Europe: A History
A History
NORMAN DAVIES
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Published by Pimlico 1997
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Copyright © Norman Davies 1996
Reprinted with corrections, 1997
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First published by Oxford University Press in 1996
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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 book’s 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., 1910–11), 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 s’étonnera pas que la doctrine exposée dans le texte ne soit toujours d’accord avec les travaux auxquels il est renvoyé 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 Europe’s 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. 16–19,19–31). But in a work of this scope it has not been possible to extend the narrative beyond Europe’s 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 Europe’s 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. 39–42). 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 1989–91 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 book’s length, the publishers’ patience, and the author’s 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.
Each capsule is anchored into the text at a specific point in time and space, and is marked by a headword that summarizes its contents. Each can be tasted as a separate, self-contained morsel; or it can be read in conjunction with the narrative into which it is inserted.
The snapshots, of which there are twelve, are designed to present a series of panoramic overviews across the changing map of Europe. They freeze the frame of the chronological narrative, usually at moments of symbolic importance, and call a temporary halt to the headlong charge across enormous expanses of time and territory. They should help the reader to catch breath, and to take stock of the numerous transformations which were progressing at any one time on many different fronts. They are deliberately focused from a single vantage-point, and make no attempt to weigh the multiplicity of opinions and alternative perspectives which undoubtedly existed. To this extent, they are shamelessly subjective and impressionistic. In some instances, they border on the controversial realm of ‘faction’, combining known events with undocumented suppositions and deductions. Like several other elements in the book, they may be judged to exceed the conventional bounds of academic argument and analysis. If so, they will draw attention not only to the rich variety of Europe’s past but also to the rich variety of prisms through which it can be viewed.
The book has been largely written in Oxford. It owes much to the rich and ancient resources of the Bodleian Library, and to that Library’s rich and ancient standards of service. It was also helped by scholarships kindly provided by the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna and by Harvard University’s Ukrainian Research Institute. It has been coloured by several visits to the mainland of Europe during its writing, notably by impressions garnered in Belarus and Ukraine, on the road from Bavaria to Bologna, in the French and Swiss Alps, in the Netherlands, in Hungary, and in the Vendée.
I wish to acknowledge a period of one year’s study leave which was granted by the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London, on the condition that private funds were raised against the cost of replacement teaching. At other times, when leave was not granted, the book has possibly benefited from the discipline of writing in every sort of inspiring locale—on trains, in planes, in canteens, in hospital waiting-rooms, on Hawaiian beaches, on the back row of other people’s seminars, even in a crematorium car park. I also acknowledge a special subsidy provided by Heinemann and Mandarin in order to speed the preparation of auxiliary materials.
I wish to express my thanks to colleagues and friends who have served as readers for particular chapters or sections: Barry Cunliffe, Stephanie West, Riet van Bremen, David Morgan, David Eltis, Fania Oz-Salzburger, Mark Almond, and Timothy Garton Ash; to a legion of helpers and consultants including Tony Armstrong, Sylvia Astle, Alex Boyd, Michael Branch, Lawrence Brockliss, Caroline Brownstone, Gordon Craig, Richard Crampton, Jim Cutsall, Rees Davies,
Regina Davy, Dennis Deletant, Geoffrey Ellis, Roger Greene, Hugo Gryn, Michael Hurst, Geraint Jenkins, Mahmud Khan, Maria Korzeniewicz, Grzegorz Król, Ian McKellen, Dimitri Obolensky, Laszlo Peter, Robert Pynsent, Martyn Rady, Mary Seton-Watson, Heidrun Speedy, Christine Stone, Athena Syriatou, Eva Travers, Luke Treadwell, Peter Varey, Maria Widowson, and Sergei Yakovenko; to a team of secretarial assistants, headed by ‘Kingsley’; to Sarah Barrett, copy-editor; to Sally Kendall, designer; to Gill Metcalfe, picture researcher; to Roger Moorhouse, indexer; to Ken Wass and Tim Aspen, cartographers; Andrew Boag, illustrator; to my editors at OUP and at Mandarin; to the project manager Patrick Duffy; and especially to my wife, without whose support and forbearance the project could never have come to fruition. There is no prize for finding the black cat.