Category Archives: History

Humoristische Karte von Europa

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Via Erkan, this truly is a superb collection. A couple were familiar, but figurative mapmaking was a popular genre from the 18th through to the early 20th century, so little wonder a number from this exclusively First World War set were new. The real sell are the descriptions – so often satirists’ points can be lost over time, and even more so when the images are reproduced a tad too small. Anyway, my favourite, by Dutch cartoonist Louis Raemaekers – hard to believe from the style that this was drawn in 1915 (and I do love the Russian giant, too big to fit fully on the map…):

Het Gekkenhuis (Oud Liedje, Nieuwe Wijs)

The Russian Ozymandias

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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (image leeched from Wikipedia)Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is dead, another of the giants of 20th century literature gone, his works already diminished from handy anti-Soviet conversation pieces for the dinner party set to dusty history source books.

The Gulag Archipelago remains his best-known book, though most people will only have read the expurgated version rather than as three chunky volumes. They may have tinkered with Cancer Ward. But, let’s face it, most people who’ve read any Solzhenitsyn will only have read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – an easy hundred or so pages of Soviet horror. Quick to read, quick to be forgotten.

While The Gulag Archipelago will be foisted on reluctant history students for decades, if not centuries to come, its catalogue of horrors becomes so vast as to be overwhelming, desensitising. This is why Ivan Denisovich is more familiar – the crimes committed by the likes of Stalin were just too vast to comprehend other than through the stories of individuals. Yes, all those mentioned in The Gulag Archipelago were individuals too, but by their sheer number they become faceless. Statistics. They blur into one, the easier to forget – as Robert Conquest noted in his (400+ page) The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivisation and the Terror-famine, “We may perhaps put this in perspective… by saying that in the actions here recorded about twenty human lives were lost for, not every word, but every letter, in this book.”

It’s something Martin Amis tried to get across in his stab at writing about the crimes of the Soviets in Koba the Dread (worth a read even if you don’t like Amis or his hectoring tone), having opened with the above quote from Conquest: “We cannot understand it… It takes a significant effort of imagination…”

The Soviet gulags, like their cousins the Nazi concentration camps, are indeed all but impossible to comprehend. Without Solzhenitsyn, we couldn’t have the first chance of even trying to imagine what they were like, let alone of understanding. And yet what he tried to describe in The Gulag Archipelago still remains impossible to comprehend – the sheer vastness and hostility of Siberia, for one, remains a struggle for me to grasp even now that I’ve endured the long flight gazing down on its featureless whiteness on several trips to Japan.

Meanwhile, his best book, the work that best shows off his literary genius – August 1914 – languishes largely unread, currently up for grabs on Amazon.co.uk for just 1p. Yes, that’s one English penny. It is at once the best book about the First World War I’ve ever read and the real perfect symbol of Solzhenitsyn – vast in size, detailed in its research, beautiful in its language, able somehow to bring to life events impossible to imagine in that first month of the war, yet also marred by early censorship (pick up Lenin in Zurich – also currently going for a penny – for some of the missing bits), more known of than read, and somehow incomplete. For August 1914, all 600+ pages of it (1000+ with the restoration of the missing bits) was but the first in an intended series – The Red Wheel – covering Russia’s road to revolution and its subsequent repression.

Of this series, he completed just four books over a twenty-year period, of which I believe only August 1914 and November 1916 has so far been translated into English. It’s a masterpiece, but a difficult and ultimately disappointing one – because now he is dead and it will never be completed, destined to become, in the memorable phrase of Nina Khrushcheva (writing in The Nation on Solzhenitsyn’s 80th birthday back in 1999),

“little more than a crank’s mausoleum within which his Nobel Prize-worthy talent has been interred.”

And so, thanks in part to the sheer length of time it took him to write them, in part thanks to his unshakable public image as the guy who writes about gulags, these works that Solzhenitsyn himself seemingly hoped to make his true literary legacy languish mostly unread and, in some cases, unpublished outside his native tongue. Where his books were once unread through censorship, they now gather dust through lack of interest – and with his death, Solzhenitsyn himself is doubtless destined to join Ozymandias – a symbol of something great, yet increasingly forgotten.

