"Dead Lands" or "New Europe"? Reconstructing Europe, reconfiguring Eastern Europe: "Westerners" and the aftermath of the world war

East European Quarterly

Volumn 36, Issue 1, 2002, Pages 39-62

  Brian Newsome, W ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA   (United States)

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EID: 43249191594     PISSN: 00128449     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
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References (117)

1. R. W. Seton-Watson, "Nationalism and Internationalism," The New Europe, 14 December 1916, 317-20;
2. Elmer Davis, "America's Contribution to Central Europe," New Europe, 5 December 1918, 177-80;
3. W. J. Rose, "A New Idealism in Central Europe," New Europe, 12 December 1918, 197-99.
4. For purposes of clarification, let us delineate the physical region most Westerners configured as the "New Europe" or "Eastern Europe." It included the newly established states of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and even Austria (the latter because of its history as the "eastern" empire). Depictions of Eastern Europe also included the preexisting countries of Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, and Greece, but not Russia. Hence, I will consider these states to form Eastern Europe because that is how many Westerners of the interwar period imagined the area and defined the term. For example, see Michel Lhéritier, L'Europe orientate à l'époque contemporaine (Paris, 1938), 27-29, 32-33, 126;
5. Edwin A. Grosvenor, "The Races of Europe: The Graphic Epitome of a Never-ceasing Human Drama. The Aspirations, Failures, Achievements, and Conflicts of the Polyglot People of the Most Densely Populated Continent," The National Geographic Magazine 34 (December 1918): 459;
6. Marcus Ehrenpreis, The Soul of the East: Experience and Reflection, trans. Alfhild Huebsch (Stockholm, 1927; trans., New York, 1928), 25.
7. Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford, 1994), 4-6, 11-12, 16, 19, 90-91, 94. 97-98, 157, 165, 283- 86, 316, 345, 348, 352,355-61, 364-72;
8. Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (Oxford, 1997), 3, 188;
9. Vesna Goldsworthy, Inventing Ruritania: The Imperialism of the Imagination (New Haven, 1998), 9, 11, 107-11, 157, 161-84. In his conclusion, Wolff carried his analysis through the present, although his examination of the interwar period remained sketchy. Todorova and Goldsworthy covered the postwar era, but they concentrated on the Balkans. I seek to fill out the picture of the interwar years and to offer new insight on the ways in which Western Europeans and Americans saw all of Eastern Europe, as well as the reasons for those depictions. Although use of terms such as "Western" and "West European" is taboo by current standards, I have utilized these epithets because that is how many Franco-British-American intellectuals, journalists, and travel authors saw themselves in contrast to "backward" East Europeans. I do not countenance the use of culturally loaded geographical designations like "Eastern" and "Western." But if one is to understand the perspective of interwar commentators, then one must "step into their shoes" to see the world as they saw it and to deconstruct their views. It would be difficult to accomplish this task without using some of their terms and reference points, even if they are deplorable by today's standards. For ease of reference, I will refer to the French, British, and Americans authors I consulted as "Western." I do not mean to exclude the Dutch, Belgians, Spanish, Italians, and other peoples in the western part of Europe from the cultural and political "West" of the interwar era. French, British, and American intellectuals, journalists, and travel authors produced a flood of literature on the region during the interwar period, so I have chosen to concentrate on their works as representative of the self-styled Western perspective for which they claimed to stand.
10. I did not consult German sources because many Germans saw their society as existing outside Western civilization. For example, Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, economist Johann Plenge, and social scientist Georg Simmel welcomed the World War in the belief that it would destroy decadent Western civilization. The promianent German novelist Thomas Mann viewed his nation as separate from the Western portion of the world and in fact fighting "the terrible, perilous, irrational struggle against the world entente of civilization." Numerous Germans saw their destiny not with the West but within their own separate Mitteleuropa, which encompassed much of the geographical region commonly referred to as Eastern Europe. See Mann, quoted in Arthur Herman, The Idea of Decline in Western History (New York, 1997), 233
11. [quote taken from Thomas Mann, Reflections of a Non-Political Man, trans. W. Morris (New York, 1983), 34].
12. See also Herman, Reflections of a Non-Political Man, (1983), op. cit., 235;
13. and H. Stuart Hughes, Consciousness and Society: The Reorientation of uropean Social Thought, 1890-1930 (New York, 1958), 406.
14. Miklós Vörös and Miklós Hadas, "Representing Euroanxieties," chap. In Ambiguous Identities in the New Europe (Budapest, 1997), 5.
