Idea of Europe

The feeling of togetherness and solidarity among European nations and peoples has tended to increase in periods of perceived external threat. As early as the classical period, the Greeks regarded the inhabitants of Asia Minor as barbars or "mumblers," people who could not speak clearly and were therefore considered irrational. Later the term barbarians also referred to non-Christian people. At various times Persians, Muslims, Mongols, Turks, and Russians have all been treated as barbarians and enemies of Europe; the dichotomy between "Us" and "the Other" has been very persistent in European history. There is little wonder that the question has sometimes been raised whether European identity and solidarity among European people in fact depends on a picture of an enemy.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century the European Union (EU) has eagerly pursued more peaceful definitions of a common European identity. The discussion of the idea of Europe and European identity started at the very time that European integration was finally beginning to move forward. In the 1940s Federico Chabod, an Italian historian, wrote the first book on the idea of Europe, rooting it in classical Greece but also emphasizing the Enlightenment as the cornerstone of a common European identity. Since the middle of the twentieth century, European identity has usually been seen as built on three pillars dating from the classical period: Greek reason and rational thinking, Roman law and order, and Christian faith and religion. Other factors have since been added to the list, among them the scientific revolution and the idea of progress typical in the Enlightenment period.

Some critical voices, however, have increasingly considered these kinds of factors too abstract to animate the Europeans. Thus Anthony D. Smith, a British professor of political science, has repeatedly asked whether the attempts to build such an identity are actually efforts to impose western European values and ideas on the eastern and northern peripheries of the Continent. It is a moot point whether Europe really has a common history and memories to be shared; such sharing is crucial if one is to engage emotionally with an identity.