1 00:00:02,380 --> 00:00:12,430 I was once introduced by the conservative philosopher Roger Scruton, who has recently been in the news, and he said Timothy Garton Ash is, 2 00:00:12,430 --> 00:00:20,980 of course, a valuable man, referring to that college, which famously produced left wing intellectuals and politicians. 3 00:00:20,980 --> 00:00:27,310 And I said, No, no, no, I wasn't a penguin. I was an excellent college and without missing a beat, Scruton said. 4 00:00:27,310 --> 00:00:41,170 Objectively, you are a very old man. So if you look at Tim Snyder's CV, you will see that, according to the text, he started at Baylor College Oxford. 5 00:00:41,170 --> 00:00:47,710 But objectively, he's a fan down to live now, and there's a little more, 6 00:00:47,710 --> 00:00:56,020 a little more basis for that claim than there was in the Scruton case because Timothy Snyder 7 00:00:56,020 --> 00:01:03,730 was a student in the early 1990s in a wonderful seminar in the immediate afterglow of 1989, 8 00:01:03,730 --> 00:01:08,260 which you will well remember an amazing group of people, including Evan Kruschev. 9 00:01:08,260 --> 00:01:19,570 I then had the great pleasure of supervising his doctoral dissertation on Kashmir's Carlos Kraus, together with the great poet of scholar Lewicki. 10 00:01:19,570 --> 00:01:23,500 And we're very proud of what he's done since. 11 00:01:23,500 --> 00:01:36,400 Which is in the first place to become over a period of about 20 years, probably the leading historian of Central and Eastern Europe in his generation, 12 00:01:36,400 --> 00:01:43,360 culminating in the book which you will all know Bloodlands Europe between Hitler and Stalin, 13 00:01:43,360 --> 00:01:51,580 which catapulted his work into a wider public debate in a very important way, 14 00:01:51,580 --> 00:01:59,260 and I think has become an absolute reference point for both historical and political discussion and then catalysed, 15 00:01:59,260 --> 00:02:05,470 I think it's fair to say by the advent of Donald Trump. 16 00:02:05,470 --> 00:02:13,120 He stepped more into a public intellectual role with a small Best-Selling book called On Tyranny. 17 00:02:13,120 --> 00:02:16,960 His most recent book called The Road to Unfreedom, 18 00:02:16,960 --> 00:02:25,570 and he's currently working on what sounds like a fascinating book on the future of freedom, apropos Gandalf and his work. 19 00:02:25,570 --> 00:02:33,250 But for this evening, we have tempted him back to European history as it relates to today. 20 00:02:33,250 --> 00:02:46,950 Please join me in welcoming this year's John. So it's it's a it's an ambiguous pleasure at best to begin by agreeing with the person who introduces 21 00:02:46,950 --> 00:02:55,140 a bit of it's there is something to the claim that objectively I am a student of sentencings, 22 00:02:55,140 --> 00:02:59,190 as I was as I was listening to the recollections last night. 23 00:02:59,190 --> 00:03:06,870 It was it was all too obvious what I would have talked about because I spent my early 20s in this place. 24 00:03:06,870 --> 00:03:12,570 Or rather this was the place from which I escaped to Poland and Ukraine and the 25 00:03:12,570 --> 00:03:17,640 Baltics and Czechoslovakia and the other places that I really wanted to go, 26 00:03:17,640 --> 00:03:24,300 which means that I was a student here. Oh, we grew up there and north was was worth it. 27 00:03:24,300 --> 00:03:28,050 And I appreciated this at the time. 28 00:03:28,050 --> 00:03:38,070 As much as anyone in their early 20s fresh from the United States can appreciate it in retrospect and with a bit of age. 29 00:03:38,070 --> 00:03:46,170 I now appreciate much more just how difficult it is to unify a life in politics, 30 00:03:46,170 --> 00:03:52,720 public policy, academic institution and, above all, intellectual life as well. 31 00:03:52,720 --> 00:04:00,150 Ralph there a dwarf. I'd like to begin this lecture, though from a moment of might not understand me from there. 32 00:04:00,150 --> 00:04:06,510 So both of my both of my usual tutors are in this room to supervise my dissertation. 33 00:04:06,510 --> 00:04:11,340 My moral tutor, as it was then called and I hope still is. Martin Conroy is also here. 34 00:04:11,340 --> 00:04:16,560 And so they will remember a young American coming to Europe for the first time. 35 00:04:16,560 --> 00:04:22,740 Americans coming to Europe for the first time face certain interpretive difficulties. 36 00:04:22,740 --> 00:04:39,440 One of them has to do with the senses of humour. So in general, it's the case that we think the British are joking when they're not. 37 00:04:39,440 --> 00:04:50,360 And with the Germans, it's the other way around, which means that we're confronted with the August figure of Ralph Deardorff. 38 00:04:50,360 --> 00:04:59,750 I faced a special kind of interpretation problem because here you had a man who was both at the same time. 39 00:04:59,750 --> 00:05:04,340 So a quarter of a century ago, I was in this room, but I was occupied. 40 00:05:04,340 --> 00:05:08,060 Not this war, but rather the role of the students I was. 41 00:05:08,060 --> 00:05:15,080 I was a paid assistant, organising a conference or helping organise a conference on a very similar topic. 42 00:05:15,080 --> 00:05:19,700 And of course, the rough groundwork was was running around as well, 43 00:05:19,700 --> 00:05:24,050 looking after the various East Europeans who had come with their luggage and so on. 44 00:05:24,050 --> 00:05:27,020 And there was a problem with the East Europeans and their luggage. 45 00:05:27,020 --> 00:05:37,250 In particular, one Romanian had lost his suitcase and were out there on board, said to me, Let's establish a principle. 46 00:05:37,250 --> 00:05:48,920 Everyone should be responsible for his own luggage. I could not tell if he was joking or not. 47 00:05:48,920 --> 00:05:57,800 Was this a sincere communism extending down to the smallest aspects of life? 48 00:05:57,800 --> 00:06:07,010 Was this a moment of exuberant overconfidence about our ability in the West to project our values for our neighbours? 49 00:06:07,010 --> 00:06:11,630 I wasn't sure at the time, and honestly, I'm still not sure thinking about it. 50 00:06:11,630 --> 00:06:23,570 Twenty five years old, Ralph Defender was not only the director of the LSD, as many of you will know, he wrote a biography of the LSD. 51 00:06:23,570 --> 00:06:25,250 It's very characteristic of him to vote, 52 00:06:25,250 --> 00:06:31,970 to do something that reflects upon it at the beginning of one of the chapters of this biography, this microphone working at all, 53 00:06:31,970 --> 00:06:38,240 or if I just at the beginning of one of the chapters of his biography of the other S. There's a passage where again, 54 00:06:38,240 --> 00:06:41,700 I'm not sure, but I think it's supposed to be fun. You could. 55 00:06:41,700 --> 00:06:47,120 You could help me. He's the chapter is about the 60s in the LSD, 56 00:06:47,120 --> 00:06:56,690 and I think much of what we're talking about is actually a kind of return to the late 1960s or as I experience it anyway as the next generation, 57 00:06:56,690 --> 00:07:00,780 a kind of last hurrah of the late for the debate to the 1960s. 58 00:07:00,780 --> 00:07:13,170 In any event, Derek begins this chapter by describing the annual reports of the director of the LSD and the text drugs like this of. 59 00:07:13,170 --> 00:07:19,130 Annual report in 1960 1961. This has not been a year of great changes. 