One problem with this proposal was that the nation-state had proven itself to be untenable in Europe. In the history of Europe’s great powers, imperialism blended into integration, with the nation-state hardly appearing. The major European powers had never been nation-states: before the Second World War they had been empires, where citizens and subjects were unequal; afterwards, as they lost their empires, they had joined a process of European integration in which sovereignty was shared.
