Wendy Asbeek Brusse provides us with the first comprehensive, multicountry reconstruction of the commercial-policy origins of European integration. Based on archival sources of six countries, Tariffs, Trade and European Integration, 1947-1957 shows that the creation of the Common Market can only be fully understood if one takes into account its economic underpinning.

Immediately after the war, European countries were continuously searching for economic stability, welfare and commercial disarmament, but existing international markets could not satisfy their aspirations. Only by reaching for novel solutions did they bring the trade wars of the 1930s finally to an end and lay the foundation for European Union.