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[The American Conservative] The Meaning of Greece
Behind Roderick Beaton’s masterful history lies the question: What do we owe Greece?
The Greeks: A Global History. By Roderick Beaton. Basic Books; 590 pages; 35.00$
Someday toward the late 1970s, as the European Economic Community (EEC) readied to rebuff yet another of Greece’s successive bids for accession into the bloc since the collapse of its right-wing junta in 1974, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing dialed the European Commission’s economic directorate, then headed by fellow Frenchman François-Xavier Ortoli. “We can’t let Plato play in second division” was the French President’s famous retort when given the Commission’s official view that the Greek economy wasn’t ready for membership in the forerunner to the EU. In Giscard’s view, philosophy trumped economics.
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