The Meanings of Europe

Changes and Exchanges of a Contested Concept

Claudia Wiesner, Meike Schmidt-Gleim, Claudia Wiesner, Meike Schmidt-Gleim

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781134458523
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Social Sciences

What is Europe? What are the contents of the concept of Europe? And what defines European identity? Instead of only asking these classical questions, this volume also explores who asks these questions, and who is addressed with such questions. Who answers the questions, from which standpoints and for what reasons? Which philosophical, historical, religious or political traditions influence the answers? This book addresses its task in three parts. The first concentrates on the controversies around the meaning of Europe. The second focuses on the role of the European Union. The third discusses Europe and its relations to different types of otherness, or rather, non-European-ness. The volume produces a complex and plural picture of the concepts, ideas, debates and (ex)changes associated with the concept of Europe, and has a clear significance for today's debates on European identity, Europeanization, and the EU.

Part I

Meanings of Europe

1 The Plural Meanings of Europe

A Historical Task

Nere Basabe

EUROPE: WHAT KIND OF DEFINITION?

Any debate on Europe usually seeks a previous consensual definition of the meaning of the term Europe, which implies not only facts (what is it?), but normative considerations (what should it be?), as well as a longing for the future. In this tension between descriptive facts and ideal statements, and in the context of the process of European integration, the current intellectual and academic debate on “Europe” has greatly intensified following the proliferation of specialised scientific journals, countless international conferences, and the wide range of books and publications such as the present one.

Contributions to these debates regularly point to the highly contested logics of exclusion and inclusion (what belongs and what does not belong to the European physical or mental landscape), as well as to the problematic relationship between some “pretended” universal values and the otherness. The reason for such a controversy is the fact that the term “Europe” has referred to many different things throughout the centuries (the conception of a commonly inhabited space, a collective identity, or a political project) up to and including some utopian definitions (Europe as the no-place out of time, see Depré 2006, 141–52) which has frequently lead to contradictory or aporetic conclusions such as the idea of an identity non-identical to itself (Derrida 1991, 16).

Even the geographical definition which, apparently, should be the first and less controversial one, presents many problems and nonetheless often stands at the core of the discussion, symbolised by questions such as: Does Russia form part of Europe? Should we consider Turkey a European country? The difficulty of demarcating its frontiers has, since ancient times, been a challenge, as the name Europe continued to refer to more and more territory (Gollwitzer 1951, 162). The debate on its religious affiliation delves further into this seemingly insolvable question and finally leads to a quite standard definition—spread by a historically dominant discourse which does not consider the wider facts—based on a cluster of values or ideas as its main distinctive feature. Hence, Europe, is an idea; a strong-willed and quite ethical notion, “a revolutionary political idea” (Semprún and Villepin 2006, 23), constructed throughout time as a universalising idea, as the invention of diversity in the core of unity and ideologically identified with the idea of liberty as the main specific feature of European societies. However, we all know that European history has not always followed such “pretended” ideals of liberty or democracy.

In light of this failure to provide a contemporary theoretical or normative definition of Europe (as they always imply ideological considerations), and with the difficulties implied in both a descriptive-geographical definition or identitarian definition, my thesis is that the best way to answering the question “What is Europe?” should be a historically contextualised approach. The study of what Europe meant at different historical moments and political circumstances, in different places and expressed by different social agents and ideological groups reveals a very different and diverse set of results. The answer to the question of the meaning of Europe emerges, then, as a historical task—with the theories of language and speech acts as its frame of reference—“because a collective meaning of Europe will always imply subjective beliefs and different discursive practices” (Pagden 2002, 1).

To this end I will initially discuss the nature of Europe as a political concept, and then present it by means of an example: the experience of the nineteenth century French discourse on the idea of a united Europe.

EUROPE AS A POLITICAL CONCEPT

In Pocock’s words, instead of asking “What is Europe?” our task should be to investigate “What do we mean by Europe?” (Pocock 2002, 55), what do we want to mean when we use the term Europe. In recent decades, this has been the aim of many authors and we can find, since the early ’60s, many academic complaints raised concerning this previous bibliographical lack, such as the introduction by the Italian Federico Cellina to his work on the Napoleonic Europeanism, who underlined the importance of undertaking the research on a definition to the concept of Europe, as a pre-condition to any subsequent study of Europeanism or any history of the idea of Europe (Cellina 1961, 17).

