Abstract
Reviewed by: Florian Greiner, University of Augsburg, Germany
Recent years have certainly not suffered from a scarcity of surveys dealing with the history of European unification: Despite or perhaps precisely because of the obvious problems currently besetting the European integration process, there appears to be lively interest in discovering why a continent once so plagued by dissention was not merely pacified during the second half of the twentieth century, but also experienced a form of institutionalized unity. Patrick Pasture, Professor of History and Director of the Masters Program in European Studies: Transnational and Global Perspectives at KU Leuven, has now presented a further study with his Imagining European Unity since 1000 AD. What distinguishes his book from the others?
The first striking aspect is the fact that Pasture, unlike earlier authors, is not a recognized expert of long standing in the field of European scholarship. While he still presents an extremely masterful survey of the existing literature, this certainly allows him to open some refreshingly innovative perspectives in his book. At the same time, it is Pasture’s self-described academic socialization as a ‘globetrotter’ (viii) which inspires his critical questioning of Eurocentric interpretations. The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the EU in 2012, which forms the analytical anchor of his story, leads him to point out that ‘Europeans sometimes seem unaware that their cherished and carefully cultivated image as the harbinger of peace, advocate of human rights and “soft power” is not always convincing to others because of its past’ (3).
Secondly, the book distinguishes itself by its brevity. In barely two hundred pages of text, Pasture undertakes a tour de force through the more than thousand-year-old history of the concept of Europe. It goes without saying that this entails both points of focus as well as omissions that are open to dispute: as concisely as Pasture describes the various European ideas and as strongly as he illuminates certain contextual relationships (particularly the religious aspect of European thought), some things, such as economic concepts of unification, tend to remain rather colourless; it is no coincidence that one of the leading actors in this field during the first half of the 20th century, the Luxemburg industrialist Émile Mayrisch, has his name consistently misspelled (in different ways) in the text (95, 122, 126) as well as in the index. Also baffling is his almost complete omission of the actual European integration process after 1950. Especially in view of the author’s intended deconstruction of the Europeans’ purportedly much too Eurocentric and positive image of Europe as a pacifying and liberalizing saviour, it would undoubtedly have been analytically profitable to subject the origin of this interpretation as well as its blind spots in contemporary history to closer scrutiny.
Thirdly, in contrast to many other accounts, Pasture does not adhere to a strictly chronological outline that follows the familiar caesurae in the history of politics and ideas. Rather, he structures his narrative along his own leitmotifs, especially the ‘relationship between European organization and the idea of peace in Europe’ (4), and dispenses with clear periodization. Instead he repeatedly highlights continuities in European thought, whereby he refrains from reducing ‘Europe’ to federal-democratic concepts but sees it as encompassing numerous anti-liberal projects as well. Thus, Pasture convincingly questions the teleological image of European unity as a guarantor of peace, stressing the often violent, nationalistic quality of European ideas, for example of Euro-Fascism or the German Großraum theory.
Fourthly, Pasture focuses not only on Europe, but also and especially on European interaction with the rest of the world. Inspired by postcolonial studies and global history, he asks about the ‘inside’ as well as the ‘outside’. According to Pasture, it is not an oft-postulated diversity that constitutes European identity, but rather Europe’s strong emphasis on and indeed obsession with otherness, as well as the lengthy European ‘search for homogeneity’ (8), whose roots can be traced back to medieval Christianity and all-too-frequently led to forcible exclusion as well as European nationalism. Thus in the interwar years, to give one example, the self-determination of national minorities, which had been conceived as a liberal democratic model, was unable to fulfil its essentially pacific function, instead becoming a driving force for practices of ethnic cleansing and discrimination (99–102). At the same time, attempts at European unification were often conceived in opposition to the interests of the rest of the world. Thus, borrowing from Peo Hansen and Stefan Jonsson’s seminal book Eurafrica, he interprets the early integration of Europe after World War II as an attempt to safeguard European colonial rule.
Even though the teleological success narrative of European unification against which Pasture writes so relentlessly and competently has been subjected to serious questioning for several years, the study nevertheless leaves a clearly positive impression, notwithstanding the points of criticism mentioned above. It is a fluently written account with a strong premise and always moves in the realm of the latest scholarship. Indeed, its critical meta-narrative stressing the dark sides and shortcomings attending the imaginings of European unity appears both timely and empirically sound. In combining the history of European integration with postcolonial and global studies, this book without doubt not only sets new accents for European studies but also qualifies as an introductory textbook for students. As such, it is even more gratifying that it has recently appeared in paperback form at a significantly more affordable price.