Europe in

History &
Idea of
Europe
 Europe in Prehistoric Times
• The appearance of anatomically modern humans in Europe —about
35,000 bce—was accompanied by major changes in culture and
technology. There was a further period of significant change after
the last major Pleistocene glaciation*, which included the
widespread adoption of farming and the establishment of
permanent settlements from the 7th millennium bce. These laid
the foundation for all future developments of European civilization
(https://www.britannica.com/topic/history-of-Europe).
• Knowledge of these early periods of the European past is based
entirely on archaeology. The evidence, almost all of which has
been collected since the mid-19th century, varies greatly from
region to region and is limited to what has been deposited and
whether it has survived (ibid.)
 Paleolithic Period and Afterwards
• -The period of human activity up to the end of the last major
Pleistocene glaciation, about 8300 BC, is called the Palaeolithic Period
(Old Stone Age); the period from 35,000 BC to 8300 BC is called the
Upper Palaeolithic Period.
• -1,000,000 years ago hominins were widely distributed in Africa and
Asia, and some finds in Europe may also date from this period. The
oldest dated material is from southern Italy, where stone tools and
animal bones have been dated to about 730,000 BC. Fossil remains of
hominins themselves are rare and most of the evidence consists of
stone tools.
• -The subsistence economy was based on hunting and gathering. The
main evidence is animal bones, which show various forms of reliance
on species such as rhinoceros, red deer, ibex and horse, but it is not
easy to understand how such food was actually obtained. Food
sources such as migratory herds and plants were only seasonally
available, so an annual strategy was necessary for survival.
• From the beginning of the last great Pleistocene glaciation around
120,000 BC, hominin fossils found throughout Europe and western
Asia, including the glacial environments of central Europe, belong to
Neanderthals. They were biologically and culturally adapted to
survive in the harsh environments of the north, but they also occur
in the milder climates of southern Europe and Asia. Stone tools
found in the Russian Plains provide the first definitive evidence of
colonization there around 80,000 BC.
• From about 35,000 BC, Homosapiens, the ancestors of anatomically
modern humans, are found in Europe. A number of significant
technological and cultural changes followed.
• Although much of the North European Plain was abandoned as the
population moved south during the peak years of the last great
Pleistocene glaciation (about 35,000 to 13,000 BC), settlements
from this period are found throughout Europe.
• Subsistence still depended on hunting and
gathering, but the role of plant foods is
difficult to estimate. As populations
increased, group territories may have
shrunk, and the increasingly harsh
environments of the last glaciation required
appropriate strategies for survival.
Settlement patterns reflect these social and
economic strategies, allowing most of the
population to remain in one place for long
periods of time, while others left to procure
distant resources.
• The earliest artworks in Europe also date
from this period. There are small animal
and human figures made of finely carved
bone or ivory. Among the most striking are
the figurines of Venus.
• Art is also found in caves such as Lascaux
and Altamira, especially in France and
Spain.
• The extreme conditions of the last Pleistocene glaciation began to
improve around 13,000 BC as temperatures slowly rose. The
Scandinavian Ice Sheet began to retreat northward around 8300 BC,
and the period from then until the emergence of agriculture (at
various times between the 7th and 4th millennia, depending on
location) was a time of great environmental and cultural change. This
period is called the Mesolithic Period (Middle Stone Age) to emphasize
the importance of the transition period.
• As the ice sheets retreated, large areas of new land in northern Europe
were opened to human settlement. Settlement began during some
short warm periods at the end of the last glaciation. Similar changes in
physical landforms were accompanied by major changes in the
environment. Increased temperature and humidity led to greater
growth of plant life. There were similar changes among animals. The
great animals of the Ice Age, such as bison and mammoths,
disappeared either because of climate change or overhunting.
Neolithic Period
• From around 7000 BC in Greece, agricultural economies were gradually
adopted across Europe, but regions further west, such as Britain,
remained unaffected for two millennia, and Scandinavia even later. The
period from the beginning of agriculture to the widespread use of bronze
around 2300 BC is called the Neolithic Period (New Stone Age).
