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Abstract
The concept of Europe is elusive because it has been regarded as synonymous with Western civilization. After the abatement in the seventeenth century of the European wars of religion, the word “Europe” replaced “Christendom.” Voltaire, Burke, and other European philosophers defined Europe as composed of states that kept the balance of power among themselves while respecting a shared heritage of Christianity and international law. During the period known as the Concert of Europe (1815–1914) Europe constituted “an international society with rights” based on common values. Europeans of various nationalities held that Europe surpassed Asia and Africa in military skills, in “social vitality, initiative and inventiveness,” and in liberal arts, science, and industry. Ranke, Mazzini, Huizinga, and others agreed in seeing “diversity in unity” in European history and society. From the sixteenth century on European nations were “conquering and exploiting the rest of the world.” Britain focused on its Empire and Commonwealth, to the neglect of Europe and the League of Nations. European civilization is distinct in “its universalist claims,” originally grounded in Christianity. The “universal mission” convictions survived the Crusades, the Reformation, and the wars of religion, and were followed by the ideologies of the French Revolution and Communism. To describe “the European inheritance” as democracy “is an extraordinarily selective and inaccurate statement,” given the predominance of authoritarian rulers and the scarcity of democratic regimes in European history since ancient Greece. The Common Market has nonetheless been criticized as “too inward looking” and “too little universalist.”
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