Ye Kefei /Wen How much do you know about Europe? Many people first think of Britain, France and Germany, or even just them. But there are so many countries, nations, and religions in Europe that simple perceptions inevitably lead to one-sidedness and narrowness.
The formation of the races and languages of the European continent alone is an extremely long and complex process.
Norman Davis elaborated on all this in his book A History of Europe: "The sudden emergence of this wave of ethnic migration in Western Europe at the end of the 4th century AD is but a scene in a drama of much wider geographical and chronological scope. Under the pressure of the Westward Advance of the Huns, Ostrogoths, Alans, Visigoths, and Vandals poured into the territory of the Roman Empire. In individual countries, it has fundamentally changed the racial mixing of populations over the centuries and has introduced entirely new components in some regions. If in 400 A.D. the population of the European continent could be clearly divided into 'Romans' and 'barbarians', by 600 or 700 AD the land was inhabited by a much more complex mix of semi-barbaric pre-Romans and semi-Romanized pre-barbarians. ”
This is even just the beginning, with migration and integration taking place in regions such as the Iberian Peninsula, Italy, and Germany. By the 8th century, ethnic settlements on the European continent began to form a lasting pattern. But even so, Davis wrote: "In the future, the basic demographic composition of Europe will need five more important ethnic migrations to complete." The peoples who later migrated "once were the sea invaders Vikings, twice the nomadic Magyars and Mongols, and the other two were the Moors and Turks who fought for the new religion".
To lay out this history, it is not enough to sit in the study, norman Davis's European vision is related to both intellectual structure and educational experience, as well as growth experience and "walking thousands of miles". While my favorite author of "A History of Postwar Europe," Tony Judt, dismisses it, it doesn't stop me from looking for some intellectual gain in Davis's book.
One
Norman Davis is a British historian, a Fellow of the National Academy, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Professor Emeritus of University College London, Professor Emeritus of St Anthony's College, Oxford, and an expert on Central and Eastern European history. He is the author of 17 books, including "History of Europe", "The Vanishing Kingdom", "God's Playground: A History of Poland", and "Under Another Sky".
In 1958, at the age of 19, Davis set off from his hometown of Lancashire and drove across the European continent to Islamabaur. In his youth, Davis's academic career was spread throughout European countries such as Britain, France, And Italy.
The book "History of Europe" is regarded as Davis's masterpiece, which includes three volumes: "Classical Era (Prehistory - 337 AD)", "Age of Empires (about 330-1493)" and "Era of Transition (about 1450-1914)", which can be called a comprehensive general history of East and West Europe, and has been sold worldwide for more than 20 years. Completed in the 1990s, Davis has given a model of operation similar to that of the Internet age, with a linked "window of knowledge" in the main text.
History of Europe (all three volumes)
Norman Davis /
Liu Beicheng Guo Fang / Translation
Meet City-State / CITIC Publishing Group
November 2021
In the book, the rise and fall of Rome, the massive aggression of the Alaric and Attila, the Norman conquests, the power struggles of the Holy See, the Renaissance and reformation, the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, the rise of Europe as a center of world power and its decline due to its descent into a world war... A period of history has been laid out.
The reason why the same weight is given to East and West Europe is related to Davis's growth experience. Davis was born in Krakow, Poland, in 1939. It was this year that Germany and the Soviet Union carved up Poland. He spent a turbulent childhood in World War II, witnessed the difference between Eastern and Western Europe, and looked forward to the stability of Europe. It is also based on this that he gives more space to his native Poland in the book. The nearly 70-page introduction to a history of Europe in which Davis expresses his views on "Western European centrism." "Western civilization is essentially a mixture of intellectual conceptions, the intention of which is to advance the interests of their conceivers," he wrote. It is the product of elaborate articles and complex practices in ideological, countless identification processes, in cultural propaganda. It can be defined by its advocates in almost any method they see fit. ”
At the same time, Davis also mentions the bitter lessons of European history: "On the one hand, it can be considered that of course there is a strong nationalist flavor of historical education in most European countries. When it originated in the nineteenth century, history education was incorporated into the service of patriotism. In its most primitive form, it is not much better than a roster of names, chronology, and names of ruling dynasties. From this it developed into a narrative of national heroes, victories and achievements. In its most extreme form, it was carefully designed to train school children to play the role of murderers and casualties in the nation's wars in the future. ”
That is to say, although nationalism has a positive effect, in extreme cases, there will be examples such as Hitler's Third Reich.