Political and social concepts, far from presenting a unique and unquestionable meaning, were historically formed as a battlefield where different definitions were opposed, and different ways of understanding reality and its possibilities of transformation (as they include, besides the strict reference to the already existent, longings for the future) are deployed: as Melvin Richter has pointed out, “in ‘contestable’ concepts, disagreements form an indispensable part of the meaning” (Richter 2000, 138). The concept of Europe, beyond its character of a proper name, generally fulfils this condition. “The history of a European identity is the history of a concept and a discourse” (Stråth 2002, 388). The concept of Europe, which often evokes not only contradictory realities but also those which do not exist, presents all the “requirements” established by Koselleck (2002, 20–37) to consider it a real Grundbegriff and outlines its specific performative character today, projecting its meaning into the future. Clarifying its political role in the struggles of the past can, hence, be presented as a contribution to the current debate.

This thesis of the idea of Europe as a historical and political concept is supported nowadays by several authors such as Pocock or more recently, Gerard Delanty (1995), Pim den Boer (1995), Michael Hefferman (1998), Anthony Pagden (2002), or Dominic Eggel (2009). But all these books have predecessors, and many works were already published in the ’50s, indeed, aiming at the development of the concept of Europe as a political expression, through the study of the historical uses of such a concept promoted in historical past political writings. In his seminal article Heinz Gollwitzer (1951, 169) had already pointed out that “the popularity of the word ‘Europa’ does not come by chance”: actually, it emerged in the late seventeenth century at the core of processes of secularisation and as the only key counter-concept able to confront—and eventually substitute—the primary notion of Christendom. Another remarkable work, H. D. Schmidt’s article from 1966, also studied the emergence of Europe as a political concept in the sense of a secular and supranational identity which could fight (in the English Protestant context) the idea of a Catholic Respublica Christiana:

The study of English and continental political pamphlets, state papers, and official pronouncements offers conclusive evidence that the term Europe established itself as expression of supreme loyalty in the fight against Louis XIV. It was associated with the concept of a balanced system of sovereign states, religious tolerance, and expanding commerce ( … ). The triumph of William III and the Grand Alliance against Louis XIV, associated as he then was—quite wrongly—with the ambitious aims of setting up a universal monarchy and a united Catholic Christendom, brought about the first major stage in the long process of western secularisation, the exchange of Europe for Christendom as supreme political collectivity. (Schmidt 1966, 177–78)

If those two authors established the emergence of Europe as a political concept in the shift between the seventeenth and eighteenth century, the present chapter will focus on the beginning of the nineteenth century, on the core of the Koselleckian Sattelzeit (“saddle time”), and on the French experience. My aim is to show to what extent this was the moment when the concept of Europe transformed its meaning in the boiling continental context of liberal revolutions, acquiring a political and historical dimension that points directly to the contemporary meanings of Europe. I chose the example of France because of its central role, after the Enlightenment and the Napoleonic Wars, in the intellectual and political European landscape of that time: the period of 1800–1848 in France actually turned out to be a political laboratory full of experiences and with long-lasting effects.

In such a context, appealing to Europe in the political discourse meant to recreate its past and also to recreate its future in the present time; to provide it with a historical sense in order to achieve the future, featured as a political project. Opposite to the abstract cosmopolitanism and the idea of Empire built up by the Enlightenment, the nineteenth century Europeanism turned into something more concrete, revolving around closed notions: plurality, diversity of traditions, liberality, civilisation, democracy, and even its main counter-concept, the Nation, which would become a conjoined notion for successive characterisations (“A Europe of Nations”). On the other hand, the concept of Europe was also used as a rhetorical weapon in the Restoration and in the political debate coming from the Great Revolutions. As such, we can talk about a liberal Europe, but also about a socialist Europe or a reactionary Europe, according to the different discourses and targets, and closely related to different interpretations of History.

THE HISTORICAL MEANINGS OF EUROPE: THE CASE OF FRANCE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

“When did it begin to be said that ‘Europe’ had a history, and when did it begin to be implied that all history was the history of Europe?”, wonders Pocock (2002, 62). The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (from Voltaire to Guizot and with many others) invented the “History of Europe” as a specific sort of narrative with the aim of finding in the past the answers to the incertitude of the turbulent events of those times. Different origins and different senses were given according to the context and circumstances at the time of writing, as well as the goals of the author. The different “histories of Europe”, in particular, served as useful instruments for the definition and representation of an ideal Europe still under construction (Verga 2004).

Those authors who first appealed to the History of Europe in times of the French Restoration stressed, in particular, the religious aspect, outlining a common History of Europe around the clustering idea of Christendom, as the memorable starting-point of our civilisation. Though the works of Novalis or Burke had previously been published, they spread their most determinant influence in France after 1815. “Those were splendid times when Europe was one Christian country”, asserts Novalis at the beginning of his Christendom or Europe (1799)—an idea reintroduced in the French intellectual debate by Chateaubriand, Joseph de Maistre, Bonald, and even the Count of Saint-Simon. Europe was conceived by the conservative thinkers as the repository of an age-old tradition, under the single rule of the Catholic church, however, this idea also implies the belonging to a same European community, and this is the reason why it appears much clearer—and deeper-rooted in a historical perspective—among those who attempted to resist the Revolution than among its supporters.