• The material culture* of early farmers in Greece and Southeastern Europe
is also very similar to that of the Middle East. The adoption of farming is
unlikely to have been a simple or uniform process across Europe. In some
regions, especially in Greece, the Balkans, Southern Italy, Central Europe
and Ukraine, de facto colonization of new populations may be important;
elsewhere, especially in the west and north, a gradual process of
adaptation by indigenous communities is more likely, but everywhere the
pattern will be mixed.
• The consequences of the adoption of farming were important for all
subsequent developments. Permanent settlement, population growth and
the exploitation of smaller territories created new relationships between
people and the environment.
• The earliest evidence for agriculture comes from settlements
such as Knossos and Argissa in Greece, just after 7000 BC.
During the 7th millennium agriculture was widespread in south-
eastern Europe. The material culture of this region bears a
strong resemblance to that of the Middle East. In the central
and western Mediterranean, the clearest evidence comes from
southern Italy, where a mixed agricultural economy was
established in the 7th millennium.
• Agriculture spread from central to northern Europe only after a
long interval. For millennia, agriculturalists and hunter-gatherers
were in contact and pottery was adopted or exchanged, but
domesticated animals and products only entered northern
Germany, Poland and southern Scandinavia around 4200 BC,
apparently after the decline of marine food supplies.
 Late Neolithic Period
• From the late 4th millennium onwards, a number of
developments in the agricultural economy came to
the fore and cumulatively constituted a new phase
of agricultural organisation. One of the most
important developments was the management of
livestock herds for purposes other than meat
supply. There were also new technologies, notably
the use of animal traction for the plough and
wheeled vehicles.
• From the end of the fourth millennium onwards,
many important social changes took place. These
varied from region to region,but laid the
foundations for Bronze Age society. Around 3200
BC, there was a major break in material culture and
settlement patterns in south-eastern Europe.
• In Central and Northern Europe, changes of a
different nature began around 2800 BC. The most
prominent feature is the new two-stage burial rites,
with individual rather than mass burials, with a
special emphasis on the burial of prestige grave
goods with adult males. In Britain, the 3rd
millennium saw the construction of huge
ceremonial monuments such as Avebury and
Stonehenge, and at the end of the millennium
individual burials began.
 Metal Ages
• The 3rd, 2nd and 1st millennia BC was a period of
profound change in Europe. This period is
traditionally defined as the Metal Age and can be
divided into phases with approximate dates:
Bronze Age (2300-700 BC) and Iron Age (700-1
BC), followed by the less clearly defined Copper
Age (3200-2300 BC). During this period, societies
in Europe consciously began to produce metals.
Simultaneously with these technological
innovations, there were changes in the
organization of settlement, ritual life and
interaction between the different societies in
Europe.
• The transitions between the three phases of the
Metal Ages are primarily defined by changes in
the metal used, but they also reflect economic
changes and transformations in social
organization.
• The Metal Ages are periods of discovery,
invention and use of various metals and
metallurgical processes. New elements entered
societies and played a role in their further
development.
• Europe's Metal Ages should be understood as a time of local invention and independent
cultural evolution. European societies during the Metal Ages can be analysed through their
reactions to and adoption of inventions. This is a phase in prehistory that raises cultural
questions about the nature of innovation and its consequences for society. Metal brought
many important new objects to communities, but more importantly it changed the nature
of society.
• Metal also had social impact, and one of its important roles derived from its role in the
expression of prestige and status, and hence its ability to assign power. Scarcity often
implies valence, and control over scarce or valuable resources often leads to power. The
production of both bronze and iron objects required scarcity of either resources or
knowledge or both. Control of metal production was an important factor in prehistory.
• One of the most important new elements in the Bronze Age was the invention of the sword.
With the sword, for the first time in European history, an object appeared that was not used
as a tool and was entirely dedicated to fighting. Fighting had been practised in earlier
periods, but was formalised in the Bronze Age. Towards the Late Bronze Age, the warrior
emerged in the form of an ensemble of defensive elements: armour.
• The increasing importance of fortified settlements and villages also shows that aggression
was an important component of life. Professional soldiers as they were known in the Roman
Empire and the Middle Ages are unlikely to have existed at this time, but from the Iron Age
onwards group warfare existed and other related occupations developed.
