This volume investigates competing ideas, images, and stereotypes of a European ‘East’, exploring its role in defining European and national conceptions of self and other since the eighteenth century.
Through a set of original case studies, this collection explores the intersection between discourses about a more distant, exotic, or colonial ‘Orient’ with a more immediate ‘East’. The book considers this shifting, imaginary border from different points of view and demonstrates that the location, definition, and character of the ‘East’, often associated with socio-economic backwardness and other unfavourable attributes, depended on historical circumstances, political preferences, cultural assumptions, and geography. Spanning two centuries, this study analyses the ways that changing ideals and persistent clichéd attitudes have shaped the conversation about and interpretations of Eastern Europe.
Europe and the East will be essential reading for anyone interested in images and ideas of Europe, European identity, and conceptions of the ‘East’ in intellectual and cultural history.
Author(s): Mark Hewitson, Jan Vermeiren
Series: Ideas beyond Borders: Studies in Transnational Intellectual History
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 318
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Europe and the East – Self and Other in the History of the European Idea
The ‘East’ as Idea and Reality
The History of Europe and the ‘East’
‘Eastern Europe’, the ‘Eastern Bloc’, and other ‘Easts’ in the Twentieth Century
Conclusion
Notes
Part I: Conceptualizing the East
Chapter 1: Europe’s Many Easts: Why One Orient Is Not the Other
‘Many Easts’
The Amorphous ‘West’
The ‘Near’ East
The Yellow Peril
Russia as East
Reimagining the European East-West Divide
The East in the West
Separately No More
Notes
Chapter 2: Europe and Its Orientalisms: Epistemology and Practice in the Long Nineteenth Century
What Was Orientalism?
Conceptual Geographies of Difference at the Margins of East and West
The Intimate Orient
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 3: Europe and the Balkans: Mapping History in the Southeast
Back to Re(g)ality
Other than Europe, Apart from Europe, Not Yet Europe: Ergo Europe
‘Balkanism’ or ‘Orientalism’: What Is Better? Does It Matter?
The Power Thing
Conclusions
Notes
Part II: National Identity and the Eastern Borders of Europe, 1789–1914
Chapter 4: Sergey Uvarov and the Coming of Age of Russian Conservatism
Russia as a Safe Haven for Ancien Régime Europe
Uvarov’s Time in Vienna
Uvarov’s Cosmopolitan Conservatism
Europe as a Source of Subversion
Spinning a Strategic Narrative
Notes
Chapter 5: Nation and Europe: Adam Mickiewicz’s Writings and Political Activity and the Dilemma of Identity during the Nineteenth Century
Introduction: Adam Mickiewicz – A Symbolic Figure
European and National Dimensions of Mickiewicz’s Biography
Mickiewicz’s Ideas of Nation and Europe
A Vision of Harmonious Coexistence and Its Transgression: the 1820s
The Condemnation of the Tyranny of Imperialism, Dreams of European Unity, and the Messianic Mission of Poland
Europe as the Unity of Free Peoples
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 6: The United States of Europe and the ‘East(s)’: Giuseppe Mazzini, Carlo Cattaneo, and Cristina Trivulzio di Belgiojoso
Mazzini’s ‘Europe of the Peoples’ and the ‘East’
Cattaneo’s ‘Europe of the Cities’ and the ‘Orient’
Belgiojoso’s Republican Europe and the Ottoman Empire
Notes
Chapter 7: A Colonial and European Nation?: Colonial Discourse and European Identity in Nineteenth-Century German Discourse
Theoretical Remarks
The Colonial East: Where Does Europe End?
The Myth of German Ostkolonisation and the European Dimension of German History
Europe as a Fortress
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 8: The Hungarian Nation between East and West: The Limits of the Nationalist Imagination in the Long Nineteenth Century
Combining East and West: The Millennial Celebrations of 1896
The Pre-modern Nation
Re-imagining the Nation
Between ‘Foreign’ and ‘Domestic’ Models: The Struggle for Linguistic and Political Autonomy
Building the Nation
Conclusion: The Contested Nation
Notes
Chapter 9: Re-imagining Arcadia: The South Slavic Balkans in the Changing Ideal of Western Europe, 1885–1914
Origins of the Geographical Imaginary
Western (and Southeastern) Europe’s ‘Long’ Fin de Siècle
From Western Modernity to Hierarchies of Morality
Conclusion
Notes
Part III: The New East in an Age of Geopolitics, 1914–89
Chapter 10: Between East and West: Europe, the US, and the USSR in the 1920s
Evaluating the Historiography
Defining the Topic
Historical Perceptions of Russia and America
Machine and Mass Societies: Interpretations of the USSR and Modern America
Responses to the USSR and Americanisation
Defending the Spirit of Europe
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 11: How to Break Away from a ‘Science of the Enemy’: Polish and German Experts Challenging the ‘Otherness’ of Eastern Europe, 1918–72
Eastern Europe Seen from Poland and Germany after 1918
The Emergence of Expertise as a Science of the Enemy, 1933–45
Maintaining and Reshaping Expertise in Eastern Europe after 1945
Three Experts Challenging the Science of the Enemy
Towards a New Paradigm of Eastern Expertise?
Notes
Chapter 12: Beyond Bipolarity: The European Movements and the Role of Eastern Europe in the Work of Carlo Cattaneo
Introduction
The Perception of Eastern Europe
The Creation of the United States of Europe
Carlo Cattaneo after the Second World War
Carlo Cattaneo and the Construction of a New Europe
A Pro-European Woman in the Footsteps of Carlo Cattaneo
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 13: The East and the Rest: British Left-Wing Intellectuals’ Refashioning of the European Idea at the End of the Cold War
Marxism Today in the British Context
A Spectre Haunts the East
‘A New Europe Is in the Making’ 42
Europe’s Other Self
A New Idea of Europe?
Notes
Index
