Europe the division of togetherness

 Long ago, in the 1960’s I studied on a course entitled, “Modern European History: 1492-1914”.   The reason for the ending of the period with the First World War is obvious to most people but what is the significance of 1492 as the beginning of the modern age in Europe?

Two events occurred both of which were intimately related.  The first was the voyage of discovery made by Columbus to the Americas and the second was the final surrender of the Moors in Granada and the expulsion of the Moors from Europe.  Both these events were orchestrated by the monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, the first rulers of a newly united Spain.   But what connected these events was not just a single nation or monarchy but a new imagination about Europe and its place in the world. 

Although it is sometimes hard for modern Europeans to imagine, the idea and reality of Europe has not always been around.   The notion of the world being divided into three continents, Africa (usually called Libya). Asia and Europe, can be detected in older Greek writings both from the mainland of Greece and from Crete.  But the definition of Europe as a geographical entity was somewhat fluid and the term really disappeared during Roman times. 

What we now think of as the heartland of Western Europe was simply part of the Roman Empire which included North Africa, and large portions of the Middle East.  The Mediterranean basin was the significant centre for trade, travel, industry, commerce, religion, politics, ideas, conflict and culture.

The end of the Roman Empire in the West (we sometimes forget that the Empire continued for another 600 years or so in the East – the Byzantine Empire), meant that there was no cohesive political, military, religious or cultural force in Western Europe.  Gradually Christianity began to re-emerge as the single most important civilizing force – mainly but not exclusively around the monastic settlements.  By the time of Charlemagne, around the year 800, the term Europe surfaced again.

This time, the idea of Europe had a different meaning.  It was no longer centered on Crete and Greece – these lands were now part of the Byzantine Empire, but much more on what we would think of today as modern France and Germany.  Europe was now connected with the idea of a new Roman Empire in the west, a civilization inspired by a Christian worldview.  This was to be the Holy Roman Empire.  From the time of Charlemagne until Ferdinand and Isabella, Europe’s borders were almost synonymous with the spread of the western Latin Church based in Rome. 

Throughout this 700 year period Europe struggled to define and defend its existence and there were two or three external threats.  The first was Islam and conflict with Islam took two forms.   One was that of the crusades in the Holy Land and the second was the gradual ending of Muslim rue in Southern France, Spain, Italy, and many of the islands of the Mediterranean including islands such as Malta.  The second threat was from the East – the idea of a Mongol invasion was very real and later that threat became somewhat fused with the threat from Islam because the Mongols eventually embraced Islam.

The third threat was the economic reality of being cut off from the riches of the East by the effective stranglehold that Muslim rulers in the Middle East had on trade between the Far East and Europe.  The leaders of Europe were well aware that the centre of the world had always been balanced somewhere between China, India and the Middle East.  Europe was on the periphery and excluded from access to the riches (both economic and cultural) of the Far East. 

Ferdinand and Isabella dared to dream of a different world order.  The voyage of Columbus was an attempt to reach the East by going west.  This audacious attempt to change the world mirrored the attempts of the Portuguese to get to the East by going round Africa instead of using the traditional trade routes. Their hope was to build on a newly united Spain and increasingly confident Christian Europe and to rival the wealth of Muslim lands and the Far East. 

As we now know, they succeeded on a staggering scale to reconfigure the history of the world through the discovery of the New World in the Americas. Europe had felt encircled, cut off and threatened for hundreds of years.  1492 marked the moment when, at least for a time, Europe would redefine the world’s centre.