Book review: Europe: A new history by Roderick Beaton
EUROPE takes its name from a Middle Eastern woman, probably fictional, who never stepped foot on its mainland: Europa, a Phoenician princess hailing from what is today Lebanon. According to different sources,. . .
EUROPE takes its name from a Middle Eastern woman, probably fictional, who never stepped foot on its mainland: Europa, a Phoenician princess hailing from what is today Lebanon. According to different sources, she was captured and transported to the island of Crete either by Zeus, the king of the gods, disguised as a flying bull, or by a crew of Greek pirates. The latter version was preferred by the Greek writer Herodotus (c. 485-425 BC). His workThe Histories, chronicling the events of the Graeco-Persian wars (499-449 BC), is generally viewed as the foundation of Western historical writing on account of its separation of mythic tales about the gods from the narration of political events. It was also Herodotus who first wrote, albeit fleetingly, about “Europe” as an entity whose diverse inhabitants might constitute a community of fate. In his telling, it is only the Greeks and their victory who stood in the way of the ambitions of the tyrannical Persian King Xerxes to subdue all the continent’s peoples. Herodotus places into his mouth the boastful promise that “I will make all these lands one country once I have passed through the length and breadth of Europe. ”This account of the Greek’s ancient, existential, defence of Europe would (as Beaton reminds us in this new book) provide an enduring, secular, foundation myth for European identity. As John Stuart Mill wrote in 1846, “The battle of Marathon [490 BC], even as an event in English history, is more important than the battle of Hastings. ”Beaton reminds us that Europe is impossible to define in terms of physical geography, but is also not simply an idea. Rather, it is a dialectic between an (ever evolving) family of ideas and the shifting physical territory in which they hold sway. Essentially, for Beaton, that “conceptual space” is characterised, positively, by the inheritance of Greek culture, Roman law, Christian faith, and the Enlightenment. If there is one historical thread that seems unbreakable throughout, it is the sanctity of the rule of law (as an ideal, if not always a practice). That space has, however also always been defined negatively in relation to an “other”. Historically, this “other” has been constituted by political actors from the East bearing a rival set of values (real or imagined), including: personal tyranny (Persia); Islam (the Ottoman Empire), or communism and ethno-nationalism (Russia). Increasingly, however, Beaton identifies the danger to Europe and its values as approaching from its West: from the United States. This, he argues, isn’t simply a Trump-era phenomenon, but also a long-term structural dynamic with roots in the Cold War. The intellectual-history dimension to the volume is, sadly, weaker than the publisher’s blurb leads one to expect. Particularly regrettable is the absence of reference to how Catholic social teaching shaped the (Christian Democrat) ideals of the European Community’s founders. Europe’s post-war distinctiveness is framed instead in terms of commitment to a wholly secular discourse of human rights. This point admitted, however, Beaton’s book is an elegant and useful work of synthesis, one that rewards the reader’s attention. The Revd Alexander Faludy is a freelance journalist based in Budapest. Europe: A new historyRoderick BeatonAllen Lane £30(978-0-241-62450-0)Church Times Bookshop£27