Very quickly, however, new opposing conceptions of Europe came into use, and if the first group of conservative writers reclaimed Europe to be born into the cradle of the previous Roman Empire and a united Christendom in the Middle Ages, the new romantic historians recovered the liberal conception of Germanic assemblies, or found its origins all the way back in Ancient Greek democracy. The Athenian idealised political system would actually become the focus of the new revolutionary movements fighting for the emancipation and federation of the continent,¹ from the ’20s (Greek Independence War) up to the Revolution of 1848, making Athens the “place of birth of European civilisation that still resists to Asian Barbarism” (Brewer 2001, 135).

Even if we admit that the historicity of Europe is a kind of invention of the eighteenth century enlightenment narrative, only with the historicism and evolutionism of the nineteenth century does it acquire its most completed form (Verga 2004, 10). The evolutionist historicism presents civilisation as a matter of grade and development, and Europe as its most developed form: “The most important result of the Revolutionary turmoil for the concept of Europe was that it received an historical credence” (Boer et al. 1995, 68). This new historical perspective appears particularly among the liberal post-Napoleon authors, who, imbued in the romantic mind appealing to tradition, couldn’t understand Europe beyond its historical meaning; this is the case of authors such as Benjamin Constant or Madame de Staël: “against the vision of a Europe emancipated from its past and subject to uniform law, the Coppet group sought to define Europe as an historical entity” (Tenembaum 1994, 367).

French Restoration is the theatre where a deep ideological cleavage is represented, the definitive clash between old and new politics which also involves all kinds of appeals to history. The study of the historical figures mentioned by the members of the Restoration parliament (Triomphe 2000, 317–24) brings out the distinction between Ultra-royalists and Liberals, because one’s political preferences necessarily relate to a certain viewpoint on the past, a particular kind of memory. So, we can see that, besides the common and omnipresent appeals to Modern Times, the insistence on Antiquity seems to be the exclusive heritage of the liberal discourse, while the Ultras still privilege the Middle Ages in their historical narrative. As such, each political party privileges that historical context which best suits its own purposes. The opposing intentions implicit in the fact of describing a past united Europe under the authority of the Pope (Maistre, 1819), or reclaiming liberty as the main composite of European common history (Guizot, 1828), seem to be clear enough.

The historian and liberal politician François Guizot (three times ministry in the period 1830–1848) stands out among the political and intellectual personalities of the period because of his commitment to the writing of a History of Europe. In his famous work of reference The History of European Civilisation (1828), he tried to explain the flow of history through general principles, deep guiding tendencies, social aspects, and “long durée” realities. With this methodology, he worked on the notion of “Civilisation”; Europe was the main unity of civilisation, whose processes of configuration he tried to analyse, departing from the medieval crossroads between Barbarians, Roman Empire, and Christendom. In his opinion there was no doubt about the fact that something called “European Civilisation” did exist, derived from some common historical processes that led to a certain unity. But at the same time, diversity remained as the main character of Europe: all the other civilisations seem to be guided by only one governing principle, he said, whereas in Europe, different principles and forms of organisation coexist—and fight:

While, in other civilisations, the exclusive dominance, or at least the excessive preponderance of one single principle, of one single form, has been the reason for tyranny, in Modern Europe, the diversity of the social order’s elements, and the impossibility of excluding anyone of them, has given birth to the liberty that rules us today ( … ); and whereas, elsewhere, the predominance of one single principle produced tyranny, in Europe, liberty has been the result of the civilisation’s plural elements in competition … European civilisation has reached, if (one) can say that, the eternal truth ( … ) This is the rational principle of its superiority (Guizot 1828, 10–12).

This freely competitive diversity is the basis of its perpetual progress, and makes liberty the most important feature of its character. In that sense, the Reform constituted one more step towards the goal of freedom, the essence of European civilisation and the result of its plurality, which henceforth must be guaranteed. Here we find the key for the political interpretation of the work of Guizot, when he reclaims freedom as the essential European value: in his analysis of the Roman Empire, Christian Church, and Barbarians, he tends to privilege the “Germanic element” as a promoter of freedom. Guizot’s History of Europe maintains an expansive standard, although it is probably not original in that sense or solid enough from a theoretical point of view, but it did succeed in capturing the needs and expectations of that time which finally led to the liberal revolutions of 1830 and 1848 (Verga 2004, 46).

We can also find historical narrations for the configuration of Europe in the beginnings...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• The Meanings of Europe: Introduction
• PART I Meanings of Europe
• PART II Europe and the EU
• PART III Europeanness and Non-Europeanness
• Contributors
• Index