Myths and Maps of Europe

"We all know that nationalism, conflicts and, on a more positive note, pluralism profoundly marked Europe. There is another side of the coin though: as all human communities, Europeans have always tried to legitimize their own existence in a mythical past: we all know the story of the rape of Europa. This paper analyzes the cohesive and legitimizing images depicting this myth, trying to undercover the complex stratifications ingrained in them and the consequent different ideas of Europe. Europa, though, is not only a defenceless maiden abducted by Zeus in the form of a white bull. Especially between the Sixteenth and Eighteenth centuries, Europe was portrayed as a matron-like woman who reigned all the world over. The paper looks into the links between politics and these representations of Europe as well. As there is a connection between borders and patriotism, this paper cannot avoid dealing with the matter of the boundaries of Europe. Does Europe need to have a frontier at all? What should it be its Eastern one? The Pacific Ocean, including the whole of Russia? The Ural Mountains, splitting Russia in two halves? Is Turkey part of Europe? Are the Mediterranean See and the Atlantic Ocean indisputable borders? The paper investigates the historical perception of European borders in geographical maps, which are images as evocative and able to congeal passions, emotions and ultimately identities as the others mentioned here."

European Review 20 (01): 1-9. , 2012

Contemporary Political Theory, 2003

London: Routledge

What is Europe? This question, which is one of the guiding threads of this volume, is not new. It has been brought forth and answered many times. But the answers indicate that the question is not as easy to resolve as it might seem at first: Europe may be defined as a continent, but when one looks closely it is not a clearly delineated whole (the territory itself, its geographical limits, are highly disputed, for example). Obviously, it does not consist in a people, rather it includes many peoples which, moreover, include many different groups and minorities. It is not defined by a language, but many languages. Nor is it defined by one culture, as there are many cultures— while reference to Europe as a concept long pre-dates its connection with the concept of culture.

2003

European Review, 2012

This study sets out to explain why historically, continental and southern Europe has been significantly more favourable to post-1945 European integration than the north. I argue that this is an important problem for two reasons. First, the fact that there are more and less Europeanist member states has been and remains the most basic political constraint on European integration. Second, I believe that by exploring this issue, I am able to present an innovative, comparative-historical analysis that not only advances our theoretical understanding of European integration, but also sheds new light on the evolution of nationalism and the nation-state. In line with broad trends in political and social theory over the last twenty to thirty years, notably social constructivism, in the introductory discussion in Part 1 I assume that a search for the sources of Europeanism – territorial and other – requires an appropriate consideration of the role of ideas. I argue that the attitudes of individuals and collectivities to political issues like European integration reflect their ideological preferences as well as their material interests, both of which are in turn products of, and may be modified by, learning. Key concepts in the study are thus ‘interest,’ ‘ideology,’ and ‘learning.’ I assume that territorial-historical background fundamentally structures how agents are influenced by these variables. Inspired by the Norwegian comparativist Stein Rokkan, I interpret European integration as a case of polity-building comparable to other instances of state- and nation-building in history. This approach suggests that integration is a fundamentally political process with the issue of sovereignty at its core. Hence, regionally differentiated patterns of attitudes to European union may reflect territorially distinct, historically evolved ideas of sovereignty. On this assumption, I construct a 2x2 table defining four basic ideas of soverereignty – polity-ideas, or normative ideas about a legitimate political order – that structures the study’s comparative-historical analysis: universalist-descending; particularist-descending; particularist-ascending; and universalist-ascending. I argue that each polity-idea is associated with a particular discourse, ideology, and even an ontological and epistemological paradigm. The main controversy in the post-1945 European debate has been between what I term the national-liberal and the Christian-democratic paradigms of integration. The former is basically particularist and intergovernmentalist and is based in northern, Lutheran or Anglican Europe. The second is inspired by Christian universalism, favours a federal or unitary Europe, and has its mainstay in continental and southern, Catholic Europe. In Part 2, I examine existing integration and international relations as well as general political science theory in order to identify theoretically possible sources of Europeanist attitudes. This discussion concludes with a working hypothesis based on Rokkan’s notion of the European city-belt. Could, as Rokkan himself explicitly suggested, the city-belt, stretching roughly from Central Italy to the North Sea and representing the historical core territory of the Catholic church and the Holy Roman Empire, be the home base or ‘primary territory’ of a European ‘nation’? Could it in this sense play a similar historical polity-building role as that assigned by Karl W. Deutsch to the Île de France as the hub of the French nation-state, to Leon-Castille in Spain, Savoy-Piemonte in Italy, Prussia in Germany, England in Britain etc.? If so, it is indeed worthwhile comparing contemporary European union-building to historical nation-building, Europeanism (pro-union ideology) to nationalism and Europeanness (European identity) to national identity. While conceding that his perspective is indeed valuable and relevant, the historical discussion in Part 3 criticises Rokkan’s notion of the city-belt for national-liberal reductionism. The Rokkanian-Deutschian thesis neglects the ancient and medieval tradition for unity and universalism espoused by the Roman Church and the Holy Roman/Habsburg Empire and underrates the continued influence of these institutions even after the Peace of Westphalia. Moreover, the thesis is too structuralist, implying that the European Union emerged more or less by default. Like intergovernmentalist and neofunctionalist integration theory, it underestimates the role of ideologically aware and reasoning human agency. Hence it is argued that Rome, represented by the Roman Church as well as by successive Roman empires, is a more important territorial and historical source of Europeanism than city-studded Central Europe. Part 3 narrates how the ascendancy of particularist (or nationalist), discourse resulted from the fragmentation of unitary medieval Christendom into a modern Europe dominated by autonomous states. State-builders propagated the notion of territorial sovereignty, which eventually turned into the hegemonial, particularist-ascending idea of national sovereignty. Here France and the Protestant states of north-western Europe were the pioneers, their kings’ control of national churches being an important factor. Anglican and Lutheran Protestantism was particularly conducive to particularism, which notably in the German context turned exclusivist and eventually racist. The particularist paradigm survived two World Wars in its more benign North Atlantic, liberal form. I submit that this paradigm has been a major source of British and Scandinavian ideological reluctance to post-war European integration. But the Holy See as well as the Holy Roman/Habsburg Empires continued to represent a strong counterweight to particularist discourse even after the Reformation and the religious wars. The Papacy criticised nationalism as a political religion, and came to terms with the modern, secular nation-state and national mass politics only with difficulty. Still, in the late nineteenth century Catholic parties were allowed to emerge and enabled Catholics to participate in secular, national politics. But they continued to look beyond the nation-state. The final Part 4 of the study narrates how transnationally networked, Christian democratic parties of Western Continental Europe jointly formulated a Europeanist-ascending programme for European union after World War II. The European Union was launched on its supranational path when these parties, led mainly by statesmen from Carolingian-Lotharingian Europe, dominated the governments of the six founding states from about 1945 to 1965. Their discourse in this regard was heavily informed by ideology rooted in the universalist European legacy, whose mainstay remains Catholic, continental and southern Europe.