• In the Iron Age the roots of historical Europe
were laid. Proto-urban settlements*, hierarchical
social orders, new ideological structures and
writing were part of this picture. It was also a
period in which the difference between the
Mediterranean world and temperate Europe
became even more pronounced and new
degrees and forms of dependence developed in
sociopolitical systems.
• During the Iron Age, stratification became
widespread and pronounced throughout Europe.
Differences in wealth and status, both for
individuals and households, were reflected in
settlements as well as in tombs. Villages
developed and within them individual buildings
became increasingly differentiated in size; and
stratification between settlements increased
with the emergence of proto-urban centres.
• A market economy rather than a redistributive
economy is the hallmark of these places, and
they are important complements to the smaller,
regionally dispersed villages and farmsteads.
• Social differentiation existed throughout the Metal
Ages but changed gradually and over time. During
the Metal Ages in Europe new social institutions
emerged and relations between people changed.
• The Iron Age is often seen as the period in history
when the peoples of Europe, the "barbarians" as
they were seen by Rome, emerged. These peoples
included a number of different tribes and groups
whose structures changed over time; all had more
or less obvious roots in the Bronze Age. However,
ethnicity is not easy to determine, and the fact that
the Romans, for example, attributed a region to a
particular people does not necessarily mean that
its inhabitants formed an ethnic and linguistic
group.The main groups that lived in this era were
the Celts in Western Europe, the Teutons in
Northern Europe, the Slavs and Cimmerians in
Eastern Europe, the Scythians, and the Sarmatians,
who later came to Southeastern Europe from the
Russian Steppe.
• Individual named persons first appeared in
European sources in the Iron Age, and the names of
kings, heroes, gods and goddesses became known
through legendary writers such as Homer.
 Europe in Antiquity and Idea of Europe
Greeks
• The Greeks originated during the 2nd millennium BC, when a branch of Indo-
Europeans overran the population of the Mediterranean region during the great
migrations of peoples that began in the lower Danube region. From about 1800 BC,
the first Greeks reached the later settlements between the Ionian and Aegean
seas. Around 1400 BC, they sailed in the Aegean and reached Rhodes via Crete
and even Cyprus and the Anatolian coast. From 1200 BC onwards, the Dorians
came from Epirus and occupied mainly parts of the Peloponnese (Sparta and
Argolis) and Crete.
• From 800 BC onwards, Greek expansion continued by establishing colonies
overseas. The coasts and islands of Anatolia were occupied from south to north by
the Dorians, Ionians and Aeolians respectively. Separate colonies were established
on the Black Sea coast in the north and in the Nile delta in the eastern
Mediterranean, as well as in Sicily, lower Italy and Massalia (Marseilles) in the
western Mediterranean. Thus, the Hellenes, as they later called themselves, came
into contact on all sides with the ancient, advanced cultures of the Middle East and
transferred many of their characteristics to Western Europe. This played a role in
laying the foundations of European civilisation.
• The location and nature of the country had a decisive influence on the evolution of
Greek civilisation. The proximity of the sea encouraged the Greeks to travel far to
explore it, but the fact that they lived on islands, peninsulas or in valleys separated by
mountains on the mainland limited the formation of states to small areas not easily
accessible from other regions. This led to the evolution of the city-state, although it
prevented Greece from becoming a single unified nation that could rival the power of
Middle Eastern monarchies.
• The Hellenes have always felt themselves to be one people. They were conscious of a
common character and a common language and practised only one religion.
• The Hellenes benefited greatly from the knowledge and achievements of other
countries in the fields of astronomy, chronology and mathematics, but their
achievements were due to their own natural abilities, and they became the founders of
European philosophy and science.
• The Greeks had a strong political understanding. This conception produced the various
systems of government that political science theories attempt to explain. Political
development in Greece followed a pattern: first the rule of kings, found in the period of
the Mycenaean civilisation; then a feudal period, an oligarchy of noble landowners; and
finally, to varying degrees, democracy
• The 5th century BC was the century of the highest development of Greek civilisation.
The Classical period and the great achievements of Athens left a lasting impression,
but political divisions, especially the struggle (conflict) between Athens and Sparta,
gradually reduced the political power of the Greeks.
