EUROPE A History NORMAN DAVIES This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781407091792 www.randomhouse.co.uk Published by Pimlico 1997 20 Copyright © Norman Davies 1996 Reprinted with corrections, 1997 Norman Davies has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author if this work This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser First published by Oxford University Press in 1996 Pimlico Random House 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 2SA www.rbooks.co.uk Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm Random House UK Ltd Reg No 954009 A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978–0–7126–6633–6 The Random House Group Limited supports The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), the leading international forest certification organisation All our titles that are printed on Greenpeace approved FSC certified paper carry the FSC logo Our paper procurement policy can be found at: www.rbooks.co.uk/environment Printed in the UK by CPI William Clowes Beccles NR34 7TL For Christian Our Californian PREFACE THIS 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 There is strong reason to believe that European history is a valid academic subject, which is solidly based on past events that really happened Europe’s past, however, can only be recalled through fleeting glimpses, partial probes, and selective soundings It can never be recovered in its entirety This volume, therefore, is only one from an almost infinite number of histories of Europe that could be written It is the view of one pair of eyes, filtered by one brain, and translated by one pen NORMAN DAVIES Oxford, Bloomsday, 1993 In preparing the corrected edition of Europe: a history, the amendments have been addressed solely to errors of fact, nomenclature and orthography No attempt was made to re-enter the realm of historical interpretation In addition to the original team of consultants, most of whom have offered a second round of advice, I wish to convey my special thanks to: J S Adams, Ann Armstrong, Neal Ascherson, Timothy Bainbridge, Tim Blanning, Tim Boyle, Sir Raymond Carr, James Cornish, J Cremona, M F Cullis, I D Davidson, H.E the Ambassador of Finland, H.E the Ambassador of Italy, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, J M Forrester, Robert Frost, Michael Futrell, Graham Gladwell, Richard Hofton, Hugh Kearney, Noel Malcolm, Velibor Milovanović, B C Moberly, Jan Morris, W Schulte Nordolt, Robin Osborne, Steven Pálffy, Roy Porter, Paul Preston, Jim Reed, Donald Russell, David Selbourne, Andrew L Simon, N C W Spence, Norman Stone, Alan H Stratford, Richard Tyndorf, John Wagar, Michael West, B K Workman, Philip Wynn, and Basil Yamey NORMAN DAVIES 17 March 1997 * ‘One will not be surprised when the doctrine expounded in the text does not always accord with the works to which reference is made in the notes’; Ferdinand Lot, La Fin du monde antique et le début du Moyen Age (Paris, 1927), CONTENTS Cover Title Copyright Dedication About the Author Preface List of Maps The Legend of Europa Introduction I Peninsula: Environment and Prehistory II Hellas: Ancient Greece III Roma: Ancient Rome, 753 BC–AD337 IV Origo: The Birth of Europe, AD c.330–800 V Medium: The Middle Age, c.750–1270 VI Pestis: Christendom in Crisis, c.1250–1493 VII Renatio: Renaissances and Reformations, c.1450–1670 VIII Lumen: Enlightenment and Absolutism, c.1650–1789 IX Revolutio: A Continent in Turmoil, c.1770–1815 X Dynamo: Powerhouse of the World, 1815–1914 XI Tenebrae: Europe in Eclipse, 1914–1945 XII Divisa et Indivisa: Europe Divided and Undivided, 1945–1991 Notes to Chapters Notes to Capsules Appendix I List of Capsules Appendix II Notes on Plates and Acknowledgements Appendix III Historical Compendium Index Plates ... treatise which upheld the traditional Ptolemeian distinction between Sarmatia europaea (European Sarmatia) and Sarmatia asiática (Asian Sarmatia) with the boundary on the Don So Poland-Lithuania... much-imprisoned Quaker William Penn (1644–1718), son of an Anglo-Dutch marriage and founder of Pennsylvania, had the distinction of advocating both universal toleration and a European parliament... Ocean to the end of Spain The east and south part rises from the sea called Pontus [Black Sea] and is all joined to the Great Sea [the Mediterranean] and ends at the islands of Cadiz [Gibraltar]…’29