60 00:07:19,130 --> 00:07:28,110 1959 to 1960 this year saw no major developments or important changes, 1952 to 1959. 61 00:07:28,110 --> 00:07:35,430 This year saw development on lines already established in 1957 to 1958. 62 00:07:35,430 --> 00:07:41,100 This year witnessed no major new developments from 1956 to 1957. 63 00:07:41,100 --> 00:07:49,980 This year's saw no major events. Now, in fairness to Sir Sidney, he was describing the LRC. 64 00:07:49,980 --> 00:07:57,630 But what is tempted to think about this and Ralph there, of course, is one in this direction this chapter of this book. 65 00:07:57,630 --> 00:08:01,770 To consider this more as a comment on the United Kingdom at the time. 66 00:08:01,770 --> 00:08:07,830 In the late 1950s, early 1960s, one could just say, we're just moving the ball on. 67 00:08:07,830 --> 00:08:16,110 Soon, you will never have had it it. But of course, in 1957, things were happening. 68 00:08:16,110 --> 00:08:21,420 All of you who are here for the Conference of the European Union or at the edge of your seats, I know raising your hands. 69 00:08:21,420 --> 00:08:26,580 You want to say Treaty of Rome, Treaty of Rome, but I would like to start so right. 70 00:08:26,580 --> 00:08:34,810 We all still remember the treaty. Yes, we do. Yes. But I want to start somewhere else, which is the late independence. 71 00:08:34,810 --> 00:08:45,250 1957 was the year of the late independence. Coincidentally, Sir Sydney Kane had actually been the vice director of the university in the leg. 72 00:08:45,250 --> 00:08:52,740 Now why do I want to begin with this? I got a secure connexion because it seems to me that this is where we have to begin if we 73 00:08:52,740 --> 00:08:59,880 want to understand the model of European identity and the model of European integration. 74 00:08:59,880 --> 00:09:10,170 Now, one of the one of the constant themes of the earlier panels and lectures and interventions has been empire. 75 00:09:10,170 --> 00:09:15,840 We must integrate the history of Europe with the history of Empire. We must bring in. 76 00:09:15,840 --> 00:09:20,700 We must bring in the earlier history of liberal capitalism as well as formulation. 77 00:09:20,700 --> 00:09:25,620 We must be able to think reflectively about Europe's role in the rest of the world. 78 00:09:25,620 --> 00:09:30,150 We must consider the first globalisation and not just the second. 79 00:09:30,150 --> 00:09:40,620 I would like to put this in a much more straightforward way as New Girl Adams, Margaret McMillan have already done and simply use the word empire. 80 00:09:40,620 --> 00:09:45,990 It seems to me that the way to maintain the level of European self-generation 81 00:09:45,990 --> 00:09:53,850 make sense now is to speak sensibly about the continuing history of empire. 82 00:09:53,850 --> 00:10:01,500 Now why? Why would you insist on let me now talk about what is in there? 83 00:10:01,500 --> 00:10:09,480 It is very easy to play with narratives to which one is not actually personally attached. 84 00:10:09,480 --> 00:10:17,220 It is very easy to contest someone else's narrative to see the holes in it, to understand how it's self-serving for them. 85 00:10:17,220 --> 00:10:21,150 It's very easy to look on as we have been doing a bit of this conference at a kaleidoscopic 86 00:10:21,150 --> 00:10:28,560 field of mutually contestable and contesting narratives and to catalogue and to analyse. 87 00:10:28,560 --> 00:10:37,470 But when does a narrative of a narrative matters when it's so deeply within you that you do not know it, 88 00:10:37,470 --> 00:10:47,010 or to apply a second test, a narrative that matters which when its existence is pointed out to you, it hurts. 89 00:10:47,010 --> 00:10:52,800 This process that we've been calling deconstruction is only real if it hurts. 90 00:10:52,800 --> 00:11:01,290 If it's not painful to realise that you have been inside a narrative that it was not even meaningful narrative, 91 00:11:01,290 --> 00:11:09,150 then we are just like, So this is the kind of surgery which I would like to try to undertake now with Europe, 92 00:11:09,150 --> 00:11:16,980 because what I would like them to, but I'd like to suggest is that the reason why it's so hard to bring the history of 93 00:11:16,980 --> 00:11:23,610 empires back into the history of the European Union or back into the history of Europe. 94 00:11:23,610 --> 00:11:30,060 The reason why we have these scattered calls all the time to bring in the rest of the world and talk about the global south, 95 00:11:30,060 --> 00:11:41,670 we aren't able to actually achieve. This is a narrative, and it's not the narrative of the bad guys that we don't like or you don't like. 96 00:11:41,670 --> 00:11:47,040 No, I'm not European. It is the narrative of the good guys. 97 00:11:47,040 --> 00:11:52,500 It is your narrative, your narrative, the narrative of the good guys. 98 00:11:52,500 --> 00:11:57,780 The supporters of European Union is an imperial narrative. 99 00:11:57,780 --> 00:12:06,690 This is the case that I want to make, and because it's an imperial narrative, it itself is what prevents you from bringing your history straight. 100 00:12:06,690 --> 00:12:12,350 And I'm going to suggest that this has political consequences now for our time, which leading up to. 101 00:12:12,350 --> 00:12:20,030 Leading to the problem of the digital world, so green, how how am I going to make the Western narrative? 102 00:12:20,030 --> 00:12:25,520 Let me to find a second term. What do I mean by Empire? That's another word which is easily tossed around. 103 00:12:25,520 --> 00:12:29,030 Let me throw out a few features. Colleagues can, of course, disagree, 104 00:12:29,030 --> 00:12:37,700 but let me just put this up for this purpose of argument and empire is is is a political entity in which there is a centre and there is a periphery. 105 00:12:37,700 --> 00:12:42,560 It's a political entity in which there is the rule of law, but law is applied unevenly. 106 00:12:42,560 --> 00:12:46,970 Some people are full subjects of it. Some people are not in practise, 107 00:12:46,970 --> 00:12:54,950 especially in war making empires or political entities that do not recognise other political political entities as equal. 108 00:12:54,950 --> 00:13:04,310 So, for example, the United States did not recognise native nations as nations, or Germany in 1939 did not recognise Poland as a state. 109 00:13:04,310 --> 00:13:09,800 In that sense, an empire will tend to aim for all Turkey. 110 00:13:09,800 --> 00:13:17,600 That is true to imagine that the economic unit would be carved out over territory, which will allow for self-sufficiency. 111 00:13:17,600 --> 00:13:24,230 And Empire will tend to believe that technological superiority, which allows for conquest, 112 00:13:24,230 --> 00:13:28,250 is actually the result of racial or some other kind of superiority, 113 00:13:28,250 --> 00:13:33,470 and it will keep on believing that it until the technological superiority no longer holds. 114 00:13:33,470 --> 00:13:45,260 The final thing that empires do and they do it beautifully and they do it well, is that they have no great empires, no rate. 115 00:13:45,260 --> 00:13:49,820 They know better than nation states. They innovate better than Europe. 