Defining Europe in terms of its virtues and values, 1750–2000

This article explores the notion of European ‘civilisation’. Around the time of the Renaissance, some Europeans began to think about Europe in terms of its civilisation; before that period only Christianity had given Europe any semblance of unity. But since then, and even more so since the 18th century, Europe came to think of its civilisation as being different from that in other parts of the world, and indeed better, based on assumptions of so-called European virtues and values. Especially since the age of the European overseas empires, Europeans have championed those virtues and indeed tried to export them to the rest of the world. It is an essential part of historical Eurocentrism. What exactly were those ways of thinking? When and how did those ‘European virtues and values’ arise, and how have they changed over time? What is the origin of the much-vaunted European values of the European Union?