The identity of “Europe” has always been uncertain and imprecise, a source of pride for some and hatred or contempt for others. Like all identities it is a construction, an elaborate palimpsest of stories, images, resonances, collective memories, invented and carefully nurtured traditions. It is also particularly elusive because continents, far more than nations, tend to be simply geographical expressions. In recent times, postcolonial times, collective identities—at least in the face of opposition—have become commonplace elsewhere. But before the nineteenth century few would have said that they were “Asian” or “African,” and—something that the peoples of the United States tend to forget—“American” has always been carefully qualified in virtually every language but English. Only Europeans have persistently described themselves, usually when faced with cultures they found indescribably alien, to be not merely British or German or Spanish but also European: “we Europeans” (nos Europai), as the English philosopher Francis Bacon said in 1623.

Because it is collective, there are those who have argued that any such thing as a “European” identity is, at best, an illusion. “Europe” now exists as an economic, and increasingly political, entity. But this has no wider cultural or affective meaning. It merely describes the signatory states of the Maastricht Treaty. Yet if that is all Europe was now, or had ever been, the Maastricht Treaty would never have come into being. For behind the limited, practical conditions that have brought together a series of postwar states on the continent of Europe into a loose federation lies a very long history.