While the history of the idea of Europe extends back to classical antiquity, the writing of that history only commenced in earnest after the Second World War. The principal histories of the idea of Europe in the immediate postwar years included those by Federico Chabod (1961), Heinz Gollwitzer (1951), Denys Hays (1957), and Carlo Curcio (1958). None of these works, however, sought to cover the entire history of the idea of Europe. It was Denis de Rougemont (1961) who first charted the history of the idea of Europe from its inception to the present. The Introduction considers the principal arguments made in those as well as in more recent histories of the idea of Europe, highlighting the ways in which many of them are grounded in culturally supremacist assumptions. It then considers those values that have come to be considered as distinctly European, including rationality, justice, democracy, individual freedom, secularism, and tolerance, before outlining the book’s overall argument, namely that while it is essential to hold onto those values, it is also necessary to rethink the idea of Europe in a spirit of self-critique and humility, and to break with any simple opposition between the European and the non-European.