Sense Of Western Europe During The Explorations Age

Sense of Western Europe

There are other theories on the analysis of Europe during the Explorations Age. In fact, this ‘new’ sense of unity was not taken into account by historians like Norman Davies , and Delanty himself, whose argumentations have already been mentioned in the first part of the paper, who, in this second section, identifies that a sense of Western Europe developed due to the Discoveries Age. They both argue that the “notions of regional diversity of Europe is a correction to over generalized concepts of Europe as a unified region “ (Delanty). The first argument focuses on the fact that, from the Great Discovery of America onwards, many western super-powers of Europe begun to be involved in a race of owning new territories,

In fact, while the Ottoman Empire was controlling Eastern Europe from the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, and the relations between Western Europe and America tightened after 1492, ‘Europe’ started to define itself as the ‘West’ (Delanty, 2013, p?). This brought to many changes: the closure of the extended Eastern frontier, the outstretched south and east of Europe, and the opening of a new different border up to the west. The eastern frontier became increasingly one of defence, the western was one of expansion (p ), and the Atlantic Ocean replaced the Mediterranean Sea. Consequently, occurred a division of the continent in two parts: ‘Oceanic Europe’ and ‘Continental Europe’ (p. ). These two notions of Europe embodied the two imperial traditions: the colonial sea-based empires of Western-Oceanic Europe and the land-based empires of Central-Continental Europe. The main Central Europe-power was still landlocked and fostered a diverse civilization identity that sharply marked out East and West within Europe as an internal division. Delanty (p. ), in accordance with Norman Davies (2007, p. 60) give a tangible example of difference in Europe, specifying the case of Russia. Among the eastern countries, imperial Russia could be the only one qualified for inclusion in the West, because it was a powerful land-based empire in expansion to the Pacific Ocean. However it was still different from the Western sea-based empires because it wasn’t characterized by a sharp separation of imperial core and colonial periphery, as was the case in the West. Davies (2007) widely discusses the concept of Western Europe and its attempt to make this civilization a universal one. The countries in Western Europe addressed its admiration for strength and power, “they were the imperial powers of the day when ‘Western civilization’ was invented” (p. 50). During the Exploration Age, all the European super-powers