Davis tries to avoid these shackles in his book, and at the same time no longer regards the emperor as the subject of history, but devotes a considerable amount of space to the commoners, the persecuted, and even the infidels, leprosy patients, and gypsies...
Davis's view of history is also common sense that people often overlook. For example, he mentions in the book that chroniclers and historians were eager to write independent, enduring, self-conscious tribal histories, but such an entity did not exist at the time.
The same is true of the European entity. In Classical Times, Davis begins by laying out the history of the term "Europe" before it was officially introduced. At that time, Europe was not yet an independent "continent", but a "peninsula", "without a name, like a puppet of a ship, parked on the bow of the world's largest land." To the west is an untouched ocean. To the south are two enclosed, interconnected oceans, dotted with their own islands, entrances and peninsulas. To the north is a huge polar ice sheet that expands and contracts with the passage of time, like some terrible, frozen jellyfish. To the east is the land bridge to the rest of the world, from which all the people and all civilizations have come. ”
Geomorphology, climate, geology and fauna have all worked together to create a benign environment, and as the book says, "historically, these geographic units have remained largely stable." At the same time, the political units that override it are ups and downs and fickle. Those 'arrogant empires of the world' are constantly dying. But plains and mountains, seas, peninsulas, islands will obviously last forever", which is also the basis for understanding European history.
Two
Europe is named after the princess Europa, who was brought to Crete by Zeus, and the Minoan civilization is named after her son. In other words, the starting point of European civilization was Crete. After the demise of the Cretan civilization, until the rise of Greek civilization, there was still no concept of "Europe".
After the fall of Greece, until the rise of Rome, there was also no concept of "Europe". The birth of the true concept of Europe was closely related to Christianity, and it was not until the full Christianization of geographical Europe that the cultural "Europe" was born.
This process can be seen as the "embryonic" era of Europe: ancient Greece spanned millennia and achieved amazing results in its heyday. The rise of Rome heralded the conquest of maritime civilization by new land powers. More importantly, Rome absorbed Greek culture and dominated the political and cultural life of the Roman Empire for hundreds of years until the advent of Christianity.
In Age of Empires, Europe enters the Middle Ages and is a history of reorganizing Christianity into a new imperial system. In Davis's view, "the main symbols of the Middle Ages were knights armed on horseback, serfs shackled to the land of lords, and monks praying in monasteries."
The Bishop of Rome raised his position to the point of supremacy, and it was at this time that the term "pope" was born, and at the same time gained the territorial basis for the establishment of a monarchy. Of course, Davis didn't like it, so he quoted Thomas Hobbes in his book: "The papacy is just the ghost of a dead Roman emperor being crowned in the grave." ”
The book mentions that there is a culture in academia that describes the medieval world as a state of stillness, but this may not actually be the case. The vikings and Magyars joined in, expanding the Christian community, but at the same time bringing with them all kinds of darkness and decadence, forcing Europe to innovate and move out of the Middle Ages. In other words, the "static, closed dark Middle Ages" is a pseudo-concept, Davis writes: "In fact, feudal society was based on a mess of disorganized, conflicting dependencies and loyalties, full of exceptions and exemptions, and the once clear hierarchy of obligations was confused by competing privileges, controversial rights, and fading obligations of generations," and this confusion was also the driving force for change.
The Age of Transition began with the Middle Ages, it began in the Renaissance, and ended in the First World War. The Renaissance began to transform Europe into a modern civilization. It was also in this process that the concept of "Europe" was given meanings other than geography and religion, and was no longer close to or even equivalent to the concept of "Christendom."
Compared with other civilizations, European civilization does have something special, which is manifested in uncertainty, especially mediterranean civilization. As the book says: "The civilizations of the Great River basins of the Nile, Indus, Mesopotamia and China lasted a long time, but lacked vitality in geographical and intellectual development." Mediterranean civilizations were stimulated by a constant movement that caused uncertainty and insecurity. Uncertainty inspires a constant intellectual uproar, insecurity inspires dynamic action... Like the cloak of Europa, the thoughts of these ancient navigators were constantly fluttering in the wind. ”
This fascinating uncertainty changed after the Industrial Revolution, presenting a kind of mental solidification. The most typical argument is, of course, "Eurocentrism", or "Western European Centrism". Although this hegemony at the level of civilization explains the trend of world civilization to some extent, the narrative of European history has also lost its original uncertainty, as well as the sparks and innovations of ideas derived from it.