We cannot comprehend the horrors of the 20th century – not the slow march into death of the Somme, not the cattle-truck convoys to the gas chambers of Belsen, and not the icy nothingness of Siberian exile – but we also cannot forget them. Even if Solzhenitsyn did, in the last decades of his life, become obsolete with the fall of Communism – a symbol of rebellion and independence so powerful that he was quickly moulded by the canny Putin to be wheeled out as a propaganda tool – and even though his works may increasingly be unread these days, he is one of the few twentieth century writers whose works we already know are important enough to be taught as history.

Yet few want to read “important” books. Better, then, to remember Solzhenitsyn the man as something separate from his actual works. The Gulag Archipelago was “important” when it first came out – since the fall of the Soviet Union it is no longer, yet it remains a truly great work of history and of literature. August 1914 was overshadowed by the earlier, “important” works on life under the Soviets when it came out. Now, finally, it can perhaps emerge from the shadows. Solzhenitsyn himself will forever be associated with the Soviet era, but perhaps now we can finally start to read his books not just for their insight into incomprehensible times, but for the beauty of their language, the knife-edge sharpness of their descriptions, and the all-pervading feeling of muffled hope amid hopelessness that is, above all, the true legacy of the twentieth century. That his final masterpiece, the Red Wheel series, will now remain unfinished seems strangely apt for a man who has come to symbolise a period in which all too many lives were ended too soon.

And still, his books remain to remind us of the horrors of war and repression, hopefully to prevent future leaders making the same mistakes, though we all know such lessons are rarely learned:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Solzhenitsyn, I hope, would be in agreement:

SPIEGEL: Are you afraid of death?

Solzhenitsyn: No, I am not afraid of death any more. When I was young the early death of my father cast a shadow over me — he died at the age of 27 — and I was afraid to die before all my literary plans came true. But between 30 and 40 years of age my attitude to death became quite calm and balanced. I feel it is a natural, but no means the final, milestone of one’s existence.

SPIEGEL: Anyhow, we wish you many years of creative life.

Solzhenitsyn: No, no. Don’t. It’s enough.

Barack Obama’s European Vacation

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Marshall Plan poster, shamelessly leeched from WikipediaI’ve largely ignored Obama’s European vacation because – like that fairly shoddy Chevy Chase vehicle – I couldn’t see the point of it.

But one thing from his much-analysed Berlin speech did stick out – and I’ve not seen it commented upon elsewhere (though if you do want a good range of analysis, try Kosmopolit, Federal Union, EU Referendum, Jan’s EU Blog and Mark Mardell).

Anyway, here’s the line: “I come to Berlin as so many of my countrymen have come before.”

The press, of course, have been comparing this visit to JFK’s famous June 1963 visit. But Kennedy’s just one man.

Who are the “many” Obama’s speaking of?

At first I thought about making a joke about the invading armies of 1944/5 – America threatening Europe with a big stick if we don’t step back into line over The War Against Terror.

But then I pondered further – and yes, he probably did mean the Americans who beat back the Nazis. But not just them. The American occupying forces of 1945-89. The troops still on military bases throughout both Germany and Europe, relics of the Cold War. The technicians still working on early warning systems and plotting out new missile defence shields. The financiers, stockbrokers, accountants and analysts found in all major European financial centres and countless cities throughout the continent. The workers in American multinationals Europe-wide. The tourists who come in their droves to see what real history looks like. And on, and on.

Without post-war American investment, Europe would never have bounced back so quickly from the most devastating conflict the world has ever seen. But the Marshall Plan was not the end of the matter – once the Yanks arrived in ’44, they never went away again. Hell, the EU itself evolved in part out of the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC) and behind-the-scenes postwar planning by first Roosevelt, then Truman and (more subtly) Eisenhower.

Many have asked why a US presidential candidate has wasted time travelling to Europe during the campaign, not least his Republican opponent. Considering how intimately tied up America has been with Europe for the last 60 years, the real question should be why haven’t we seen more presidential candidates take the trip? Sod European self-importance, sod Bush’s poor people-management skills. If you invest your money somewhere, you do so because you expect a return on that investment. If you invest a lot of money, you sure as hell make sure that you manage that investment. How can so many American leaders have been so blase about a region in which their country has invested so much? Yes, the American people couldn’t care less about us foreigners – but it’s surely irresponsible to pay so little attention to any area in which the US has so much tied up?

