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Authors: Mark Mazower
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unfamiliar realities.
“With the passing of the centuries,” two French historians concluded in 1992, “Europe discovers that beyond the differences of its tongues and customs, its people partake of a common culture … Europe is becoming conscious of the existence of a European identity.” 2 Made with unfortunate timing in the year civil war broke out in Yugoslavia, this bold claim has a respectable pedigree. In 1936, another year of civil war, the British historian H. A. L. Fisher asserted that Europe was unified by a civilization which was “distinct … all pervading and preponderant,” resting upon “an inheritance of thought and achievement and religious aspiration.” And a few years later, in The Limits and Divisions of European History , the émigré Polish scholar Oskar Halecki pleaded for the fundamental unity of the continent at the very moment his country formed part of the Communist bloc. 3
It is as though one response to the bloody struggles of this century has been to deny their internecine character: one side is made to stand for the true Europe— l’Europe européenne in the striking phrase of Gonzague de Reynold—while the others are written off as usurpers or barbarians. The intellectual tradition which identifies Europe with the cause of liberty and freedom goes back many centuries. But if we face the fact that liberal democracy failed between the wars, and if we admit that communism and fascism also formed part of the continent’s political heritage, then it is hard to deny that what has shaped Europe in this century is not a gradual convergence of thought and feeling, but on the contrary a series of violent clashes between antagonistic New Orders. If we search for Europe not as a geographical expression, but as what Federico Chabod called “an historic and moral individuality,” we find that for much of the century it did not exist. 4
What was new in Europe’s history was not the existence of conflict, but rather its scale. Compared with the great dynastic empires of the past—the long centuries of Byzantine, Habsburg and Ottoman rule—the utopian experiments of twentieth-century ideologies came and went with striking speed: yet their struggle brought new levels of violenceinto European life, militarizing society, strengthening the state and killing millions of people with the help of modern bureaucracies and technologies. In the 1870–71 Franco-Prussian War the death-toll was 184,000; in the First World War it was above eight million, and more than forty million Europeans—half of them civilians—died in the Second World War. The depth of these wounds was directly proportionate to the grandeur of the ambitions held by the various protagonists, each of whom aspired to remake Europe—inside and out—more thoroughly than ever before. It is not surprising if today Europe is suffering from ideological exhaustion, and if politics has become a distinctly unvisionary activity. As Austria’s former chancellor Franz Vranitsky once supposedly remarked: “Anyone with visions needs to see a doctor.”
This disillusionment colours the strange post-1989 triumph of democracy in Europe. Seventy years earlier, the consolidation of democracy across the continent after the First World War fitted liberal dreams of a new world order: Europe seemed destined to become the model for mankind. Through the League of Nations the new states of eastern Europe would learn the habits of democracy from the more advanced and mature states of the West, while through colonies and mandates, the great imperial powers would spread democracy more widely. The defeat of communism in Europe in 1989 carried no such global implications, and no such evangelical dreams. Democracy suits Europeans today partly because it is associated with the triumph of capitalism and partly because it involves less commitment or intrusion into their lives than any of the alternatives. Europeans accept democracy because they no longer
“With the passing of the centuries,” two French historians concluded in 1992, “Europe discovers that beyond the differences of its tongues and customs, its people partake of a common culture … Europe is becoming conscious of the existence of a European identity.” 2 Made with unfortunate timing in the year civil war broke out in Yugoslavia, this bold claim has a respectable pedigree. In 1936, another year of civil war, the British historian H. A. L. Fisher asserted that Europe was unified by a civilization which was “distinct … all pervading and preponderant,” resting upon “an inheritance of thought and achievement and religious aspiration.” And a few years later, in The Limits and Divisions of European History , the émigré Polish scholar Oskar Halecki pleaded for the fundamental unity of the continent at the very moment his country formed part of the Communist bloc. 3
It is as though one response to the bloody struggles of this century has been to deny their internecine character: one side is made to stand for the true Europe— l’Europe européenne in the striking phrase of Gonzague de Reynold—while the others are written off as usurpers or barbarians. The intellectual tradition which identifies Europe with the cause of liberty and freedom goes back many centuries. But if we face the fact that liberal democracy failed between the wars, and if we admit that communism and fascism also formed part of the continent’s political heritage, then it is hard to deny that what has shaped Europe in this century is not a gradual convergence of thought and feeling, but on the contrary a series of violent clashes between antagonistic New Orders. If we search for Europe not as a geographical expression, but as what Federico Chabod called “an historic and moral individuality,” we find that for much of the century it did not exist. 4
What was new in Europe’s history was not the existence of conflict, but rather its scale. Compared with the great dynastic empires of the past—the long centuries of Byzantine, Habsburg and Ottoman rule—the utopian experiments of twentieth-century ideologies came and went with striking speed: yet their struggle brought new levels of violenceinto European life, militarizing society, strengthening the state and killing millions of people with the help of modern bureaucracies and technologies. In the 1870–71 Franco-Prussian War the death-toll was 184,000; in the First World War it was above eight million, and more than forty million Europeans—half of them civilians—died in the Second World War. The depth of these wounds was directly proportionate to the grandeur of the ambitions held by the various protagonists, each of whom aspired to remake Europe—inside and out—more thoroughly than ever before. It is not surprising if today Europe is suffering from ideological exhaustion, and if politics has become a distinctly unvisionary activity. As Austria’s former chancellor Franz Vranitsky once supposedly remarked: “Anyone with visions needs to see a doctor.”
This disillusionment colours the strange post-1989 triumph of democracy in Europe. Seventy years earlier, the consolidation of democracy across the continent after the First World War fitted liberal dreams of a new world order: Europe seemed destined to become the model for mankind. Through the League of Nations the new states of eastern Europe would learn the habits of democracy from the more advanced and mature states of the West, while through colonies and mandates, the great imperial powers would spread democracy more widely. The defeat of communism in Europe in 1989 carried no such global implications, and no such evangelical dreams. Democracy suits Europeans today partly because it is associated with the triumph of capitalism and partly because it involves less commitment or intrusion into their lives than any of the alternatives. Europeans accept democracy because they no longer
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