Fully revised, updated and extended to include the momentous developments of 2020, this fourth edition of Peter Rietbergen's highly acclaimed Europe: A Cultural History is a major and original contribution to the study of Europe.
The book examines the structures of culture in this part of Eurasia from the beginnings of human settlement on to the genesis of agricultural society, of greater polities, of urban systems, and the slow transitions that resulted in a (post-)industrial society and the individualistic mass culture of the present. Using both economic and socio-political analytical concepts, the volume outlines cultural continuity and change in Europe through the lenses of literature, the arts, science, technology and music, to show the continent’s ever-changing identities. In a highly readable style, it expertly contextualizes such diverse and wide-ranging topics as Celtic society, the Roman legal system, the oppositions between ‘elite’ and ‘popular’ culture in pre-industrial Europe, Michelangelo’s world-view, the interaction between the Enlightenment and Romanticism, the growth of a society of time and money, the appeal of fascism and other totalitarian ideologies, and the ways the songs of Sting express late twentieth-century thinking. Structured both chronologically and thematically, the text is distinctive in the attention consistently paid to the many ways Europe has been formed through its contacts with non-European cultures, especially those of Asia and the Americas.
This edition concludes with an epilogue that discusses the ways Europe’s recent past – including the long-term efforts at further unification, and the various forms of opposition against it – has been both interpreted and misinterpreted; the importance of globalization; and the major challenges facing Europe in the present, amongst which are the consequences of the pandemic of 2020. With a wide selection of illustrations, maps, excerpts from primary sources and even lyrics from contemporary songs to support its arguments, the text remains the definitive cultural history of Europe for both the general reader and students of European history and culture.
Author(s): Peter Rietbergen
Edition: 4
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2021
Language: English
Commentary: True PDF
Pages: 672
Cover
Half Title
Endorsements
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of figures
List of maps
Preface to the fourth edition
Prologue: Europe – a present with a past
Europe: on the problems of writing a (cultural) history
Europe: a name, a hope – a reality?
Europe: the quest for ‘European-ness’
Europe: old Europe, new Europe, old borders, new borders
About the authorial condition
About choices: the scope and structure of this book
About the use(s) of this book
About the 2020 edition of this book
Acknowledgements
PART I: Continuity and change: new ways of surviving
1. Before ‘Europe’: towards an agricultural and sedentary society
Beginnings in Africa and the eastern Mediterranean, or the
non-European origins of culture in Europe
The advent of agriculture, temple and state
Invasion, conquest and change: the first Eurasian wave
BABYLON, THE SEVENTEETH CENTURY BC: THE LAW CODE OF HAMMURÁPI
Beginnings in Europe: after the last Ice Age
Invasion, conquest and change: the second Eurasian wave
A ‘marginal’ culture? Trade and communication in Phoenicia
A ‘marginal’ culture? Democracy and its limitations in Greece
A ‘marginal’ culture? Tribal society in Celtic Europe
The ‘birth of Europe’ and the Greek ‘world-view’, or how to define one’s
own culture
The world of Alexander the Great
Dossier: the human body
2. Rome and its empire: the effects and limits of cultural integration
Between the Alps and the Mediterranean, between the Etruscan
and the Greek worlds: the expansion of the early Romans
From an informal to a formal empire
ROME, THE SECOND CENTURY AD: A LEGAL SYSTEM, A LEGAL SOCIETY –
THE ROMAN CONTRIBUTION
Roman culture
The Roman Empire and the worlds beyond
Dossier: the rule of law
3. An empire lost – an empire won? Christianity and the Roman Empire
Developments within the Jewish world: the genesis of Christianity
From Jews – and Gentiles – to Christians: the role of Jesus of Nazareth
and his followers
Religions in the Roman Empire
A sect of ‘hopeless outlaws’
CARTHAGE, AD 180: ARGUMENTS AGAINST AND FOR THE RELIGION OF THE
CHRISTIANS
Towards an empire Roman as well as Christian
Rome and its neighbours in the fourth and fifth centuries AD: ‘decline
and fall’? The division and loss of the political empire – the survival
of the cultural empire
Empire and language
Dossier: charity and/or solidarity?
PART II: Continuity and change: new forms of belief
4. Towards one religion for all
The Christian world-view: the survival of Classical culture within the
context of Christianity and Europe
MOUNT SINAI, AD 547: KOSMAS EXPLAIN THE CHRISTIAN COSMOGRAPHY
One religion for all: the fusion of Christianity and Europe
The rise of a new empire: Frankish statecraft and Christian arguments
Culture and cohesion: the role of ideology and education in the shaping of
Carolingian Europe, or the ‘First Renaissance’?
The impact of monasteries
Dossier: Charlemagne: the Father of Europe?
5. Three worlds around the Inner Sea: Orthodox Christendom, Islam and Catholic Christendom
Confrontation and contact from the sixth century onwards
The world of the patriarch, or: Orthodox Christendom
The world of the prophet, or: ‘the House of Islam’
The world of the Pope, or: Roman, Catholic Christendom
The Crusades: Catholic Christendom versus Islam and Orthodox
Christendom
CLERMONT, 26 NOVEMBER 1095: POPE URBAN II CALLS FOR A CRUSADE
Dossier: Islam in Europe
6. One world, many traditions: elite culture and popular cultures: cosmopolitan norms and regional variations
Europe’s ‘feudal’ polities
The Church and the early states
Economic and technological change and the early states
Stronger states – stronger rulers?
The towns and the early states
A Christian world or a world of Christian nations?
Elite culture and popular cultures: cosmopolitan norms and regional
variations
LONDON, AD 1378: GEOFFREY CHAUCER DESCRIBES HIS WORLD
The importance of the universities
Dossier: democracy?
Interlude: the worlds of Europe, c.1400–1800
A world of villages
A world of towns
Two worlds?
