European society

“ The development of nationalism and Europeanism is still incomplete, but the drive in that direction has thus far survived the fragmenting forces of self-determination and political independence which have played so vital a role in human society since the beginning of the present century. Europeanization is still a dream rather than a reality. The forces of regionalism, nationalism, and separatism still dominate European life. But the ideology and techniques of Europeanization are widely recognized, accepted and put into practice. ”

“ My purpose has been to exhibit the European nations as a group of historic individuals with purposes, opportunities, and limitations analogous to those of actual individuals. An individual has no meaning apart from the society in which his individuality has been formed. A national state is capable of development only in relation to the society of more or less nationalized states in the midst of which its history has been unfolded. ”

“ The rise and growth of European civilization is too vast and complex a subject to be thrown into proper perspective and relation in a few paragraphs; but in all its details, as in its main features, it illustrates the truth that progress goes on just as society tends toward closer association and greater equality. Civilization is co-operation. Union and liberty are its factors. ”

“ Europe is therefore more than an economic space of contestation in which our citizens are invited or required to deliver up their lives in the service of an abstract model of economy and society whose core assumptions they are assumed not to question or put to the democratic test in elections. ”

“ Amid empires shrivelled into deserts, amid the wrecks of great cities, a single column or obelisk of which nations import for the prime ornament of their mud-built capitals, amid arts forgotten, commerce annihilated, fragmentary literatures and populations destroyed, the European talks of progress, because, by an ingenious application of some scientific acquirements, he has established a society which has mistaken comfort for civilisation. ”

“ See also, Koskenniemi, ‘Histories of International Law’. ↑ In the years leading up to World War One, however, a number of non-European communities became included in the ‘family of nations’ and recognised as sovereign states. European jurists had started to accept that some non-European societies could live up to the ‘standard of civilisation’ and therefore be included as members of the international society. ”

“ But, aside from the fact that in Europe this political and social evolution had taken centuries, there was also the working of the law of the survival of the fittest. In European nations it had been the element, always composite, which deserved to live, that formed the nucleus of a nationality. ”

“ By ones or twos, men and women might be accepted into the established church, marry into the dominant race, rise to the governing class; but the exceptions proved nothing. The European believed in his station in life, his civil status, the standing of his family in the financial or social world. ”

“ What has made the European family of nations an improving, instead of a stationary portion of mankind? Not any superior excellence in them, which, when it exists, exists as the effect, not as the cause; but their remarkable diversity of character and culture. Individuals, classes, nations, have been extremely unlike one another: they have struck out a great variety of paths, each leading to something valuable ”

“ Thus may we say that all the Powers of Europe form a 'system' [33] among themselves uniting them by community of commerce, letters, manners, religion, and international law, and by regard for the maintenance of a resulting equilibrium, which it may be no one's special concern to maintain but which it would be less easy to destroy than many people think. There is a Society of the Peoples of Europe, with its roots in the past. ”

“ Ladies and gentlemen, when you are at home, you will sense that this is the situation for many people in Europe today. They are asking themselves, "What should Europe be?" "Why do we need Europe?" "What holds Europe together in its innermost being?" ”

“ What the Europeans shared with each other, which in their own eyes distinguished them from everyone else and made them capable of ‘discovering’ and ‘civilising’ the rest of the world, was a distinctive kind of consciousness or conscience. ”

“ And that is what the people of Europe, those we represent here, expect from us.
Today we need a stronger Union. Stronger to respond to the longings of the European citizens, to promote the European economy and defend European values. ”

“ The next two years should be spent in the great towns of Europe, in order to remove awkwardness of manner, prejudices of race and feeling, and to get the outward forms of a European citizen. All this would sharpen his wits, give him more interest in life, more keys to knowledge. ”

“ This immense continent being peopled with elements of European civilization, could not remain a mere appendix to Europe. But when it is connected with Europe by a thousand social, moral, and material ties, by blood, religion, language, science, civilization, and commerce, to believe that it can rest isolated in politics from Europe, would be just such a fault as it was that England did not believe in time the necessity of America's independence. ”

“ The more cheering is this one thing, which we do see and know—that its tendency is to a universal European commonweal; that the [102] wisest in all nations will communicate and co-operate; whereby Europe will again have its true Sacred College and council of Amphictyons; wars will become rarer, less inhuman; and in the course of centuries, such delirious ferocity in nations, as in individuals it already is, may be proscribed and become obsolete for ever. ”

“ In coming to understand a mood which so fully reflects an unknown world, the European mind will discover principles which will make it rise superior to itself. May this broad comprehension of human thought lead Europe to estimate with greater justice a civilization numbering its years by thousands, and to refrain from thwarting the fulfillment of its destiny. ”

“ Let us, whatever we do, fight for and work towards great and sound principles for the European system. The first of those principles which we should keep before us is the principle of nationality— [cheers] —that is to say, not the conquest or subjugation of any great community, or of any strong race of men, but the setting free of those races which have been subjugated and conquered. ”

“ Social democracy with its organisation encompasses the masses from one end of Europe to the other. To-day the same desires fire the men of Paris, London, St. Petersburg, Vienna, and Rome. And already one common formula directs their exertions: money.
Races des vieux pays, forces désaccordées,
Vous nouez vos destins épars, depuis le temps
Que l'or met sous vos fronts le même espoir battant. [5]
Independently of the frontiers of countries, on a broad-based foundation, a unified race, a new community, the European, is in process of formation. ”