116 00:13:49,820 --> 00:13:53,030 They innovate fantastically well. 117 00:13:53,030 --> 00:14:03,860 Which is why when we try to think of the great European literature, we very often run into literature, which has to do with empire one way or another. 118 00:14:03,860 --> 00:14:11,210 Joseph Conrad would be an excellent example for me here, because here we have a British writer who is notionally writing about British Empire, 119 00:14:11,210 --> 00:14:21,530 but who was in fact, a Polish writer, but not even exactly a Polish writer because he comes from the part of Poland, which is in fact, Ukraine. 120 00:14:21,530 --> 00:14:27,200 And his first and first experience of colonialism is actually Polish colonialism in Ukraine, 121 00:14:27,200 --> 00:14:30,170 which is why we can have a book about Ukraine by Ukrainian author, 122 00:14:30,170 --> 00:14:38,810 which is called Poland's Heart of Darkness and how that made perfect sense, which in fact it does of the empires narrate. 123 00:14:38,810 --> 00:14:44,660 And I would to force those concepts together because when we talk about empire here, 124 00:14:44,660 --> 00:14:48,890 we very often mean something dark and distant, and certainly not us because we gave. 125 00:14:48,890 --> 00:14:53,210 But when we talk about immigration, that's something friendly and polite. 126 00:14:53,210 --> 00:15:01,250 But I want to claim that empires narrate and that they narrate better than we do, and that your best narrative, 127 00:15:01,250 --> 00:15:07,310 the one that's close to you and the one that's going to hurt is an imperial narrative. 128 00:15:07,310 --> 00:15:12,800 OK. What is what is that on the European there? 129 00:15:12,800 --> 00:15:17,600 The one which is too close to critique, right, goes like this. 130 00:15:17,600 --> 00:15:24,310 The European narrative says there are nation states. 131 00:15:24,310 --> 00:15:27,550 These nation states are terrible. 132 00:15:27,550 --> 00:15:39,580 They've existed for some very long time, and these nation states learnt they've learnt over time, in particular after the Second World War. 133 00:15:39,580 --> 00:15:46,740 These nation states learn. That war was a very bad state, and as a result, 134 00:15:46,740 --> 00:15:54,840 these Nation-States came together in a programme of economic cooperation with the goal of lead to political cooperation, 135 00:15:54,840 --> 00:16:04,740 which would make war impossible that I believe is the closest thing to a standard European Union as Europe has clocked in history. 136 00:16:04,740 --> 00:16:08,970 And this year is commemorated on practically every occasion. 137 00:16:08,970 --> 00:16:16,350 If you are European, the person is perhaps pronounced less likely at least 10000 times in your life. 138 00:16:16,350 --> 00:16:23,580 And to challenge it as I'm going to do it, I imagine is going to feel a little bit tense. 139 00:16:23,580 --> 00:16:29,640 One must challenge it. And here's why it is over. 140 00:16:29,640 --> 00:16:36,060 It is absolutely not true. And here I am, not addressing narrative as narrative. 141 00:16:36,060 --> 00:16:40,930 I'm not going to say that's your narrative. I have a different narrative. 142 00:16:40,930 --> 00:16:49,110 I now want to speak as a very conservative historian who say this is simply tasteless, conceptually and empirically. 143 00:16:49,110 --> 00:16:58,620 There is nothing to it. There are two old European nation states and the European powers that fought the Second World War, 144 00:16:58,620 --> 00:17:05,880 which were not nation states, by the way, did not learn from the Second World War that peace was good and the war was bad. 145 00:17:05,880 --> 00:17:14,040 That never happened. If you have a European integration process, it had to come from somewhere else. 146 00:17:14,040 --> 00:17:18,930 Now, let me try to let me try to make the factual case here. 147 00:17:18,930 --> 00:17:27,990 So one. So this narration, which I called fable of the lies, the narrative that you carry inside of us Europeans, 148 00:17:27,990 --> 00:17:34,290 is the fable of the wise nation, a nation that's old and that's increasingly wise on the fable. 149 00:17:34,290 --> 00:17:40,500 A divided nation begins from this axiom that there were a European nation states. 150 00:17:40,500 --> 00:17:47,610 So what ask where in when were there European nation states and what did that look like? 151 00:17:47,610 --> 00:17:56,830 This is interesting because the place and time were in fact, European nation states of is the Balkans. 152 00:17:56,830 --> 00:18:05,250 That is to say, the crumbling borderlands of the Ottoman Empire, the first and second and third quarters of the 19th century. 153 00:18:05,250 --> 00:18:10,500 This is where the Nation-State is born, not just in Europe, but but in the world, right? 154 00:18:10,500 --> 00:18:15,240 Not in France, which was never a nation state. Ever in a modern period. 155 00:18:15,240 --> 00:18:22,440 But in the Balkans. In the Balkans. We have, interestingly, the first decolonisation, right? 156 00:18:22,440 --> 00:18:27,070 We categorise colonial history as beyond Europe, right? 157 00:18:27,070 --> 00:18:31,020 This is a this is a mistake. This is a mistake that allows the narrative to go on. 158 00:18:31,020 --> 00:18:37,200 The first decolonisation of Greece and Serbia and then Romania and later Bulgaria. 159 00:18:37,200 --> 00:18:43,020 That's the first decolonisation. And these are the first nation states. 160 00:18:43,020 --> 00:18:50,760 These nation states. As all, because all of you were historians of your own don't have certain inherent problems of one of their inherent 161 00:18:50,760 --> 00:18:57,210 problems if they don't have access to a large market leading an empire and leaving a large market. 162 00:18:57,210 --> 00:19:05,850 Another of their problems is they don't have access to the sea. They handled this problem with a political economy of nationalism. 163 00:19:05,850 --> 00:19:16,200 The political economy of nationalism says since our only tax base is land, the people who live in the land across this river are our people. 164 00:19:16,200 --> 00:19:21,210 And then you come up with other arguments that are linguistic or cultural historical, as the case may be. 165 00:19:21,210 --> 00:19:24,750 This is the history of the Balkans. In one sentence in the 19th century, 166 00:19:24,750 --> 00:19:30,810 a series of wars and the militaristic countries that are nation states ethnically that are 167 00:19:30,810 --> 00:19:38,100 unsustainable and their unsustainability arrives in a package which we know as the First World War, 168 00:19:38,100 --> 00:19:41,820 which is in fact the Third World and the first one of 1912. 169 00:19:41,820 --> 00:19:47,070 The second one in 1913 and the first with the Balkan States defeated Empire in the second one, 170 00:19:47,070 --> 00:19:52,890 the Baltic states by themselves and in the third energy of one Balkan state, Serbia has turned against the house or monarchy. 171 00:19:52,890 --> 00:19:59,400 And then we have the event known as the First World War. So that is one part of the career of the European nation state. 