Lessons from Scotland

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On 25th July 1603 King James VI of Scotland was crowned King James I of England, sparking many of the ongoing resentments about Scottish power in England and English power in Scotland that are continuing to this day.

On 25th July 2008, Labour lost to the Scottish Nationalist Party in the Glasgow East by-election, giving the Scottish independence movement a handy boost.

1603, resentment of influential Scots; 2008, resentment of influential Scots.

405 years with the same rulers – and 301 years since the Act of Union brought the two countries together as one – and yet Scottish/English national identity is as strong as ever. The only difference? We no longer invade and kill each other when we get miffed.

Lesson learned? Political union is great.

“The fathers of Europe and their successors”

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In the US, the Founding Fathers occupy a near-sacred place in the national myth and national consciousness – a glorious pantheon of visionaries who helped guide the divided States to their destiny as a greater whole.

In Europe, bar in a few highly europhile circles, there is no such glory attached to those who first came up with the idea of the European Community – bar, perhaps, the old anti-federalist bogeyman of Jean Monnet. But even his will be an unfamiliar name to most Europeans – let alone Sicco Mansholt, Joseph Bech, Alcide de Gasperi, Paul-Henri Spaak, or Count Richard Nikolaus von Coudenhove-Kalergi. As for the man who arguably did more than anyone bar Monnet to promote the vision of a unified Europe? Well, Winston Churchill is more often than not used as a figurehead of British opponents of the EU, despite having been one of the most fervent early advocates of a federal European political union.

Of course, as the EU has never had to declare independence from anyone and has singularly failed to come up with a binding constitution, it lacks the obvious father figures of the United States. But nonetheless, behind the scenes countless intellectuals and politicians have contributed to the idea of what Europe is, and what the EU should be for. Bronislaw Geremek, who died last week, was undoubtledly one such – prompting French euroblog Nouvelle Europe to ponder (with apologies for my poor translation): Continue reading →

*Yawn* Another topical Holocaust/Nazis post

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Yesterday I went to my uncle’s funeral. 88 years old and alert and amusing until the day he died. I never knew that he was in the RAF during the war – back-end technical support, I believe. One of the engineers who kept the planes flying during the Battle of Britain. Not as glamorous as being a Spitfire pilot, perhaps, but absolutely vital and insanely dangerous nonetheless (messing around with bombs and ammo while surrounded by fuel tanks, often ducking German air raids while he was at it).

Last week I was down in the West Country visiting my 85-year-old grandmother. In 1940, at the age of 17, she felt the call, left the tiny hamlet in which she had spent her entire life down in a remote part of Cornwall and moved to London to train as a nurse. She hit the wards of Guy’s Hospital just as the bombs of the Blitz started hitting the streets and houses.

In the previous war, her father – my great-grandfather – had likewise signed up as soon as he could (this despite, or perhaps because of his Prussian father’s internment on the Isle of Man), being shipped out from the back-end of Cornish tranquillity to the trenches of the Western Front, and lasting all the way, through both the Somme and Passchendale.

My great-grandfather went on to become a teacher. My grandmother a housewife. My uncle an accountant. They became ordinary, everyday people again, and none of them liked to talk about their experiences. And herein lies the problem.

The recent attacks on Roma settlements in Italy and plans to fingerprint all Roma in the country have so many obvious echoes of the early anti-Jewish rumblings of inter-war Germany (and pre-WWI Austria, where Hitler gained his political education thanks to the populist likes of Schonerer, Lueger and the like, for that matter), that they shouldn’t need to be underlined. Indeed, by likening anything at all to the actions of the fascists of the 1930s/40s it’s hard not to fear slipping into hyperbole – and on the internet, of having Godwin’s Law brought up yet again.

The problem is precisely that everyone knows about the Nazis and about the Holocaust. It’s part of the education of pretty much every European child, and has been for more than half a century. In some countries, the teaching of the Second World War would even take preference over more general national histories, so important has it rightly been considered (while I was at school we spent two years on the Second World War – with not a single lesson on the British Empire). Documentaries about the Nazis are on a constant loop on the various history TV channels. History sections of bookshops are dominated by picture books and chunky tomes about the Third Reich and the chaos it wrought.

And what do we learn? That the Nazis were evil. That this was an extraordinary moment, an unprecedented time.

