In this blog post, we explore whether the concept of Europe has been shaped by comparisons with ‘non-Europe’. Explore the process of Eurocentric historical perception and identity formation.
How has the concept of ‘Europe’ been shaped by Europeans? Originally, Europe was an undefinable entity that defied homogeneity. Medieval Europeans had the idea of a Christian world, and more secular concepts only emerged after the collapse of church authority.
Europeans defined themselves in terms of “non-Europe,” or the “other world. Rather than Europe, “non-Europeans” have always been seen as the problem, and because they have different origins from Europeans, they are seen as not only incompetent, but also politically perpetually disorganized. Europeans traced their origins to Greece and Rome, and over time, they came to see the rest of the world as a mirror of Europe’s past. Over the centuries, Europe’s past became more clearly perceived through the rest of the world.
Europeans became aware of prehistory as they discovered new worlds, such as the Americas. The Americas were unknown in Greco-Roman times and were imaginary, not even written about in the Bible. When explorers discovered that stone-only peoples lived in the Americas and the Pacific, the idea of degeneracy began to gain traction. John Locke (1632-1704), however, argued that the Stone Age existed all over the world, and that those who still used stone tools were not the product of degeneration, but rather remnants of it, and his view became increasingly accepted.
It’s interesting to look at how Europeans thought about Egypt in relation to the concept of Europe. Europeans saw Egypt as belonging to a world outside of Europe; they thought it was the source of civilization, but they considered Egyptian knowledge to be useless. They believed that the Greeks had entered Egypt and brought it to life, and they saw European domination of Egypt in the modern era as proof of European superiority. Europeans also used the word “Orient” to refer to the “banal world outside of Europe” or to the second class, emphasizing European superiority. Compared to the dynamism of Europe, the East was perceived as inherently stagnant, inferior, and emotional.
By creating a “new history,” Europeans established the concept of “Europe. Europe was always an entity that was challenged through ideas and wars, but it played an important role in the process of looking at itself through the mirror of the ‘other world’. In this process, Europe found legitimacy to dominate the rest of the world, and the image of European progress and superiority reached its peak in the 19th century.
This narcissistic history is at the center of European identity today. Europeans perceived the outside world as inferior and saw domination as a duty, not a right. The rationale was to bring the ordered rationality of civilized society to the uncivilized, offering them the possibility of progress.
