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Reflections on the Eclipse of Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

C. E. Black
C. E. Black
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Extract

It is doubtless a truism to state that Europe is on the wane, at least as a center of political power. Few would deny that a change of major proportions has taken place since the turn of the century in Europe's role in world affairs. But once this is stated, agreement ceases. The causes and mechanism of Europe's decline have received the most varied interpretations, and the bearing of this change on the future is so profound that each school of thought tends to evaluate the destiny of Europe in terms of its own political philosophy. The widest assortment of scholars and prophets have been drawn to this problem by the fascination of its perplexities, and their treatises already comprise a formidable library. Yet the solutions proposed can scarcely be said to have resulted in a clarification of the problem of Europe, and even the most distinguished and influential of these writers have found relatively few areas of agreement.

Type
Review Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , January 1952 , pp. 293 - 303
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1952

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References

1 Sorokin, Pitrim A., Social Philosophies of an Age of Crisis (Boston, 1950)Google Scholar, provides a useful summary and critique of many of these treatises.

2 Fischer, , op. cit., pp. 194–95Google Scholar; this chapter has been revised and expanded since the first edition of 1943.

3 Ibid., pp. 198.

4 Ibid., pp. 200–16.

5 This study is an expansion of Holborn's article, “The Collapse of the European Political System, 1914–45,” published in World Politics, I, No. 4 (July 1949), 442–66.

6 Holborn, , op. cit., p. xi.Google Scholar

7 Ibid., p. x.

8 Ibid., pp. 55–62.

9 Ibid., pp. 189–93.

10 Clough, , op. cit., p. 3.Google Scholar

11 Ibid., pp. 6–7.

12 Ibid., p. 11.

13 Ibid., pp. 219–20; see also the table on p. 237.

14 For a recent discussion of this problem, see Halecki, Oscar, The Limits and Divisions of European History, New York, 1950, pp. 65–141Google Scholar; another viewpoint, illustrated by a number of original maps, is presented in Cahnman, Werner J., “Frontiers Between East and West in Europe,” Geographical Review, XXXIX, No. 4 (October 1949), 605–24.Google Scholar