The return of the Europeans

Reflections on ‘Reflections on the Revolution in Europe’, Part Eight

Part One: Europe’s absent-minded revolution
Part Two: Welcoming the stranger
Part Three: Leaving behind the history written in blood
Part Four: On French assimilation and British multiculturalism
Part Five: Team Islam and Team France
Part Six: Disappointment of the Diaspora
Part Seven: Tolerance and Terror

‘Islam is a magnificent religion that has also been, at times over the centuries, a glorious and generous culture. But, all cant to the contrary, it is in no sense Europe’s religion and it is in no sense Europe’s culture.’

That was one theme of Christopher Caldwell’s history of post-war Europe, and while the scale and scope of cant has only grown, it nevertheless remains so. The word ‘Europeans’ was first used by a churchman in the eighth century to describe the combined tribes – Latin and Germanic – who defeated the Arab-Berber force outside Poitiers in 732. Christendom, a word that also came to be used in the Early Middle Ages, was ‘the West’, but as the West went global it became in some ways a victim of its own success. As its lost faith in both Christianity and its own moral righteousness, the West’s heightened sense of its values came to be a weakness in a hostile and illiberal globe. As one European cabinet minister said in 2006: ‘we live in a borderless world in which our new mission is defending the border not of our countries but civility and human rights.’

As the continent became more focussed on its mission and values, Caldwell noted that towards the end of the century even Europe’s rationale for immigration began to change; initially used as a way of filling labour shortages, it became instead a moral duty to the global south. This was not decided upon at any time; as an idea it just grew and spread, and it had profound and troubling implications for its political systems.