AustLit

'Addressing the European Parliament in Strasbourg on 8 March 1994, as he made the case for the Czech Republic’s membership in the European Union, Vaclav Havel described the deep historical entanglements that defined and created “Europe”.

Europe is a continent of extraordinary variety and diversity geographically, ethnically, nationally, culturally, economically and politically. Yet at the same time all its parts are and always have been so deeply linked by their destiny that this continent can accurately be described as a single albeit complex political entity. Anything crucial in any area of human endeavour occurring anywhere in Europe always has had both direct and indirect consequences for our continent as a whole. The history of Europe is, in fact, the history of a constant searching and reshaping of its internal structures and the relationship of its parts. Today, if we talk about a single European civilization or about common European values, history, traditions, and destiny, what we are referring to is more the fruit of this tendency toward integration than its cause. 

'This interdependence of political, economic, cultural, social, ethnic, scientific and intellectual activity has always been at the heart of the continent’s history. It lies still at the heart of the present crises over Europe’s future, questioning its form of governance and indeed its very identity. Some commentators even foresee the death of “Europe”, in the face of the compounding pressures since 2015 of the Greek debt debacle, the refugee crisis, and Brexit. But what is the Europe these people hope to preserve? Is it a polity, a cultural entity, or even a state of mind? The articles in this special issue of the Australian Journal of Politics and History can be seen as a series of efforts to place this problem in its historical frame. They derive from papers delivered at the 2017 conference of the Australasian Association for European History (AAEH), held at Monash University in Melbourne, which took as its theme the concept of “Europe’s Entanglements”.2 One of the particular attractions of this biennial conference is the way it serves as a barometer of the state of historical research on Europe within Australia and New Zealand. Since 2000 selections from its papers have appeared in a special issue of the Australian Journal of Politics and History. As editors of this contribution to that series, we have sought to maintain the established practice that the selected papers should focus upon the work of emerging scholars and allow them the opportunity to publish their research in a leading journal. If these articles do not form a single, cohering answer to the problem of how to understand Europe, they each attempt to confront some aspect of the myriad interwoven elements of Europe’s past that Havel identified.' (Introduction)