This article analyses the process of the development of Europe. The discussion is divided into three parts. First, the idea of a European identity with its humanizing, civilizing and Christian dimensions; we will consider how this served as the original foundation for a European identity. The second part looks into the diverse attempts to create a united Europe based on efforts to overcome models which in their turn sprang from nationalist perspectives. Finally, it examines the idea of a European interculturism whose foundation is a commitment to ethics and education.

Parliament and Europe, 2011

History, 2018

In an essay that was part of a string of works aimed at unravelling the meaning of 'Europe', J.G.A. Pocock emphasised the indeterminacy of its identity as a constituent element of any discourse about Europe. Its resistance and resilience against all attempts to fix its boundaries and to define its past would be the main component of Europe's (self)representations. Viewed from such an angle, European identity might be, at best, the recognition of a plurality of different cultural values and social and political practices that cannot be subsumed under a unifying and unified narrative. If anything, Pocock suggested, it is the history of such an indeterminacy, so often overlooked or ignored, that ought to be told. 1 Similar doubts are shared by many others. As Richard Evans has recalled, A.J.P. Taylor once went as far as to assert that 'European history is whatever the historian wants it to be'. It was, as he saw it, but a chaotic collection of ideas and events taking place in or tightly connected to 'the area we call Europe'. However, he also had to admit that he was not sure what such an area was and that, therefore, he was 'pretty well in a haze about the rest!' 2 According to Evans, Taylor might have been rightthough he then added, importantly, that what historians wanted constantly changed. 3 But Evans's remark hints at the crux of the matter. In fact, it questions the interests of historians, their duties, and the relationship they entertain with 'their' pasts. Importantly, the urge to overcome the historical boundaries of national pasts, so tightly connect to the desire to find a common European past, has emerged time and again when nationalism has shown its darkest side or when the political limits of the nation-state have become manifest. At such historical junctures, in times of crisis, many scholars have turned to Europe. As has been noted, the fact that between the 1920s and the 1950s attempts to find a single, common European history multiplied is telling. 4 Henri Pirenne's Histoire de l'Europe, written during the First World War * This special issue is the result of the 6 th annual symposium of the Research Network on the History of the Idea of Europe. We are grateful to the Council for European Studies (Columbia University) and Sciences Po in Paris for hosting our workshop as part of the 22 nd International Conference of Europeanists. 1