European Identity - Individual, Group and Society - HumanitarianNet

1.What do we Mean When we Say Europe?Mercedes Samaniego BoneuJean Monnet Chair of History of European IntegrationUniversity of Salamanca, SpainWhat Europe was or thought it was: the Eurocentrismof past centuriesTo talk about European identity, to refer to the Europe that we arere-building, is an exercise in delicate and clichéd reflection. Delicate for,although we are dealing with an area in which the consensusesreached are broad, the existence of disagreements in such a currentdebate are just as commonplace. And for the same reason, andprecisely because the debate about the future of the European Union isso topical, it is almost impossible to avoid falling into the trap ofrepetitions.Despite all this, the thoughts resulting not from these pages, butrather the approach of this Seminar we are participating in, are anindication of the importance we keep giving to the task of finding andstrengthening identity traits for the Europe of the 21st century, for thegreat Europe many of us Europeans feel committed to.In this respect, it so happens that while we continue to investigatewhat we want to be, or with what Europe we identify, it is necessary togive access to history as the guarantor of what we were, at least of theway we were during what we chronologically call modern times, twocenturies that recount the still recent passing of our continent.And with this passing of time, we immediately run into that proud“Eurocentrism” with which we have made the history of the last twohundred years, and that is perhaps one of the sombre moments of ourpast. Not so much because we seemed to ignore other realities, butrather by recognizing the importance of Europe, at least that of anumber of its great nations, we were lending credibility, whether cons-