What Davis wanted to do was to "design a coordinate system of events and space for European history." The formation of this coordinate system is full of interesting details. For example, Davis believes that an important reason for the miracle of ancient Greek civilization is "high intensity of sunlight". It is precisely because of the high quality of light that painters can see the shape and color of things with extraordinary precision, and develop a higher civilization based on this. At the same time, "the climate that is full of sunshine and changes with the seasons, which can provide impetus for outdoor life" and "the Aegean Sea that provides an ideal environment for navigation, commerce and colonization" made ancient Greece "an existing ancient civilization that is easy to inherit, introduce and develop".
Three
In the traditional view of "Western European centrism", many people regard ancient Greece as a perfect model because of the inheritance of the Renaissance. But rational people know that there is a dark side to any era, and ancient Greece was not only brilliant. In Davis's pen, he not only recorded the great achievements of Greek philosophy, literature, art, science, and polity, but also wrote about its dark side.
In any case, the legacy of ancient Greek civilization is enough for the whole of Europe to enjoy to this day. The flourishing of its vitality has long since surpassed the entity. It is precisely based on the admiration of ancient Greece that "Western European centrism" is not based on the economic leap and colonial cultural export brought about by the Age of Discovery and the Industrial Revolution, as some people understand, but can find its source in ancient Greek civilization, even if Greece is not a geographical Western European country.
The Greek-Persian War was seen as an indiscriminate attempt at the east and the west, symbolizing the opposition between the liberal West (Greece) and the authoritarian East (Persia), and was also the basis of the cognition of later Generations of Europeans. The war created a great and enduring sense of identity among the Greeks, freed from Persian rule, viewing Greece as a "free land," while the opposing East was full of despotism and ignorance.
This view was, of course, extreme, but at the time it was seen as the backbone of civilization against barbarism.
Ancient Roman civilization greatly exacerbated this extreme thinking, also based on its great splendor. Compared with the structure of the classical city-states, the Roman Republic had great cohesion, and through this cohesion the powerful forces generated by this cohesion, it promoted expansionism.
Because of the conflict with the Goths, the Romans always had great doubts about the "barbarians". In the eyes of the Romans, the empire was civilized, and the barbarians were uncivilized. Geographically, it differs from the estrangement of Greece and Persia, but in terms of "Western consciousness," it has something in common. Of course, the Romans would not have imagined that when the empire fell, the barbarians would invade, and eventually they would merge and form various pluralistic states on the ruins of the empire, which also became the basis for the many countries in the territory of Europe today. At the same time, the strong cultural export of Christianity has become the foundation of today's Europe. Even as post-Renaissance Europe struggled to get rid of the definition of "Christendom," this detachment was not isolation, but of making this old definition a part of itself and making itself broader.
That is to say, in the process of "Europe becoming Europe" – the former "Europe" refers to geography, the latter "Europe" refers to culture – the continent is full of self-confidence and has always had the insistence of "European center". It was first based on brilliant civilizations, then on Christianity, achieved geographical expansion, and then tried to get rid of the shackles of religion, and once again reached its peak with cultural export and colonialism.
Davis did not disagree with post-Renaissance Europe, especially during the Industrial Revolution, but there was no shortage of satires of hegemony. He wrote: "The vitality of 19th-century Europe far exceeded anything known before. Europe vibrates with unprecedented power: technological power, economic power, cultural power, intercontinental power. Its main symbols are its engines - locomotives, gas plants, generators. Whether in popular evolutionary theories that support 'survival of the fittest,' or in the philosophy of historical materialism that supports the triumph of the strongest classes, or in the cult of superhuman, primordial power itself seems to be a virtue. ”
In contrast, he seems to prefer the "weak," such as the Gypsies mentioned repeatedly in the book. Davis sympathized with their migration and proliferation, lamenting that "Europeans, accustomed to settling life, inevitably always harbor a complex mixture of hatred and fascination for a way of life that is completely different from theirs." ”
Isn't this millennium", the "differentness" of the Gypsies, in a sense, a negation of "Eurocentrism"?