EUROPE

A “gigantic promontory.”

Beaton, professor emeritus of history at King’s College London, delivers an outstanding history of Europe, beginning with the Battle of Marathon in ancient Greece. Were it not for that victory, 2,500 years ago, Asian culture, first in the form of Persia’s, would have dominated the western tip of Europe, instead of the reverse. After false starts with Alexander the Great and the Crusades, largely fed by firearm and naval technology during the Renaissance, Europe spread empires across the world. Even contemporaries denounced the greed, injustice, and mass murder that occurred. Other accomplishments such as the Scientific Revolution, almost entirely a European achievement, are admirable. Also uniquely European was the rise of representative government, in which citizens choose leaders and enjoy rights that a government must respect. Born in a European offshoot (colonial America), representative government survived the disastrous French Revolution, made progress the following century, and flourished in the 20th. It seemed to triumph with the USSR’s 1991 collapse, although Beaton points out that, while America celebrated its victory, Europe progressed toward a genuinely visionary future: the European Union, a vast, prosperous supranational system with open borders and a free market under the rule of law. It’s no secret that the present century has seen this progress stumble, as nationalism, always more powerful than brotherly love, returned with a vengeance. War, too, still rages in Ukraine. Beaton writes, “Today it is no longer the rule of law or liberal democracy that is in the ascendant around the world, but Russian-style authoritarianism…even in parts of Europe itself, and…a new administration in the United States.”

A vividly insightful history of an ever-evolving continent.