Social Sciences En Politieke En Sociale Wetenschappen
European History
Summary
BA1 European History - complete summary
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Course
European History
Institution
Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB)
This summary is a combination of the slides, my personal notes (with examples to understand the concepts better and pictures).
It easy to learn since there are pictures, bullet points and different colour codes for the name of authors and examples.
Good luck!
Social Sciences en Politieke en Sociale Wetenschappen
European History
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INTRO EUROPEAN HISTORY
CLASS 1- INTRODUCTION
Why study history?
1.To escape the present, nostalgia, a longing for “what is forever lost” / “in my days things were much better”
o Risk: the “pastness of the past” and overstating rupture/discontinuity →reality: continuity
2.To learn lessons from the past –how to deal with moral dilemma
o Risk: biases in what counts as the “great men and women of history”
3.To identify structural laws – Teleology (Marx/Fukuyama)
Human soc can really be exact and precise- to identify structural laws of soc to predict the future
Theological: both presume that we as mankind are evolving towards a specific identifiable and predictable endpoint
For marx: classless and stateless soc / For Fukuyama: endpoint of huan dev is a liberal dmeocracy
o Risk: causality and the risk of overdetermination
4.For political or ideological purposes
Want to proove something- pick an argument in their favour
Examples: a selection mechanism in higher education; nationalist projects; Post-colonial ”reclaiming of the past”
o Risk: conflation (=combination) of science and politics
So, many risk.. Why should we study it?
1. To understand change and how “the present” came to be
o Understand continuity and change (ie.migration: some things same as in the past but also
diff)
o Understand institutionalisation and
revolution/transformation
→studying history makes us understand why we behave this way
• Turbulent times: feeling that today is challenging
Is it really that turbulent? No →If the 19th would have internet there would have
been much more research about it
2. Put the present day into perspective, to dismantle its “for granted” (obvious, or natural)
character
• To acknowledge the power struggles that are the basis of today’s institutions, ways of life, etc.
Taking for granted but the habits of today: result of historical stuggles of hisotrical struggles would have had diff results: today would have
been diff → we need to have a critical awareness of our present way of living
• To question uniformity of European experience
Ex: industrialization: happened in diff timeframes- that it’s diff btw the countries,.. → not uniform!
• To “provincialise” Europe; to account for multiple paths/meanings of “modernity”
•Dipesh Chakrabarty (2008): critique on “historicism” →Post colonial theory
Historicism = the idea that “to understand anything, it has to be seen both as a unity and in its historical
development”→Would see history in a linear way: historical dev
Pedagogic function: if you tell to you students that it happened linearly BUT humans do not behave in an orderly
way →we are chaotic: progress, dev, backsliding
Historicism and the limitations of linear and singular conceptions of history:
Imaginary “waiting rooms”: One man’s present becomes another man’s future
Example: John Stuart Mill (1806-1873): On Liberty / On Representative Government
→Proclaimed self-rule (power by the ppl) as the highest form of government and yet argued against giving Indians
or Africans self-rule →democratic self rule: best thing you could imagine
→According to Mill, Indians or Africans were not yet civilised enough to rule themselves. Some historical time of
development and civilisation (colonial rule and education, to be precise) had to elapse before they could be
considered prepared for such a task.
1
, →paradox: power to the ppl but not to those ppl →indans + africans were not colonised enough to
exercise self-rule → put them in the waiting room of history
→What Mills saw as civilised and uncivilised was really biased, very linear conception of history
o To “provincialise” Europe (or the European experience)
o To account for multiple paths/meanings of “modernity”
o Of particular relevance for the 19th century – “the birth of modern Europe”
→A tendency to mask the heterogeneity of the “European” experience and peach one single story
→A tendency to attribute a singular meaning to “modernity” and a singular trajectory to “modernity”
2. The long 19th C (E. Hobsbawn)
• 1789 the collapse of French absolutist monarch ------ the eruption of the First World War in 1914
o From a society of orders (“estates”) to a society of classes
o Popular sovereignty and new modes of political legitimation
• Economic and social transformation
• Demographic explosion and mass migration
• Dramatic changes in the political landscape
o Birth of new European powers: unification of Italy and Germany
o The consolidation of nation-states and imperialism
o The incorporation of the masses in politics
The 19th century modernity
The normative pulse of Europe’s narrative of “modernity”
→The 19th century is often conceived as the era that put the “Enlightenment ideals” (since, rationality, reason
given) into practice and make EU modern BUT →“What is the Enlightenment? There is no official answer, because
the era named by Kant’s essay was never demarcated by opening and closing ceremonies like the Olympics, nor are
its tenets stipulated in an oath or creed” →Steven Pinker→big disagreement about what the enlightment is
o Steven Pinker (2018) →enlightenment: part of EU
18th century Enlightenment as a bridge-head between
o 17th century: scientific revolutions and the age of Reason →ie. Earth is not flat
o 19th century political, socio-economic and cultural changes (industrialisation, urbanisation,
secularisation, democratisation,…) →scientific dev lead ti change of the modern man
Associated with core values; linked to the “modern condition”:
o Reason: as opposed to divine conditions and imperatives →modern EU: rationality as base
o Science: evidence-based judgments
o Humanism: universal ideals, such as equality, liberty that apply to all humans
o Progress: human-made systems (government, market, international institutions) for the
betterment of the human condition
o Peace: belief in our ability to design peaceful cohabitation
Henry Martyn Llolyd (2018) – text 2
Critque Pinker for the idea of idea that enlightment has a linear process → not all history from the 17th to the 19thC
was not only characterised by rationality
Enlightment is under threat- science facts and evidence based evidence is under threat →Rise of superstition
“On either side of the Atlantic, groups of public intellectuals have issued a call to arms. The besieged citadel in need
of defending, they say, is the one that safeguards science, facts and evidence-based policy. The white knights of
progress – such as the psychologist Steven Pinker and the neuroscientist Sam Harris - condemn the apparent
resurgence of passion, emotion and superstition in politics. The bedrock of modernity, they tell us, is the human
capacity to curb disruptive forces with cool-headed reason. What we need is a reboot of the Enlightenment, now”.
