May, Friday 24th., 2019A "European Empire" Is Not What Europe Needs
May, Friday 24th., 2019
''...The Renaissance itself was born from the bowels of an Italy divided
into a multitude of city-states. It is this division that the Scottish
philosopher David Hume considered favorable to the progress of the arts
and sciences...''
And we should not forget -although not so relating to the spirit of this article- that the above mentioned "Italian bowels" received an extra boost and were most abundantly enriched by the Byzantine= Greek grammarians, poets, writers, musicians, astronomers, architects,
artists, scribes, philosophers, scientists, politicians and theologians thrown out of Constantinople a.)due to the Vatican attacks and pillages of 1204 AD. and b). due to an invading Ottoman army= Khazarian Turks, on 29 May 1453.
Maria L. Pelekanaki
<<Khan Academy.
...In
the period following the sacking of Constantinople in 1204 and the fall
of Constantinople in 1453, people migrated out of Constantinople. Among
these emigrants were many Byzantine scholars and artists, including
grammarians, poets, writers, musicians, astronomers, architects,
artists, scribes, philosophers, scientists, politicians and theologians.
The
exodus of these people from Constantinople contributed to the revival
of Greek and Roman studies, which led to the development of the
Renaissance in humanism and science. Byzantine emigrants also brought
to western Europe the better preserved and accumulated knowledge of
their own Greek civilization...>>
A "European Empire" Is Not What Europe Needs
A certain nostalgic view of the Roman Empire has helped to push the
idea the European Union is essential to the prosperity and success of
Europe. But a closer look at the continent invalidates the link between prosperity and affiliation to Brussels' Europe. Among the richest European countries are the countries outside the Union. This is the case in Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein. Nor is there a link between the wealth of a country and its membership in large political groups at the global level.
In addition to the regions already mentioned, many places combine
smallness and wealth, as shown by Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea and New
Zealand.
Unfortunately for the proponents of a political Europe, the
historical rise of the European civilization also illustrates the
opposite of the imperial narrative. The American historian
David Landes recalled in 1998 that the fall of the Roman Empire was a
happy event for the Old Continent. These affirmations support the work
of the sociologist Jean Baechler, who, three decades earlier, wrote that
the expansion of European trade was favored by the anarchy inherited
from the feudal order.
Coupled with the relative cultural unity forged by the Catholic Church, the feudal anarchy inaugurated by the Middle Ages liberated the economy and the spirit of enterprise. This
specificity of the West explains what the British historian Eric Jones
called "the miracle" or "the exceptionalism" of Europe. Unlike oriental
and Asian tyrants capable of killing the creativity of an empire,
European monarchs, by the smallness of their territories, knew some
limits to their predation.
It was therefore easier for the industrious Western classes to escape
oppression by punishing bad governments through emigration. Consider
the revocation of the Edict of Nantes under Louis XIV and the
impoverishment of the Kingdom of France induced by the exodus of
Protestants to more favorable havens like Switzerland, the Netherlands,
or England. The absence of political unity allowed the continent to be ruled by many small, sovereign, and competing territorial divisions.
From this competition was born a race for talent and capital, conducive
to the diffusion of a certain political discipline. It was in these
conditions that freedom, commerce, and science flourished. That Macron invokes the "Renaissance" in his election
campaign to sell membership in this new Empire, shows his historical
misunderstanding.
The Renaissance itself was born from the bowels of an Italy divided
into a multitude of city-states. It is this division that the Scottish
philosopher David Hume considered favorable to the progress of the arts
and sciences.
Also in Italy, Shakespeare, in the Merchant of Venice, leads Antonio to recall that the prosperity of the city depends on the securities and freedoms granted to all traders. From
Benjamin Constant to Montesquieu to Alexis de Tocqueville, many
thinkers were convinced that these freedoms are more likely to be
safeguarded in small states than in vast empires.
From this point of view, the European Union is a cartel of
governments eager to resuscitate imperial ambitions foreign to the
conditions of the rise of our civilization. Its authoritarian
projects of political, regulatory and fiscal standardization are
betrayals of the spirit of innovation that requires the highest degree
of decentralization and possible institutional competition.
Finally, it is the intellectuals Nathan Rosenberg and Luther Earle
Birdzell who best summarize the historical factors behind the blossoming
of the West. In a book published in 1986, they write that the prosperity of a civilization implies the expansion of an open trade on a politically fragmented territory. Applied to our region, this
prescription leads us to prefer the dream of a Europe with a hundred
thousand Liechtensteins to the dystopia of a continent-spanning empire.