PART III: Continuity and change: new ways of looking at man and the world
7. A new society: Europe’s changing views of man
The survival of Classical culture and the beginnings of Humanism
The loss of Byzantium – the gain of Europe: the further development of
Humanism in Italy
From Humanism to the Renaissance in Italy
ROME, AD 1538: MICHELANGELO ANALYSES ITALIAN ART
Humanism and the Renaissance: Italy and beyond
Dossier: European music
8. A new society: Europe as a wider world
Economic and technological change and the definitive formation of the
‘modern’ state
From manuscript to typescript
Gunpowder and compass
THE HAGUE, AD 1625: HUGO GROTIUS EXPOUNDS ‘THE LAW OF NATIONS’
Church and state: the break-up of religious unity
Unity and diversity: printing as a cultural revolution
Printing, reading and the schools: education for the masses?
Europe and its frontiers: nation-feeling and cultural self-definition
Dossier: capitalism
9. A new society: Europe and the wider world since the fifteenth century
The ‘old’ world and the ‘older’ world
The old world and the new
The ‘Columbian exchange’
AUGSBURG, MADRID, PARIS, THE EARLY SIXTEENTH CENTURY: OPINIONS ON THE
CONQUEST OF AMERICA AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
Images of America and mirrors of Europe
Further cultural consequences of European expansion
Dossier: Europe’s wider world
10. A new society: migration, travel and the diffusion and integration of culture in Europe
Migration, travel and culture
Non-voluntary travel: the cultural significance of migrations
Three types of cultural
The business trip: merchants and bankers
The diplomatic trip: ambassadors and politicians
The educational trip: students, scholars and artists
ROME, WINTER 1644–5: JOHN EVELYN VISITS THE ETERNAL CITY
The practice of travel
To travel or not to travel?
Travel as an element in growing cosmopolitanism and cultural
integration
Dossier: The Church of Rome
11. A new society: the ‘Republic of Letters’ as a virtual and virtuous world against a divided world
The Republic of Letters: a quest for harmony
The Republic of Letters and the ideal of tolerance: theory and practice
FRANCE, CHATEAU MONTAIGNE, NEAR BORDEAUX, AD 1580: MICHEL DE
MONTAIGNE ON EUROPE AND ‘THE OTHER’
The Republic of Letters and its enemies: national cultural policies,
or the political uses of culture
The Republic of Letters, or how to communicate in an invisible
institution
The Republic of Letters and the ‘inter-traffic of the mind’:
three examples
Dossier: paradise
12. Anew society: From Humanism to the Enlightenment
Humanism and empiricism between ‘ratio’ and ‘revelatio’
From (scientific) empiricism to new visions of man and society
LONDON, 1620, PARIS, 1637: FRANCIS BACON AND RENÉ DESCARTES, VIEWS
ON THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD
From Humanism to Enlightenment: along dawn
Enlightenment and Romanticism: poles apart?
Dossier: cosmos, nature, man
PART IV: Continuity and change: new forms of consumption and communication
13. Europe’s revolutions: freedom and consumption for all?
Material culture and conspicuous consumption: consumer change
until the end of the eighteenth century
Production and reproduction: economic and demographic change
until the end of the eighteenth century
Social and cultural change: the convergence of elites until the end of
the eighteenth century
Two revolutions: one political, one economic, both cultural
PARIS, 27 AUGUST 1789: THE CULTURAL IMPORTANCE OF THE ‘DÉCLARATION
DES DROITS DE L’HOMME ET DU CITOYEN’
Urban, industrial culture: the regulation and consumption of time
Dossier: machines
14. Progress and its discontents: nationalism, economic growth and the question of cultural certainties
The two revolutions and their aftermath
Elements of nationalism: political culture in the nineteenth century
New elites, new mechanisms of cultural diffusion, new manifestations of
culture
BASLE, THE MIDDLE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: JACOB BURCKHARDT
(1818–97) CRITICIZES CONTEMPORARY CULTURE
Money and time, goods and leisure: towards a consumer culture
Dossier: War and Peace
15. Europe and the other worlds
Europe and its expanding world
Europe and Latin America: a severed relationship?
North America as a vision of freedom
A variety of perceptions: capitalism and consumerism, freedom and slavery,
progress and decadence
NEW YORK, 1909: HERBERT CROLY (1869–1930) INTERPRETS ‘THE PROMISE
OF AMERICAN LIFE’
Europe and America – a cultural symbiosis, or: the growth of the ‘Western
World’
To the ‘heart of darkness’: Europe and Africa
The ‘old’ world and the ‘older’ world: Europe and Asia
Dossier: humankind
16. The ‘decline of the occident’ – the loss of a dream? from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century
The sciences and society: positivism …
BERLIN, 1877: HEINRICH STEPHAN REJOICES IN THE FIRST GERMAN TELEPHONE
SERVICE
Europe in hiding, Europe surviving
A growing sense of fin de siècle: between optimism and pessimism
The sciences and society: relativism …
A world at war? Europe at war!
Dossier: who am I?
17. From a dream shattered to a dream revived?
Continued pessimism
The preconditions of another war …
Europe: a world after two World Wars
A culture of time versus money
From ‘familyman’ to ‘salaryman’ – from group identity to individual
identity?
Towards a youth-oriented middle-class mass culture
EUROPE, LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY: THE MESSAGES OF POPULAR MUSIC
Science and society
Migration and contemporary Europe
Dossier: European-ness?
Epilogue: Europe – a present with a past, a present with
a future?
A present with a past? On the necessity of history education
New dimensions of identity – towards a unified Europe?
New dimensions of identity – towards a complex multiculturalism?
New dimensions of identity – towards an anonymous, mediatized mass
culture?
From the present to the future
Index