172 00:19:59,400 --> 00:20:06,990 The second part of the career of the European nation state, I would venture to say it's even less glorious after the First World War. 173 00:20:06,990 --> 00:20:13,530 The solution to a war which was initiated by a small nation states turns out to be the creation of more small nation states, 174 00:20:13,530 --> 00:20:17,490 which are Austria, Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, Latvia. 175 00:20:17,490 --> 00:20:24,300 So six states are created from former empires, more or less ex nihilo and then a number of other states Hungary, 176 00:20:24,300 --> 00:20:32,430 Hungary, for example, are performed in different boundaries. But the principled response to the First World War is more Nation-States. 177 00:20:32,430 --> 00:20:35,030 These are not going to go into the reasons for and against that. 178 00:20:35,030 --> 00:20:42,620 Of course, there were historically intelligible reasons why this happened, but I'm just going to make the simple, chronological technical. 179 00:20:42,620 --> 00:20:50,630 That these interviews do not last for very long. All six of the newly created nation states Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, 180 00:20:50,630 --> 00:20:55,970 the three Baltic states ceased to exist completely by the middle of the Second World War. 181 00:20:55,970 --> 00:21:00,530 Their entire career as nation states lasts for about two decades. 182 00:21:00,530 --> 00:21:04,130 We heard the case of one of them, which is the Office of Austria. 183 00:21:04,130 --> 00:21:11,090 Last night on all, that's a special that's that is one example of the general public. 184 00:21:11,090 --> 00:21:18,410 Austria has a sort of shoes. The Texans, Slovaks have a betrayal in Munich, the Poles in the Baltics have it all together for now. 185 00:21:18,410 --> 00:21:22,790 There's a national story for the national story of covers up the general truth, 186 00:21:22,790 --> 00:21:27,230 which is that all of the new nation states were destroyed after the Second World War. 187 00:21:27,230 --> 00:21:33,560 The territory of all of this new nation states and the territory of the Balkan nation states. 188 00:21:33,560 --> 00:21:37,670 Almost all of this territory then falls under Soviet domination, right? 189 00:21:37,670 --> 00:21:41,690 Which is not really a career as as a nation state. 190 00:21:41,690 --> 00:21:45,780 So that's the history of the European nation state. That's it. 191 00:21:45,780 --> 00:21:50,210 I know some small exceptions here and there. That's pretty much what you've got. 192 00:21:50,210 --> 00:21:58,010 Now you might be thinking, what about the great national unification of the 19th century Belgium? 193 00:21:58,010 --> 00:22:05,580 Belgium gets through one Leopold, but the second Leopold buys this stretch of real estate in the centre of Africa, 194 00:22:05,580 --> 00:22:13,310 which remembers the Belgian Congo, which is an integral part of Belgium for the central part of Belgian history. 195 00:22:13,310 --> 00:22:16,880 Italy Germany are not founded as nation states. 196 00:22:16,880 --> 00:22:21,320 That's a retrospective projection by people who think that nation states are normal. 197 00:22:21,320 --> 00:22:26,450 They're founded as national monarchies, as kingdoms, as empires. 198 00:22:26,450 --> 00:22:35,780 So we're like does have an operational meaning. The German state from the very beginning was imperial, not just with respect to its own population, 199 00:22:35,780 --> 00:22:41,810 but very quickly with respect to its whole new territories in Africa and the Pacific. 200 00:22:41,810 --> 00:22:45,800 Italy also ventures as quickly as it can into Africa. 201 00:22:45,800 --> 00:22:52,560 These were not meant to things, nor were they the nation states in the 1930s, under fascism, 202 00:22:52,560 --> 00:22:59,810 imperial game, imperial nature or the imperial aspiration to Africa is particularly clearly pronounced. 203 00:22:59,810 --> 00:23:05,320 No. I have now pulled the history. 204 00:23:05,320 --> 00:23:16,030 Briefly, I know of all of the founding members of the European Integration Project, if you will just spot me Luxembourg, please. 205 00:23:16,030 --> 00:23:26,860 This is the history of all of the founding members and the history of the countries that joined in the first enlargement or to be very brief about it. 206 00:23:26,860 --> 00:23:29,620 Germany in the 1940s, right? 207 00:23:29,620 --> 00:23:41,710 If we think of the European integration project beginning in the 1950s, in the 1940s, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Italy, Britain to the Netherlands. 208 00:23:41,710 --> 00:23:45,340 These are all empires. They see themselves as empires. 209 00:23:45,340 --> 00:23:53,950 They see one another as empires. So into the 1940s, every single one of these entities is an empire. 210 00:23:53,950 --> 00:23:59,800 And so it begins to ask when that moment could have been with the West European nation 211 00:23:59,800 --> 00:24:05,020 states realised that war was a bad thing and begin the process of European integration. 212 00:24:05,020 --> 00:24:12,370 That moment didn't happen because it could not have happened because these entities were never Nation-States. 213 00:24:12,370 --> 00:24:18,430 Let's attend, then very briefly in the post-war years and the beginning of European integration. 214 00:24:18,430 --> 00:24:24,730 And let's begin with with the most important case of which, of course, is is Germany. 215 00:24:24,730 --> 00:24:28,930 The general case that I want to make is not that war is a good thing. 216 00:24:28,930 --> 00:24:33,610 I mean, unless I misunderstood what my American accent be taken the wrong way. 217 00:24:33,610 --> 00:24:39,100 The case I want to make is that Europeans did not learn from the Second World War. 218 00:24:39,100 --> 00:24:43,900 That war was a bad thing. Not in any straightforward way. 219 00:24:43,900 --> 00:24:45,910 There are a number of ways to make this case. 220 00:24:45,910 --> 00:24:52,630 One is to point out to people who suffered the most from the Second World War were Jews, the other Russians, Ukrainians and Russians. 221 00:24:52,630 --> 00:24:54,710 And however, one wants to evaluate this. 222 00:24:54,710 --> 00:25:02,110 You wouldn't want to say that some kind of call for peace prevails amongst the national memories of those countries, right? 223 00:25:02,110 --> 00:25:05,470 So it's that's one way to make the awkward I'm going to take you go in a different way. 224 00:25:05,470 --> 00:25:11,440 And that is, the major participants are not learning from the Second World War. 225 00:25:11,440 --> 00:25:19,390 The major participants West European, Central European art, losing colonial wars and exhausting themselves. 226 00:25:19,390 --> 00:25:25,390 That is what they have in common. Crucially, that is what they have in common. 227 00:25:25,390 --> 00:25:30,760 To make this case, I have to begin with Germany because Germany is the most important example. 228 00:25:30,760 --> 00:25:36,820 And as in so many things, Germany here is the leader of Germany as the leader in the narrative production. 229 00:25:36,820 --> 00:25:43,240 Germany is the leader in a half true at best account of itself during the Second World War, 230 00:25:43,240 --> 00:25:48,310 which by its nature, not only shelters Germans, but shelters other Europeans. 231 00:25:48,310 --> 00:25:53,980 How do I do this? The Second World War is at its essence in Europe. 