Heritage is seldom written specifically into the cultural policy documents behind national film and television production in Europe. However, historical film and television play a crucial role in European film cultures, and clearly have very high audience figures. A historical TV drama like ITV’s Downton Abbey (2010–15) enjoyed around ten million viewers on average in the UK, and has been distributed to more than 220 territories globally. Danish historical TV drama often has a national share of between 60 per cent and 80 per cent, equal to an audience of between 1.5 and 2.5 million (of a population of 5.5 million), and the recent Danish historical drama 1864 (2014) has been sold to more than 60 countries. So, national historical productions clearly capture the national imagination and frame understandings of the past. At the same time, they often also speak to a transnational audience and are based on co-production and transnational support mechanisms. Thus, the international production of historical dramas and the success of such series tell us that the most popular national history and heritage also has a universal and transnational dimension. Within the context of this present volume, it is particularly interesting to see how this transnational dimension can interact with the efforts of key European institutions to make concrete notions of a collective European heritage.
Heritage and EU Cultural Policy
The EU and the European Commission are not often thought of as major generators of cultural policy. Culture is primarily seen as a matter for the constituent nation states. However, since the 1960s we have entered an ever-more globalised film and television sector, and since the 1980s the EU has created transnational frameworks for cultural policy, broadly defined. This has included the development of policy to create a single European film and television market via European co-production and distribution structures. The recent establishing of Creative Europe represents a unification of a number of different cultural policies and agencies, but with new initiatives and an increased budget. The previous Culture Programme had a budget of €400 million and the Media Programme had a budget of €755 million. The new Creative Europe budget is €1.46 billion—an increase of nine per cent compared to the total sum dedicated to cultural initiatives from 2010 to 2014. The sub-budgets for the audiovisual sector and the sub-budgets for other cultural initiatives for other parts of European culture have only been slightly increased for the period 2014. This is clearly not a budget that can radically move things on, but it is a beginning.
The EU has increasingly looked at the creative sector as important, not just for culture itself, but also for the economy and economic growth. The creative sector has gained importance in the global economy. In the so-called communication from the European Commission On a European Agenda for Culture in a Globalizing World (EU Commission 2007), the Commission is almost poetic, quoting the Swiss author Denis de Rougemont: ‘Culture is all the dreams and labour tending towards forging humanity. Culture requests a paradoxical pact: diversity must be the principle of unity, taking stock of differences is necessary not to divide, but to enrich culture even more. Europe is a culture or it is not’ (EU Commission 2007: 2). Behind this quotation lies a new and stronger understanding of the role of narratives and culture for the creation of stronger European integration. The EU has recognised the importance of cultural narratives to develop a stronger common understanding of being European next to the feeling of belonging to a national community. Culture and media narratives are part of a cognitive and emotional battle to develop Europe as an ‘imagined community’. The concept of heritage is also an important element in this same community. Heritage is a broad term, referring to history as such as well as a broad range of cultural artefacts such as archaeological sites, buildings, specific landscapes, literature, art, film, etc. In 2005, the Council of Europe adopted the Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society (COE 2005a) in which it defined heritage as follows: ‘Cultural heritage is a group of resources inherited from the past which people identify with independently of ownership as a reflection and expression of their constantly evolving values, beliefs, knowledge and traditions. It includes all aspects of the environment resulting from the interaction between people and places through time’ (Article 2). The idea of heritage is a central anchor of European cultural policy for all the key European institutions.
The stronger presence of culture and heritage in EU policies is connected with the expansion of EU policy areas after the Maastricht Treaty (1991), the Nice Treaty (2001) and the Lisbon Treaty (2004). However, we can trace the European roots of policies for cultural collaboration and cultural heritage back to 1954, three years before the founding EU treaty, the Treaty of Rome (1957). The Council of Europe (COE), an organisation independent of the EU, has often played a role as the cultural dynamo in cultural policy initiatives. COE’s European Cultural Convention (1954) formulates a number of key issues and policy areas that later entered the EU, as can already be seen in the opening statement: ‘The aim of The Council of Europe is to achieve greater unity between its members for the purpose, among others, of safeguarding and realising the ideals and principles which are their common heritage’ (COE 1954: 1). The text stresses the need to further develop bilateral cooperation, among other things by encouraging the study of the languages, history and civilisation of the European nations and by promoting cultural activities of European interest. Article 4 states the aim of facilitating the movement of persons as well as objects of cultural value, whereas Article 5 stipulates: ‘Objects of European cultural value in each member state must be regarded as part of the common cultural heritage’ (COE 1954: 2). In the already quoted 2005 declaration (COE 2005a), the concept of heritage has an even more central position, Europe’s ostensibly common heritage being placed at the heart of its democratic values and quality of life. Cultural heritage here means the common heritage of ‘human rights, democracy and the rule of law’ or what might be called the political democratic heritage of Europe (COE 2005a: 2, Preamble). But the preamble and the following articles also clearly point to a common European cultural heritage defined as ‘the shared source of remembrance, understanding, identity, cohesion and creativity, and the ideals, principles and values derived from the experience gained through progress and past conflicts’ (COE 2005a: 3, Article 2). The convention is rather forceful in its calling upon not just the diversity of national heritage traditions or ‘heritage communities’, but also in pointing to the fact that knowledge of, and respect for, the cultural heritage of others is the basis for a common European heritage.
