around which other histories and other
geographies were to be organized (cf.
Young, 1990b).
(2) Exhibiting the world:the production of a
space within which particular objects
were made visible in particular ways,
and by means of which particular claims
to knowledge made by viewing subjects
were negotiated and legitimized.
(3) Normalizing the subject: the production of
spaces of inclusion and exclusion that
treated the subject-position of the white,
middle-class, heterosexual male as the
norm.
(4) Abstracting culture and nature: the produc-
tion of ‘nature’ as a realm separate from
‘culture’,inwhichEuropeanculturehad
madenatureyield its secrets and its re-
sources, and in which temperate nature
was ‘normal nature’ (cf. Blaut, 1999).
This argumentation-sketch is more than an
exercise in historical reconstruction. ‘In eluci-
dating the conceptual orders of Eurocentrism,’
Gregory argues, ‘it becomes much more diffi-
cult to assume that we have left such predica-
ments behind, and much more likely that we
will be forced to recognise that Eurocentrism
and its geo-graphs continue to invest our geog-
raphies with their troubling meanings.’ dg
Suggested reading
Slater (1992); Gregory (1998a).
Europe, idea of Theregionthat we now call
Europe is the western part of the Eurasian
landmass. Europe has no clearly defined bor-
ders, particularly in the east, but the region’s
history can be read as an ongoing attempt to
define what it means to be European and to fix
thatidentityon the map (Heffernan, 1998).
This process has generated a series of non-
European ‘others’, against whom Europeans
have defined themselves.
The term ‘Europe’ is derived fromEuropa,a
female character in Greek mythology. The
word had no geographical meaning for the
Classical civilizations centred on themiddle
eastand the Mediterranean basin, and little
significance in the Roman Empire. It is absent
from the Bible, but was used alongside
‘Christendom’ in the early medieval period to
describe the area where Christianity prevailed
and where a literate elite shared a common
Latin language. On medieval world maps,
Europe was depicted as a small, internally
undifferentiated area, vulnerable to incursion
from the Islamic regions ofasiaandafrica,
which were Europe’s first constituting ‘others’
(Hay, 1968; Wilson and van den Dussen,
1993).
The expansion of Europe into theamericas
from the late fifteenth century was both a cause
and a consequence of the intellectual and tech-
nological changes associated with the European
Renaissance, and provoked a major reassess-
ment of Europe’s place in a world still seen as
divinely created (Wintle, 1999, 2008). The
opening of the Americas also generated a new
economic system based on long-distance
Atlantictradeand a new political system based
on competitive European nation-states,
whose interests clashed repeatedly in Europe
and the Americas during the collapse in the
fragile unity of the Christian church following
the Reformation. As ‘Christendom’ disinte-
grated into a complex mosaic of Catholic and
Protestant communities in the Old and the
New Worlds, the word ‘Europe’ lost its reli-
gious connotation. In the wake of the Treaties
of Westphalia (1648), which ended the
European wars of religion, Europe was
defined as the region in which a ‘balance of
power’ might operate between rival nation-
states by mutual consent (Pagden, 2002).
The geographical limits of this arrangement
were famously outlined in the Duc de Sully’s
mid-seventeenth-century Grand Design for
European unity. For Sully, the Ottoman
Empire had no part in the ‘concert of Europe’,
because international agreements ultimately
rested on Christian values. Christian Russia
was also excluded, because the Russian people
were deemed essentially Asiatic and hence
culturally inferior. Europe now had two con-
stituting ‘others’, a traditional religious enemy
in the Islamic south and a new cultural enemy
in the Asiatic east. Sully’s cultural definition of
Europe highlights a fundamental irony at the
heart of the European debate. At the very
moment when Europe was defined politically
in the most enlightened terms as an area where
permanent peace might be established by
international agreement, it was also defined
geographically to exclude the peoples of other
regions who were deemed unworthy on
cultural or civilizational grounds (Heater,
1992; Wolff, 1994; Neumann, 1996: see also
civilization;nomos).
The legitimacy of imposing geographical
limits on supposedly universalhuman rights
was hotly debated during the eighteenth-
century enlightenment, but the freedom
educated Europeans (including those who
had settled beyond Europe) claimed for them-
selves in their hard-won battles against theGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_E Final Proof page 222 1.4.2009 3:17pmEUROPE, IDEA OF