232 00:25:53,980 --> 00:26:04,270 Of these eight colonial war that the war aims of Hitler or above all, Ukraine and secondarily, oil in the Caucasus. 233 00:26:04,270 --> 00:26:08,740 Hitler describes this absolutely clearly as a colonial war. 234 00:26:08,740 --> 00:26:15,340 According to every classic definition, the interchangeability speaks of it as being like the conquest of America, 235 00:26:15,340 --> 00:26:22,600 the conquest of India, the conquest of Africa. But he's making it abundantly clear that he's thinking about a frontier empire the 236 00:26:22,600 --> 00:26:27,820 way that Germany fights the war that is not in Poland and the Soviet Union as 237 00:26:27,820 --> 00:26:33,190 states and not recognising what it's doing in legal terms as an occupation and not 238 00:26:33,190 --> 00:26:37,930 recognising the peoples of that zone as having the rights of occupied peoples. 239 00:26:37,930 --> 00:26:42,970 Those are all mainstream traditional European colonial practises. 240 00:26:42,970 --> 00:26:47,470 And by the way, Amy Suffi and possano and hung around a number of people. 241 00:26:47,470 --> 00:26:55,270 I don't know why, but that's how I say the French accent. They they pointed this out at the time, 242 00:26:55,270 --> 00:27:02,320 right after African American and Afro European intellectuals had a way of making this point about making more or less half as hard. 243 00:27:02,320 --> 00:27:04,870 This was a colonial war, above all. 244 00:27:04,870 --> 00:27:14,590 And if it's understood as as a colonial war, then one begins to see a larger pattern in the way that war is remembered. 245 00:27:14,590 --> 00:27:19,030 So the Germans do remember the Second World War. I don't want to overstate this case. 246 00:27:19,030 --> 00:27:24,520 And Germans do more than anyone else have a culture of reflection about the Second World War. 247 00:27:24,520 --> 00:27:33,460 However, that culture of reflection is startling. I would say shockingly A. Geographical, insofar as Germans remember the Holocaust, 248 00:27:33,460 --> 00:27:36,700 they started with the camps, which is not where the Holocaust happened. 249 00:27:36,700 --> 00:27:43,640 They focus on the German Jews, most of whom survived, who were three percent of the victims of when there's a secondary four victims. 250 00:27:43,640 --> 00:27:47,020 It's the Russians as though one could kill lots of Russians without killing more. 251 00:27:47,020 --> 00:27:54,160 Ukrainians on Ukraine and Belarus sort of forced the territories after Jews, the places where people suffered the most. 252 00:27:54,160 --> 00:27:58,420 And by the way, the Holocaust, as it happened, is unthinkable in a number of ways. 253 00:27:58,420 --> 00:28:00,910 Without the colonial aspirations of. 254 00:28:00,910 --> 00:28:09,860 Europe, because it is the colonial aspiration to control Eastern Europe, which brings under German control the places where Jews actually live. 255 00:28:09,860 --> 00:28:14,960 So the the canonised Germans minimisation of the Holocaust, 256 00:28:14,960 --> 00:28:23,960 as well as the more or less complete wiping out of Ukraine as a colonial object during the Second World War are not specifically German. 257 00:28:23,960 --> 00:28:37,740 However, this is the way it goes. In general, the story of European reconciliation is a story which allows the call a huge history to be ignored. 258 00:28:37,740 --> 00:28:46,830 All right. So when Germany turns to France for post-war reconciliation? 259 00:28:46,830 --> 00:28:51,060 This is, amongst other things, a diversion. 260 00:28:51,060 --> 00:29:02,610 The Second World War, much as much as I appreciate my call, Merkel leading the Second World War is not centrally about Germany and France. 261 00:29:02,610 --> 00:29:06,930 Germany was only concerned to get France out of the way so we can destroy the Soviet Union. 262 00:29:06,930 --> 00:29:08,940 The war was not simply about France. 263 00:29:08,940 --> 00:29:15,840 For most of the Second World War, Vichy, which was a legally legitimate French state, was not in the way of German. 264 00:29:15,840 --> 00:29:22,860 More plants and more French citizens fought on the side of the axis and fought on the other side, 265 00:29:22,860 --> 00:29:26,130 which is why there will never be a relicensed oriented operative. 266 00:29:26,130 --> 00:29:30,240 But this is why there will never be an official French history of the Second World War. 267 00:29:30,240 --> 00:29:46,500 So in those conditions, treating Franco-German reconciliation as as a kind of proper memorialisation, the Second World War is a kind of diversion, 268 00:29:46,500 --> 00:29:54,870 and it's the first step towards the larger desertion, which is which is the fable of the of the wise nation, the Netherlands. 269 00:29:54,870 --> 00:30:04,050 And nothing that reminds you that the Netherlands, of course, as you all know, are a major European imperial power before Brazil, 270 00:30:04,050 --> 00:30:11,190 until they lost it to the Portuguese until the nine year war, when they lost a great deal for the French and the English. 271 00:30:11,190 --> 00:30:16,920 They were maybe the only one of the major maritime major powers into the 20th century. 272 00:30:16,920 --> 00:30:24,720 There are still some old Dutch colonial territories, including most prominently, the Dutch Incendies during the Second World War. 273 00:30:24,720 --> 00:30:28,890 It was common. It was common sense in the Netherlands that the only way we could have a post-war 274 00:30:28,890 --> 00:30:32,850 recovery will be with the help of the Dutch East and is a starting other ones. 275 00:30:32,850 --> 00:30:38,040 At the end of the Second World War took for granted that the Dutch, you said this would help the Netherlands. 276 00:30:38,040 --> 00:30:41,340 We called immediately after the Second World War. 277 00:30:41,340 --> 00:30:49,170 The Netherlands begins fighting for the recovery of the Dutch East enemies of one hundred and forty thousand Dutch troops. 278 00:30:49,170 --> 00:30:55,920 One hundred and forty thousand US troops fight from 1945 to 1949 in the Dutch EastEnders. 279 00:30:55,920 --> 00:31:00,870 Now, no, like Germany. This is not a nation state. 280 00:31:00,870 --> 00:31:07,650 There are no nation states here. This is not a country which has learnt from the Second World War that one does not fight wars. 281 00:31:07,650 --> 00:31:14,730 It immediately fights of war after the Second World War, and it only leaves that war because it's losing because the Americans will help. 282 00:31:14,730 --> 00:31:22,840 And that's that's that's the story. France. 283 00:31:22,840 --> 00:31:31,290 After the Second World War, France fights colonial wars more or less and uninterrupted for 16 years. 284 00:31:31,290 --> 00:31:40,290 And it does not do so as a nation. It does so as an empire when France fights in when France fights in Indochina. 285 00:31:40,290 --> 00:31:46,260 Three quarters of the world casualties that the French army takes are not French people. 286 00:31:46,260 --> 00:31:53,700 It is fighting as an empire for an empire for 16 years, more or less uninterrupted. 287 00:31:53,700 --> 00:31:58,950 First in Indonesia, as you will know where those world casualties are about 75000. 