Lecture 1 - 9 september 2024
Concepts used:
★ Identity → created through othering → defined against ‘the other’;
★ Eurocentrism → focus on europe;
★ Hegemony (cultural/economic) → power relations;
★ Center and Periphery → for a very long time europe so itself as the center of the world →
imperialism is when the idea became dominant;
★ Cultural transfer;
★ Origin myths, ethnogenesis - narratives → how languages came about and how nations
were born;
★ Language politics - language vs. dialect;
★ Ethnolinguistic identities.
Critical thinking is not about rejecting historians → look at history and based on facts look at it
critically.
What is Europe?
★ United in diversity;
★ A term with a long history;
○ Geography - a continent;
○ Idea - a cultural unit with its own values and cultural conventions;
○ Political unit - European Union; balance of power on the continent;
★ usually identified with:
○ Liberty → Asian despotism;
○ Christianity → Islam;
○ Civilization → Barbarity;
■ Self-definition against others: othering.
Look at Asia or Africa → also continents with diversity, what defi n es Europe?
Historical layers of the term Europe
★ Eurocentrism → better than the rest of the world;
★ The idea of Europe → historian as archeologist of ideas and cultural assumptions about the
name;
★ Europe has been associated with;
○ Political freedom;
○ Christianity;
○ Civilization;
○ Progress and imperialism;
○ Aggressive nationalism;
○ EU as normative power;
, ○ ??
Europe - etymology
★ Tripartite view → the division of the world in three distinct continent;
★ Asia, Africa and Europe
★ Europe term we don’t know.
Oldest maps - T & O maps
★ Isidore of Seville;
★ Isidor-Codex
★ Pancake world (flat) → the world was divided into three → Africa, Asia and Europe. Asia
is half of it, while Africa and Europe are ¼.
★ Maps are not yet eurocentric → Jeruzalem is in the middle → the center of many religions.
Noachide maps (T&O) (Noah and his sons)
★ Schem - Asia
★ Cham - Africa → black sheep of the family → disrespectful → punished → eternal curse →
descendants seen as inferior → root of slavery.
★ Japheth - Europe
★ Noah had three sons and the sons all got one part of the world.
★ Myths are not just cute stories, especially if there is a large circulation of them, paired
with power relations and exception, can lead to very serious consequences;
★ Relationship between racism, nationalism and imperialism.
Sometimes languages disappeared because of suppression.
Alphabets
★ Latin - Catholic Europe
★ Greek and Cyrillic - Orthodox Europe (Greek and Slavic languages)
★ Arabic - Islam
★ Hebrew - Jewish world
In the 16th century people were more aware of language diversity and went searching for an
explanation. Why at that time? Reformation and the printing press → find a different system.
Alphabets do not have to be connected to a language.
In the past language was connected to its script because of the holy books, written in a
particular alphabet. In the 14th-16th century, Dente said that law should be in Latin, but
sonnets and poems should be in your native language.
Discovery of the Indo-European model
Sir William Jones analyzed Sanskrit ca. 1780 and noticed patterns.
Religious diversity
,Language diversity → one language family is very important for political ideology pan
slavism/pan germanism. Language families seem like a linguistic system and neutral, but in fact
they matter for the political climate.
Historical implications for the shaping of Europe
- Religion has a high mobilizing power;
- Religious wars have tended to concentrate military powers in the monarchy and away
from the cities and the nobility;
- Religious mobilization and state formation went together, especially in orthodox
eastern europe and in protestant areas, less so in catholic monarchies;
- Religious- and ethnographic identities are still interwoven with our thinking.
Lecture 2 - 11 september 2024
What is this lesson about?
★ 1453 and beyond: From Byzantine Empire to Ottoman Empire;
★ Longevity of imperial legacies even after empire;
★ Purposes of stereotypes and myths;
★ Mobilization of religious identities and national religious identities in today’s nation-
states of South-East Europe.
Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium ca. 330-1453)
Ottoman Empire (ca. 1300-1922)
1000 years of Byzantium rule, 500 years of Ottoman rule:
Do they unite South-East Europe as a separate entity?
Do they make South-Eastern Europe separate, different from Europe?
If so, what is at work? → Power of myths and traditions. Do similar myths and simplifications
perhaps also work in all of Europe?