 Romans
• The original Mediterranean population of Italy was completely transformed by
the repeated overlapping of peoples of Indo-European origin. The first Indo-
European immigrants, belonging to Italic tribes, crossed the eastern Alpine
passes to the Po River plain around 1800 BC. They then crossed the Apennines
and eventually occupied the region of Latium, including Rome. Before 1000 BC
they were followed by related tribes, which then split into various groups and
gradually moved into central and southern Italy. Later arrivals were the Illyrians
from the Balkans, who occupied Venice and Apulia. At the beginning of the
historical period, first Greek colonists arrived in Italy, and after 400 BC the Celts,
who settled on the Po plain.
• The city of Rome gradually grew in power and influence. The building of an
enormous empire was Rome's greatest achievement. By the 2nd century AD, the
Roman Empire, held together by the military might of a single city, had spread
to North Africa and Western Asia; in Europe it encompassed all the
Mediterranean countries, Spain, Gaul and southern Britain. This vast territory,
united under a single authority and a single political and social organisation,
enjoyed a long period of peaceful development. In Asia, it bordered the Persian
Empire on a narrow frontier, but elsewhere beyond that there were only
"barbarians".
• The empire created an interconnected area of free trade in which the Pax
Romana ("Roman peace") came into being. Products from the countryside
found a market throughout the empire, and the advanced technical skills
of the central Mediterranean region spread to the provinces. The most
decisive step towards Romanisation was the extension of the city system
to these provinces.
• It was during the Roman Empire that the Christian religion entered
Europe. Recognised as the state religion, it added a new fundamental
factor of equality and unity to the imperial civilisation and at the same
time reintroduced Middle Eastern and Hellenistic elements to the West.
• When the Western (Roman) Empire collapsed and the use of Greek
ceased, the distinction between East and West became even sharper.
While the name Romaioi remained attached to the Greeks of the Eastern
Empire, in the West the word Rome acquired a new meaning in connection
with the church and the bishop of Rome. Christianity, the most enduring
legacy of the ancient world, and a church of Roman character became one
of the most important features of Western European civilisation.
 Other Tribes (Germans and Huns) and
Migration Period
• Arriving from Central Asia in 375, the Huns first attacked
• The migrations of the Germanic peoples, which lasted the Ostrogoths*; this caused serious unrest among the
until the early Middle Ages and destroyed the Western eastern Germanic peoples. The Huns remained in the
Roman Empire, together with the migrations of the background and gradually subjugated many Germanic
Slavs, played a major role in shaping the distribution and other tribes. Terrified Goths and related tribes
of peoples in modern Europe. entered the Roman Empire through the Danube border,
and the Balkans once again became a battleground for
• The Germanic peoples emerged around 1800 BC, Germanic armies. With the crushing defeat of the
spread south of Scandinavia and then deeper into Romans at Adrianople (Edirne) (378), the empire showed
Germany in the Bronze Age and came into contact that it lacked the strength to expel all its enemies from
with the Mediterranean, but were cut off from the its territory. The Roman Empire, whose power was
Mediterranean by the Celts and Illyrians in the Iron gradually weakening, was divided into Eastern and
Age. Their culture declined, and the increasing Western Rome in 395. ** This division was crucial in
population and worsening climatic conditions forced shaping the future antagonism between east and west.
them to move further south to new lands. Even before The end of the Western Roman Empire came in 476,
200 BC the first Germanic tribes had reached the when Germanic soldiers declared Odoacer king of Italy
Lower Danube, only to be cut off by the Kingdom of and Odoacer deposed the emperor Romulus Augustulus.
Macedonia. Constantinople became the New or Second Rome.
Western Europe was lost to the barbarians from the east
• At the end of the 2nd century BC, hordes of and north. The West (Occident) once again shifted
Cimbri(one of Germanic peoples) migrating from towards Asia Minor.
Jutland crossed the Celtic-Illyrian region and reached • Centuries after the foundation of Constantinople, the
the edge of the Roman sphere of influence, first in term Europe came to define the western part of Europe
Carinthia (113 BC), then in southern France and finally and the idea of Empire came to define Byzantium (the
in Upper Italy. With the fierce attacks of the Cimbri, East) (Fischer, 1957). When the Byzantine Empire laid
the Germans entered the stage of history and in the claim to the imperial tradition, the western (Roman)
following years posed a major threat to the Roman identity was based on Latin Christianity. Europe and the
Empire. West became synonymous with Christianity.