288 00:31:58,950 --> 00:32:09,150 Very serious number, right? Although most of the not French, then Algeria in Algeria, the Algerian war between 1954 1962, 289 00:32:09,150 --> 00:32:15,780 the time to notice how in French political rhetoric at the time, the word the on the. 290 00:32:15,780 --> 00:32:20,190 So it's actually quite striking that you're coming to it from today's point of view of the customer, 291 00:32:20,190 --> 00:32:29,220 of course, because of course, the old LPF into class, the old means at the beginning of the Algerian war into interglacial means that the French 292 00:32:29,220 --> 00:32:36,810 army is responsible for integrating the Arab population into the French state by 1961. 293 00:32:36,810 --> 00:32:45,090 The dominant means the debacle is that the French in Algeria will be integrated into the emerging Algerians. 294 00:32:45,090 --> 00:32:51,000 But that's what the classical meds in the time and the place as late as late as 1961. 295 00:32:51,000 --> 00:32:54,960 And as you all know the story, although I'm telling you the slightly different way it is empire, 296 00:32:54,960 --> 00:33:02,130 which makes the Republic a republic difficult, or its empire, which brings that version of the French Republic to an end. 297 00:33:02,130 --> 00:33:08,730 Its empire is the problem with the goal is meant to solve, and which does, in fact in which he does in fact solve. 298 00:33:08,730 --> 00:33:17,340 But how does he solved right? Is there a moment where the gold magically says now is the French nation state? 299 00:33:17,340 --> 00:33:24,330 That moment never arrives. That moment simply, never happens. The goal recognises that the French Empire he would never use. 300 00:33:24,330 --> 00:33:30,900 These words, of course, is no longer sustainable, and he chooses Europe of the the. 301 00:33:30,900 --> 00:33:35,490 The visit to the German officers in 1960 to the Treaty of 1963, 302 00:33:35,490 --> 00:33:42,240 which Tony Judt calls the decisive turn to Europe, are also the decisive turn away from empire. 303 00:33:42,240 --> 00:33:46,050 There is no moment for the French Nation-State making the decision. 304 00:33:46,050 --> 00:33:51,750 There is a French Empire which is choosing Europe as as a substitute. 305 00:33:51,750 --> 00:34:00,390 That's probably the most important them. Now what does this choice of Europe mean for the Europeans involved? 306 00:34:00,390 --> 00:34:06,600 Well, let's think of another group of refugees. Let's think of that. 307 00:34:06,600 --> 00:34:10,740 Let's think of the millions of Germans after the Second World War, 308 00:34:10,740 --> 00:34:20,280 the hundreds of thousands of people who are on the tens of thousands of Dutch who are coming for lack of a better word back. 309 00:34:20,280 --> 00:34:25,530 What are they coming back to? Are they coming back to a nation state? 310 00:34:25,530 --> 00:34:29,790 In the case of the Germans who settled in western East Germany and Austria, 311 00:34:29,790 --> 00:34:32,850 and a number of other countries, which one of those was the German nation state, 312 00:34:32,850 --> 00:34:41,460 exactly for the one who settled in Belgium and Switzerland in France, but also all over Europe for the Dutch, many of whom this family are Jewish. 313 00:34:41,460 --> 00:34:50,940 Are they really suddenly a Dutch nation state? Is there a nation state that's reading them there or as they returned in the 40s, 50s and 60s? 314 00:34:50,940 --> 00:34:55,020 Are they perhaps returning? Is also the wrong word for these people? 315 00:34:55,020 --> 00:35:00,900 Are they in fact arriving in something which is not really a nation state, namely an emerging Europe? 316 00:35:00,900 --> 00:35:09,660 The interesting thing about the 1950s and 1970s, if one thinks of imperial history and this is the part which is most shocking, 317 00:35:09,660 --> 00:35:19,590 most surprising and therefore most taken for granted is the economic recovery that from 1950 and 1970. 318 00:35:19,590 --> 00:35:25,590 In Europe, average rates of growth were four percent a year after previous decades, when the average was one percent. 319 00:35:25,590 --> 00:35:35,490 That is the shocking thing. It's shocking that a whole number of levels high levels like if you fight a Second World War like this, 320 00:35:35,490 --> 00:35:42,420 should you really be recovering this quickly and this and this? Well, but more profoundly, 321 00:35:42,420 --> 00:35:49,680 if you are losing the technological advantage to the rest of the world that was brought to you by the industrial revolution, 322 00:35:49,680 --> 00:35:51,270 which is what's happening, right? 323 00:35:51,270 --> 00:35:59,880 The thing which is enabling empire and the advantages of industrialisation is feeding precisely in those two decades. 324 00:35:59,880 --> 00:36:03,210 How can that be the time when your growth spurts off? 325 00:36:03,210 --> 00:36:08,220 How could that be the time which is remembered as the glorious years at the time when never had it so good? 326 00:36:08,220 --> 00:36:17,460 How can that be? And the answer, of course, is Europe, and there are people who are looking upon this phenomenon and recognising it for what it was. 327 00:36:17,460 --> 00:36:20,430 There were people who were looking upon with the Germans and the Dutch and Price were 328 00:36:20,430 --> 00:36:27,720 doing and recognising that this was how you go from Empire precisely into something else. 329 00:36:27,720 --> 00:36:30,880 And those people were called the British political. 330 00:36:30,880 --> 00:36:40,720 So in the late 1950s and early 1960s, from the point of view of London, this story that I was telling was then clear, right? 331 00:36:40,720 --> 00:36:43,960 Maybe not every detail, maybe not on Ukraine and so on. 332 00:36:43,960 --> 00:36:53,350 But the general outline that you need a place to go after Empire and Europe was that place that was generally smoke. 333 00:36:53,350 --> 00:36:57,250 I would go so far as to say that with something like common sense. 334 00:36:57,250 --> 00:37:04,090 Of course, the British escape from Empire was not this straightforwardly bloody categorical with an end date, 335 00:37:04,090 --> 00:37:07,930 as it was with the Germans, the French and and the Dutch. 336 00:37:07,930 --> 00:37:19,900 The key moment might be 1956 as an imperial humiliation at Suez, rather than rather than playing God in 1957 or even India in 1947. 337 00:37:19,900 --> 00:37:27,850 But the general lesson was as we moved for an empire, we need a substitute in 1961 on the ocean. 338 00:37:27,850 --> 00:37:30,550 The House of Commons, as I'm sure everyone will remember too, 339 00:37:30,550 --> 00:37:35,770 to join the European Economic Community passed by the three hundred and thirteen to four. 340 00:37:35,770 --> 00:37:41,230 So out of the argument, the argument that I'm making more or less trivial part of the problem in the 341 00:37:41,230 --> 00:37:46,750 sixties for Britain was that the empire was still mixed into the question. 342 00:37:46,750 --> 00:37:51,550 There wasn't a categorical movement, as there was for the Dutch or the Germans and for the French, 343 00:37:51,550 --> 00:37:55,510 which meant that you could still defeat Commonwealth versus Europe. 344 00:37:55,510 --> 00:38:02,590 And the British press was still loudly debating that, which helped the goal as he prepared his arguments for the veto. 345 00:38:02,590 --> 00:38:04,180 By the end of the nineteen sixties, 346 00:38:04,180 --> 00:38:10,750 it was harder to make that argument because the balance of trade was then clearly favouring the continent over the Commonwealth, 347 00:38:10,750 --> 00:38:15,670 which the art, which which was the argument for applying again. 