Pastor-Castro and John W. Young (eds), The Paris Embassy: British Ambassadors to France, 1944-1979 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, forthcoming 2013)
• ‘Reconciling the irreconcilable? Britain, the Atlantic Community and European Unity in the 1960s’ in Valerie Aubourg and Giles Scott-Smith (eds), Atlantic, Euratlantic, or Europe-America? The Atlantic Community and the European Idea from Kennedy to Nixon (link is external) (Paris: Soleb, 2011)
• ‘Britain, de Gaulle’s NATO policies and Anglo-French Rivalry, 1963-7’ in Christian Nuenlist, Anna Locher and Garret Martin (eds), Globalizing de Gaulle: International Perspectives on French Foreign Policies, 1958-1969 (link is external) (Langham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010) The Harvard Cold War Studies Book Series