Elena CALANDRI

Professor of History of European Integration, Department of Political Science, Law and International Studies, University of Padua

White Europe?

Eurowhiteness. Culture, Empire and Race in the European Project
Hans Kundnani. London, Hurst Publishers, 2023

The colonial legacy plays a pivotal role in today’s critical assessment of ‘Europe’, European integration and European institutions. This follows a widely perceived estrangement between Europe and the Global South, difficulties in handling cultural diversity in European societies, and the consequences of human exchanges, globalisation and migration. It also follows an academic trend pointing to the nexuses between European integration and the two major processes in European post-1945 history: decolonisation and post-colonial relations. Although the nexus was acknowledged by historians long before the recent spike of interest, in this newest incarnation, it has been given absolute centrality, it is considered not one component in a complex set of events and ideas, but a crucial, sometimes even the major driver. The field is crowded and to “contest the absence of (post)colonial awareness from the process of European formation and to rewrite it into its narrative” (Ponzanesi 2018) is now the choice of many of those writing in post-colonial studies. Hans Kundnani’s ‘long essay’ Eurowhiteness. Culture, Empire and Race in the European Project is to be read in this framework. It is a denunciation of the ‘hidden’ ideas lying behind the origins, development and the present of European integration, rhetorically construed as a confutation of “what ‘pro-Europeans’ say”. Kundnani’s first key argument is that Europe and the EU are an ‘imagined community’. He rejects the “pro-Europeans’ standard narrative” of the integration process as a choice for peace and against nationalism. Instead, he defines the post-war idea of Europe and the integration process as nationalism at a continental level, that is ‘regionalism’, and its ‘universalism’ as an updated version of the old ‘civilising mission’. Kundnani stresses how the integration process launched in the 1950s was Eurocentric and reserved for Europeans, and that its ‘civic’ component, based on territorial belonging and civic values, coexisted with an ethno/cultural vein based on racialised bias and ‘whiteness’. This vein reemerged after the so-called ‘migration crisis’ of 2015 and is now disturbingly shared outside ‘populist circles’.

To support his theses, Kundnani provides first a historical excursus from ancient Greece to the World War II to show how the idea of Europe, and European identity, has “formed in opposition to multiple non-European Others”: from the Greek poleis confronting the ‘barbarians’, to the Sacred Roman Empire opposing Islam in the Middle Ages and the early modern period – Islam in both its Arab and Ottoman incarnations. However, it is in the Enlightenment that Kundnani finds the roots of the current civilisational vision, including race and whiteness, and the idea of European superiority which inspired colonialism and its culture. This legacy informed colonisation in the 19th and 20th centuries, and was very alive as the second world war set the stage for the continental integration process. The book develops as an overview of the history of continental integration from 1945 to the present. It gives colonialism a central role as a driver in the Paris and Rome Treaties, inspired by “a colonial project”, and traces the vanishing role of colonial preoccupations in the next decades of the Cold War, when the flourishing integration process became a “vehicle for colonial amnesia”. During these decades, de-politicisation and economic development allowed the Christian Democrat ‘fathers of Europe’, followed by the Social Democrats, to consolidate the narrative of a civic identity, based on territorial belonging, and of a “European model” based on the social market economy.

Human rights and the rule of law perpetuated the idea of the universal value of European civilisation. In the twenty years between the end of the Cold War and the financial crisis, however, a renewal in the ‘civilising mission’ reached its apex. The EU imposed it on Eastern Europe, through the enlargement process, and in relations with the rest of the world, where economic and political conditionality was increasingly embedded in the identity and international profile. It was also included in the actual policies of the Union. The financial crisis and, even more so, the so-called migratory crisis of 2015 have, however, seen reverses. Kundnani detects the shift toward a defensive attitude and the revival of emphasis on external threats. There is ‘othering’, the reassertion of an ethno/cultural identity and a civilisation self-definition, to provide an alternative after worsening economic conditions, the end of redistributive policies, and the crisis of the ‘social model’. 

Scholars of European studies widely accept many arguments in Kundnani’s book. The colonial preoccupation marking the beginning of the integration process, discussed by leading French historian René Girault in the late 1980s, is well known. The role of the French colonials in the European Commission’s General Directorate 8 ‘Development’ is particularly discussed. Nobody doubts either, at least among historians, that Europe’s post-war political leaders defended national interest both inside the European institutional framework (just think of Charles de Gaulle!) and in their national and collective relations with the rest of the world. Of course, continental integration was as much a way to govern mutual relations as to collectively retain a degree of independence in the age of superpowers. And yes, the nations tried to keep alive bonds with their former empires, although they did it much more as individual countries than collectively. They did so with a degree of continuity with old topics and cultural biases which were a legacy of colonial times. Certainly, European integration was, and was understood to be, a pioneering form of regionalism. From the 1970s, diplomats and political scientists discussed a ‘European identity’: the ‘European model’ of economic integration was, meanwhile, put forward in Latin America and South East Asia. Also, the 1990s and early 2000s are now widely accepted as a period of ‘Eurointoxication’ and hubris, though proper historical research is limited. Certainly, the ‘universalist’ language, the normative approach and the systematic inclusion of economic and political conditionality have been acknowledged as a mark of the times and of the much-heralded, and ill-fated, ‘Global Europe’. To some these points were supposed to make up for the lack of legitimation of an international role for the EU and for the benefit of citizens.

The problem with the book, and its willingly abrasive posture and revisionist ambition, is not in individual arguments, but in the general, unproven theses. These, at best, confuse a part with the whole picture, and adopt an exceptionalist attitude, in particular toward recent European trends. The thesis concerning the pivotal role of colonialism and of a racialised post-colonial culture in European integration is unconvincing, as is the claim that universalism represents a revived civilising mission. The wealth of quotations, and examples are cherry-picked to support the thesis: the omissions are also telling. Historical generalisations and simplifications are simply too grandiose and one-sided. The whole seems to lack evidential and methodological foundations. Kundnani’s arguments are to be found at the crossroads where four academic trends meet: the history of ideas, identity, post-colonial studies and critical race theory. While all offer essential insights, all too often, there is no interest in checking whether and, if so, how those ideas led to concrete choices before taking them as the reality. Minor figures are bigged up as interpreters of their time, philosophers as governors, and ideology becomes structural foundations. Provincialising Europe is probably, also, a lesson which should be more widely understood.