15. J. W. Headlam, The Dead Lands of Europe (New York, 1917), 5.
16. Albert Mousset, Le Royaume serbe croate Slovène: son organisation, sa vie politique et ses institutions, with a Preface by Albert Thomas (Paris, 1926), 172. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are my own.
17. Headlam, Albert Mousset, Le Royaume serbe croate Slovène: son organisation, sa vie politique et ses institutions, (1926) op. cit., 5-9;
18. Mousset, Le Royaume serbe croate Slovène: son organisation, sa vie politique et ses institutions, (1926) op. cit., 247;
19. Thomas Hungerford Holdich, Boundaries in Europe and the Near East (London, 1918), 8, 84, 92-93;
20. Halford J. Mackinder, The World War and After: A Concise Narrative and Some Tentative Ideas (London, 1924), 218, 248, 256;
21. "The Crisis of Democracy in the Slavonic World," The Slavonic and East European Review 9 (March 1931): 511, 514-15;
22. Hubert Griffith, European Encounters: A Travel Note-Book (London, 1931), 284, 286;
23. Bernard Newman, The Blue Danube: Black Forest to Black Sea (London, 1935), 79;
24. Hermann Keyserling, Europe, trans. Maurice Samuel (New York, 1928), 319-20;
25. Lheritier, Europe, (1928) op. cit., 23-24, 30-31,116-17,144-46.
26. Holdich, Europe, (1928) op. cit., 84, 92-93;
27. Mackinder, Europe, (1928) op. cit., 203, 205,210, 214-15, 218, 225.
28. For others who excluded Germany from the West, see Henri Massis, Defense de I'occident (Paris, 1927), 19, 24;
29. and Leonard Woolf, Barbarians at the Gate (London, 1939), 91-92,139, 182,191-92.
30. Lhéritier, Barbarians at the Gate, (1939) op. cit., 15,21.
31. Lhéritier, Barbarians at the Gate, (1939) lbid, 16-18.
32. Holdich, Lhéritier, Barbarians at the Gate, (1939) op. cit., 8-9, 118;
33. Mackinder, Democratic Ideals and Reality (New York, 1942), 162-63;
34. William Stearns Davis, A Short History of the Near East from the Founding of Constantinople (330 A.D. to 1922) (New York, 1922), vii;
35. Mary Edith Durham, Twenty Years of Balkan Tangle (London, 1920), 9.
36. See also Robert Joseph Kemer and Nicholas Howard, The Balkan Conferences and the Balkan Entente, 1930-1935:
37. A Study in the Recent History of the Balkan and Near Eastern Peoples (Berkeley, 1936), 3-8;
38. and the anonymously authored "The Near Eastern Settlement," The New Europe, 6 November 1919, 92-94.
39. Arnold J. Toynbee, The Western Question in Greece and Turkey: A Study in the Contact ofivilizations (Boston, 1923), xvii, xxvii, xxxi, 5-6, 9,13,18,27,154-55;
40. Olivier-Martin edited La Revue historique du droit francais et étranger
41. and Chambon edited La Revue parlementaire.
42. Henri de Montfort, Les Nouveaux états de la Baltique, with a Preface by Charles Dupuis (Paris, 1933), 263;
43. François Olivier-Martin, "Préface," in Hugo Vitols, La Mer baltique et les états baltes (Paris, 1935), viii;
44. Henry de Chambon, Origines et histoire de la Lettonie, with a Preface by J. Noulens (Lille, 1933), 9, 49;
45. Alexandre Millerand, "Préface," in Louis Villecourt, L'Estonie (Paris, 1932), 8;
46. Jacques Ancel, Manuel historique de la question d'orient (1792- 1930), 4th ed. (Paris, 1931), 4-7, 321- 23;
47. Chris GoGwilt, 'True West: The Changing Idea of the West from the 1880s to the 1920s," in Enduring Western Civilization: The Construction of the Concept of Western Civilization and Its 'Others,' ed. Silvia Federici (Westport, 1995), 50;
48. Robin Okey, "Central Europe/Eastern Europe: Behind the Definitions," Past and Present: A Journal of Historical Studies 137 (November 1992): 120-21.
