Narrating Europe: (Re)Thinking Europe and its Many Pasts (original) (raw)

In an essay that was part of a string of works aimed at unravelling the meaning of 'Europe', J.G.A. Pocock emphasised the indeterminacy of its identity as a constituent element of any discourse about Europe. Its resistance and resilience against all attempts to fix its boundaries and to define its past would be the main component of Europe's (self)representations. Viewed from such an angle, European identity might be, at best, the recognition of a plurality of different cultural values and social and political practices that cannot be subsumed under a unifying and unified narrative. If anything, Pocock suggested, it is the history of such an indeterminacy, so often overlooked or ignored, that ought to be told. 1 Similar doubts are shared by many others. As Richard Evans has recalled, A.J.P. Taylor once went as far as to assert that 'European history is whatever the historian wants it to be'. It was, as he saw it, but a chaotic collection of ideas and events taking place in or tightly connected to 'the area we call Europe'. However, he also had to admit that he was not sure what such an area was and that, therefore, he was 'pretty well in a haze about the rest!' 2 According to Evans, Taylor might have been rightthough he then added, importantly, that what historians wanted constantly changed. 3 But Evans's remark hints at the crux of the matter. In fact, it questions the interests of historians, their duties, and the relationship they entertain with 'their' pasts. Importantly, the urge to overcome the historical boundaries of national pasts, so tightly connect to the desire to find a common European past, has emerged time and again when nationalism has shown its darkest side or when the political limits of the nation-state have become manifest. At such historical junctures, in times of crisis, many scholars have turned to Europe. As has been noted, the fact that between the 1920s and the 1950s attempts to find a single, common European history multiplied is telling. 4 Henri Pirenne's Histoire de l'Europe, written during the First World War * This special issue is the result of the 6 th annual symposium of the Research Network on the History of the Idea of Europe. We are grateful to the Council for European Studies (Columbia University) and Sciences Po in Paris for hosting our workshop as part of the 22 nd International Conference of Europeanists. 1