European Identity - From a construct to the innate

I recently read an article on Facebook criticising the rewriting of European history through the use of school text books. The article claimed that the books were glossing over the many divisions within European history in order to create the sense of a common European identity and thus an unstoppable process culminating naturally in a European State.

I am not going to talk about the rights and wrongs of the case against the textbooks, as I have not read them. Rather, I would like to discuss the idea that there is no such thing as a European identity.

Jean Paul Sarte once said that "we are what we make of what others make of us". A bit of a confusing statement I know :) but essentially he was always of the opinion that identity is something we create when dealing with the world around us.

The question is not therefore, is European identity something that has always existed but is this something that we can identify now. Are there things that identify Europeans as different to the rest of the world which overrides the differences between the individual identities? That does not mean that we must get rid of the others. We all carry many identities: I am English, British, a husband, a man, a teacher etc .  . These all play different roles in my life.

Returning to the idea if a constructed identity; both the British and American identities are the products of very discernible historical events. If you were to ask a resident of England living in 1650 about their sense of identity then you would be unlikely to get anything wider than English.  The Act of Union of 1707 created the political entity of Britain but it took many years to forge a common identity.  This process was still going on in the 19th century. 

In a similar way American identity was forged through the War of Independence yet even as late as the 1860s this identity was still somewhat artificial. The Civil War was horrifically bloody and pitted two very different identities against one another. The south were able to declare succession due in a large part to the lack of a sense of common identity with the north.

Yet today, in 2016, would we question the existence of either British or American identity? Of course not, they have both been forged through the common histories and exploits of their respective people. As with many things in life,  hardships often play a greater role in creating identity than prosperity. The idea of a common "other" an "enemy" will cement the sense of a shared identity faster than anything else.

This unfortunate fact means that until Europeans are forced to face the world together, then they probably won't. That said, it is just a matter of time before this identity is forced upon us and we have to 'make of what others make of us'. 

Jeremy