Principles of constructing europe:
★ Constructing Europe by cultural transfers from the Muslim World;
★ Constructing Europe by Othering the Muslim world: Cultural essentialism to portray
(Western) Europe as a seemingly coherent and unique entity;
★ Othering within Europe;
○ Western Europe vs. Eastern Europe
History and historiography
★ Historiographies give value assign m en ts about the past
★ Teleology:
★ Evaluating history from its end;
★ Breaks and continuities?
, Byzantine Empire, 330-1453
What is an empire?
★ Military organization?
★ Social integration?
★ Economic exploitation and trade networks?
★ Uninterrupted dynasty;
★ Imperial ideology?
★ Colonization/colonialism? → integration into colonized areas
★ Difference imperialism and colonialism → imperialism is when European empires
competed with each other to try and get more colonies than each other. Trade
colonialism.
★ Very multicultural
★ Empire is always modernizing;
★ When you can no longer expand → you start to shrink
What is the Orthodox Church in Constantinople/Istanbul?
★ Orthodox Patriarchate Constantinople;
★ Theology ritual and tradition ;
★ Symphony with Byzantine Emperor;
★ Split from the Roman Church.
Non-m uslim s in the Ottom an Em pir e: pr otected m in or ities
Orthodox Patriarch of Byzantium to remain in Istanbul → De facto an Ottoman church.
Religious autonomy for the Orthodox, Armenian and Jewish subjects of the Ottoman
Empire.
Fast forward: Nineteenth century: crisis of Ottoman Empire
Imperialism brought up the question → what to do with the ottoman empire? → dismembered,
and not allowed to be taken over by Russia → who will get what?
★ Loss of European territories due to Russian, Austrian, British intervention on behalf
of Christian minorities;
★ Decline paradigm of the Ottoman empire;
★ Ottoman project of state modernization/Europeanization: making subjects to
citizens.
New Christian-majority nation states with Muslim minority populations:
Huge waves of Muslim emigration to Turkey → the unmixing of nations;
Bosnia becomes protectorate of Habsburg Empire 1878; annexed 1908;
New national history writing → Europeanization vs ottoman Yoke.
→ Role of historical and religious myths?
Concepts used:
★ Identity → created through othering → defined against ‘the other’;
★ Eurocentrism → focus on europe;
★ Hegemony (cultural/economic) → power relations;
★ Center and Periphery → for a very long time europe so itself as the center of the world →
imperialism is when the idea became dominant;
★ Cultural transfer;
★ Origin myths, ethnogenesis - narratives → how languages came about and how nations
were born;
★ Language politics - language vs. dialect;
★ Ethnolinguistic identities.
Critical thinking is not about rejecting historians → look at history and based on facts look at it
critically.
What is Europe?
★ United in diversity;
★ A term with a long history;
○ Geography - a continent;
○ Idea - a cultural unit with its own values and cultural conventions;
○ Political unit - European Union; balance of power on the continent;
★ usually identified with:
○ Liberty → Asian despotism;
○ Christianity → Islam;
○ Civilization → Barbarity;
■ Self-definition against others: othering.
Look at Asia or Africa → also continents with diversity, what defi n es Europe?
Historical layers of the term Europe
★ Eurocentrism → better than the rest of the world;
★ The idea of Europe → historian as archeologist of ideas and cultural assumptions about the
name;
★ Europe has been associated with;
○ Political freedom;
○ Christianity;
○ Civilization;
○ Progress and imperialism;
○ Aggressive nationalism;
○ EU as normative power;
, ○ ??
Europe - etymology
★ Tripartite view → the division of the world in three distinct continent;
★ Asia, Africa and Europe
★ Europe term we don’t know.
Oldest maps - T & O maps
★ Isidore of Seville;
★ Isidor-Codex
★ Pancake world (flat) → the world was divided into three → Africa, Asia and Europe. Asia
is half of it, while Africa and Europe are ¼.
★ Maps are not yet eurocentric → Jeruzalem is in the middle → the center of many religions.
Noachide maps (T&O) (Noah and his sons)
★ Schem - Asia
★ Cham - Africa → black sheep of the family → disrespectful → punished → eternal curse →
descendants seen as inferior → root of slavery.
★ Japheth - Europe
★ Noah had three sons and the sons all got one part of the world.
