Europe and its Historians
Stuart Woolf
Histories of Europe have a long genealogy, whose origins can probably be found in the defence Christian Europe, above all humanist circles, against threat Muslim Ottoman expansion. In course Enlightenment and Napoleonic years, earlier elements that were regarded as characterising crystallised into sense common to European elites – described ‘civilisation’ distinctiveness superiority Europeans from other regions world. If we analyse what was understood by this ‘idea Europe’, I argued elsewhere, identify number constituent Europe's progress that, for their authors, explain its distinctiveness, particularly when compared with historical experiences or contemporary condition states societies elsewhere These summarised as: (i) secular cultural tradition, originating classical antiquity, revived (after ‘barbarian’ interlude) Renaissance culminated France; (ii) individual entrepreneurship motor economic dynamism strength; (iii) liberty defining quality governance; (iv) balance power between limited leading states; (v) civilised manners, civilités , (in Norbert Elias's sense) publicly accepted regulatory mechanisms forms social relationships. The Restoration, Federico Chabod has clarified, extended corpus values attributed through recovery Middle Ages Christianity.
Contemporary European History