348 00:38:15,670 --> 00:38:22,630 Britain applies for a second time in 1967 and in one of these non coincidences, which helps bring these, I think, 349 00:38:22,630 --> 00:38:31,510 to events that are one of the events together in 1968 that Wilson brings back all of the British forces east of Suez, right? 350 00:38:31,510 --> 00:38:40,210 The moment of applying for the European Economic Community is the moment of conceding that the British Empire, in its traditional form, is over. 351 00:38:40,210 --> 00:38:44,200 It is the same moment, and at the time I would. 352 00:38:44,200 --> 00:38:50,200 I would say that was seldom the story in the rest of the emerging countries. 353 00:38:50,200 --> 00:38:58,570 And this in is, first of all, is that we're sorry in the second enlargement, first of all in Spain is very similar, right? 354 00:38:58,570 --> 00:39:04,030 Portugal is a major European empire by by the 20th century. 355 00:39:04,030 --> 00:39:07,420 What remains is chiefly Africa. 356 00:39:07,420 --> 00:39:17,020 Portugal stays out of the Second World War, but Salazar governs all the way through orients Portuguese ideology and the economy around Africa. 357 00:39:17,020 --> 00:39:24,370 African cotton is crucial to Portugal after 1968, how long the Portuguese colonies would remain. 358 00:39:24,370 --> 00:39:33,550 He said it's a question of centuries. He later in Europe, 500 years of OK, you know that that's wrong. 359 00:39:33,550 --> 00:39:36,940 But what's interesting about how it ended that time? He says this. 360 00:39:36,940 --> 00:39:46,930 In the late 60s, early 1970s, 80 percent of the Portuguese argues that Africa Europe had 80 percent of your arms on another continent. 361 00:39:46,930 --> 00:39:55,870 Maybe you're not a nation state in 1974. What's striking about your Portugal is the way that everything happened at the same time. 362 00:39:55,870 --> 00:39:58,150 If you're following the European integration narrative, 363 00:39:58,150 --> 00:40:02,690 you will notice that the people who come out of the recreation revolution are talking about Europe right away. 364 00:40:02,690 --> 00:40:08,020 Yes, they were. If you're following a democratisation narrative, you'll notice that they were talking about democracy. 365 00:40:08,020 --> 00:40:15,490 Indeed. But they were also talking about colonisation. And what's interesting is that they were talking about all three things at the same time. 366 00:40:15,490 --> 00:40:22,810 And I believe correctly identify them together because after all, you can't really have a democratic empire. 367 00:40:22,810 --> 00:40:32,110 And losing the empire was a condition of joining Europe, and Suarez was making these points in single sentences at the time in 1974. 368 00:40:32,110 --> 00:40:44,530 Spain, interestingly, follows the same pattern. Spain, the Spanish empire, has also been reduced to Africa, mostly North Africa, by the 20th century. 369 00:40:44,530 --> 00:40:50,440 The Spanish Civil War, which precedes the Second World War, is a colonial war in interesting ways. 370 00:40:50,440 --> 00:40:55,600 Franco is a colonial officer who fights the war on the Spanish mainland, 371 00:40:55,600 --> 00:41:03,160 according to what he himself characterises as colonial methods and in large measure, it's Typekit slot by African troops. 372 00:41:03,160 --> 00:41:10,730 That is, not only Spanish troops who are veterans of African wars, but by Africans themselves on Spain. 373 00:41:10,730 --> 00:41:17,470 Right? So Franco is himself a creature of empire, and he identifies Spain with him. 374 00:41:17,470 --> 00:41:24,520 It's another one of these non coincidental coincidences that Spain loses its last claimed empire, 375 00:41:24,520 --> 00:41:28,990 the Spanish Sahara, within a few hours of Franco stuff. 376 00:41:28,990 --> 00:41:30,130 And again, it's not. 377 00:41:30,130 --> 00:41:40,030 Incidents that the process of losing Empire, the death of Franco Democratic transition, as we used to say and the application of European Union, 378 00:41:40,030 --> 00:41:41,290 all happen at the same time, 379 00:41:41,290 --> 00:41:47,860 the application to the European European sort of European community takes place three weeks after the first parliamentary elections. 380 00:41:47,860 --> 00:41:54,670 Three parliamentary elections in in Spain. No. 381 00:41:54,670 --> 00:42:04,300 When I was at that first conference 25 years ago, Spain and Portugal were reference points for Eastern Europe. 382 00:42:04,300 --> 00:42:10,840 Spain and Portugal had joined the European police so that the European community just become the European Union, 383 00:42:10,840 --> 00:42:18,880 they have democratised after a dictatorship. So these were these were Corcoran's for Poland and Czechoslovakia and and all the rest. 384 00:42:18,880 --> 00:42:23,680 But something else that happened by the end of the 1980s, early 1990s, 385 00:42:23,680 --> 00:42:31,750 and that is that this very West European people realise nation had already crystallised by then each 386 00:42:31,750 --> 00:42:38,860 of these nations individually and all of them collectively had to build up this story about how we, 387 00:42:38,860 --> 00:42:46,870 as European nation states, learn lessons from war in the middle of the century, and hence we have all joined together in this project. 388 00:42:46,870 --> 00:42:56,410 That story was already there. By the time the East Europeans emerged from communism back up and then the Europeans came along. 389 00:42:56,410 --> 00:43:04,300 This is important, and rather than disrupting it, because why would they affirmed it? 390 00:43:04,300 --> 00:43:15,550 Their story was. Yes, of course we are of nation states recently liberated and we would like to return to Europe, a very powerful scene at the time. 391 00:43:15,550 --> 00:43:25,330 Now that whole notion that here we have more European nation states looking for a home is unchallenged because the 392 00:43:25,330 --> 00:43:35,010 failure of the wise nation has already the fact that these places had not really been successful nation states ever, 393 00:43:35,010 --> 00:43:41,920 or that when they had been nation states, that was the thing that tended to bring about those world wars, which you were supposed to be. 394 00:43:41,920 --> 00:43:48,940 This isn't really noticed. This one might have done at the time is look under their re-affirming rhetoric because to some extent, 395 00:43:48,940 --> 00:43:54,790 they were self-consciously affirming the West Europeans in their own illusions about the way history works. 396 00:43:54,790 --> 00:43:58,960 If you look under, if you scratch the surface and you find that you get their intentions, 397 00:43:58,960 --> 00:44:08,710 you see that like everyone at the moment with Empire Falls apart, there is an understanding of what the purpose of European integration actually is. 398 00:44:08,710 --> 00:44:15,790 Later, we forget and the East Europeans here are no exception. But at that moment, they returned to Europe. 399 00:44:15,790 --> 00:44:27,760 What you mean is we know perfectly well from Munich and 19th in Munich and Yalta, and also we know perfectly well from 1956. 