The Myth of Europe

Please allow me to present for you a concept - as briefly as possible - for which my academic studies and present experiences are in concert, and with which I think you might enjoy a new outlook on a variety of subjects.

There is no such thing as "Europe" - and there never has been.

Geographically, Europe was awarded the status of a "continent" for political, rather than cartographic or geologic reasons. The borders of the so-called "Europe" are technically the Ural mountains, which run East of the Caspian sea, approximate with the interior of Iran, and somewhere in the South Caucasus mountains, again bordering Iran after circumnavigating Turkey. This definition is the continental divide - the line that demarkates which direction water will flow - but the logic required to separate Europe and Asia thus requires every continent be split into 2 - with California, Washington & Oregon now part of North-West America, and the rest of the US on the continent of North-East America.

In actuality, "Europe" is nothing more than a rather small peninsula affixed to the NW corner of the greater Eurasian landmass, of which India - by virtual of actual geology - has more claim to independence than Europe, despite its rather imperial designation as the world's only "subcontinent."

Exercise #1 - Try putting your finger on the "middle" of Europe. You might think Switzerland, or Prague? Actually, it would be in the Ukraine.

Politically, of course, we can think of Europe as those countries in the European Union, but that would be ridiculous, as the EU has the potential to expand at will. And what precedence is there for 1 country = 1 continent (besides Australia)?

Culturally, "Europe" is an even more subjective reality. Take for example the case of Georgia (not the Peach state), which by any geographic definition must be part of Europe. While the people of Georgia consider themselves to be fully European, especially by their predominant Christian faith, the same label is not applied to Georgians by their so-called co-Continentals.

It's hard to say what makes "Europe" so "European." Certainly it is a complex mixture of social history, political and economic contact, and yes, cultural markers like religion, language and art. There is also a not insubstantial racial element to our modern understanding of Europe, which is not substantiated by actual reality. Put simply, not all "Europeans" are "Caucasian," no matter how broadly we choose to paint the term (Consider the Moors, the Balkans, even the once-Altaic Hungarians).



It has also been expressed that to be "European" is to be a direct beneficiary of the monumental events of the 14-17th centuries which supposedly shaped what we conceive of as modernity, specifically the Renaissance/Enlightenment, Political Liberalism, the Reformation, and eventually, the Industrial Revolution. To be "European" is to claim not only to be the torch-bearers of an intellectual tradition stretching back to the (partially-"European") empires of Rome and Greece, but in fact to make such a claim as the Exclusive inheritors of this line.

That the "Continent" was itself a dark place of no considerable contribution to this "Western" civilization until at least the 14th century (a gap of, say 2,000 years at least), or that it's eventual discovery of "its own" intellectual heritage was made possible only through the intermediary of other - mostly Arab, Persian and African - translations and commentaries is somehow overlooked.

Exercise #2 - Start as far West as Europe allows (Portugal, Spain, England, France), and start naming countries as you move East. See how far you get when listing off "European" countries you know by memory. When this fails, consult a map, and then check to see how "European" you still consider wherever you got stumped.

A last demonstration, the aforementioned Industrial Revolution, hailed as the great Triump of Europe, which in fact only took place in England, and was later exported to France and Germany. It's arrival in Italy, Romania, and "European" Russia was barely ahead of its implementation in India, and far behind Japan or America.

Further, as you proceed East, you fill find cultures competing to assert their "European-ness" by their link to Orthodox (sometimes called "Eastern Orthodox") Christianity, on the assumption that Istanbul was, for a time, the navel of Europe, not Rome. With Orthodoxy come the Slavs and Russia, which following its territorial conquests of the 17-18th centuries must include, culturally, all of Siberia in a concept of "European," just as New Mexico is no longer "Navajo," but "American."

There may be no "Europe" as a place or a people, but there certainly is a "Europe" as a term which can be used to separate, for purposes of inclusion or exclusion, one group of people, concepts or practices, from another.

What I would ask of you, the reader and presumably a thoughful and intelligent individual, is to contemplate why such a term was fashioned, and why it continues to have such weighty significance despite its demonstrable mendacity.

Obviously it's ideological, and equally clear is that it is most often used to the benefit of "Europeans," who use the concept to demonstrate their superiority in some way to the excluded Other, a practice which is not uniquely European. In fact, in an interesting twist, America has long used the term "European" to denigrate it as the Other to the American self-preception of newness, freedom, youth, etc.

Why do I go on-and-on about this? Because I'm in Bishkek, which by no definition that I know - cultural, geographic, political, linguistic, religious - can be construed as "European."

However, when I tell my friends that I'm going to Kyrgyzstan for the summer, the most common response I received - no offense buddies - was, "have fun in Europe."

Much to their credit, my friends all meant well, and further they are - every single one of them - bright, well-informed, open-minded people, almost entirely Americans, but most with some experience of worldly travel themselves.

So there are a few things I find interesting here:

Out of what I assume to be geographic ignorance, educated Americans assume Kyrgyzstan to be somewhere in "Europe" for reasons I, and possibly even then, don't understand.

By every definition I can imagine, Kyrgyzstan has no place in a roster of "European" capitals. And yet... Living in Bishkek, I still feel unquestionably immersed in the "Western/European world," insofar as this is understood to be only a concept.

It might be fair to say that Kyrgyzstan - or at least Bishkek - are not "European" or "Western," but rather have been "Westernized." While I don't (quite) question the truth of the underlying assertion - the Kygyz culture (itself a Russian invention via categorization) has been changed largely by outside forces to more closely resemble the concept of "Europe / the West" - I do take offense at the idea of "Westernization" on the same grounds that I reject the myth of "Europe."

If France, Germany and Britain, the key-3 of the "Europe" identity, were themselves "Westernized" by the teachings of Plato, Ibn Sina, al-Ghazali, Heraclitus, and a wealth of Persian scholars, not to mention the fundamental roots of the Industrial Revolution in Indian hydraulic sciences, how is this in any way "Westernization?"

Isn't Bishkek just a part of the same process of cultural, intellectual, and material exchange that has shaped every non-isolated society on Earth? Since there is clearly no such thing as a neatly-defined "Europe," the broader idea of "the West" as opposed to "The East" (universally applied to anything non-Western, and totally ignoring the possibility, for example, of the Global South - Africa, South America, Pacifica) must be even more nonsensical.

Was America "Easternized" by the original migration across the Beiring straight? What about Democracy - a concept spawned (to a very limited extent) in the Eastern Mediterranean through a heritage of Anatolian transfers? Or Christianity? Aren't all major world religions, in fact, non-European and therefore "Eastern?"

I'm not suggesting we truncate the formal name to just the E____ Union, or that the idea of "Europe" is going away anytime soon, despite its preposterous construction.

What I'm suggesting is that we, as discerning individuals, be cautious in our use of the term "Europe" and all the baggage it entails, and that we be especially attentative to the motivations and assumptions employed by those who use "Europe" to describe or justify certain ideas, people, or practices.

So in answer to the friendly salutation I have so often received, "have fun in Europe," I must enigmatically respond, "but I've never been to Europe - - or perhaps I've neer left?"