“ The old order and principles of Europe were to receive a new impress, and the decaying system of the middle age to be replaced by a polity of revolution, which should finally change the relations of nations, the types of European government, and the ideas of spiritual control. ”

“ Those small States which will soon have disappeared from the map of Europe, besides their vast superiority to most great empires in financial prosperity, in the material well-being of the inhabitants, and in many cases in political liberty, pacific tastes, and intellectual progress, form one of the chief refuges of that spirit of content, repose, and retrospective reverence which is pre-eminently wanting in modern civilisation, and their security is in every age one of the least equivocal measures of international morality. ”

“ And the European, proud in his might, in his strength, in his civilization and his humanity, rules arrogantly, blindly, selfishly, egoistically, amidst all the intricate cog-wheels of [151] his authority, which he slips into gear with the certainty of clockwork, controlling its every movement, till to the foreigner, the outside observer, this overlordship of tangible things, this colonizing of territory alien in race and mind, appears a masterpiece, a very world created. ”

“ Friendly relations between the European governments and ourselves, may and will exist—such only as the mutual and reciprocal benefits resulting from trade and Commerce can create: but beyond this, the governments of Europe, as governments, must entertain towards us an implacable hatred, and to destroy us and blot our name and nation from the earth, is the first and most cherished object of their hearts. ”

“ We must never forget that we are the inheritors of a profoundly important set of European values – Greek democracy, Roman law, the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the great democratic revolution that began in France. ”

“ Europe has been teaching us the higher obligations of public good above those of the family and the clan, and the sacredness of law, which makes society independent of individual caprice, secures for it continuity of progress, and guarantees justice to all men of all positions in life. Above all things Europe has held high before our minds the banner of liberty, through centuries of martyrdom and achievement,—liberty of conscience, liberty of thought and action, liberty in the ideals of art and literature. ”

“ No sooner does an European arrive, no matter of what condition, than his eyes are opened upon the fair prospect; he hears his language spoke, he retraces many of his own country manners, he perpetually hears the names of families and towns with which he is acquainted; he sees happiness and prosperity in all places disseminated; he meets with hospitality, kindness, and plenty everywhere; he beholds hardly any poor, he seldom hears of punishments and executions; and he wonders at the elegance of our towns, those miracles of industry and freedom. ”

“ If in 1878, when the European nations suddenly awoke to the importance of the non-European world, they had been able to agree upon some simple principle which would have secured equal treatment to all, how different would have been the fate of Europe and the world! ”

“ It comes back, one notes for the thousandth time, to that redistribution and reconsecration of values, of representative weight, which it is the interesting thing, over the land, to see take effect—to see in special take all the effect of which it is capable. There are a thousand “European” values that are absent, and, whether as a consequence or not of that, there are innumerable felt solutions of the social continuity. ”

“ The result of this community of interests, commercial, political, and moral, between Europe and America—of this frequency and rapidity of intercourse between them, is, that it becomes as difficult to point out the geographical degree where American policy shall terminate, and European policy begin, as it is to trace out the line where American commerce begins and European commerce terminates. ”

“ We wish that all the peoples of Europe shall become useful and happy members of this new organism.”—Now the future of Europe mainly depends upon the condition of Germany, a country which, by its brutal disregard of European principles, supports the old policy of armed isolation. ”

“ Here, for all the idealism of youth and the ambition of maturity, for diplomatists, engineers, administrators, agriculturists, educationists, an opportunity for the work of a lifetime, a task to appeal at once to the imagination, the intellect, and the organizing capacity of practical men, a scheme in which all nations might be proud to participate, and by which Europe might show to the backward populations that the power she had won over Nature was to be used for the benefit of man, and that the science and the arms of the West were destined to recreate the life of the East. ”

“ Modern European history is an impressive example of the importance of this struggle for existence. The progress of Europe is greatly owing to the fact that in this continent we have a group of communities which are closely related, yet independent, and rivals. In every department of activity they learn from each other, and spur one another on by continual emulation. Each must follow its rivals in the adoption of every new improvement, under penalty of decline and even ruin. ”

“ But on the other hand, the intelligent European is up against the unity of Europe problem night and day. Europe cannot go on. European civilization cannot go on, unless that net of boundaries which strangles her is dissolved away. The difficulties created by language differences, by bitter national traditions, by bad political habits and the like, are no doubt stupendous. ”

“ That which is now revealed has been labouring for more than twelve centuries to manifest itself; this external and apparent community has not always existed; but such has always been, at bottom, the unity of European civilization, that it is impossible thoroughly to understand the history of any of the great modern peoples without considering the history of Europe as a whole, and contemplating the course pursued by humanity in general. ”

“ If we are to deliver the European Union of peace and prosperity that the founders envisaged, and that I believe the citizens of Europe yearn for beyond the understandable fear of present circumstances, a strategy that draws on the research, scholarship and world views of all of the social sciences, and ethics and philosophy is required. ”

“ The existence in modern Europe of many distinct nations on the same level of civilisation, but with different forms of government and conditions of national life, secures the permanence of some measure of patriotism and liberty. ”