hist notlari 1: when does European history begin?

Formations and Constructions: when does European history begin?

When talking about formation, one can mention several layers that are constantly changing and shaping the entity called Europe. This is also a process of inventing Europe through the creation of tradition. With the year 1983, constructivism in the interpretation of history gets a firmer place. Because empiricism and positivism were the dominant methods used before. Although in 1960s there were indicator of the coming change through E.H. Carr’s interpretation of history as the dialogue between the past and the present rather than the collection of facts. In the 1970s the interest into ancient history became the fashion as some other topics were already over-studied. This curiosity to other topics brought also with it new interpretations of the existed literature. For instance, in 1976 Edward Said came up with his theory that, the West has been constructing and forming an ideology while producing knowledge about the Orient. This was also one of the implementations of E.H. Carr to a specific field. After Orientalism, scholars started to question their knowledge about the most basic concepts like nation. Scholars like Renan, asked what a nation is constituted of. Since commonalities are only told to but not experienced by the majority of the people, ideology creates this sense of belongingness and connectedness with others in the community.

History starts when the individual voices of people (today known as historians) were heard. In time it became the first branch of social sciences, redefined and professionalized. But it cannot be perceived as a science, since it is not looking for formulation of laws. It is ideographical rather than nomothetical that is interested with reaching generalizable facts. It is interested with pure, ideology-free objectivity. But this was not always the case, as historians were not interested with other nation states.

Through the Napoleonic Wars, French Revolution and unifications of Italy and Germany nation states were taking shape. This was also the time of rising radical ascendency of Europe on the rest of the world. Before 1500 this was not the case, as civilizations (East Asian, Indian, Medieval Feudal etc.) have minimal contact with and no superiority against each other. At time one would rise above the others first through its economic domination that will reflect to military and political power. The gap opened up in the 1800s with the Industrial Revolution. The jump from agrarian to industrial society altered the existing balance and pushed the disparities to an extreme. Rise of Eurocentrism, the feeling of superiority over the rest coincides with the rise of nation states, nationalism and ideological currents.

Delanty argued that European idea is ambivalent, as it is not always about unity and inclusion but also exclusion and construction of difference based on norms of exclusion. The idea of Europe has been invented repetitively through the pressure of new collective identities. It is a normative concept on the contrary to belief that the cultural foundation is in Christianity, humanism and liberal democracy. On the same line, Gellner has mentioned that Europeans have taken their recent problems like the rise of authoritarian regimes as universal issues faced by mankind. Hence these turbulences have also shaped the human destiny. However, he also mentions that this assumption has been abandoned and Europe is no longer considered as a model to explain everything else. Mann relates Europe’s ‘superiority’ to the ecological difference with Asia, namely high proportion of coastlines and navigable rivers for transportation. Moreover, competition derived from surplus that is hidden from interference of state and inertial control also led to normative regulations. Another component that differs Europe from Asia is Christianity. The rational restless versus rational acceptance dichotomy is formed through Christianity’s provision of common social identity ensuring recognition of property rights and free exchange, whereas Asiatic belief systems are based on acceptance of social order. Hence these differentiations and interpretations have resulted in the three-balance view of the world.

The inner circle or the peak was perceived as the West, who also considered themselves as ‘historic’ nations with a past of progress and dynamic development. Especially the elites believed that they were the ones who ‘made’ the history since the Middle ages by creating an advanced civilization. Hence, they had the capitalist development, making the separate studying of politics, social relations and economic development possible. When the history department was created in universities, it only studied the European history. They were nationalistic in spirit and focusing on the country of origin. The periodicals of 19^th century reflected this trend and writers have not talked to each other till the end of the Second World War.

The outer circle consisted of the primitives, people without history or the ‘non-white’ communities. Their territories were limited, they have not established a language and believed in a monotheistic religion. Anthropology was studying them by collecting artifacts and facts about their lives. Especially with the colonization era British, French and Americans had much to study from the countries they colonized.  The circle in between is formed by the ‘Oriental’ i.e. Chinese, Japanese, Ottoman, Indian and Ethiopians. They are distinguished from the primitives through the states, complex bureaucracy and military they formed. But these nations are not fully historical nations who can end up being promoted or relegated to the third situation. Oriental studies looked into these civilizations with the help of linguistics that has done a lot of translation. The others’ history has been static and repetitive due to despotism and Asiatic way of economic development, which deprived oriental studies from a place in the departmental structure. The oriental despotism was rooted in the lack of checks and balances system, lawless and subservient on will of one person. Hence, the West and the Orient are binary opposites in which the western side is the stronger. The blockage and absence of development was ended after 1000 years with colonization. The underlying message is that West is the superior, but how and when did that happen?

Scholars like Wallerstein, Gellner and Stears asked the question in the opposite way: why did the East stay backwards? No private property and individual freedom have stood out as the most important reasons from the discussions. The catastrophes of 20^th century led to pessimism and exploration of knowledge on non-European civilizations. All national histories have started to been included in the department, in mean while the Euro-centric optimization was reversed. But this question persisted: how was it that just the European agrarian society developed capitalism? It is interesting to see that people just left behind 99% of their history formed by hunting, gathering and cultivation. Through the industrial revolution, accumulation of wealth and concentration of capital were made possible. The historians were emphasizing the uniqueness of the situation that triggered this revolution, which may be meaningless for the historians living 1000 years from now. But still the explanations focus on timeless and frozen West as the single biggest construction. Diamond and Cook wondered from when on this superiority started, Gellner and Stearns elaborated on the theories of how they became superior. Whereas Delanty looked into every stage of European history and found out that there has always been the ‘other’ for the West, although the name has been changing.