What are some examples of the cooperation and the conflict that have shaped Eastern Europe?

Britain’s referendum on the EU marks another step in the country’s long and troubled history with its European neighbours. Divorce or not, Europe will continue to have a huge influence over British politics and society – history has a few lessons for us here.

Europe made the UK. The emergence first of England as a nation state was the product of European pressures – to defend itself against Viking raids. So was the formation of the United Kingdom, which rallied England and Scotland against the France of Louis XIV.

Moreover, Europe has almost always been more important to us than the rest of the world. The 18th century statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke, for example, spoke of a “Commonwealth of Europe”, long before the British Commonwealth of Nations was even thought of.

The nature of the European challenge varied greatly over time. It was always strategic. In the Middle Ages the main enemy was France. In the 16th century and early 17th centuries it was Spain. From the late 17th to the early 19th century it was France again; in the mid to late 19th century it was Tsarist Russia. Then, in the early and mid-20th century it was first the Kaiser and then Hitler’s Germany; and then Russia again – with a brief interruption after the fall of the Berlin Wall – from the end of World War II to the present day.