★ Myths are not just cute stories, especially if there is a large circulation of them, paired
with power relations and exception, can lead to very serious consequences;
★ Relationship between racism, nationalism and imperialism.
Sometimes languages disappeared because of suppression.
Alphabets
★ Latin - Catholic Europe
★ Greek and Cyrillic - Orthodox Europe (Greek and Slavic languages)
★ Arabic - Islam
★ Hebrew - Jewish world
In the 16th century people were more aware of language diversity and went searching for an
explanation. Why at that time? Reformation and the printing press → find a different system.
Alphabets do not have to be connected to a language.
In the past language was connected to its script because of the holy books, written in a
particular alphabet. In the 14th-16th century, Dente said that law should be in Latin, but
sonnets and poems should be in your native language.
Discovery of the Indo-European model
Sir William Jones analyzed Sanskrit ca. 1780 and noticed patterns.
Religious diversity
,Language diversity → one language family is very important for political ideology pan
slavism/pan germanism. Language families seem like a linguistic system and neutral, but in fact
they matter for the political climate.
Historical implications for the shaping of Europe
- Religion has a high mobilizing power;
- Religious wars have tended to concentrate military powers in the monarchy and away
from the cities and the nobility;
- Religious mobilization and state formation went together, especially in orthodox
eastern europe and in protestant areas, less so in catholic monarchies;
- Religious- and ethnographic identities are still interwoven with our thinking.
Lecture 2 - 11 september 2024
What is this lesson about?
★ 1453 and beyond: From Byzantine Empire to Ottoman Empire;
★ Longevity of imperial legacies even after empire;
★ Purposes of stereotypes and myths;
★ Mobilization of religious identities and national religious identities in today’s nation-
states of South-East Europe.
Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium ca. 330-1453)
Ottoman Empire (ca. 1300-1922)
1000 years of Byzantium rule, 500 years of Ottoman rule:
Do they unite South-East Europe as a separate entity?
Do they make South-Eastern Europe separate, different from Europe?
If so, what is at work? → Power of myths and traditions. Do similar myths and simplifications
perhaps also work in all of Europe?
Principles of constructing europe:
★ Constructing Europe by cultural transfers from the Muslim World;
★ Constructing Europe by Othering the Muslim world: Cultural essentialism to portray
(Western) Europe as a seemingly coherent and unique entity;
★ Othering within Europe;
○ Western Europe vs. Eastern Europe
History and historiography
★ Historiographies give value assign m en ts about the past
★ Teleology:
★ Evaluating history from its end;
★ Breaks and continuities?
, Byzantine Empire, 330-1453
What is an empire?
★ Military organization?
★ Social integration?
★ Economic exploitation and trade networks?
★ Uninterrupted dynasty;
★ Imperial ideology?
★ Colonization/colonialism? → integration into colonized areas
★ Difference imperialism and colonialism → imperialism is when European empires
competed with each other to try and get more colonies than each other. Trade
colonialism.
★ Very multicultural
★ Empire is always modernizing;
★ When you can no longer expand → you start to shrink
What is the Orthodox Church in Constantinople/Istanbul?
★ Orthodox Patriarchate Constantinople;
★ Theology ritual and tradition ;
★ Symphony with Byzantine Emperor;
★ Split from the Roman Church.
Non-m uslim s in the Ottom an Em pir e: pr otected m in or ities
Orthodox Patriarch of Byzantium to remain in Istanbul → De facto an Ottoman church.
Religious autonomy for the Orthodox, Armenian and Jewish subjects of the Ottoman
Empire.
Fast forward: Nineteenth century: crisis of Ottoman Empire
Imperialism brought up the question → what to do with the ottoman empire? → dismembered,
and not allowed to be taken over by Russia → who will get what?
★ Loss of European territories due to Russian, Austrian, British intervention on behalf
of Christian minorities;
★ Decline paradigm of the Ottoman empire;
★ Ottoman project of state modernization/Europeanization: making subjects to
citizens.
New Christian-majority nation states with Muslim minority populations:
Huge waves of Muslim emigration to Turkey → the unmixing of nations;
Bosnia becomes protectorate of Habsburg Empire 1878; annexed 1908;
New national history writing → Europeanization vs ottoman Yoke.
→ Role of historical and religious myths?