None of this, of course, is entirely true. Continue reading →

Tories and the EU, trade talks, Russian threats

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Three things that have caught my eye this morning, in ascending order of importance:

1) Following a fun article on the impact a Tory victory in the next UK general election may have on the EU in this week’s Economist, there’s an interesting round-up of Conservative European election posters from the last couple of decades over at the Open Europe blog – a perfect illustration of the fundamental shift in Tory thinking on the EEC/EU that’s taken place over the last 30 years or so.

2) As EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson issues a stark warning about the need for unity over WTO talks, I stumble across EU Trade Policy: Approaching a Crossroads – a handy (mercifully short) briefing paper from Chatham House on the continued lack of a breakthrough in EU trade negotiations as we rumble towards the end of the Cotonou agreement and squabbles with the likes of Russia and China continue. Short version: it doesn’t look promising.

3) Medvedev Criticizes West in Tough Foreign Policy Speech – the usual Russian posturing, or the start of something new? Either way, “The EU and US have been warned”, apparently. Thanks for that, Dmitry! Meanwhile, the Financial Times urges standing up to Russia over Georgia – a much-ignored new Caucasian crisis that’s hardly getting any better, and Europe’s World has an article (promising-looking, but I haven’t had a chance to read in full just yet) on The EU, Russia and the crisis of the post-Cold War European order. From what I’ve seen so far, this looks like essential reading:

“The EU today cannot be described anymore as federalist state in the making – it is something much more complex and undefined. It resembles something closer to post-colonial India, with its mixture of languages, legal regimes, traditions and sensitivities, than it does post-War Germany or France. In the powerful metaphor of Jan Zielonka the post-enlargement EU is not a kind of Westphalia federation; it is more a kind of neo-medieval empire. There is no European demos and there probably never will be – but there is kind of European public. There are no final borders but moving borders and variable geometries. And it was Count Sergei Witte, Prime Minister under Nicholas II, who said there was no such thing as Russia, but only a Russian empire.”

Why Belgium?

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Episode of the Belgian Revolution of 1830, by Egide Charles Gustave WappersHaving gone for months without a government, the Belgian crisis looks set to kick off once again. French speakers and Flemish speakers really just don’t seem to get on, and are increasingly objecting to being forced to share the same country. Indeed, as anyone who has ever been to Brussels – which is in the Flemish part of the country – will know, if you try to speak French to a Flemish-speaker, you’re liable to end up with an earful of abuse. To outsiders it can all seem rather confusing – I mean, hell, it’s only Belgium, right? As anyone who’s ever visited the place will know, although the countryside is pretty enough (and the beer and food is aces), there’s really not that much worth fighting over – Belgium has more often than not been used as a staging-post for wars aiming to claim other, more interesting territories. Rarely has it been the prize that has been sought.

So what’s worth getting so het up about? The confusion only deepens when you realise that the problem dates back more than 2,000 years…

Belgium has always been an artificial creation – and one with little in the way of a coherent history. It started out as part of the Roman province of Gallica Belgica (named after the Belgae tribes of the region, whom Julius Caesar thought among the most brave of those he helped conquer), formed in 22 BC following thirty years of on-off rebellions and Germanic invasions and even then made up of two distinct linguistic/racial groups, the belligerent Germanic tribes in the north and the more Romanised Celtic Latin speakers in the south.

But the real clincher came under Emperor Domitian in c.90 AD – Gallica Belgica was restuctured, with the part largely corresponding to modern-day Belgium being named Germania Inferior. The inferiority complex has arguably remained ever since – the area more often under the rule of others than independent.

After three hundred years of relative peace under the Romans (albeit heavily militarised peace, as this was border country) being shattered by the arrival of the Vandals and Burgundians in 406, becoming part of the heartland of the Frankish Merovingian and then Carolingian empires. Modern day Belgium was still but a part of a greater whole, with no identity of its own.

Then came the split – the division of Charlemagne’s Holy Roman Empire that followed the Treaty of Verdun of 843. Now, rather than just being part of a larger whole, what is now Belgium became two even smaller parts of two far larger wholes – a situation only worsened when, in 862, the County of Flanders became part of the new country of France, the rest of what is now Belgium remaining in the Holy Roman Empire. Despite being nominally part of France, Germanic languages began to dominate in northern Flanders, while Latinate languages continued to be the norm in the south for much of the medieval period.