The Idea of Europe in Antiquity (Greek & Roman Periods)
• For those living in antiquity, the idea of Europe had little meaning. Even long
before it became a geographical expression, the idea of Europe belonged to the
realm of myth rather than science and politics (Hay, 1957, p. 5).
• In Greek myths, the Phoenician princess Europa, after being seduced by Zeus
in the guise of a white bull, left her homeland in present-day Lebanon and
settled on the western island of Crete, where she later married the King of
Crete. In many other myths, Europa was the half-sister of Asia and Libya (the
name of Africa), whereas according to Homer she was the daughter of the
Phoenix (Buehler, 1968). Europe, after all, was not a Greek discovery, but a
Phoenician one, and may even have Semitic origins (Sattler, 1971, p. 19). The
notion of the Greek origin of Europe was a later invention (Delanty, 1995: 18).
• Europe and Asia, as separate regions, were of little importance to the Greeks,
since anything non-Greek was 'barbaric' to them. Greece was often thought of
as a separate entity from Europe and Asia. This seems to be the view of
Aristotle, who made a tripartite distinction between Greeks, Europeans and
Asians, but argued that the latter two were 'barbarous' (Delanty, 1995).
• For the Greeks, the concept of Asia was more firmly tied to a specific region than
Europe, which remained a vague area north of Hellas. Herodotus did not make a
clear distinction between Europe and Asia. Europe and Asia were merely
geographical terms, while Greece and Persia were cultural-political terms. In the
fourth century Isocrates, however, identified Europe with Greece and Asia with
Persia (Hay, 1957, p. 3). In the second century AD, Ptolemy used the term
Sarmatia and separated Sarmatia Europea and Sarmatia Asiatica in the same
way as the Don River (Halecki, 1950, p. 85). This was to be a permanent
distinction and remains one of the geographical definitions of Europe. The
division of the world between Asia and Europe (Persia and Greece) at this time
led to a tripartite division of Europe, Asia and Africa (Delanty, 1995).
• The idea of Europe began to emerge with the decline of classical Greek
civilisation. After the Persian wars, the Greek city-states were weakened by
internal strife and the Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Athens paved the
way for the rise of Macedonia in 338 BC. Under Alexander the Great, after
Macedonia annexed Greece and defeated Persia in 331 BC, the centre of Greek
civilisation shifted towards Asia Minor. The idea of Europe, which began to take a
proto-political form in the Age of Alexander, served to mystify the territories of
the Macedonian conquests by giving them the identity of a distinct geographical
entity (Delanty, 1995).
• In Antiquity, the idea of Europe was subordinated to the concept of the West.
The concept of the West originally referred to the Eastern Mediterranean world
and was not the same as the less significant idea of Europe as a cultural idea.
The concept of the West, in general, referred to the wider Greek world, while the
idea of Europe was predominantly geographical. The idea of the West before the
use of the term Europe, like the early idea of Europe, was in fact what we would
today call the East. The ancient boundaries of the West were the boundaries of
the known world in the western Mediterranean and Persia in the East. The
concept of the West had another and more important meaning in antiquity: It
was believed to be the location of paradise somewhere in the unknown western
ocean. Europe was subordinated to this mystery of the West.
• The Romans did not have a strong sense of European identity, probably because
parts of the Roman empire were spread outside Europe. The heart of the empire
was the eastern Mediterranean basin. The Roman Empire was as oriental as it
was Hellenic and was home to a great variety of peoples: Celts, Germans,
Romans, Iberians, Berberis, Illyrians and Libyans (Delanty, 1995). Thus, for most
of Antiquity, Europe did not encompass what we associate with it today. It was
not a continent in the geopolitical sense: Europe was not a cultural model for the
Roman Empire.
• For the Romans, the idea of Europe was not as strongly articulated as in the
Middle Ages. Roman ethnocentrism did not focus on the idea of Europe, but on
the myth of Rome as the centre of the world. According to their origin myth, the
Romans could trace their history back to the fall of Troy in Asia Minor. The idea
that the West was destined to inherit the burden of Eastern civilisation is central
to the myth of Rome's origins (Delanty, 1995).
