What is European History? Reflections of a Cosmopolitan Islander.

There have been many attempts to define ‘European History’. The concept did not exist until the emergence of the idea of ‘Europe’ itself, which can be dated to the Early Modern period, when ‘Christendom’ no longer seemed a viable geographical concept in view of the religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the expansion of Christian missions overseas. By the late eighteenth century, the reforms of Peter the Great had led to the expansion of the idea of ‘Europe’ beyond the area imagined by Ancient geographers to include a large part of Russia. More recently, attempts to equate European history with the history of the member states of the European Union have met with little favour. In the UK, European history conventionally means the history of the European Continent, not including the British Isles. Argument about the cultural parameters of European history continues, and forms an essential part of any study of the subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]