The Enlighten Construction

Larry Wolff’s Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment, provides a cultural and intellectual analysis of the enlightenment period. Specifically, the book presents the enlightenment in a different light than most scholarly works. The enlightenment was the age of reason and words like tolerance were thrown around; Wolff presents a book that challenges how much reason scholars had at that time. The book centers on the cultural aspect of Western Europe and how Western Europeans viewed their eastern neighbors, the Slavs. The argument presented in the book is that because Western Europeans were enlightened, they looked down on the neighboring white people in the east. In fact, multiple cases compared the eastern white people to Africans. This was a significant shock to read and has created controversy. In reviews, there is a divide among scholars alone the east and west lines. Wolff presents Eastern Europe as a cultural bridge between civilization and barbarism constructed by French historians. The book presents a compelling argument that challenges the way one views the enlightenment. It also challenges the idea that Europe is a single entity. The book is very applicable to modern studies in the current political environment. 

About the Book

Larry Wolff is an expert in the region of Eastern Europe, which makes it possible to present this book.  Wolff is a cultural historian who focuses on the Habsburg Monarchy and the Enlightenment.  He is the director of the Center for European and Mediterranean Studies at Ney York University.  He has a doctoral degree from Stanford University. His research is quite interesting because he focuses on the cultural understanding of Eastern Europe.  Wolff was inspired by the fact that he thought the scholarship on the reason why Eastern Europe was backward was completely untrue.  When Wolff traveled to Eastern Europe and the Vatican Secret Archive, the original purpose was to research Poland’s relationship with the Vatican.  He noticed cultural distinctness between Western Europeans and the Slavs.  He has received six academic awards for his research. 

Structure of the Book 

The book is well structured to provide a complete overview of the cultural aspects of the enlightenment.  There are nine chapters built into the book.  The first part of the book provides a basic overview of the enlightenment period.  There is also a cultural overview of this period that details the gender differences and cultural distinctions.  For example, Wolff cites how Slavic women were considered to be firmer and heroic than men.^v  The second half of the book focuses on the writings of Voltaire and Rousseau.  The final two chapters discuss how enlightened scholars wrote about anthropology.  Wolff mixes a diverse number of sources from accounts from travelers, diplomats, geographers, and philosophers.  The format is excellent at funneling the reader towards a deep understanding of how enlightened thinkers viewed the Slavs.

Ideas of The Past and Present 

The ideas that are present in this book are still relevant today.  Wolff unknowingly has created a book that is essential reading for understanding the debate on what Europe is.  One of the unintended consequences of the enlightenment in Wolff’s mind is that Western thinkers artificially constructed the idea of Eastern Europe.  The Enlightenment is hard to simplify, but it is considered to be a secular cultural movement with a humanist, universalist, and rationalist worldview.  The idea of Europe comes from a Western lens which is interesting because Slavic people were being included and excluded at the same time.  Wolff points this out comically by saying that people associate Vienna with the West and Prague with the East when in fact Prague is to the west of Vienna.  However, the West saw itself as the enlightened ones, while the East was seen being between civilization and barbarism.  Michael Confino points out that the Enlightenment was a universalistic concept and he is curious why that was not brought up.  Confino argued that under the enlightenment, the opinions were of a one Europe and one humanity, not a divided Europe.  Wolff did answer this concern by using examples of authors arguing for eastern expansion to help enlighten the east.  Amongst the condescending tone of the sources, the authors hoped that the enlightened Western monarchs help bring the Slavs to the light.

Voltaire constructed Europe between the ones that have the knowledge and the ones who do not. Thinkers like Volney, who wrote of a vanguard nation that would be imitated by other nations. His idea is very similar to the foreign policy of the United States and Western European Union members to Eastern Europe. Wolff considered Archetti’s work to be condescending due to the consideration that Slavs were inferior and for advocation of cultural imperialism as a moral mission. For thinkers such as Voltaire, they considered the Slavs to be “the strangest people who are on the earth.” Count de Ségur who traveled from Prussia to Partitioned Poland, wrote that he felt that he left Europe to enter the woods of the demi-savages. Ségur concluded, as demonstrated throughout the chapters, that Eastern Europe is neither Europe nor Asia. Eastern Europe is something in-between Europe and Asia.