• “White knights” present a selective reading of the Enlightenment →have to be critical about the
past in EU bcs it’s often taken as a standard for the rest of the world
• Enlightenment thinkers, especially French intellectuals, placed a high value on the role of sensibility,
feeling and desire → not only about reason →need emotions too
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, • Hegel (1770-1831): emphasis on rationality produces citizens who are alienated, dispassionate and
estranged from nature
• David Hume (1711-1776): morality is grounded in sense-experience: we judge the good/beautiful
directly and without need of reason →our judgments are not only based on reason, rationality
• 19th century romanticism, nationalism and fascism→“science can explain everything, but
understands nothing”
1.3 Modernity, what’s in a name???
1. A category of historical periodisation →link it to the 19thC
2. A quality of social experience – a heightened sensitivity to what is unique about the present
3. An (incomplete) project
1. A category of historical periodisation
The modernisation paradigm (sociology, 1960s) →to make sense to to world- not per se linked to history
See how hisotical events have been enterpreted
Modernisation = the transformation from a traditional, rural, agrarian society to a secular, urban, industrial society
• Causes:
1. Macro-structural changes:
▪ Rationalisation, industrialisation and urbanisation (from feudalism to capitalism)
▪ Birth of nation-states and institutions of democratisation (representative
democracy, modern bureaucracy, public education)
2. Micro-individual changes – birth of “modern man”
▪ Reason-giving rather than tradition and habit
▪ Individualism, freedom and formal equality, meritocracy
▪ Faith in social, scientific and technological progress and human perfectability and
rationality
2. A quality of social experience
The Painter of Modern Life (1864)
Ppl become aware of the uniqueness of their time and realise that there is a diff with the ancient regime
Reason why we know longer speak of a middle age → feel modern- feel that they reached a new timeframe
Modernity
= the self-definition of a generation about its own technological innovations, governance, and socio-economics
= a particular relationship to time, characterised by intense historical discontinuity or rupture, openness to the
novelty of the future, and a heightened sensitivity to what is unique about the present
Modernus: “of today” (as opposed to something that has past)
Reinhart Koselleck (1979) Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time
Focusses on the labels that we use to speak about the 19th century
o “der Moderne”, “les temps modernes”, “Neuzeit”, ”Nieuwe tijd”: a temporal distinction,
yet one claiming a distinctive breach with the past →focus on labels to use for the period of
time, concepts express that period is something radical new
o A historical consciousness and its transformation into a general model of social experience
▪ An ability to conceive of a future as distinct from the present and past
o 18th C. Enlightenment: a qualitative claim about the newness of the times; valorising
substantive changes
3. An (incomplete) project → we haven’t reached the end →no endpoint
• Modernity = a paradoxical form of temporality
o In a sociohistorical sense, all modernities grow old (ie fashion trends)
o To remain “off today”, modernity needs to constantly re-establish itself in relation to an
ever-expanding past.
• As a result of such “updates”, modernity:
o Becomes less of a concept to describe a historical period
3
, o Becomes more of a qualitative criterion to express a desired present/future
”Modernity is a qualitative, not a chronological, category”- Theodor Adorno (1903-1969) → qualitive category to
express what we like about certain European evolution, development, experience. When we call something modern,
we do not say that they are taking place today, but we say that we like them because they are fitting of a
contemporary society
As part of the project of “updating” our relationship to the past:
o There is a tendency to:
▪ Associate meanings of “modernity”, “modern man” with normative values, ideals
and beliefs to the modern men
▪ Re-interpret the past as a logical and orderly path to a cherished present (linear
account of history)
▪ Define modernity in terms of “progress” or “development” →no backsliding, only
progress
• “Progress” = defined in terms of the projection of certain people’s present
as other people’s futures (singular account of history)
European History- this course = an attempt to:
▪ Describe the factual specificity of 19th Century Europe
▪ Account for the diversity of European experiences
▪ Showcase the limitations of determinist accounts of “modernisation"
▪ Acknowledge the non-linear character of key evolutions and trends
CLASS 2-FRENCH REVOLUTION
French revolution is conceived as the beginning of the 19th C and where the modernity in created
1.Context (1789-1815)
Not the first revolution in its kind- ppl before also rebelled (gainst auhority, church,...)→our nature
o Glorious Revolution (1688-1689, England)→diff monarchies +fam in England
Abdication of Catholic king and replacement by Protestant king
o The American Revolution (1775-1783)
American independence from Great-Britain
Impact of these revolutions:
England: breach with tradition of “divine right to rule” →switch of catholic king to protestant: crucial
Catholic: Pope as the representative of God on earth → don’t have to listen to ordinary ppl
In protestanrt church: emphasis on every person and their interpretation of the bible + relationship of democratic
control created with the ppl →King needed to account for his behaviour → no king would remain unconditional
In UK changed <->other EU countries still divine right→lot of discontent of ordinary ppl →rebellions
USA: rights of representation and revolt against “unjust” rule
Claim for a faire representation + if gov is illigitimate: the ppl have a right to rebel + Claim for popular sovergeinty
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