Europe as a Cultural-Civilizational Construct

This chapter examines the different meanings that “Europe” has historically had. It explores the geographic, cultural, religious, and historical understandings of Europe, stressing the uncertainty regarding Europe’s eastern boundary, and how this uncertainty has given rise to the idea that there are actually many “different” Europes, including Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Mitteleuropa, and the Balkans. It stresses the role of Christianity in understanding Europeanness, and the role that Orthodoxy plays as a “quasi-European” form of Christianity, and Islam as Europe and Christianity’s certain “other.” It also discusses how Russia, in both its Tsarist and Soviet guises, has been judged by others (and itself) to only imperfectly fit the criteria associated with Europeanness, even as it judged non-Russian others within its realm according to those same criteria.