49. Karl Brockhausen, "National Reconciliation in South-Eastern Europe," Slavonic Review 7 (January 1929): 311;
50. Toynbee, The World after the Peace Conference: Being an Epilogue to the 'History of the Peace Conference in Paris' and a Prologue to the 'Survey of International Affairs, 1920-23' (London, 1926), 21;
51. Ehrenpreis, The World after the Peace Conference: Being an Epilogue to the 'History of the Peace Conference in Paris' and a Prologue to the 'Survey of International Affairs, 1920-23' (1926) op. cit., 11-13, 18;
52. Griffith, The World after the Peace Conference: Being an Epilogue to the 'History of the Peace Conference in Paris' and a Prologue to the 'Survey of International Affairs, 1920-23' (1926) op. cit., 32-33, 58, 210, 286, 289;
53. Newman, The World after the Peace Conference: Being an Epilogue to the 'History of the Peace Conference in Paris' and a Prologue to the 'Survey of International Affairs, 1920-23' (1926) op. cit., 116, 152-53. 160;
54. Newman, Danger Spots of Europe (London, 1939), 195, 203, 210-16;
55. Keyserling, Danger Spots of Europe (1939) op. cit., 309-10, 319, 321-22, 345;
56. Lucian Swift Kirtland, "The Obstacle Race in Central Europe," Travel 37 (May 1921): 5;
57. Ancel, "The Obstacle Race in Central Europe," Travel 37 (1921) op. cit., 16, 318;
58. Gordon East, "The Concept and Political Status of the Shatter Zone," in Geographical Essays on Eastern Europe, ed. Norman J. G. Pounds (Bloomington, 1961), 12;
59. Martin W. Lewis and Kären W. Wigen, The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography (Berkeley, 1997), 6-7, 54, 57-58.
60. Durham, The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography (1997) op. cit., 9, 18, 32, 34, 39, 45, 55;
61. Todorova, The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography (1997) op. cit., 3, 6, 16, 120-22;
62. Goldsworthy, The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography (1997) op. cit., 161-71, 211.
63. As Todorova and Goldsworthy have noted, Durham loved the Albanians and sought to promote their cause in Europe after the Balkan Wars and the Great War, much as Rebecca West, author of Black Lambl and Grey Falcon (London, 1941), championed the cause of Yugoslavia's royalist Serbs during the Second World War. Both Durham and West set out to depict the "real" Balkans, and both favored a particular Balkan people. Yet they inadvertently encouraged the perpetuation of some negative Balkan stereotypes.
64. Louis Gallois, "Les Populations slaves de la péninsule des Balkans," Annales de géographie 27 (15 November 1918): 450-51.
65. Ehrenpreis, "Les Populations slaves de la péninsule des Balkans," Annales de géographie 27 (1918) op. cit., 11.
66. Ehrenpreis, "Les Populations slaves de la péninsule des Balkans," Annales de géographie 27 (1918) Ibid., 12-13.
67. Todorova, "Les Populations slaves de la péninsule des Balkans," Annales de géographie 27 (1918) op. cit.; 16, 124-25, also examined this passage from Ehrenpreis. In addition, she argued that the Oriental image, although usually depicted in a negative light, offered an exotic form of escape from the stale European world (13).
68. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York, 1978), 1, 3, 7, 32-33, 40, 42, 54, 72, 120,204,206.
69. Todorova, Orientalism (1978) op. cit., 20;
70. Goldsworthy, Orientalism (1978) op. cit., 2.
71. Said, Orientalism (1978) op. cit., 116-17,120.
72. The traditional Levant of the nineteenth century was the Eastern Mediterranean's Asian littoral, primarily Syria and Palestine.
73. Elie Kedourie, England and the Middle East: The Destruction of the Ottoman Empire, 1914-1921 (Hassocks, 1956; reprint. 1978). 72-79.
74. Evelyn Baring, Modem Egypt (New York, 1908), vol. 2, 246-51;
75. Kedourie, Modem Egypt (1908), vol. 2, op. cit., 74.
76. Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, vol. 1
77. Form and Actuality, trans. Charles Francis Atkinson (New York, 1926), xiv, xv, 3-5, 21, 26, 33-39, 44, 46-47, 93- 94, 106, 109-12, 424;
78. Massis, Form and Actuality (1926) op. cit., 28-29;
79. Herman, Form and Actuality (1926) op. cit., 225, 236-40.
80. John F. Fennelly, Twilight of the Evening Lands: Oswald Spengler-A Half Century Later (New York, 1972), 49-50, 54;
81. Klaus P. Fischer, History and Prophecy: Oswald Spengler and the Decline of the West (Durham, 1977), 15,30,51, 154.
82. Roland N. Stromberg, An Intellectual History of Modern Europe, 2d ed. (Englewood Cliffs, 1975), 419-20,423,425.
83. On the connection between the Enlightenment and the " construction" of Eastern Europe, see Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe.
