European Question Research Articles

Whose Troy? Whose Rome? Whose Europe? Three Medieval Londons and the London of Derek Walcott’s 'Omeros'

What does it mean that so many medievalists, especially in the United States and in Canada, study the European middle ages without being from or of Europe? What does it mean if we specify, further, those who don’t come from the United States or Canada either, but from areas of the world that experienced western European empire, as most of the globe did, as a systematic political and psychological subordination to Europe? I take the Caribbean poet Derek Walcott’s depiction of late twentieth-century London in his long narrative poem Omeros as a way to pose the question of what Europe might look like from the other side of the relationship of domination, that is, to define Walcott’s Europe. Walcott’s London repudiates Europe, and with it what he calls History, exactly the kind of history made by the European epics of Homer, Virgil, and Dante in the form of the world-destinies they constructed for Europe in the cities of Troy and Rome, and made by their would-be successor London. But he does so with difficulty: the Troy of Homer and Virgil has long sought to seduce him into rendering his own island into its terms, elegiac and nostalgic. He seeks instead a poetry of the local, the small, the unvarnished, and the present tense. In doing so, he constructs a point of view that exposes the presumption and the brutality that sits inside medieval texts offered to the reader as celebrations of London and the history it contributes to making; but his perspective also brings out of the same texts their half-conscious efforts, repressed in the name of History, to speak for the local, the small, the unvarnished, and the present, on behalf of the desire for human adequacy to self, sociality, and community without war. Roughly speaking, desire, or history, shows up in the view from Walcott’s St. Lucia in the face of the History for which Europe is a metonym. Medieval texts read from outside the European frame are liable to be different from those read from within that frame; we need medieval readings from underneath and outside the European matrix that can put Europe in question, though it may be that History, and the project of a dominating Europe, remains too seductive to renounce.

Castles of the Teutonic Knights in Russia

The author carries out cultural and historical analysis of the diversity of architectural forms in the cultural heritage of the mediaeval districts of Kaliningrad region, Russia, in the context of the activity and history of the Teutonic Order. Feudal castles played a special role in European society, which makes them an interesting source for research. The architectural and historical typology of castle forms which appeared in the region of Europe in question was based both on common features characteristic of the Western European chivalric tradition and particular features, i. e. local cultural and construction traditions. The latter manifested themselves in the establishment of historical centres of settlements, which were later transformed during the construction activity of the knights of the Teutonic Order. The author aims to synthesise data on the historical diversity of the architectural and artistic forms of Kaliningrad region castles as part of the cultural heritage of the Teutonic Order. It is established that a castle of the Order was a sociocultural space based on the natural environment, social structure, and mental values of the knights of the Teutonic Order. Such mediaeval works of European culture were reflected in the castles of the Order in the 13th–15th centuries, combining common European and local historical and architectural peculiarities: the fortification features and regional cultural differences were preconditioned

Europe in Question and the Question of Europe-An(d) Capitalism: A Review of Stuart Holland's 'Europe in Question'

Europe in Question and the Question of Europe-An(d) Capitalism: A Review of Stuart Holland's 'Europe in Question'

Europe in question and the question of Europe-an(d) capitalism: a review of Stuart Holland’s ‘Europe in Question’

Europe in question and the question of Europe-an(d) capitalism: a review of Stuart Holland’s ‘Europe in Question’

From the Prophet to postmodernism? New world orders and the end of Islamic art

AbstractThis article addresses the peculiar fact that in most historical surveys the narrative Islamic history ends around 1800 CE. It considers the roots this idiosyncrasy and its implications for attempts to coopt or instrumentalize the objects Islamic in the decade after 2001 in discourses liberalism and tolerance in which an originary Islam was contrasted with modern more 'fundamentalist' understandings religious belief and practice. It explores contradictions inherent in related attempts to locate models for Muslim religious subjectivity in medieval artifacts secularized as objects.KeywordsIslamic art, museum, canon, nineteenth century, postcolonialism, Qajar artWhen I read Islam in the papers these days, I often feel I am reading museumized peoples. I feel I am reading people who are said not to make culture, except at the beginning creation, as some extraordinary, prophetic, act.Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim-an African PerspectiveThe breach between two kinds history, which treat either historical or modern art, and do this under different paradigms, no longer makes sense. We are just as poorly served by a rigid hermeneutic framework perpetuating a dogmatic strategy interpretation. It is perhaps more appropriate to regard the interrogation the medium art, historical man and his images the world, as a permanent experiment.Hans Belting, The End the History Art?Ever since its inception as a sub-field history, no one has been quite sure where to locate Islamic and architecture within its master narratives. In Sir Banister Fletcher's History Architecture (first published in 1896) Saracenic architecture belongs with the non-historical styles, branching (along with Byzantium) from the trunk a decidedly Eurocentric family tree somewhere between Rome and Romanesque.1 While (generally speaking) the century since Fletcher's tree was drafted has seen Islamic admitted into the exclusive club historical styles, the problem where to house it is no less current, a point reflected in its treatment within universal surveys art. In the eleventh edition Gardner's Art Through the Ages (2001), for example, the chapter on Islamic is located between Byzantium and Ancient America, whereas the subject is entirely absent from the sixth edition H.W. Janson's magisterial History Art published in the same year.2 The enquiring reader who, seeking even a trace Islamic culture in Janson's narrative, turns to the index will find only two entries there under the heading Islam: art of and threat to Europe from.3 The juxtaposition has a disquietingly contemporary resonance, although the Europe in question turns out to be that the ninth-century Carolingians. Nevertheless, the clear distinction between Europe/not Europe within which this single reference to Islam occurs reflects the frisson alterity upon which the reception and accommodation Islamic has been predicated historically.The problem where to locate Islamic stems, at least in part, from the peculiarities the term itself, an invented rubric that must accommodate a vast array artistic production stemming almost 1,400 years and spanning every continent.4 If artistic appreciation fulfills some the cultural functions religious adulation, then the position Islamic is particularly fraught, with the qualifying adjective caught between a religious identity and cultural identification. The resulting ambivalence is reflected not only in the lengthy apologias that accompany its use, but also in the tendency to oscillate between media-based and dynastic taxonomies, and in the appearance ethnically or regionally based surveys.5Many these qualities were manifest in a myriad new survey books on Islamic and architecture published in the United States and Europe in the decade between 1991 and 2001. …