900 years on from Julius Ceasar’s initial Roman conquest, there was still no sign of Belgium – but the language division was firmly entrenched. When the two parts of modern Belgium were reunited as part of the Bergundian Netherlands in the early 15th century, they found they had little in common – and continued to feel that way until the Pragmatic Sanction of 1549, when they were divided once again during the reorganisation of the Seventeen Provinces.

Did the Belgians have any say in any of this? Of course not – they still didn’t exist.

Meanwhile, the Reformation kicked in and – as in so many parts of Europe – caused further divisions, the Flemish/Germanic north turning Protestant, the French/Latinate south remaining Catholic [* see comments*]. The northern part joined the newly-formed Dutch Republic, the south the Spanish Netherlands – and the dividing line of this political/religious schism ran right through good old Belgium, neatly positioning it as one of the central battlefields and staging grounds of first the Eighty Years War, then the overlapping Thirty Years War, swiftly followed by the War of Devolution, the Franco-Dutch War, the War of the Grand Alliance, the War of the Spanish Succession, the War of the Austrian Succession, the Seven Years War, the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. Along the way, the region’s rulers (usually French, Spanish, Dutch or Austrian) changed too often to keep track of, and it played host to at least two of the battles that helped define modern Europe, Ramillies and, of course, Waterloo.

After Napoleon’s defeat, Belgium was included as part of the newly-created United Kingdom of the Netherlands – which was so united it lasted a mere 15 years until the oft-forgotten Belgian Revolt created that fun little country that plays host to the European Union. Why was there a revolt? Well, because having been under French rule from 1795-1815, the French-speaking Catholic south didn’t much like suddenly being ruled by the Protestant Dutch again.

The Belgian Revolt remains a hugely confusing affair, thanks largely (as far as I can tell) to a combination of revolutionary fervour and Dutch over-reaction, rather than just the southern, French, Catholic bit of Belgium ending up independent, parts of the Flemish Protestant north [* see comments*] split off as well. It seems rather like a one-night-stand that ended up in marriage – albeit a marriage that has lasted 178 years so far, and weathered countless more wars passing through the country’s borders (that declaration of neutrality made back in 1830, it seems, not doing them much good).

And there we have it. Like all European countries, Belgium is an accidental construct of centuries of conflict, only this time one where the accident is continuing to create real problems thanks to the harsh cultural/linguistic divide between north and south that was already in evidence back in the time of the Romans. Just check out the map of the Belgian elections from last year (left) and the Flemish/French linguistic divide (right), and it becomes all too obvious – a picture telling a thousand words and all that (almost literally, in this case – I’m about 30 words over…):

Belgian elections v languages, stolen from ElectoralGeography.com and The Encyclopedia Britannica respectively

Plus, of course, the irony value of even so small a country as Belgium – a country that even by Europe’s standards has experienced more than its fair share of warfare, conflict and persecution – not being able to stay united while playing host to the various institutions of a European Union which of course aims to unite a far larger and far more divided area packed with far more languages and far more past conflicts, is not lost on me… It makes it at once the most and the least appropriate place to house the (majority of the) EU institutions going. Unless we can relocate them to the Balkans…

Update: Here you go, the stupidity of Belgium personified. I present the town of Baarle-Nassau. Surely this has to be one of the most convoluted fixed national border situations in the world?

The Union for the Mediterranean

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Launched officially today, and I’ve yet to work out what it’s all for (bar an ego trip for Sarkozy and a jolly for various heads of state, that is).

Mark Mardell has the handiest overview I’ve found so far – and also doesn’t seem to know quite what to make of it. Wikipedia is, as ever, useful if taken with a pinch of salt – largely thanks to the overview of the controversies and squabbles that have marred its birth.

One thing that is fun, however, is to compare the map of this new international club with that of the Roman Empire at its height…

The Union for the Mediterranean vs. the Roman Empire

So, we’ve got Germany, Sweden, Finland, Ireland, Poland, Denmark, the Canary Islands, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, a bit more north African desert and Scotland; they’ve got northern Cyprus, Switzerland, Serbia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, bits of Moldova, bits of Ukraine, bits of Dagestan and Chechnya, and Iraq.

I think I can safely say that we win.

RIP Bronislaw Geremek

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Bronislaw GeremekNow this is sad news indeed.