• For the peoples of Antiquity, the distinction between north and south was more
important than the distinction between east and west. In the maritime age, the
Alps represented a much greater geographical and therefore cultural divide than
the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean was the centre of world civilisation for a
long time before it became a Roman lake. It served to unite peoples and
civilisations rather than divide them (Delanty, 1995).
• A geographical image that had a much greater reality in the ancient and early
medieval mind was Ethiopia, believed to be the source of the Nile, which was
associated with paradise (Baudet, 1976, p. 15). Thus, the ancient idea of Europe
referred to the vaguely defined West, the land of darkness, the land of the
evening sun, rather than the western continent. Although "Europe" existed as a
word, the term "Europeans" was rarely used. That is why the natives of Syria and
Iran continue to call Europeans "Franks" (they have no other word for the Franks
who came from the West in the 12th century with the Crusades) (Delanty, 1995).
Europe and Idea of Europe in the Middle Ages
• The Middle Ages are now understood as a dynamic period in which the idea of
Europe emerged as a distinct cultural unit. During late antiquity and the early
Middle Ages, political, social, economic and cultural structures were radically
reorganised, as Roman imperial traditions gave way to those of the Germanic
peoples who established kingdoms in the former Western Empire. New forms of
political leadership were introduced, the population of Europe was gradually
Christianised and monastic life was accepted as the ideal form of religious life.
These developments reached maturity in the 9th century during the reign of
Charlemagne and other rulers of the Carolingian dynasty*, who led a broad
cultural revival known as the Carolingian renaissance
(https://www.britannica.com/topic/history-of-Europe/The-Middle-Ages).
• The middle or high Middle Ages saw even more remarkable growth. This period
was marked by economic and territorial expansion, demographic and urban
growth, the emergence of a national identity and the restructuring of secular and
religious institutions. It was the period of the Crusades, Gothic art and
architecture, the papal monarchy, the birth of the university, the revival of
ancient Greek thought and the towering intellectual achievements of St Thomas
Aquinas (ca. 1224-74) (https://www.britannica.com/topic/history-of-Europe/The-
Middle-Ages).
• Following the great migration of Germanic tribes in the fifth century and the strengthening of
the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in England in the following centuries, the centre of European
civilisation shifted north-westwards and the Baltic replaced the Mediterranean in importance.
Germanic tribes weakened the empire from the north, while Persia attacked from the east.
Western Europe was vulnerable to attack from all sides. In the ninth century the Vikings
advanced southwards, the Hungarians from the east and the Muslims from the south. It was in
this context that the idea of Europe gained currency (Leyser, 1992, p. 40-1). The Islamic
invasions, together with the barbarian and Persian invasions, gave Christendom a sense of
European identity that served as a bulwark against the non-Christian world. It was a siege
mentality, an identity born not in victory but in defeat. Charlemagne gave himself the style of
the "father of Europe" (Delanty, 1995).
• From the seventh century onwards, the idea of Europe was increasingly articulated in
opposition to Islam, which had held the upper hand for centuries. After the death of Mohammed
in 632, his followers spread out from Arabia and conquered the Persian empire of the Sassanids
and annexed the Fertile Crescent (the lands of Iraq, Syria and Palestine). In the seventh and
eighth centuries the Arabs conquered most of North Africa, and Alexandria fell in 642. Carthage
fell in 698. Muslim power thus spread to Anatolia, Persia and Mesopotamia, eventually reaching
India. The Arab empire of the Umayyad dynasty, founded in Damascus in 661, began to look
westwards and advanced into Europe with the fall of the Visigoth kingdom in Spain in 711. After
711, until the Christian reconquest of Spain, the Pyrenees was the effective frontier of
European Christianity in the West. The Muslim conquest of Spain extended almost to France
until the Arabs under Abdier Rahman were defeated by the Franks at the battle of Tours in 732
(Hay, 1957, p. 25).
• The West was shaped by a hundred years of Muslim aggression from about 650 to 750.
This period was not the beginning of the so-called Dark Ages* after the collapse of the
Roman Empire in the fifth century, but the real turning point in the formation of European
identity. After the Roman Empire had survived the barbarian threat by moving to
Constantinople and then faced the Persian threat, it was confronted with Islam.