Pogroms in Russian History

Jonathan Dekel-Chen, David Gaunt, Natan M. Meir, and Israel Bartal, eds., Anti-Jewish Violence: Rethinking the Pogrom in East European History. 240 pp. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011. ISBN-13 978-0253355201. $34.95. Sam Johnson, Pogroms, Peasants, Jews: Britain and Eastern Europe's Question, 1867-1925. 296 pp. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. ISBN-13 978-0521895484. $90.00. John D. Klier, Russians, Jews, and the Pogroms of 1881-1882. 514 pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. ISBN-13 978-0521895484. $110.00. Lidia B. Miliakova, ed., Kniga pogromov: Pogromy na Ukraine, v Belorussii i evropeiskoi chasti Rossii v period Grazhdanskoi voiny, 1918-1922 gg. Sbornik dokumentov (Book of Pogroms: Pogroms in Ukraine, Belorussia, and European Russia during the Civil War, 1918-1922. A Collection of Documents), xxxvi + 995 pp. Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2007. ISBN 5824308160. Shortly after the eruption of mob violence in the spring and summer of 1881, contemporary observers scratched their heads in bewilderment in search of explanations. (1) How could pogroms break out simultaneously in so many places? While tsarist officials initially blamed the events on revolutionary elements and on the Jewish exploitation of Russian peasantry, contemporary journalists, historians, and communal activists saw dark and mysterious forces behind what was regarded as the most notorious antisemitic conspiracy in modern times. Men in Russia's most powerful governing circles, so it was argued, masterminded the waves of anti-Jewish violence that spread quickly along railroad routes, highways, and rivers to dozens of industrial towns. (2) For well over five decades, this interpretation--based primarily on the awesome explanatory power of conspiracy theories--shaped the most influential histories of pogroms. The first generation of revisionist historians such as Hans Rogger, I. Michael Aronson, Heinz-Dietrich Lowe, and Charters Wynn, among others, shifted the analytical focus by considering a broad range of factors that fueled ethno-religious strife: the strains of Russia's uneven economic development, fierce antisemitic press campaigns, demographic fears, and a rootless, hard-drinking, lawless working-class culture. In prerevolutionary Russia, the vast majority of pogroms occurred in places where Jews were newcomers. As the steel and mining industries took off in the last two decades of the 19th century, tens of thousands of men came south to work in Russia's industrial heartland. The mass of this ethnically diverse, uneducated, and transient population was especially prone to violent behavior, much of which was directed toward Jews. (3) There was, as Rogger argued in what remains the most insightful overview of the topic, nothing peculiarly Russian or Jewish about pogroms. (4) Russia may have been memorialized as the birthplace of pogroms and Jews may have been the most visible victims, but Russia was neither the first nor the only place where ethnic riots occurred and Jews were by no means the only ethnic group targeted by pogromshchiks. One of the challenges of analyzing pogroms is coming to terms with the frequency, diversity, and dynamism of the events that we include under this heading. Scholars have used the term to label anti-Jewish violence that took place in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1648 (the so-called Khmelnytsky massacres), in Odessa in 1871, in the southwestern borderlands after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, in Lodz in 1892, in Kishinev and Gomel in 1903, during the revolutionary uprisings of 1905-6, and amid the 1914-21 continuum of war, revolution, and mass terror. As John Klier points out in his exhaustive new book on the subject, reviewed here, Virtually the only common feature of these events was that Jews were among the victims, although they were not always the primary target (59). What, then, was a pogrom, and more important, what do we gain from analyzing a series of distinct historical events under this common rubric? …

On the role of the president of the state in the process of the reconciliation with past: French experience

The article analyzes the role of the presidents of French Fifth Republic in the process of the French reconciliation with its Vichy past, i.e. with collaboration and participation in the Final solution of Jewish question in Europe during Second World War. It is analyzed De Gaulle?s creation of ?resistancialist myth?; Mitterrand?s Pre-War as well as War past, his friendship with R. Bousquet and his refusal to speak at the Commemoration in 1992; Chirac?s speech in which he admitted collective responsibility of France and Frenchmen. In the final chapter, on the basis of the French experience, some conclusions have been drawn which could be relevant for Serbia today. These are the most important ones: the building of the myth immediately following a traumatic period is an unavoidable phase; neither the political left nor right are a priori a positive factor in the process of the reconciliation with the past; the president of the state must have a ?vision of the statesman?; the explicit verbal recognition of the responsibility is necessary.