84. H. G. Wells, The Salvaging of Civilization (London, 1921), 1.
85. H. G. Wells, The Salvaging of Civilization (London, 1921), Ibid, 10,15, 17,21-22,34-35,43-46,61,68.
86. Paul Valéry, Variétí (Paris, 1924), 11-13, 15, 21, 24, 25, 32-33;
87. Marvin Perry, Arnold Toynbee and the Crisis of the West (Washington, 1982), 1-2, 4, 33.
88. Valéry, Arnold Toynbee and the Crisis of the West (1982) op. cit., 45, 53-54. Valéry's assessment presents some worrisome, but perhaps explainable, contradictions. If ancient Greek thought characterized Western Europe, then where did modem Greece fit into his scheme of Europe? Was it part of Western, Central, or Eastern Europe? One suspects that Valéry would have considered contemporary Greece part of Eastern Europe and have excluded it from the civilized West as he did other Orthodox countries. Quite commonly, writers differentiated between the ancient Greeks as forerunners of Western civilization and the modem Greeks who had lost touch with their glorious predecessors.
89. Toynbee, Experiences (London, 1969), 186-87, 199-202, 207;
90. Toynbee, "The Dwarfing of Europe," chap, in Civilization on Trial (New York, 1948), 97-98, 106;
91. Toynbee, Nationality and the War ( London, 1915; reprint, New York, 1919), v. 1, 500;
92. Herman, Nationality and the War (1915), v. 1, op. cit., 256-57, 268, 275-76;
93. Perry, Nationality and the War (1915), v. 1, op. cit., 1, 9, 11, 16, 83;
94. William H. McNeill, Arnold J. Toynbee: A Life (Oxford, 1989), 91, 93;
95. Stromberg, Arnold J. Toynbee: Historian for an Age in Crisis, with a Preface by Harry T. Moore (Carbondale, 1972), xi, 1, 4-5, 13-15. In his lecture on "The Dwarfing of Europe," Toynbee based his idea of European hegemony on the great power status of Britain and France as well as the prevalence of West European cultural and intellectual types throughout the world. He believed that such dominance was coming to an end. Thus he spoke of an eminent "dwarfing of Europe."
96. Toynbee, A Study of History, vol. 6 (Oxford, 1939), 284 (quote), v.
97. Toynbee, A Study of History, vol. 6 (1939), Ibid, 4, 318-21;
98. Toynbee, Study, vol. 5, 411;
99. Perry, Study, vol. 5, op. cit., xiii, 20, 36-37, 44-46, 54-55, 63- 64, 79, 84, 87, 95;
100. Herman, Study, vol. 5, op. cit., 4, 9, 271, 278-83;
101. Stromberg, Toynbee, 14-15.17,23,27.
102. With the exception, of course, of the Soviets' reversal of state policy toward the Orthodox Church.
103. Toynbee, Study, vol. 6, 1.
104. See also Toynbee, Study, vol. 1, 63-67;
105. Toynbee, Western Question, 5-6;
106. Stromberg, Toynbee, 16-17.
107. Toynbee, Study, vol. 6,2.
108. Toynbee, Western Question, 6.
109. Toynbee, Western Question, Ibid, 26, 61.
110. Toynbee, Western Question, Ibid., 27.
111. Toynbee, Nationality and the War, 139 (quote), x, u, 143, 242-45, 478, 500.
112. Massis, Nationality and the War, 139, op. cit., 73 (quote), 1-3, 7-8, 10, 14, 17, 19-22, 24, 57, 129. 176-77, 180, 224, 233, 248-51, 262-64, 269-70.
113. As noted by Silvia Federici ("The God That Never Failed: The Origins and Crises of Western Civilization," chap, in Enduring Western Civilization, 84)
114. and Robert O. Paxton [Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), 21, 333, 344, 357)
115. Massis patronized Action franchise, was a close associate of Charles Maurras, edited the conservative journal La Revue universelle, supported the Vichy regime during World War II, and was elected to the Academie francaise in 1960. Like Maurras, he maintained a hostile altitude toward the presence of foreigners in France, especially North Africans and, during the 1930s, Jewish refugees. Xenophobia and anti-Semitism fed Massis's diatribe on Western decline and his depiction of Eastern Europe. The most important point, though, is that his opinions about Eastern Europe were quite similar to those of more leftist intellectuals, such as H. G. Wells.
116. C. Delisle Bums, Modem Civilization on Trial (New York, 1931), 18.
117. C. Delisle Bums, Modem Civilization on Trial (New York, 1931), Ibid., 6,8-9, 12-16, 121-29,136-38.