Understanding Europe (The Works of Christopher Dawson)

XI. The Revolt against Europe

165 xi The Revolt against Europe The change in the world position of European culture during the present century has been so great that it is difficult to find any parallel to it in the whole course of history. In comparison with this the greatest changes in the history of ancient civilization, like the decline of Hellenistic civilization in the second century b.c. or the decline of the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries a.d., were comparatively gradual and were far more limited in their effects. Fifty years ago Europe enjoyed a position of world hegemony which was at once political, economic and cultural, which had been steadily growing for four centuries and which showed little apparent sign of coming to an end. In the course of little more than a single generation this position of world leadership has been lost and Europe herself is threatened with disintegration. Politically, Europe to-day is weaker and more divided than at any period since the tenth century. Fifty years ago her political and military powers were greater than those of all the rest of the world put together, and she was the centre of control in which all the forces of international politics were concentrated. To-day the centres of world power lie outside Europe and Europe herself is partitioned between two rival non-European power systems. From the economic point of view her productive resources are still great, but she has become relatively and absolutely impoverished, and she has ceased to be the workshop of the world and the centre of world trade and finance . Even more serious than all this, however, is Europe’s loss of cultural leadership. In the past Europe has undergone many political and economic crises, some of them very severe, like that which caused the 166 Understanding Europe ruin of Germany during the Thirty Years War, but hitherto no one in Europe and few outside have doubted the values of European culture. To-day all this has changed. Asia and Africa are in revolt, not merely against the political control of Europe, but even more against her claim to cultural hegemony. America is convinced of her own cultural superiority , as represented by what is known as “the American way of life” , and is coming to regard Europe as a culturally backward area which stands in need not only of American money but of American methods of social organization and American cultural leadership. Finally and above all, Europe herself has begun to lose faith in her own cultural traditions and her own cultural values. The external critics of European culture find supporters within European society. Indeed these critics have been the disciples of the internal critics of the European tradition, so that to a very great extent Europe has been her own greatest enemy. This is something new in history. In the second century b.c. Hellenism was the victim of an anti-Hellenic reaction, but no Greek and few men of Hellenistic culture ever doubted the supreme value of the Hellenic tradition. And so, too, in the decline of Rome, the prestige of Roman culture outlasted the power of the Empire. There were traitors and renegades who went over to the barbarians for practical reasons, but there was no anti-Roman ideology, and men remained faithful to the old tradition of culture for centuries after the political order had broken down. No doubt the change from paganism to Christianity involved a revolt against cultural tradition and a change of cultural values , but this was an internal process within Mediterranean culture, and the transfer of loyalties had already taken place and a new synthesis had been created before the fall of the Empire. This double movement of criticism and disaffection towards the social traditions and cultural values of our civilization is therefore a unique phenomenon in history. It is not a result of political decline, since it preceded the latter and developed during the century when the external power of Europe was at its highest. On the contrary, it may be argued that it was this revolt against European culture that was one of the antecedent causes of Europe’s political decline, since the anti- The Revolt against Europe 167 European ideologies have provided the enemies and rivals of Europe with their most formidable weapons, while the internal loss of faith in European culture has weakened the European powers of resistance...