The Idea of Europe
A Critical History

This book offers a new critical history of the idea of Europe from classical antiquity to the present day.

Shane Weller (Author)

9781108478106, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 3 June 2021

362 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.6 cm, 0.64 kg

'Weller's critical history of the idea of Europe is an important corrective to the self-mythologisation of the EU. It should be read especially by 'pro-Europeans' who continue to invoke the Enlightenment as if it were not implicated in European barbarism.' Hans Kundnani, The New Statesman

There is an increasingly widespread sense that Europe is in crisis. Notions of a shared European identity and a common European culture appear to be losing their purchase. This crisis is often seen as a conflict between a cosmopolitan and a nationalist idea of Europe. The reality is, however, considerably more complex, as the long history of the idea of Europe reveals. In The Idea of Europe: A Critical History, Shane Weller explores that history from its origins in classical antiquity to the present day. Drawing on a wide range of sources, he demonstrates that, all too often, seemingly progressive ideas of Europe have been shaped by Eurocentric, culturally supremacist, and even racist assumptions. Seeking to break with this troubling pattern, Weller calls for an idea of Europe shaped by a spirit of self-critique and by an openness to those cultures that have for so long been dismissed as non-European.

1. Myths of Europa: from Classical Antiquity to the Enlightenment
2. A Great Republic of Cultivated Minds: 1712–1815
3. Nationalism and Universalism: 1815–1848
4. The Russia Question
5. Homo Europaeus:1848–1918
6. The European Spirit: 1918–1933
7. A New European Order: 1933–1945
8. Unity in Diversity: 1945–1989
9. Other Europes
10. Europe Against Itself: 1989 to the Present Day.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX], European history [HBJD], Literature: history & criticism [DS], Literature & literary studies [D]