The Pursuit of Europe: A History

by Anthony Pagden

The European Union, we are told, is facing extinction. Most of those who believe that, however, have no understanding of how, and why, it become possible to imagine that the diverse peoples of Europe might be united in a single political community.

The Pursuit of Europe tells the story of the evolution of the "European project", from the end of the Napoleonic Wars, which saw the earliest creation of a "Concert of Europe", right through to Brexit. The question was how, after centuries of internecine conflict, to create a united Europe while
still preserving the political legal and cultural integrity of each individual nation. The need to find an answer to this question became more acute after two world wars had shown that if the nations of Europe were to continue to play a role in the world they could now only do so together.

To achieve that, however, they had to be prepared to merge their zealously-guarded sovereign powers into a new form of trans-national constitutionalism. This the European Union has tried to do. In the process it has created not, as its enemies have claimed, a "super-state" but a new post-national
order united in a political life based, not upon the old shibboleths of nationalism and patriotism, but upon a common body of values and aspirations.

It is this, argues Anthony Pagden, that will allow the Union to defeat its political enemies from within, and to overcome the difficulties, from mass migration to the pandemic, which it faces from without. But it will only succeed in doing so if it also continues to evolve as it has over the past
two centuries.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics

432 pages, Hardcover

Published February 4, 2022

About the author

Anthony Pagden was educated in Santiago (Chile), London, Barcelona and Oxford and holds a B.A.. M.A. and D.Phil. from the University of Oxford. He has been a free-lance translator and a publisher in Paris a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, Senior Research Fellow of the Warburg Institute (London), Professor of History at the European University Institute (Florence), University Reader in Intellectual History and Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge and the Harry C. Black Professor of History at Johns Hopkins. He joined UCLA in the Fall of 2002. His research has concentrated on the relationship between the peoples of Europe and its overseas settlements and those of the non-European world from the Atlantic to the Pacific. He is primarily interested in the political theory of empire, in how the West sought to explain to itself how and why it had come to dominate so much of the world, and in the present consequences of the erosion of that domination. His research has led to an interest in the formation of the modern concept of Europe and most recently in the roots of the conflict between the ‘West’ and the (predominantly Muslim) ‘East’. He has also written on the history of law, and on the ideological sources of the independence movements in Spanish-America, and is currently completing a book on cosmopolitanism and the Enlightenment . He has written or edited some fifteen books, the most recent of which are, Lords of all the World. Ideologies of Empire in Britain, France and Spain (1995), Peoples and Empires (2001), La Ilustración y sus enemigos (2002), Worlds at War, The 2500 year struggle between East and West (2008), and, as editor, The Idea of Europe from Antiquity to the European Union (2002). – all of which have been translated into several European and Asian languages. He is a regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement, and The London Review of Books, and has written for The New Republic, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Il Sole 24 Ore (Milan), El Mundo (Spain), El Pais, (Spain) and La Nueva Provincia (Argentina).

He teaches classes in the history of political thought from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, in the theory of international relations, and seminars on imperialism and nationalism and on the theory of racism and ethnicity since antiquity.

Reviews

[Keith · Rating 1 out of 5]

Well, maybe it wasn't the book that I was expecting or hoping for. But far too much philosophical meandering, and very little hard history. All very worthy I'm sure, but not for me. A handful of terrible typos didn't make it any easier!

[MH · Rating 3 out of 5]

A dense exploration of geopolitical philosophies of a united Europe from a wide variety of writers, jurists, and intellectuals from the Enlightenment to the EU. Pagden brings in a number of philosophers offering competing ideas of nationhood, sovereignty, colonialism, and the values and challenges of federation (although his brief introductions of some of these men might be a little questionable - to describe Brecht as a "poet and ironist" might be technically true but overlooks what he's best known for, and to reduce William Wells Brown to an escaped Kentucky slave erases all of his later accomplishments). The book's greatest utility might be for scholars seeking an overview of centuries of political thought from figures both famous and obscure.

There is one jarring moment, though, that I'm having a hard time overlooking. Pagden writes about how the modern academy "has sought to replace reasoned argument and rational inquiry with strident, generally ill-informed denunciation. And in all this what is entirely overlooked is any recognition that if Europe may be justifiably excoriated for having practised colonialism (although it was hardly alone in this), it was also responsible for bringing it to an end - albeit slowly and painfully, and perhaps in too many places incompletely; that if Europeans can rightfully be denounced for having benefited massively from the enslavement of Africans (although they are not alone in that), they were also responsible for abolishing slavery" (272). The argument that 'white people did terrible, terrible things, but we eventually stopped doing them. We should get credit for that!' is embarrassing and petulant, and really beneath him.

I won a copy of this book in a Goodreads giveaway.

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

Europe is a continent. And apparently, this governmental bureaucrat thinks the continent will dissolve into nothingness, unless the providential strong Leader will emerge to protect Whitedom.

[Carlos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great history of a wonderful idea that few people seem to appreciate nowadays. I am an European first, and then a member of the human race. To me nationality means little, I hate flags (because they kill) whichever the colors with two exceptions, the UN flag and the EU flag, so to me this book is preaching to the converted, nevertheless I recommend it specially to eurosceptics in the hope that they will see the light one day.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read