Europeanisation, National Identities and Migration ... - europeanization

The collective identity of Europe 29
seen as a spatial expansion, as the transfer of statues and architectural styles, and as
the conquest of territories in the name of god. The gold of Peru and the silver
of Mexico, the slaves from Africa and the cotton from the New World provided the
material bases for the undisputed claim of a European hegemony over the Old
and New World.
Europe as a missionary movement
This idea of translation contrasts to the idea of a European mission, which is based
on discontinuity between past and present and assumes an invisible and categorical
unity instead of an embodied, visible and tangible heritage.
The idea of a European mission is strongly represented in reformatory
Protestantism, in its iconoclasm and abstention from splendour and personal
mediation. Cromwell had still proclaimed ‘the western project’ as a missionary
conquest of the Caribbean, but in the missionary conception Europe was gradually
decoupled from its territorial ties and gained a temporal connotation. The res
publica christiana could and should finally include every human being. European
Christendom was turned into a universal community in relation to a god who was
invisible and omnipresent, inaccessible and beyond description. The sacred core
of European culture could no longer be seen as embodied in particular places
and objects. It became a missionary project that referred to all human beings and
to all global regions. Europe was still a cultural movement but instead of moving
cultural objects it moved persons from outside into the community.
The universal claim of the missionary movement allowed, however, for internal
diversity. In contrast to the discourse of pre-reformatory Christianity that
communicated on the basis of a single language, reformatory Protestantism
allowed for a variation of vernacular languages – the universal message of salvation
was taught in many tongues.
Protestant missionary zeal and the counterreformation, however, also divided
Europe into three religious camps that fought each other in devastating wars.
As a response to these confessional wars, intellectuals engaged in a new discourse
about the unity of Europe. This demanding discourse about Europe was, though,
still a matter of relatively small elites of noblemen, scholars, officeholders and
merchant capitalists. Pufendorf or Erasmus, Leibniz or Bodin, Comenius or Spinoza
did not yet address a large public and they did not yet imagine their readership
in national contours. They travelled between the princely courts and changed their
commitments, communicated in several European languages and wrote for a
small educated readership.
This missionary universalism of the European culture also shaped the process
of modernisation and rationalisation that is commonly associated with the
Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. The movement of enlightenment was
borne by intellectuals who travelled between the centres of scholarship in Europe
and frequently published abroad to escape censorship. New publications by famous
authors were quickly translated and available to a European-wide readership.
Although Paris and Leyden, London and Königsberg, Edinburgh and Göttingen