• As a result of non-Arab conquests, Arab power developed into an Islamic political system
under the Abbasid caliphate, which emerged after the overthrow of the Umayyads in 750
and lasted until the mid-13th century until it was sacked by the Mongols. With the rise and
consolidation of this Muslim world system, the West went on the defensive. Charlemagne
failed to defeat the Moors in Spain in 778. The threat no longer came from the barbarian
tribes of the north, who had been attacking the Roman Empire since the fifth century, but
from Islam. With the expansion of the Islamic empire, the frontiers of Greco-Roman
civilisation narrowed to the Pyrenees and the Bosphorus, which was again besieged in
674-8 and 718.
• Following the rise of Islam, a new idea of Europe began to emerge, which came to refer to
the north-western continent of Europe. With the loss of a large part of the Mediterranean
to Islam, the West began to adopt the barbarian lands of the northwest. The West more or
less abandoned the Mediterranean and the Byzantines had to seize the initiative on the
eastern front. In 863 they defeated the Arabs in a major battle and pursued an aggressive
policy of keeping the Arabs at bay until the rise of the Seljuk dynasty in the mid-11th
century (Obolensky, 1971, p. 71).
• Christianity provided Western monarchies with a powerful myth of
legitimacy, which was increasingly strengthened in the face of Islam's
efforts to conquer Western territories. The concept of Europe as a
geographical term was increasingly applied to the Christian regions of • The adoption of Christianity in K.
the West. Europe became identified with the concept of a Christian Europe facilitated the emergence
community, with an emphasis on the north-west. With the rise of Islam,
the ancient ties between East and West acquired a permanent of a new and broader civilisation
antagonistic character. A new frontier emerged, stretching from the on the territory of the Carolingian
Baltic Sea to the Black Sea.
•
Empire (Christiansen, 1980). It
Christianity was effectively "Europeanised" from the 8th century
onwards. From its origins as an Asiatic cult, it became the imperial was the idea of the Christian
ideology of Rome and eventually, under the auspices of the German empire that outlived the German
Empire, evolved into the universal and legitimising myth of the medieval
Christian world. Christendom as a word has been used since the ninth empire and became a major part
century (Phillips, 1988, p. 32). The use of Christianity as an expression of the culture and identity of
was a relatively late development (it was not in common use until the
eleventh century), so it is not surprising that the idea of Europe was an
Europe. Europe gradually ceased
even later invention. From the beginning of the third century onwards, to be merely a geographical term
the concept of the Christian era was accepted as the basis for historical and came to signify cultural
chronology, while Islam established its own system of historical
chronology after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 (Herrin, unity, referring to the territory of
1987, pp. 1-6). the Carolingian empire against
• The Europe of Nations emerged as an embryo at the end of the 9th
century (the outlines of Germany and France were already becoming
Byzantine authority (Delanty,
clear). The borders of Charlemagne's empire overlapped to a remarkable 1995).
extent with those of the original EC, and the border between West and
East Germany was not very different from Charlemagne's line of advance • With the rise of the Germanic
into Germany (Seton-Watson, 1989, p. 39). In the east, the Frankish empire, Europe became a more
Empire extended only as far as the Elbe River, the Bohemian mountains
and the Alpine regions of Austria (a small Europe - not including the clearly defined territorial entity.
Slavic lands to the east and the whole of Germanic civilisation) This was important because the
(Barraclough, 1976).
•
idea of Europe was to be closely
By the time of the Carolingian Empire, the idea of Europe (a new idea)
had been religiously institutionalised and led to the ideological linked to German national
transformation of Rome into Europe (the Greek was seen as non- identity (Delanty, 1995).
European, the Roman Christian as European) (Ullmann, 1969).
 Crusades
• Military expeditions organised by
Western European Christians in response
to centuries of Muslim wars of expansion,
beginning in the late 11th century; the
aim was to check the spread of Islam,
regain control of the Holy Land in the
eastern Mediterranean, conquer pagan
territories and reconquer formerly
Christian areas; Between 1095, when the
First Crusade was launched, and 1291,
when the Latin Christians were finally
expelled from their kingdom in Syria,
numerous expeditions were organised to
the Holy Land, Spain and even the Baltic;
the Crusades continued for several
centuries after 1291. Crusades declined
rapidly in the 16th century with the
advent of the Protestant Reformation and
the decline of papal authority.