Book Review: Hobolt, S. B. (2009). Europe in Question: Referendums on European Integration. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press

Book Review: Hobolt, S. B. (2009). Europe in Question: Referendums on European Integration. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press

Europe in Question: Referendums on European Integration – By S. Binzer Hobolt

Europe in Question: Referendums on European Integration – By S. Binzer Hobolt

Are there Jewish Answers to Europe's Questions?

It is a great honour for me to be your keynote speaker today, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Leo Baeck's death and to celebrate the creation of the rabbinical seminar that carries his name. I must tell you that I feel quite at home in your midst, so much at home that I shall speak to you frankly about my understanding of the current situation doubts and all, even though I have the feeling I am preaching to the converted. You have an entire week for your own celebrations and congratulations, and there is, indeed, much to rejoice as one sees the growth of progressive Judaism throughout the world and particularly in Europe. So allow me a few more sombre reflections. I could have entitled this lecture just as easily 'The ebb and flow of Europe's Jews', for let us face it, we are not a simple geographic or demographic category. We are invested with a huge emotional charge, which has fluctuated madly between highly positive and highly negative extremes on the gauges of a Jewish world, which today sees red when the very term 'Europe' is pronounced. This was not always the case, even as recently as ten years ago. How quickly time flies and how slow it can also be.

Review: Europe: Europe in Question

Review: Europe: Europe in Question

Europe in Question: Theories of Regional International Integration

Europe in Question: Theories of Regional International Integration

Europe in Question: Theories of Regional International Integration

Europe in Question: Theories of Regional International Integration

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article: The SPD and European Integration, by William E. Paterson. West‐mead, England: Saxon House Europe in Question, by R. J. Harrison. The Politics of the European Community, by Roy Pryce. International Theory and European Integration, by Charles Pentland, Faber and Faber Multinational Corporations and National Government: A Case Study of the United Kingdom's Experience 1964–1970, by Michael Hodges The Impact of US Investment in Europe: A Case Study of the Automotive and Computer Industries, by Y. S. Hu The Essentials of Economic Integration: Lessons of the EFTA Experience, by Victoria Curzon EFTA: Restrrctive Business Practices, by Adrienne Szokolóczy‐Syllaba East‐West Economic Cooperation: Problems and Solutions, by Albert Masnata. Technology in Comecon: Acceleration of Technological Progress through Economic Planning and the Market, by J. Wilczynski. European Development Policies: The United Kingdom, Sweden, France, EEC, and Multilateral Organizations. Edited by Bruce Dinwidd. The Defence of Watern Europe, edited by John C. Garnett. Crisis in European Defence, by Geoffrey Lee Williams and Alan Lee Williams. In Search of a New World Economic Order, edited by Hugh Corbet and Robert Jackson. Italy: Despoilments and Crisis in the Post‐War Economy, by Gisele Podbielsli. An Introduction to the Italian Economy, by K. J. Allen and A. A. Stevenson

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article: The SPD and European Integration, by William E. Paterson. West‐mead, England: Saxon House Europe in Question, by R. J. Harrison. The Politics of the European Community, by Roy Pryce. International Theory and European Integration, by Charles Pentland, Faber and Faber Multinational Corporations and National Government: A Case Study of the United Kingdom's Experience 1964–1970, by Michael Hodges The Impact of US Investment in Europe: A Case Study of the Automotive and Computer Industries, by Y. S. Hu The Essentials of Economic Integration: Lessons of the EFTA Experience, by Victoria Curzon EFTA: Restrrctive Business Practices, by Adrienne Szokolóczy‐Syllaba East‐West Economic Cooperation: Problems and Solutions, by Albert Masnata. Technology in Comecon: Acceleration of Technological Progress through Economic Planning and the Market, by J. Wilczynski. European Development Policies: The United Kingdom, Sweden, France, EEC, and Multilateral Organizations. Edited by Bruce Dinwidd. The Defence of Watern Europe, edited by John C. Garnett. Crisis in European Defence, by Geoffrey Lee Williams and Alan Lee Williams. In Search of a New World Economic Order, edited by Hugh Corbet and Robert Jackson. Italy: Despoilments and Crisis in the Post‐War Economy, by Gisele Podbielsli. An Introduction to the Italian Economy, by K. J. Allen and A. A. Stevenson