Existence of Europe before 1650

A discussion of the history of conceptions of Europe is an ambiguous one. What is

this entity ‘Europe’? A land-mass, but a land-mass without natural frontiers,
offering plenty of room for disagreement over what territory should be included
or excluded. According to Peter Burke, Europe has never been an economic or
political unit, whatever the future may hold. The land-mass has never had a
common culture distinct from other parts of the world. Not even Christianity has
ever quite filled this role. For even in the Middle Ages there were Christians
outside Europe and Muslims in Andalusia, Bosnia and elsewhere. But Anthony
Pagden's prologue shows that 'Europe' means something despite the fact that it is
very difficult to define it precisely. Europe was, from many centuries past, a
cultural space. European culture, which combined constituents inherited from
various peoples in the ancient Mediterranean world, gave its educated people a
sense of belonging more closely to each other than to the rest of humanity. The
Greeks bequeathed to Europe a philosophical outlook, and a belief in the value of
city life for developing the human personality to the full. The Roman Empire gave
a universal language and a legal system and Christianity gave a shared faith.
Ancient learning somehow instilled the belief that free Europeans possessed the
skill, the craft, the quest for understanding to master the world through ingenuity
and technology. This belief gave early modern Europeans the confidence that
they were thus destined to dominate the rest of the world.

The story of Europe begins with the myth of the abduction of Europa, an Asian
woman by European Cretans which finally culminated in the famous Trojan War.
But due to this creation of myth, hatred was instigated between the two
continents. Thus, Europe owes Asia its historical origins as it will fashion itself for
generations in opposition to Asia. Even Christianity, which was to provide Europe
with much of its subsequent sense of both internal cohesion and its relationship
with the rest of the world, was also in its beginnings an Asian religion. Rome,
which will form the true creator of Europe was also the result of a vagrant Asian
exile which gave Europe its political and finally its cultural identity.
In order to trace something as elusive and insubstantial as collective
consciousness and determine what Europe meant to earlier generations, we need
to place the term ‘Europe’ within a stock of concepts available for expressing
group identity in different places and times. We know that Europe is defined by
opposition and has been opposed to the barbarians, the heathen, despotism,
slavery, coloured skin, the tropics and the East and it has been identified with
civilization, Christianity, democracy, freedom, white skin, the temperate zone,
and the ‘West’. The ‘Europeans’ always tried to show their superiority over the
Asians because unlike the Asians, they are subject not to the will of an individual,
but only to the law and customs. The Greeks and Romans do not seem to have
identified themselves with Europe as they both spanned across different
continents and not just the Mediterranean area. In the early Middle Ages, the
term ‘Europe’, like the term ‘West’ occurs every now and then especially in the
context of invasion. For nearly 2000 years, from the 5th century B.C. to the 15th
century A.D, the term ‘Europe’ was in sporadic use without carrying very much
weight, without meaning very much to many people. From the later 15th century
however, it came to be taken rather more seriously when Pope Pius 2 heard the
news that the Turks had taken Constantinople and the advance of the Turkish
forces seems to have made westerners more conscious of their collective identity.
A common danger encouraged a sense of solidarity, even among enemies and
messages like Europe needed to unite in order to deal with this threat were being
spread. So ‘Europe’ was defined by contrast to Turk’. The Turks were infidels, so
‘European’ meant Christian. The Turks were ruled by a despot, but Europe (as
Machiavelli and others pointed out) was a region of limited monarchies and
republics. The Greek idea of oriental despotism was revived and displaced from
the Persians to their Turkish neighbours. The Turks were seen as barbarians while
Europeans defined their own way of life as ‘civilization’.

If the first context in which people became aware of themselves as Europeans

was that of being invaded by other cultures, the second was that of invading
other cultures. in other words discovery and exploration. Columbus and Vasco da
Gama helped the Grand Turk to create European self consciousness. Europe was
defined by contrast not only to the Ottoman Empire but also to India, China, Peru
and Brazil. Whether they liked or disliked the lands they visited. Travelers in other
continents were forced into awareness of what it meant to be European, and
printing spread this awareness to others. Visitors to Brazil, for example were
struck by the difference in culture and manners between the local inhabitants and
themselves. Thevet noted the differences: the ‘savages’ are naked, the Europeans
clothed; the savages lack reason and the knowledge of God. while ‘we’ have both;
the savages eat their enemies, we do not; the savages live like beasts, while we
live like civilized men and defined his own culture as human and others’ as
subhuman. In the 17th century, we see another situation which reflects to what it
means to be a European which was political conflict within Europe itself. It looks
as if by the year 1700 Europeans were more ready to talk about Europe, to see it
as a whole, and to contrast it with the rest of the world than they had been in
1500, let alone the Middle Ages. Consciousness of being European was now an
important social and political fact. But was awareness of Europe restricted to a
few intellectuals and politicians or was it extended more widely? It was the late
seventeenth century when ordinary people, at least in towns began to be aware
of Europe, because the term occurred in broadside ballads which they could hear
sung in the streets and in a diary or chronicle of events found which was kept by a
poor cloth worker of Lille.

‘Europe’ is not only a neutral geographical term but a word expressing a sense of
group identity, a form of collective consciousness like national consciousness,
class consciousness, or the sense of belonging to a particular age group or
generation. Europe has meant a great deal to many people, it has not always
meant the same thing and it is useful to remember that consciousness is
subjective and meant differently in different times.

References:

1) Did Europe exist before 1700 by Peter Burke.

2) Early Modern Europe by Euan Cameron.