Wolff did a great job balancing the debate between Voltaire and Rousseau in defining Eastern Europe. Voltaire supported the enlightened ideas of power, which lead his support of Catherine the Great. Rousseau backed the Poles and celebrated the diversity of the Slavic nations.xxi Wolff points out this debate on the political makeup of Eastern Europe is what defined the region. The West Slavic nations embraced their national identity. The Russians embraced the absolutist sovereign ruler.xxii Eastern Europe was “the laboratory of ideological experimentation in which the Enlightenment explored political possibilities by performing theoretical operations within a hypothetical domain.” Wolff pointed out that Joseph II did not heed Rousseau’s warning about multi-national states with a core nation not understanding the minorities would result in instability in forming a multinational state.

There is some debate on how Wolff used Voltaire. Confino notes that Voltaire never used the term Eastern Europe. He argues that Wolff is substituting Eastern Europe into Voltaire’s work to makes a sound argument. Confino and Marshall Poe miss the entire point because sources like Voltaire’s work created an image that is commonly associated with Eastern Europe. There was no single Enlightenment vision of the East, but all these sources created the foundation for what we have today. Wolff is not saying that the term Eastern Europe was created, but the stigma grew from this period.

Slavery

The author’s second chapter is probably the most impactful and saddening part of the book. The discussion of slavery in Eastern Europe makes the reader angry that it is not discussed to the extent that it should. Wolff uses Casanova as a primary source in the discussion. Casanova was a traveler going from France to Russia, passing through Poland. Through his travels, he noticed the difference in women. He became attracted to Slavic women and felt the temptation to buy a peasant girl’s services. He used her and he tried to teach her to make her civilized. He forced her to dress in French clothes and beat her until she learned to speak Italian. This was very horrifying to read. The discussion on slavery in Poland was infuriating. Count Luis-Philippe de Ségur discussed the slavery of the Poles and the slave trade that went towards the Ottoman Empire. He considered the enslavement of the Slavs as immoral. The time period provides an eye-opening view of slavery by equating the Slavs with Africans to justify slavery. What makes me angry is that hardly anyone has discussed this topic at length. Reviewers from the journals that focus on the Slavic world need to appreciate that an entire chapter is focused on this subject.

Criticism

One issue I have with the book is that Wolff does not consider variables that were before the time of the Enlightenment. The development of the Slavic languages and the resistance towards Germanization. Wirtschafter also asks if the division of Catholic and Orthodox Christianity, influences from the Roman empire, and invasions by the Mongols played a role in the image of Eastern Europe developed. Peter Fuchs would have liked to see the debate between scholars who have and haven’t traveled East. Fuchs believes that not all of the travelers considered Slavs demi-savages.

One of the major aspects of the book that was appreciated is the fact that Wolff focused on the culture. Scholars like Wallerstein and Brenner focus only on the economic elements to assess the differences between Eastern and Western Europe. The book displays that there was a cultural construction of Eastern Europeans by foreigners. In some cases, the so-called primary sources that influenced this construction never actually traveled to the Slavic lands. Atlanticists are corrected that nations in Eastern Europe are imagined, but it is the Atlanticists how have done the imagining. The nations are on the crossroads of Europe and Asia have been around for a long time and were not just constructed out of thin air.

Conclusion

Larry Wolff’s Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment is a must-read book that provides answers to the East and West debate in Europe. The focus of the cultural and intellectual aspects of the Enlightenment offers the reader with a glimpse into how the stigma of Eastern Europe was created. The book shows how the enlightened became elitists and looked down on the white neighbors in the East. This elitism generated a logic that allowed for Slavs to be equated to Africans. The social construction of Eastern Europe from the Enlightenment is still remnants today. Some of the exact reasoning remains to this day, which is especially true in how the US and Western EU countries believe there is a mission to make the East exemplary. Some historians disagree with the characterization of the enlightenment shaping the negative idea of Eastern Europe. In some of their minds, some empires were “not that bad” if it was the right imperialism. This book shines a light on how western universalism can lead to moralistic crusades.