The First European

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Who was the first European? �

The answer depends on what one means by 'Europe'. If Europe is a mere economic �arrangement among nation-states, then the first European must surely be Augustus. For it �was he who determined the limits of the Empire which subsequent emperors merely �tinkered with at the edges. There were to be no more conquests, no more expansion. The �river, the desert and the ocean set the limits to empire. Within, there was one economy, �without, the dark world, full of threatening barbarians. �

However, Europeans do not feel Augustus sufficiently European. The line of reasoning �followed above might be called the Anglo-Saxon line of reasoning. The English regard �Europe as an economic arrangement, a large trading zone of shopkeepers. Until 1998, this �was, for instance, The Economist's view of Europe. Then, to the surprise no doubt of �many of its readers, it performed a remarkable editorial volte-face. The London-based �newspaper nominated Charlemagne as the 'first European'! And, for the first time, the �newspaper acknowledged that Europe was not just a nation of shopkeepers, but a political �dream an, aspiration. �

Why Charlemagne and not Augustus? Well, simply put, Charlemagne was Christian, �while Augustus was pagan. And while thinkers such as Edward Gibbon would happily �have regarded the pagan as the first European, the founding fathers (yes, Europe, too, has �its founding fathers) could not: they were all devout Catholics. Jean Monnet, Alcide De �Gasperi, Konrad Adenauer and Robert Schumann (recently nominated for 'beatification', �the first step towards sainthood) were all fervent Catholics. And Charlemagne had been �Catholic. �

After the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, in the fifth century, Europe lay in ruins, �ungoverned for a thousand years. However, an ephemeral union of western Christendom �was achieved under Charlemagne (768-814), with the denarius circulating as a single �currency. The contours of the Carolingian Empire more or less coincide with those of the �single market, achieved on January 1st, 1994. And, on January 1st, 1999, Europe acquired �its denarius, the euro. �

Since then, the attempts to unify Europe had been bloody encounters. Louis XIV �confessed on his deathbed that he had "loved war too much". During the War of �Devolution, it took the triple alliance between England, Sweden and the United Provinces �to defeat Louis. The League of Augsburg was a Europe-wide alliance against the Sun �King. During the War of the Spanish Succession, it took the combined might of England, �Holland and the Holy Roman Empire to frustrate Louis' ambition to control Spain ��(1714).

The next unifier of Europe was, of course, Napoleon. Again, a combination of �European powers was required to bring him down. The Congress of Vienna (1814) � a �grouping of European states � emerged to ensure peace in Europe for another hundred �years. The hundred-year cycle of war and peace prompted Arnold Toynbee to compare �Europe's war-cycle with the business cycle! The First World War began eerily in the year ��1914. Already, there were voices advocating a unified Europe. The most active statesman �in the field of European peace and co-operation was undoubtedly Aristide Briand.

In ��1929, he observed: "I think that among peoples constituting geographical groups, like the �peoples of Europe, there should be some kind of federal bond". And then came the last �unifier, Adolph Hitler. It was clear that Europe had to be unified, through war or peace. �Since war had failed, the union must be achieved peacefully.

It was in this spirit that �Helmut Kohl, the ex-Chancellor of Germany, described the question of the single �currency as one of war or peace. And it was in this spirit, too, that Europe resorted to the �undemocratic method of bribery to enable Kohl to win one more term as Chancellor to let �the statesman push through his most precious project. The London-based journalist, �Gwynne Dyer, described the bribe as "the good bribe". �

The Catholicism of the project was so pronounced that the (Protestant) Scandinavian �countries stayed out of the Union for decades fearing that it was a Catholic plot. After the �war, Christian Democracy emerged as the leading power in politics. In Italy, the �Democrazia Cristiana was headed initially by De Gasperi; in France, the Mouvement �Rupublicain Populaire (MRP) was created in 1944; in West Germany, Konrad Adenauer �led the Christian Democratic Union; in Holland, it was the Catholic People's Party. �Exceptionally, Great Britain possessed no Christian Democratic tradition at all. �

However, the European Union resembles the Roman Empire of Augustus as well as the �Holy Roman Empire of Charlemagne in that it has quietly eschewed democracy. Just as �Augustus rendered the Senate and Republican traditions otiose, maintaining only the �trappings of republicanism, so the European Union, directed by unelected Brussels �bureaucrats, has maintained a veneer of democracy. How many Europeans vote for the �powerless European Members of Parliament?

The last time, the percentage was only 45. �The most vivid evidence of the basically undemocratic nature of the Union came after the �Austrian elections, when that country was collectively boycotted by Europe since it had �elected the fascist and xenophobic Freedom Party. Louis Michel, the foreign minister of �Belgium, observed that voters can be 'na�ve' and 'simple'. Of Jorg Haider's Freedom �Party, he said that to be a democratic party "you must work by democratic rules, you �must accept not to play on the worst feelings each human being has inside himself". After �all, even Hitler had been elected by the people.

However, Europe's 'despotic phase', as �one newspaper described it, has been a well-kept secret. In the last ten years, only one �book has been written on the lack of democracy in Europe. And since the purpose of the �union is to prevent future wars, a Pax Europeana along the Augustan Pax Romana lines �must be undemocratic. It was the people of Europe who caused those wars. One has only �to compare the patriotism of Rupert Brooke with the pacifism of Wilfred Owen to �appreciate the after-the-event nature of the wisdom of the European Union. �

http://www.geocities.com/if6065/farvardin

Iftekhar Sayeed teaches English and economics. He was born and lives in Dhaka, ‎Bangladesh. He has contributed to AXIS OF LOGIC, ENTER TEXT, POSTCOLONIAL ‎TEXT, LEFT CURVE, MOBIUS, ERBACCE, THE JOURNAL, and other publications. ‎He (more...)

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