The Making of Europe

The Making of Europe

In The Making of Europe, Christopher Dawson sets out to rewrite European History from a European point-of-view, with the goal of understanding the unity of the common civilization instead of a national identity. He advocates for Europe to develop a common European consciousness and a sense of its historic and organic unity. Dawson argues that there should not be a separate history for each country, but a common history intertwined with all. The Making of Europe adeptly corroborates Dawson’s thesis, while also addressing the reasons behind the fall of The Roman Empire as a result of turmoil in the Empire, classical tradition and Christianity, the Barbarian invasions, and the spread of Islam. Dawson’s book is about the people and cultures of Europe, not just those of the  Roman Empire and Mediterranean. 

Dawson and Henri Pirenne seem to be somewhat on the same page with regards to their notions of civilization. Pirenne gives more responsibility to the fall of the Roman Empire to that of the spread of Islam than does Dawson. But, Dawson seems to be able to see the ‘big picture’ better than Pirenne. Although there were crushing Barbarian invasions, Dawson asserts that the breach with the old tradition of culture was far less sudden and less complete than that which occurred at the beginning of the Iron Age. He goes into much more detail on the Barbarians way of life than does Pirenne. Dawson understands the tribal nature of Barbarian culture, one that was a tribal society with personal freedom, loyalty, self-respect, heroic traditions, devotion towards community, and moral and spiritual development that were far in advance of the material culture known in the Roman Empire.In many ways these tribal society factors are of greater significance than the sheer opulence of the Roman culture. In short, kinship was more important in Barbarian society than citizenship.

In general, Dawson depicts the Barbarians as a group of people with mixed descent and heritage, all with a more or less combined culture. The tribes integrated with and overlapped each other. When one group was dominant for many years, another would be sure to dominate later. Readers are left with a fluid image of the Barbarian culture.

Dawson gives credit to the Ostrogothic kingdom as the direct source of the movement which destroyed the unity of the Roman Empire and created new Barbarian kingdoms in the West. The defeat of the Romans at the Battle of Adrianople by Barbarians forced the Roman capital and government to be moved to Italy. This movement prepared the way for the disintegration of the Western Empire.Dawson shows how the scene was set for the Roman Empire to crumble. The spread of Islam and the awakening of the East were just the icing on the cake to bring the Empire down.

Another important aspect of European culture that Dawson expounds upon is the religious way of life. Unlike other oriental religions, Christianity thrived because “it possessed a system of ecclesiastical organization and a principle of social authority that distinguished it from all the other religious bodies of the age”.Civic institutions, the basis of ancient society, were replaced by the Church.Dawson also points to a reversal of societal roles, where the Bishop would ascend to become the most important figure in the community, instead of the municipal magistracy.Dawson states that Europe owes its political existence to Rome, spiritual unity to the Catholic Church, and intellectual culture to the Classical Tradition.

The literal making of Europe would not be complete without the East. By the third century, Dawson claims that a new culture had arisen due to influences from the East. The beginning of the Persian kingdom belonging to the Sassanids in A.D. 226, was most epoch-making event of the third century. It gave rise to a new oriental world-power, saw a reassertion of native Iranian power, and started the tradition of culture against the hegemony of Hellenistic civilization that would dominate Europe for five hundred years. “The coming of Islam is the great fact which dominates the history of the seventh and eighth centuries, and it affects the subsequent development of Medieval civilization.” The spread of Islam was also “the last act of the thousand years of interaction between East and West, the complete victory of the oriental spirit which had been gradually encroaching on the Hellenistic world since the downfall of the Seleucid monarchy. Mohammed was the answer of the East to the challenge of Alexander.” 

Similarly to Pirenne, Dawson sets the seventh century as the end of the last phase of ancient Mediterranean civilization and the beginning of the Middle Ages. In addition to the spread of Islam the Muslim culture began expanding. Despite the loss of political unity within the Islamic empire, Muslim culture thrived. The tenth century was the beginning of a Persian Renaissance and the golden age of literature and science. Western Europe was not immune to the spread of Islam. Dawson maintains that Western culture “grew up under the shadow of the more advanced civilization of Islam, and it was from the latter rather than from the Byzantine world that medieval Christendom recovered its share in the inheritance of Greek science and philosophy.”

Dawson gives immense attention to Charlemagne and the Carolingian Age. In point of fact, Dawson argues that it was the personal influence of Charlemagne that inspired the greatest achievement of the Carolingian Age: the gathering together of the scattered elements of the classical and Patristic traditions and their reorganization as the basis of a new culture. The Carolingian Age saw a return to scholarship that changed the face of the written word. The revision of scripts and calligraphy are hallmarks of this important era of the Middle Ages. Art and architecture also saw advancements during this time period. Dawson again points to the imperial influence of Charlemagne as the founder of “Holy Roman” architecture. On art, Dawson says, “it is in miniature-painting and illumination that the mixed art of the Carolingian period is seen to best advantage.”

The Carolingian abbey was perhaps the most important aspect in the history of early medieval civilization. The institution was based on a purely agrarian economy, but still embodied the highest spiritual and intellectual culture of the age. Monasteries were also great centers of trade. They fulfilled a primitive idea of banks and insurance societies. “It was owing to the work of the monsters that the Carolingian culture was able to survive the fall of the Carolingian Empire.”

When one considers Dawson’s historical output, consideration of his understanding of totalitarianism’s nature and his opposition to it must be given. This view of totalitarianism has been linked by some researchers as developing in preparatory school when Dawson was a boy. In addition, “one of Dawson’s chief catalytic intellectual and spiritual guides in young adulthood was John Henry Newman,” who Dawson would later credit as foreseeing totalitarianism’s precursors.

Christopher Dawson was likely greatly influenced by his upbringing in England. The grandson of several generations of clergymen, coming of age in a medieval castle-like dwelling, and the actual town in which he was raised, all gave him a “dual perception of reality as both time- and culture-linked.” He was the century’s leading historian of the Catholic Church, so rumination must also be given to his close association of Catholicism. Dawson “saw totalitarianism as part of modernity’s growing secularization of culture,” and concluded that it needed a response. Schwartz points out that “Dawson’s views on totalitarianism molded his attitudes toward topics as diverse as fascism and communism, World War II, the welfare state, decolonization, America’s role in Western civilization, education, European unity, and religious ecumenism.”