One of the leading lights of the Solidarity movement – undeniably one of the most important of the late 20th century – and still active in standing up for what’s right (just last year becoming a figurehead for opposition to the Polish government’s fresh anti-communist purges). A former Polish Foreign Minister and historian, he’d also been suggested as a good candidate for first president of the EU, and was one of the few MEPs with genuine name recognition value.

His kind are rare – and exactly what the EU needs if it’s ever going to emerge as something truly worthwhile.

Update: I’d forgotten all about Geremek’s book The Common Roots of Europe. I’m sure I’ve read it, but don’t have a copy. Off to the library, because this all seems strangely appropriate, what with today’s shift in blogging focus and altered tagline. From Amazon’s description: “[Geremek] suggests that it is in everyone’s interest to understand Europe in a wider sense, not just as a geographical concept, but as a political and cultural one too. He discusses unity, variety and collective identity in medieval Europe, social and economic structures in East and West, and the continuity and change in European identity in the intervening centuries.”

Sod it, perhaps I’ll buy the thing…

A shift in focus: History and Culture

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You may have noticed that over the last few months the rate of posting here has declined. It’s a combination of over-work and lack of interest in the current political goings-on, and has inspired a slight shift in focus in an attempt to get me posting more frequently.

In the UK, we’re in that dull mud-slinging period prior to an election almost certain to see a change of government (that may not arrive for another two years), much like the interminable years of party fervour of 1990-97. The Labour v Tory rivalry always bores me – especially when everyone gets so het up about it all. But sadly the golden age of cross-party unity over a hatred of Tony Blair has ended, and petty squabbles are again on the rise.

When it comes to the EU, we’re in yet another period of stagnation caused by the rejection of yet another tedious and uninspiring treaty, much like the interminable last seven years (or more) since the Treaty of Nice singularly failed to achieve what it was meant to. I’ve already written so much on the Lisbon Treaty and Constitution that I’m not sure if I can handle churning out any more attempts at constructive criticism, soothsaying or analysis. At least, not for a while.

Elsewhere in Europe, there’s not a great deal of excitement among the domestic politics of the various states at the moment either, from what I can tell. Even Berlusconi’s being entirely predictable since his return to power (engineering a grant of immunity from prosecution and spurting out broad, brainless populist nonsense at every opportunity). The only thing that does spark an interest is the ongoing threat of Russian energy dominance, a new phase of which was hinted at over the weekend with suggestions that the Kremlin might be using oil supply to the Czech Republic to try and force the Czech government to backtrack over the proposed US missile defence shield.

But this is not meant to be one of those semi-regular “blogger announces he/she’s going to quit blogging in an attempt to garner praise from readers before swiftly posting more than ever” posts.

Clio, The Muse Of History And Song, 1758 - Francois BoucherInstead, I’ve decided to start writing about things that still interest me when the political goings on are getting tedious. Keeping in with the general theme of this place – and giving an excuse to make that little piece of paper with “MA Modern History (Dist.)” and those three years working on a history magazine seem worthwhile – what better than European history and culture? After all, I know my stuff moderately well, am always reading to find out more, and in recent months have most enjoyed writing posts like the Eurovision liveblog and overview of wannabe European states – the political ones have more often been a chore. Blogging should be fun, not dull.

I’ve been pondering this shift in focus ever since the last redesign, but decided for certain this weekend, while browsing through a couple of books. First, Tony Judt’s excellent Postwar, from the Preface:

“The whole of Europe (excluding Russia and Turkey) comprises just five and a half million square kilometers: less than two thirds the area of Brazil, not much more than half the size of China or the US. It is dwarfed by Russia, which covers seventeen million square kilometers. But in the intensity of its internal differences and contrasts, Europe is unique.”

Swiftly followed by this, from the Prologue to Geert Mak’s gloriously engaging In Europe:

“Do we Europeans have a common history? Of course, everyone can rattle their way down the list: Roman Empire, Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment, 1914, 1945, 1989. But then one need only look at the enormous differences in the way that history has been experienced by individual Europeans: the older Polish truck driver I spoke to, who had been forced four times in his life to learn a new language; the German couple, bombed out of their home and then endlessly driven from place to place throughout Eastern Europe; the Basque family that fell apart one Christmas Eve arguing about the Spanish Civil War, and never spoke to each other again; the serene satisfaction of the Dutch, the Danes and the Swedes, who have usually avoided catching the full brunt of History. Put a group of Russians, Germans, Britons, Czechs and Spaniards at one table and have them recite their family histories: they are worlds unto themselves. Yet, even so, it is all Europe.”

