Searching for the Origins of European Identity

The vast erudition of Professor Rudolph Binion induces a feeling of awe in me and many other colleagues. The Leff Families Professor of Modern European History at Brandeis University has such a powerful intellect and is so incredibly knowledgeable that it is difficult to accept the as-

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signment of evaluating his work. Indeed, several distinguished colleagues decided to withdraw from participation in this symposium for a variety of reasons: they felt themselves to be inadequately prepared to undertake it, they feared offending a scholar they hold in such high esteem, or because of the demands of their own scholarship. When I reported this to Rudy, anonymously of course, he urged me to assure these individuals that he welcomed the most severe critiques of his work. Regrettably, they did not change their minds.

Although I have taught European history at three different universities and Ramapo College since I was trained in Modern English and European History at one of the world’s leading research institutions, I had to struggle with my own inclination to withdraw from this symposium on the grounds that I simply do not know enough about the fields of Medieval and Early Modern European history. However, despite my deficiencies of knowledge I have gone ahead on the grounds that we will only develop knowledge in general and psychohistory in particular by exposing our limitations as well as our capabilities. So we will let the reader and Professor Binion be the judges of any value in my comments.

My essential question is why start with the Black Death in the Middle Ages in pursuit of the origin of European identity. There is so much that has occurred between the 14^th century and the second half of the 20^th century when Western Europeans stopped killing each other regularly and instead felt sufficiently European to manifest their identity in a Common Market, a European Union, and common constitution in the face of being caught between America and Russia. I find it problematic to go back to such early origins. However, if one must go to the earlier period in the search for origins, why not start with the Christian Normans confronting Muslims during the Crusades?

Among peoples, a common identity is usually formed

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in relationship to others who are seen as quite different—as strangers. When in the later 11^th century Pope Urban II called upon Western European knights to stop fighting each other and to instead fight the infidel and to assist the Christians of Constantinople who were in danger of being overrun by the Turks. His call was based on a sense of the commonality of Western Christianity in opposition to the otherness of the Turks. Christians and Muslims viewed each other as enemies, with the Christians seeing themselves as Europeans. (Subsequently, crusaders in the pay of the Venetians would hasten the demise of the Orthodox Christians of the Eastern Roman Empire.) The idea of Western Christians taking time out from their internecine wars to fight the infidel was recurrent. Well after the end of the crusades, Henry VII (1485-1509) of England would instruct his son and heir to continue the fight against the infidel. The threat from Islam was a military danger to Western Europe as recently as the prolonged siege of Vienna by the Turks in 1683, when the Austrian Empire was saved by the Polish army. Although Muslims have remained a presence in Europe to the present, the reluctance of the European Union to accept Turkey into membership is a reflection of this Islam country still being viewed as part of the “other.” Of course, among other things critics of acceptance argue that only a small part of Turkey is literally in Europe.

In modern history the people of Western Europe do not consider all of the approximately 6.8% of the world’s landmass referred to as geographic Europe as occupied by Europeans. For example, although the Russian Empire represented about half of the European landmass, Western Europeans often viewed Russians as more Asian than European. In studying 20^th century European history I have come across a variety of scholarly books with titles like Russia and Europe (1945, 1973) representing a sense of separateness from Russians. Although many European rulers may have

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literally been related, often through Queen Victoria, British ambivalence about being a part of the European family of nations is reflected in such books as Britain in Europe: 1789-1914 (1945) by. R. W. Seton-Watson.

The establishment of European identity through struggles with Islam is directly connected to suffering at the hands of the Turks and other Muslims, as well as the fantasies about them. Christian Europeans were terrified of Islamic armies, as well as their strange customs, laws, and religions. Christian crusading children were sold into slavery in Islamic North Africa and, as late as the end of the 19^th century in the Ottoman Empire, taken from their families to be turned into Islamic soldiers or castrated to serve administratively in the Ottoman Empire. Perhaps the forced conversion of their children was most frightening to Christian Europeans. The surge of Islamophobia in the wake of Islamic terrorism in the early 21^st century and a growing Muslim presence harkens back to these earlier dangers.

A few observations about the ethnocentrism of Europeans might be helpful. The narcissism of the Europeans led their geographers to decide that their corner of the Afro-European-Asian landmass was a separate continent, despite the lack of real geographic barriers. Their narcissism also led them to consider that when they were conquering, exploiting, and colonizing often older and equally complex civilizations around the world, they confused their own cultures, customs, languages, laws, and religions with civilization. This narcissism led them to start to set organizations to lessen their own internecine violence to see them as representing the whole world, thus the League of Nations, United Nations, World Court, and so forth. Consequently, some good things have followed from the presumptions of Europeans and their descendents in North America and elsewhere.

Despite my doubts about finding the origins of a

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European identity in the Black Death and preference for viewing it as a development over many centuries in relationship to Islam and others, I commend Rudolph Binion not only for his enormous erudition and the logical exposition of his theory, but also for getting me and others to think about such a big issue, deepening our knowledge in the process. Once again he has demonstrated himself to be a pioneer psychohistorian and world-class scholar.

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