Author Description

The revolutionary thesis of this book is that the European past and the idea of Europe as an essentially ‘historical continent’ was (re)invented by the critics of the French Revolution as part of their ideological struggle against the Revolution. The counter-revolutionary authors and statesmen were both conservative and cosmopolitan at the same time. In their writings they drew on the works of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment as well as criticized its alleged revolutionary legacy. This study seeks to uncover the roots of historically informed ideas of Europe and of European history, while at the same time underlining the fundamental differences between the writings of the older counter-revolutionary Europeanists and their self-appointed successors in the twenty-first century.