lOMoARcPSD|61823667
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Intro to European History
Deconstructing Europe: Places and spaces of Europe
1. What is Europe?
2. Where does Europe begin?
3. Where does Europe end?
4. Who are the Europeans?
Deconstructing European History
Deconstructing = critically interrogate a particular concept, historical event, development,
social phenomena etc.
1. Deconstructing History:
1.1Why study history?
• To escape the present, nostalgia, a longing for “what is forever lost”
→ Risk: the pastness of the past” and overstating rupture/ discontinuity
• To learn lessons from the past: how to deal with moral dilemmas
→ Risk: biases in what occurs as the ‘great men and women of history’
• To identify structural laws: teleology which suggests that history has a
recurring pattern that keeps on repeating itself. “We think that this is
normal”
→ Marx: the working class will rule/ Fukuyama: linearity/evolutionary process where
the liberal democracy means the end of history
→ Risk: causality and the risk of overdetermination (oversimplification)/ It looks into
history with causality; if A leads to B, B leads to A,…
• For political or ideologies purposes
→ Example: a selection mechanism in higher education, nationalist projects;
postcolonial ‘reclaiming of the past’
→ Risk: conflation science and politics
With so many obstacles/pitfalls, why then study history?
1. To understand change and how “the present” came to be
- understand continuity and change
- understand institutionalization and revolution/ transformation
→ we are experiencing what we call ‘turbulent times (never seen before); ‘fake news’
2. Put the present day into perspective, to dismantle its “for granted” (obvious, or
natural) character (as social scientists try to understand/ review data and make
research)
- to acknowledge the power struggle that are the basis of today’s institutions, ways
of life, etc.
1
Downloaded by Margo Lepoudre ()
, - to question the uniformity of the European experience
- to provincialize Europe; to account for multiple paths/ meanings of ‘modernity’
→ Dipesh Chakrabarty (2008) Critique on historicism:
→ Historicism = the idea that ‘to understand anything, it has to be seen both as a unity
and in its historical development’
→ As if there is a singular, linear trajectory to modern civilization
Historicism and the limitations of linear and singular conceptions of history:
• Imaginary ‘waiting rooms’: one man’s present becomes another man’s future. When
we understand history and development as a linear trajectory, we are in a way
creating this imaginary waiting room
• Example: John Stuart Mill (1806-1873): on “Liberty & on representative
Government” : proclaimed self-rule as the highest form of government and yet
argued against giving native Americans (‘Indians’) or Africans self-rule. According to
Mill, Indians [native Americans] or Africans were not yet civilised enough to rule
themselves. Some historical time of development and civilization (colonial rule and
education, to be precise) had to elapse before they could be considered prepared for
such a task, consigning them ‘Native Americans, Africans and other ‘rude’ nations’ to
an imaginary waiting-room of history.
• Of particular relevance for the 19th century – “the birth of modern Europe”
- A tendency to mask the heterogeneity of the “European” experience
- A tendency to attribute a singular meaning to “modernity” and a singular trajectory
to “modernity”
1.2 The long 19th Century (E. Hobsbawm)
• 1789 the collapse of French absolutist monarch --> the eruption of the WW 1 in 1914
- From a society of orders (“estates”) to a society of classes
- Popular sovereignty and new modes of political legitimation
• Economic and social transformation
• Demographic explosion and mass migration
• Dramatic changes in the political landscape
- Birth of new European powers: unification of Italy and Germany
- The consolidation of nation-states and imperialism
- The incorporation of the masses in politics
2
Downloaded by Margo Lepoudre ()
, lOMoARcPSD|61823667
19th Century modernity
The normative pulse of Europe’s narrative of ‘modernity’
• The 19th C is often conceived as the era that put the ‘enlightenment ideals’ into
practice but…. What is the enlightenment?
→ “There is no official answer because the era named by Kant’s essay was never
demarcated by opening and closing ceremonies like the Olympics, nor are its
tenets stipulated in an oath or creed” (Steven Pinker, 2018)
• When thinking of enlightenment, we should think of the processes that led to it
and processes that continued after as a result (modernity, humanism, progress,
science)
→ I think therefore, I am – René Descartes: creation of the ‘modern man’ who is not
tied to dogmas/beliefs but think for himself able to reason as ‘an individual’
• Henry Martyn Lloyd (2018) in his texts about the enlightenment:
- White knights present a selective reading of the enlightenment
- Enlightenment thinkers, especially French intellectuals, placed a high value on
the role of sensibility, feeling and desire
- Hegel (1770-1831): emphasis on rationality produces citizens who are alienated,
dispassionate and estranged from nature
- David Hume (1711-1776): morality is grounded in sense-experience: we judge
the good/beautiful directly and without need of reason
- 19th century romanticism, nationalism and fascism
“Science can explain everything, but understands nothing”
Modernity, what is in a name? historically used to make a time period
(e.g.postmodern)
1) Category of historical periodisation,
The modernisation paradigm (sociology, 1960s)
• Modernisation = the transformation from a traditional, rural, agrarian society to a
secular, urban, industrial society
Macro-structural changes:
• Rationalisation, industrialisation and urbanisation (from feudalism to capitalism)
• Birth of nation-states and institutions of democratisation (representative
democracy, modern bureaucracy, public education)
Micro-individual changes – birth of “modern man”
• Reason-giving rather than tradition and habit
• Individualism, freedom and formal equality, meritocracy
• Faith in social, scientific and technological progress and human perfectibility and
rationality
3
Downloaded by Margo Lepoudre ()
Downloaded by Margo Lepoudre ()
, lOMoARcPSD|61823667
Intro to European History
Deconstructing Europe: Places and spaces of Europe
1. What is Europe?
2. Where does Europe begin?
3. Where does Europe end?
4. Who are the Europeans?
Deconstructing European History
Deconstructing = critically interrogate a particular concept, historical event, development,
social phenomena etc.