Because, of course, though Europe has more than its fair share of diversity in history and culture it still has plenty of common ground – be it Saint George acting as patron saint of England, Moscow, Portugal and more, the similarities in old myths and legends (like Zeus and Odin, Tristan and Lancelot), or the flow of artistic motifs (from the use of the eagle in heraldry Europe-wide to the symbolism of the star in art, architecture and the EU flag). Perhaps by focussing more on these areas I’ll be able to track down that elusive, impossible to define quality of what it means to be “European” – the thing that unites us all, from Ulster to the Urals, Nordkapp to Nicosia.

It may turn out that Bismarck was right, and all we have in common is geography. But I prefer to turn to Churchill – a fine historian (if not so fine a politician), with a strong (if frequently misunderstood) idea of Europe:

“I wish to speak about the tragedy of Europe, this noble continent, the home of all the great parent races of the Western world, the foundation of Christian faith and ethics, the origin of most of the culture, arts, philosophy and science both of ancient and modern times. If Europe were once united in the sharing of its common inheritance there would be no limit to the happiness, prosperity and glory which its 300 million or 400 million people would enjoy.”

But the major reason is just to have fun with blogging again – so don’t expect a structure or a plan to emerge for a while. This will be more a miscellany. Slices of little-known or forgotten history. Profiles of persons of interest. The occasional book review. Overviews of key events and ideas. Quotations. In other words, random bits and pieces that interest me – sometimes tied to the overriding theme of European identity or current affairs, sometimes just curios. And all the while heeding Hegel:

“Rulers, Statesmen, Nations, are wont to be emphatically commended to the teaching which experience offers in history. But what experience and history teach is this – that peoples and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it… Amid the pressure of great events, a general principle gives no help. It is useless to revert to similar circumstances in the Past.”

When it comes to politics, history is both ignored and useless. What could be a more perfect focus for a political blog, that most ignored and useless of all contributions to the public sphere?

States of mind

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With Kosovo having just declared independence this weekend, it’s time for a look at some of Europe’s other wannabe countries.

Following Vladimir Putin’s largely fair comments about European double-standards over Kosovan independence, it’s certainly worth looking at other wannabe European countries that the EU could technically recognise, once the precedent’s been set. And if not the EU, why not Russia, just to piss Brussels off?

Some are more economically viable, some less; some are more uniform in their national identity, some more controversial; some are more of a joke. But all, really, have similar claims to independent status as Kosovo – and many are associated with the European Parliament’s European Free Alliance group. There’s a surprisingly large number of aspirant Utopias:

Utopia, the ultimate dream state
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St George’s Day

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One of my most unrelenting (and occasionally nutty) eurosceptic visitors popped up the other day reckoning that I must hate St George’s Day because I’m pro-EU (yes, he’s one of those who rarely reads/understands what I write, so has me down as a slavering, unthinking, traitorous Europhile, rather than someone who’s, you know, thought about it quite a lot and can see all the problems).

Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. St George is, after all, one of the ultimate symbols of Britain’s pan-European ties.

He was a Roman soldier (much like St Alban, in fact, the chap some have suggested would be more appropriate as England’s patron saint), so part of that vast organisation which united Europe from the Forth to the Nile, Portugal to the Caspian Sea – and which has helped shape the look and feel of Europe’s geography and culture for so much of the last 2000 years.

He was born in Anatolia, modern Turkey (although probably more like present day Armenia – with his mother having been born in what is now Israel/Palestine), showing how the links between Turkey and Europe have stretched back for millennia – and is the patron saint of Istanbul as well as of England.

He is venerated as an Islamic martyr as well as a Christian one, showing once again the links between the two faiths that so many on both sides seem to have forgotten in recent years (but hey, if you believe in a great big bearded fairy living up in the clouds, don’t expect too much rationality, eh?)

He remains the most venerated saint in the Orthodox Church, so popular on Europe’s eastern fringes – the dominant religion in, for example, Ukraine, Belarus, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, Greece, the former Yugoslavia, Cyprus, Georgia and Russia.

