Norman Davies - Europe: A History

A History

NORMAN DAVIES

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Published by Pimlico 1997

Copyright Norman Davies 1996

Reprinted with corrections, 1997

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First published by Oxford University Press in 1996

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Norman Davies is Professor Emeritus of the University of London, a Senior Member of Wolfson College, Oxford, and the author of several books on European history, including Gods Playground and Heart of Europe.

PREFACE

T HIS book contains little that is original. Since most aspects of the subject have been thoroughly worked over by previous historians, primary research was rarely required. The books originality, such as it is, lies only in the selection, rearrangement, and presentation of the contents. The main aim was to map out a grid of time and space for European history and, by introducing a sufficiently comprehensive range of topics into the framework, to convey an impression of the unattainable whole.

The academic apparatus has been kept to a minimum. There are no notes relating to facts and statements that can be found in any of the established works of reference. Among the latter, special mention must be made of my twenty-nine volumes of The Encyclopaedia Britannica (11th edn., 191011), which far surpasses all its successors. Endnotes are only provided to substantiate less familiar quotations and sources of information beyond the range of the standard textbooks. One should not assume that the text necessarily agrees with interpretations found in the works cited: On ne stonnera pas que la doctrine expose dans le texte ne soit toujours daccord avec les travaux auxquels il est renvoy en note.

The academic considerations which underlay the writing of the present volume have been set out in the Introduction. But its design may need some explanation.

The text has been constructed on several different levels. Twelve narrative chapters pan across the whole of Europes past, from prehistory to the present. They gradually zoom in from the distant focus of Chapter I, which covers the first five million years, to the relatively close focus of Chapters XI and XII, which cover the twentieth century at roughly one page per year. Each chapter carries a selection of more specific capsules, picked out, as it were, by telephoto, and illustrating narrower themes that cut across the chronological flow. Each chapter ends with a wide-angle snapshot of the whole Continent as seen from one particular vantage-point. The overall effect may be likened to a historical picture album, in which panoramic tableaux are interspersed by a collection of detailed insets and close-ups. One hopes it is understood that the degree of precision attainable at these different levels will vary considerably. Indeed, a work of synthesis cannot expect to match the standards of scientific monographs that have rather different purposes in mind.

The twelve main chapters follow the conventional framework of European history. They provide the basic chronological and geographical grid into which all the other topics and subjects have been fitted. They concentrate on event-based history: on the principal political divisions, cultural movements, and socio-economic trends which enable historians to break the mass of information into manageable (though necessarily artificial) units. The chronological emphasis lies on the medieval and modern periods, where a recognizably European community can be seen to be operating. The geographical spread aims to give equitable coverage to all parts of the European Peninsula from the Atlantic to the Urals north, east, west, south, and centre.

At every stage, an attempt has been made to counteract the bias of Eurocentrism and Western civilization (see Introduction, pp. 1619,1931). But in a work of this scope it has not been possible to extend the narrative beyond Europes own frontiers. Suitable signals have been made to indicate the great importance of contingent subjects such as Islam, colonialism, or Europe overseas. East European affairs are given their proper prominence. Wherever appropriate, they are integrated into the major themes which affect the whole of the Continent. An eastern element is included in the exposition of topics such as the Barbarian invasions, the Renaissance, or the French Revolution, which all too often have been presented as relevant only to the West. The space given to the Slavs can be attributed to the fact that they form the largest of Europes ethnic families. National histories are regularly summarized; but attention has been paid to the stateless nations, not just to the nation-states. Minority communities, from heretics and lepers to Jews, Romanies, and Muslims, have not been forgotten.

In the last chapters, the priorities of the Allied scheme of history have not been followed (see Introduction, pp. 3942). Nor have they been polemically contested. The two World Wars have been treated as two successive acts of a single drama, preference being given to the central continental contest between Germany and Russia. The final chapter on post-war Europe takes the narrative to the events of 198991 and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The argument contends that 1991 saw the end of a geopolitical arena, dubbed the Great Triangle, whose origins can be dated to the turn of the twentieth century (see Appendix III, p. 1312), and whose demise offers a suitable hiatus in a continuing story. The approach of the twenty-first century sees the opening of a new opportunity to design a new Europe.

The capsules, of which there are some 300 (see Map 30 and Appendix I), perform several purposes. They draw attention to a wide variety of specifics which would otherwise find no place among the generalizations and simplifications of synthetic history-writing. They sometimes introduce topics which cross the boundaries of the main chapters; and they illustrate all the curiosities, whimsies, and inconsequential sidestreams which over-serious historians can often overlook. Above all, they have been selected to give as many glimpses as possible of the new methods, the new disciplines, and the new fields of recent research. They provide samples from some sixty categories of knowledge, which have been distributed over the chapters in the widest possible scatter of period, location, and subject-matter. For arbitrary reasons of the books length, the publishers patience, and the authors stamina, the original capsule list had to be reduced. None the less, it is hoped that the overall pointilliste technique will still create an effective impression, even with a smaller number of points.