Nationalism, Federalism and the United States of Europe

Abstract

In around 1790, following the outbreak of the French Revolution, the English political thinker Edmund Burke wrote a number of works criticizing the new revolutionary ideals. The new revolutionary Europe was, to him, tantamount to the downfall of Europe. For Burke saw Europe as a body in which communal customs and traditions counted for far more than rational, economic-judicial factors. In his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) and Thoughts on French Affairs (1791) he observes that not even the wars between European states had succeeded in destroying the sense of affinity. Even at war, the states of Europe are closer to one another than the peaceful non-European states. The reason for this, says Burke, must be sought in the institutions fundamental to all the nations of Europe: the Christian faith, monarchy rule, Roman law, similar customs and education. As a consequence of these mutual ties and way of life, ‘no citizen of Europe could be altogether an exile in any part of it … When a man travelled or resided for health, pleasure, business or necessity, away from his country, he never felt himself quite abroad’, as his famous saying goes (quoted in Welsh, 1995: 73).