Transcript Intro-2 - Brief History of the Idea of Europe

A brief history of Europe and the European idea
Ideas of Europe
Jost-Henrik Morgenstern
European Institute of Public Administration
Maastricht, The Netherlands
Mythical Europe
 Europa
 Broad eyes
 To go down, set
 Europa
 daughter of a Phoenician king
 Abducted by Zeus in the form
 of a bull and brought to Crete
 Married the King of Crete
Europe as an idea
 What is Europe?
Geographic entity
Social and cultural realm
Political entity
 Definitions
Example: Merriam-Webster Dictionary
 Eu·rope
Function: geographical name
1 continent of the eastern hemisphere between Asia & the Atlantic area
3,997,929 square miles (10,354,636 square kilometers), population
498,000,000
2 the European continent exclusive of the British Isles
Antiquity
POLIS: Greece
 City States – the Polis, or body of citizens

E.g. ancient Athens:

Assembly open to all citizens

Parliament and Court

Council, offices
 Philosophy and political thought
 Science
 Hellenism
 Slavery
 Geography
Antiquity
LEX: Rome

Law

Centralized government

Military organization

Church-state relations

“Pax Romana” 27BC – 180AD

Military expansionism

Monarchy, “oligarchic democracy”, empire

Geography, “mare nostrum”

And again slavery
Early Middle Ages
IMPERATOR I: Charlemagne
 747 – 814
 King of the Franks and
Lombards
 Crowned Imperator Augustus
(Holy Roman Emperor) by
Pope Leo III
 “Carolingian Renaissance”
 Territory – the old EC, excl the
East of Germany and all “slav
lands”
IMPERATOR II: Charlemagne’s Europe
Middle Ages
Religion
 Concept of Christendom, or christianitas
 Firmly accepted around turn of 1st millennium
 “Christian people”
 Real-world, concrete area, not spiritual concept
 But: religious wars
 “Unifying”

Between religions: Muslims in Spain, crusades, Seljuq Empire
 …and dividing Europe

Amongst denominations: East-West Schism (Rome v
Constantinople); Catholic v Protestant
 Main concept, replaced only in 17th century by “Europe”
EUROPEANS: Erasmus of Rotterdam

1466?- 1536

Catholic scholar

Religious writings, editions of
the new testament, education

Has been seen as reformist,
reactionary, humanist

Today’s conception positive as a
widely traveled, European man
of letters
Early Modern Era
PAX: Europe as concept for peace
 Numerous writers in 17th century saw a European solution for
peace on the continent developing concrete and creative
designs of a European polity
 Emeric Crucé 1623
 Duke of Sully 1638
 William Penn 1693, federation of states, a European parliament
with weighted representation, incl. Russia and Turkey
 John Bellers 1710, European state, annual congress and
weighted representation by population, common European law
RATIO: Enlightenment
 Explicitly unreligious conception of society, also
European society
 Science and rational analysis of the world
 Role of freedom in society and for the individual
 Developing the “rights of man”
 Long list of “European” scholars: Francis Bacon,
Edmund Burke, Denis Diderot, Benjamin Franklin,
Immanuel Kant, Hugo Kołłątaj, Carl Linnaeus,
Sebastiao de Melo Marquis de Pombal, Baruch Spinoza
…
Constitutionalization and Democratization of
Europe
 Rise of parliaments in England and Scotland
 Noble’s democracy in Poland-Lithuania
 European exiles in America
 French Revolution
 National democratic revolutions and restoration
 Development of party systems
 Partial democratization in Western Europe after WWII
and after 1989 in Central and Eastern Europe
 Ideologies
 Borders and Divisions
 Economy / Industrialization
 Languages
Inter-War: European Federalism
 Moral and physical decline of Europe
 Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West (1918)
 Europe as solution to ills of the continent
 E.g. Pan- Europa, manifesto published 1923
 Author: Richard Count Coudenhove-Kalergi


Son of Austro-Hungarian Diplomat
Cosmopolitan – Elitist
 European federation


Conference -> security system -> customs union
Again selectivity in perception: RCK was supporter of
colonialism (Africa as tropical Europe), language preference
EUROPEANS: Tomáš G. Masaryk

1850-1937

Statesman, sociologist,
philosopher, humanist

Learned blacksmith; studied in
Brno, Vienna, Leipzig;
Professor in Prague, London

Fled with Serbian passport to
Switzerland, Italy, England, US

Advocate of Czechoslovak
independence

1st president of Czechoslovakia,
re-elected three times
Europe as we see it –
Europe as we like to see it
 Historic elements of the European idea are selective
 Idealization of ancient European societies: Greece, Rome
 “The past is a foreign country: They do things differently there”
The Go-Between, Lesley P. Hartley
 In Histories of European ideas, little or no mention of dark
sides of Europe




Divisions
Slavery
Religious wars
Nazi Germany’s “new Europe”
Ideas to Institutions for
Europe
POST-WAR INTEGRATION IN EUROPE
Post War
 Material destruction and wide-spread poverty
 Dependence on the US
 Division of continent
 Shaken belief in moral superiority, in particular, but not
exclusively in Germany
 Systemic and military challenge by the SU
Institutions for Europe: Path to Paris
The Zürich Speech 1946
United States of Europe
A Council of Europe
Creation of UNECE 1947
The Hague Congress 1948
Chair: Winston Churchill
Issues: European unity, Council of Europe and the College of
Europe
Organisation for European Economic Cooperation OEEC 1948
The Marshall Plan
Council of Europe 1949
Human Rights
European Coal and Steel Community ECSC 1952
Pooling of Heavy Industries
A Community of Fact
Making war physically impossible
Pragmatic Visionaries: Coal and Steel I
 9 May 1950
 The Schuman Plan
 first proposal as pooling
of heavy industries (coal
and steel)
 agreed by France,
Germany, Netherlands,
Belgium, Luxembourg
and Italy
 and creates institutions,
the European Coal and
Steel Community ECSC
 Treaty of Paris entered
into force in 1952
Pragmatic Visionaries: Coal and Steel II
 Functional integration to achieve idealist goals
 Step by step
 Integration of vital heavy industries
 Economic regulation: FTA – Customs Union – Common
Market
 Diffusion into other areas
 Why coal and steel?
 Heavy industries, weapon manufacture
 German coal & French ore
 open market, deconcentration of German industry, mutual
control
Characteristics of post-war integration
 Functional
 Consensual
 Balanced and compensational
 Recently, since mid-70s, democratic
 Dynamic, expansive
 Enlargements
 Competences
 And for the most part: peaceful
Questions
Changes with the 04/07
enlargement
What role for candidate
countries and new member
states?
Thank you!
Jost-Henrik Morgenstern
[email protected]
Tel.: +31 433 296 266
Fax: +31 433 296 296
Sources
 Heikki Mikkeli 1998: Europe as an Idea and Identity.
Macmillan: London.
 Gerard Delanty 1995: Inventing Europe: Idea, Identity,
Reality. Palgrave Macmillan: London.
Other Reading
 Norman Davies 1996: Europe - A history. Oxford:
Oxford.
 Tony Judt 2007: Post War. A history of Europe since
1945. Pimlico: London.
 Larry Wolff 1994: Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map
of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment. SUP:
Stanford.