• The First Crusade was also a period of Reconquest for the Latin West. Leon
and King Alfonso VI of Castile recaptured Toledo from the Muslims in 1084.
This event is very important as it signalled the emergence of a new and
greater Europe and a great victory for Christendom. Spain was the first of the
former Christian lands to be reconquered until the recapture of Hungary in
1699 (Lomax, 1978, p. 1). However, progress on the Iberian peninsula failed
until the thirteenth century as a result of the renewal of Arab power. The term
'Cold War' was first used in the thirteenth century to describe the tensions
between Muslims and Christians (Bozeman, 1960, p. 426), and the dichotomy
of Self and Other remained a defining force in European identity for centuries.
• The idea of Europe was not at the centre of the crusades; it was perhaps even
the negation of this idea. Christianity was the main identity of the Crusaders.
The symbol of the Crusaders was not a national emblem but a supranational
symbol, the cross, and the Crusaders were known as 'God's army' or 'God's
hosts' (Bartlett, 1993, p. 261). The collective identity was the Christian
pilgrim. However, the term 'Franks' was more widely used than 'Europeans'.
While Europe was in the process of becoming a clearly defined entity,
'Europeans' were almost non-existent.
 Europe and the Idea of Europe against the Ottomans
• Founded at the end of the 13th century, the Ottoman Empire became the most
important military power in the East. The Ottomans crossed the Dardanelles to Gallipoli
in 1354 and established their capital in Edirne after 1361. Then, in 1389, they began
their conquest of the Balkans with the famous Battle of Kosovo, where the Serbs were
defeated and all Christendom was put on the defensive.
• The Latin West, weakened by the Black Death and destabilised by peasant revolts, was
helpless to stop the Islamic revival of the fourteenth century. The fifteenth century
witnessed the consolidation of Ottoman supremacy in the Balkans, Anatolia and the
Aegean. In 1453 Sultan Mehmet II captured Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire
came to an end with the death of Emperor Constantine XI.
• The fall of Constantinople was one of the decisive events in the formation of European
modernity. According to the traditional view, the Middle Ages of Europe ended in 1453.
From that moment on, the Latin West was on the defensive: With the disappearance of
the Byzantine empire, the Latin West was directly exposed to Islam, which was very
close to the heart of Christianity and occupied about a quarter of European territory.
• In the decades after 1453, it gained momentum with the expansion of Ottoman
supremacy to the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean, culminating in
1517, at the height of the Reformation in Europe, with the conquest of Syria and Egypt
and its expansion into the Maghreb.
• Towards the end of the Middle Ages there was a rupture between East and West. By the
fifteenth century there was a sense of European identity, but it was an identity shaped by
defeat rather than victory and underpinned by the image of the East as the common enemy.
• The word Europe was rarely used until the 15th century. This is not surprising because the
Christianity with which Europe was associated was not a territorially unified culture. This leads
to ambiguity because Christian unity transcended European unity and in its early days was a
universal religion, not a European one.
• Until the late 15th century, the idea of Europe was essentially a geographical concept,
subordinated to Christianity as the dominant identity system in the West. The idea of Europe as
the West was reinforced by the foreign conquests of the 'age of discovery'. Europe then began
to emerge from its association with Christianity and gradually became an autonomous
discourse. As a result of the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453 and the colonial
expansion of Western Europe after 1492, the idea of Europe was linked to a system of what
were considered specifically European values (which were not fully expressed as European
identity until the end of the 17th century). In the encounter with non-European peoples and
resistance to Ottoman expansion, the idea of Europe itself therefore became a focal point for
the construction of a specifically European identity.
• The origins of European identity can be found in the resistance against the Turks in the 16th
century (Beck, 1987; Schwoebel, 1967). This was a consciousness sustained by the principle of
exclusivity rather than any inherent collective cohesion. As Ottoman maritime dominance
began to decline from 1571 onwards, the idea of Europe began to replace Christendom as a
cultural frame of reference for the construction of new forms of identity. In the 16th century,
with Bodin, Europe began to replace Christianity (Fritzemeyer, 1931, p. 90).