No doubt due to this Orthodox connection, he is also the patron saint of Georgia, Greece, Montenegro, Serbia and Moscow (Istanbul, of course, was formerly Constantinople / Byzantium, the seat of the Orthodox Church after the great schism, hence George’s patronage there – Constantine the Great, the founder of Constantinople / Istanbul, having been crowned Roman Emperor in the pleasingly English city of York in July 306 AD).

George is also patron saint of Catalonia – a land originally colonised by the ancient Greeks, then taken over by the Carthaginians, then the Romans, then the Visigoths, then the Moors, then the Franks and, after a period under the rule of Aragon (of English king Henry VIII’s first wife Catherine of Aragon fame), Spain. A near perfect encapsulation of the various waves of European civilisations.

Then there’s Portugal, another country with George as Patron (I won’t bother going into detail about Canada and Ethiopia, don’t worry) – and one of the few European countries with whom England has never (officially) gone to war. Portugal’s history is similar to that of Catalonia – only with the added excitement of trade with the Phoenicians (much like pre-Roman Devon and Cornwall) and a sizeable Celtic community – just like the Celtic fringe of the British isles. They may have been conquered by the Moors while England was being conquered by the Vikings, but otherwise the two nations’ histories are remarkably similar – invasions, consolidation, exploration, innovation, empire and decline.

Saint George certainly never killed a dragon, and there is little historical evidence to show that he actually existed.

He is, however, a perfect symbol for both England and Europe – an amalgamation of numerous other myths that epitomise an appeal to civility, chivalry and toleration, yet with a militaristic edge in the dragon legend that is not only perfect for a continent which has seen as many wars as Europe has done, but also warns “if you attack us, we will fight”. His historical nature is pretty doubtful, yet – much like England has King Arthur, the Anglo-Saxon settlement, the Norman Yoke, Robin Hood and that nonsensical “1000 years of history” – the lack of historicity merely makes him that much more powerful as a symbol, as he can become anything we want him to be. He is revered across Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals, yet – like so much European culture – originated from the Middle East, demonstrating once again that the diversity of this continent is never so great as people may think.

In other words, as the European Union hunts around for a new direction and a new unifying ideal, it could really look to no better a symbol than Saint George, a truly pan-European figure – and one well worthy of a drink or two in the pub tonight, whether he existed or not.

(Want more Saint George? Try Wikipedia and the Catholic Encyclopaedia)

Update: Forgot to mention, today is also William Shakespeare’s reputed birthday, and likewise the date recorded for his death. This most influential, most English of poets – as we all know – drew heavily on continental European subjects and history for his many plays, from Romeo and Juliet to Othello, The Merchant of Venice to Macbeth. But he also died on the very same day – 23rd April 1616 – as that other great 16th/17th century writer, Miguel Cervantes, the author of the wonderful Don Quixote – one of the founding texts of modern western civilisation, and another fine example of something typically European: the futile search for something better.

Shakespeare, Cervantes and Saint George – all united by 23rd April, all quite gloriously European.

Magna Carta and Civil Liberties

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A quickie to try and clear up a confusion I’ve seen on a few blogs around the place who seem to think that Magna Carta guarantees British (well, English) people certain freedoms:

The Magna Carta “rights” thing is a complete myth. It never granted anyone other than a few barons any liberties – the attempt to argue that it did began in the 17th century with Sir Edward Coke, and was expanded upon by the Parliamentarians to justify their entirely illegal revolt against the King. Even if it did grant any rights, hardly any of it remains in force.

In fact, there are not, nor ever have been, any guaranteed rights in this country. Not until we signed up to the UN, that is. The way the English constitution works (Scotland is rather different) ensures that nothing can possibly be guaranteed within the nation state itself – only external obligations can compel our government to abide by what many consider to be basic human rights obligations. There is not, nor ever has been, anything in English law that can secure civil liberties.

(Oh, and an additional problem? Legally speaking, any attempt to introduce a codified constitution granting inviolable legal rights to the people would itself be unconstitutional, and therefore illegal and easily repealed by any later government that wished to… The only way to ensure certain rights is to sign up to strict external obligations to force the national government to abide by set rules of conduct – one of the benefits we would have got had the now dead EU constitution been ratified and put into force.)