1. Deconstructing History:
1.1Why study history?
• To escape the present, nostalgia, a longing for “what is forever lost”
→ Risk: the pastness of the past” and overstating rupture/ discontinuity
• To learn lessons from the past: how to deal with moral dilemmas
→ Risk: biases in what occurs as the ‘great men and women of history’
• To identify structural laws: teleology which suggests that history has a
recurring pattern that keeps on repeating itself. “We think that this is
normal”
→ Marx: the working class will rule/ Fukuyama: linearity/evolutionary process where
the liberal democracy means the end of history
→ Risk: causality and the risk of overdetermination (oversimplification)/ It looks into
history with causality; if A leads to B, B leads to A,…
• For political or ideologies purposes
→ Example: a selection mechanism in higher education, nationalist projects;
postcolonial ‘reclaiming of the past’
→ Risk: conflation science and politics
With so many obstacles/pitfalls, why then study history?
1. To understand change and how “the present” came to be
- understand continuity and change
- understand institutionalization and revolution/ transformation
→ we are experiencing what we call ‘turbulent times (never seen before); ‘fake news’
2. Put the present day into perspective, to dismantle its “for granted” (obvious, or
natural) character (as social scientists try to understand/ review data and make
research)
- to acknowledge the power struggle that are the basis of today’s institutions, ways
of life, etc.
1
Downloaded by Margo Lepoudre ()
, - to question the uniformity of the European experience
- to provincialize Europe; to account for multiple paths/ meanings of ‘modernity’
→ Dipesh Chakrabarty (2008) Critique on historicism:
→ Historicism = the idea that ‘to understand anything, it has to be seen both as a unity
and in its historical development’
→ As if there is a singular, linear trajectory to modern civilization
Historicism and the limitations of linear and singular conceptions of history:
• Imaginary ‘waiting rooms’: one man’s present becomes another man’s future. When
we understand history and development as a linear trajectory, we are in a way
creating this imaginary waiting room
• Example: John Stuart Mill (1806-1873): on “Liberty & on representative
Government” : proclaimed self-rule as the highest form of government and yet
argued against giving native Americans (‘Indians’) or Africans self-rule. According to
Mill, Indians [native Americans] or Africans were not yet civilised enough to rule
themselves. Some historical time of development and civilization (colonial rule and
education, to be precise) had to elapse before they could be considered prepared for
such a task, consigning them ‘Native Americans, Africans and other ‘rude’ nations’ to
an imaginary waiting-room of history.
• Of particular relevance for the 19th century – “the birth of modern Europe”
- A tendency to mask the heterogeneity of the “European” experience
- A tendency to attribute a singular meaning to “modernity” and a singular trajectory
to “modernity”
1.2 The long 19th Century (E. Hobsbawm)
• 1789 the collapse of French absolutist monarch --> the eruption of the WW 1 in 1914
- From a society of orders (“estates”) to a society of classes
- Popular sovereignty and new modes of political legitimation
• Economic and social transformation
• Demographic explosion and mass migration
• Dramatic changes in the political landscape
- Birth of new European powers: unification of Italy and Germany
- The consolidation of nation-states and imperialism
- The incorporation of the masses in politics
2
Downloaded by Margo Lepoudre ()
, lOMoARcPSD|61823667
19th Century modernity
The normative pulse of Europe’s narrative of ‘modernity’
• The 19th C is often conceived as the era that put the ‘enlightenment ideals’ into
practice but…. What is the enlightenment?
→ “There is no official answer because the era named by Kant’s essay was never
demarcated by opening and closing ceremonies like the Olympics, nor are its
tenets stipulated in an oath or creed” (Steven Pinker, 2018)
• When thinking of enlightenment, we should think of the processes that led to it
and processes that continued after as a result (modernity, humanism, progress,
science)
→ I think therefore, I am – René Descartes: creation of the ‘modern man’ who is not
tied to dogmas/beliefs but think for himself able to reason as ‘an individual’
• Henry Martyn Lloyd (2018) in his texts about the enlightenment:
- White knights present a selective reading of the enlightenment
- Enlightenment thinkers, especially French intellectuals, placed a high value on
the role of sensibility, feeling and desire
- Hegel (1770-1831): emphasis on rationality produces citizens who are alienated,
dispassionate and estranged from nature
- David Hume (1711-1776): morality is grounded in sense-experience: we judge
the good/beautiful directly and without need of reason
- 19th century romanticism, nationalism and fascism
“Science can explain everything, but understands nothing”
Modernity, what is in a name? historically used to make a time period
(e.g.postmodern)
1) Category of historical periodisation,
The modernisation paradigm (sociology, 1960s)
• Modernisation = the transformation from a traditional, rural, agrarian society to a
secular, urban, industrial society
Macro-structural changes:
• Rationalisation, industrialisation and urbanisation (from feudalism to capitalism)
• Birth of nation-states and institutions of democratisation (representative
democracy, modern bureaucracy, public education)
Micro-individual changes – birth of “modern man”
• Reason-giving rather than tradition and habit
• Individualism, freedom and formal equality, meritocracy
• Faith in social, scientific and technological progress and human perfectibility and
rationality
3
Downloaded by Margo Lepoudre ()