In 2005, COE published 50 Years of the European Cultural Convention, taking stock of its policy intentions and results. Between 1954 and 2005 the integration and collaboration between COE and the EU increased, and many of its initiatives were co-sponsored or simply integrated into EU policy: European Heritage Days (1985), European Heritage Prize (1991–) and the European Capitals of Culture Initiative (1985–; see Sassatelli 2009). The concept of heritage in most EU policy documents from 1957 onwards is to be understood as a broad historical, cultural and archaeological concept, often linked to cultural sites and their role in common cultural history:
The policy initiatives developed within the COE framework, which present heritage as part of a transnational European culture, were initially only indirectly represented in the EU system. The European project in the Treaty of Rome from 1957 is, from the preamble to the individual articles, clearly defined primarily as ‘an ever closer union’, established to ‘ensure the economic and social progress of [signatories’] countries by common action to eliminate the barriers which divide Europe’ (EEC 1957: 1). The Rome Treaty establishes a European citizenship and actually mentions certain goals for education and culture. Culture is, for example, mentioned in Article 3 of the treaty: ‘Encouragement for the establishment and development of trans-European networks […] contribution to education and training of quality and to the flowering of cultures of the member states’ (EEC 1957: Article 3).The point of the matter is that ‘culture’ is at the heart of all relations between people or between nations and so cannot be taken lightly or for granted. A lack of knowledge or appreciation of another’s culture can result in ghastly blunders, a fact undenied by recent and on-going events and interventions around the world […] So culture is not just one among many fields of administrative concern, it permeates, or should anyway, all aspects of life in society. (COE 2005b: 5)
In Article 128, culture and heritage are addressed in more detail. This is where we find the source of the famous ‘unity in diversity’ concept: the union must contribute ‘to the flowering of the cultures of the Member States, while respecting their national and regional diversity and at the same time bringing the common cultural heritage to the fore’ (EEC 1957: Article 128.1). Further goals and policy actions are stipulated (EEC 1957: Article 128.2) by pointing to the need for improvement of the knowledge and dissemination of the culture and history of the European peoples, conservation and safeguarding of cultural heritage of European significance, non-commercial cultural exchanges, and artistic and literary creation, including in the audiovisual sector.
Until the 1980s, these principles and policy areas were not strongly implemented, but from the end of the 1980s a common European cultural policy began to take form. Milestones in this development were Television Without Frontiers (1984) and a common market for media, the subsequent development of the EU’s Media programme (1987–), the Council of Europe’s film support programme, Eurimages, and the Europa Cinema Initiative (both 1992), and finally the much stronger inclusion of culture and heritage after the Maastricht Treaty (1993). Behind this stronger development of a cultural dimension is a political agenda, the feeling that there is a gap between the EU and its citizens, a lack of a common communicative space and a public sphere. But there was also a genuinely cultural agenda linked to the question of national identities and how they connect with a collective European identity, and a growing understanding of the economic significance of the cultural and creative media sector. Article 128 in the original Treaty of Rome was amended and expanded in the Maastricht Treaty, most importantly by adding the cultural dimension to all other actions of the Union, thus stressing the centrality and importance of culture, heritage, media and communication. The second important amendment to the original treaty was the emphasis on the cultural dimension of transnational activities between nation states and between the EU and the rest of the world. Culture, heritage, television, film and other media thus became important in a much more direct way, not just for European integration, but also as a means of positioning Europe on the global stage.
The coming cultural turn of the EU was prefigured ideologically by a declaration of European identity by the Council of Europe. On 25 April 1985, the Council of Ministers met and issued a declaration, On European Cultural Identity. This stressed that ‘cultural co-operation [is] an indispensable contribution to European awareness’; that unity in diversity produces the richness of the common European cultural heritage’; and that ‘common traditions and European identity [are] the product of a common cultural history which is not delimited by the frontiers separating different political systems in Europe’. ‘Cultural co-operation will contribute to greater mutual rapprochement of the peoples and states of Europe and thus promote lasting understanding.’ It is in the common interest of all European states to maintain and develop this heritage and to expand cultural relations’, as well as the necessary ‘intensification of cultural co-operation among all states of Europe’ (COE 1985: 1). What is striking here is a strong emphasis on a European identity along with a recognition of cultural diversity. It is not often that cultural cooperation, unity and a common culture and heritage are put on the agenda, and 1985 was particularly early for such discussions, a decade before the Maastricht and Nice treaties began to have consequences in actual cultural policy at the EU level.
National Historical Narratives and the Transnational Context
The gradual European development of a transnational European understanding of film, media and cultural heritage is not just the result of incre...