400 00:44:27,760 --> 00:44:33,580 We know perfectly well from 1981. We know perfectly well that we are not sustainable as nation states. 401 00:44:33,580 --> 00:44:39,100 Now that is not what you say out loud, but that is about the return to Europe actually meant. 402 00:44:39,100 --> 00:44:46,900 It meant that we know that we need a larger body in order to be state's right with pharmaceuticals. 403 00:44:46,900 --> 00:44:52,120 You spoke yesterday about independence being that shipment of the European Union. 404 00:44:52,120 --> 00:44:56,140 That might have surprised some of you, but that is what is left of. 405 00:44:56,140 --> 00:45:04,290 It is precisely the people understood at the time, and some pollsters think this way is precisely the European Union, which makes the state possible. 406 00:45:04,290 --> 00:45:17,770 No, this is a story which in some way coincides with overlaps with the idea of the European rescue of the nation state, 407 00:45:17,770 --> 00:45:27,940 which UN resolution cited earlier in. I believe it is true European integration saves the state, but there's a very important qualification here. 408 00:45:27,940 --> 00:45:32,770 It wasn't the Nation-State because there were no nation states to rescue. 409 00:45:32,770 --> 00:45:43,830 You cannot rescue something that has never existed. And it wasn't exactly a rescue, either, it was a transformation because there wasn't a period. 410 00:45:43,830 --> 00:45:52,350 In all of these examples. There was an imperial state. And what the European project did was allow that imperial state to become something else. 411 00:45:52,350 --> 00:45:59,490 But there was no nation state to rescue. So that can't quite be the right way to formulate it in Eastern Europe. 412 00:45:59,490 --> 00:46:08,580 What we have, very interestingly, is the second kind of integration in the first kind. 413 00:46:08,580 --> 00:46:16,230 What you have are one sort of imperial of in metropole. 414 00:46:16,230 --> 00:46:22,290 I mean, the bit around the bit around Lisbon or the bit around London, the bit around Paris. 415 00:46:22,290 --> 00:46:28,170 These are the imperial metropolis of what were once much larger empires until very recently were so substantial. 416 00:46:28,170 --> 00:46:34,230 These are the metropoulos there. These are what remain after a certain kind of internal disintegration. 417 00:46:34,230 --> 00:46:39,240 So up until the 1980s, what Europe does is it brings together Frankfurt. 418 00:46:39,240 --> 00:46:50,430 The metropolitan fragments of it from its great success after 1989 was to join with the metropolitan fragments, also the France. 419 00:46:50,430 --> 00:46:53,520 Because these state is not particularly successful. 420 00:46:53,520 --> 00:46:59,340 Nation states are all imperial fragments of the Habsburg and the Romanoff, or, to some extent, the German Empire. 421 00:46:59,340 --> 00:47:04,900 So that is what they are. And the great and interesting success of the European Union in the early part 422 00:47:04,900 --> 00:47:09,960 of the 21st century is that it solves the problem not in the Second World War, 423 00:47:09,960 --> 00:47:17,340 but of the First World War, the First World War. And that's it's not actually the piece. 424 00:47:17,340 --> 00:47:21,360 It's not. It's not the piece itself. A piece of Britain after the Second World War. 425 00:47:21,360 --> 00:47:26,550 It's a peace agreement after the First World War. That's what these national questions arise. 426 00:47:26,550 --> 00:47:35,260 And it is in 2004 2007-2013 that these national questions are merged into the European Union. 427 00:47:35,260 --> 00:47:42,030 Right? OK, now. So the enlargements of 2004 should also 2013. 428 00:47:42,030 --> 00:47:47,610 You might think in the history of Empire, at least in Europe, 429 00:47:47,610 --> 00:47:55,380 but not quite what I've said before that when you are just about to join the European project, 430 00:47:55,380 --> 00:48:02,550 this argument that I'm making is fairly clear, although you might be hitting some other terms that are a little bit kinder to yourself. 431 00:48:02,550 --> 00:48:04,410 This argument is fairly clear. 432 00:48:04,410 --> 00:48:13,230 Once you were inside the European Union, the scale of the table of the wise nation is totally and basically everybody goes for it. 433 00:48:13,230 --> 00:48:20,640 But when you are outside and you want to get in. The purpose of the European Union is absolutely clear. 434 00:48:20,640 --> 00:48:26,370 And this is the strange thing about the great misunderstanding between Ukrainians in 2013, 435 00:48:26,370 --> 00:48:33,960 precisely and many Europeans, because the chief Ukrainian argument for joining the European Union or for one thing, 436 00:48:33,960 --> 00:48:42,210 to sign association agreement was we are perfectly aware that our post-imperial state is deeply flawed, 437 00:48:42,210 --> 00:48:52,410 but we know that other post-imperial states became less flawed because of economics and the integration process. 438 00:48:52,410 --> 00:48:57,960 I'm not making this up. This is what opinion polling of Ukrainians shows. 439 00:48:57,960 --> 00:49:05,190 This is what it was about. Meanwhile, in Europe, inside the European Union, because of the fabled realised nation. 440 00:49:05,190 --> 00:49:15,720 This makes no sense. If you don't understand that your state was also at one time, probably an untenable post-imperial fragment. 441 00:49:15,720 --> 00:49:21,750 You don't understand the point of view of another untenable post-imperial friend. 442 00:49:21,750 --> 00:49:29,070 There's another group of people now in 2013 who understand this the way that I understand it, and that is the Russia. 443 00:49:29,070 --> 00:49:38,010 But they draw different conclusions. There were three historically possible answers for what to do after Empire and Europeans of supply. 444 00:49:38,010 --> 00:49:46,020 All three there are three possible answers. One of them is the nation state, which I've already talked about as a short career. 445 00:49:46,020 --> 00:49:51,900 The second is European integration, which is the solution without a name because we all know that it's happening. 446 00:49:51,900 --> 00:49:57,420 But as far as I know, it's very rarely referred to as what you do after Empire. 447 00:49:57,420 --> 00:50:05,760 The third thing you can do after Empire is, of course, more empire, and that is what Russia openly proposes in 2013. 448 00:50:05,760 --> 00:50:11,460 And here again, we have a major misunderstanding between this time the Russians and the Europeans, 449 00:50:11,460 --> 00:50:16,470 because the idea that moment want you go back to Empire when Empire has been totally 450 00:50:16,470 --> 00:50:21,330 displaced as a category of discourse and analysis doesn't really make sense. 451 00:50:21,330 --> 00:50:28,170 Even though if you look at the basic documents of the foreign policy concept of the Russian Federation published in February 2013, 452 00:50:28,170 --> 00:50:35,160 it is absolutely clear that they have made a turkey which is explicitly imperial is precisely the ways that I've described. 453 00:50:35,160 --> 00:50:41,890 There are now centres that. Referees law no longer applies. There are other countries around us which are not fully fledged countries. 454 00:50:41,890 --> 00:50:50,530 This is clear not just in the rhetoric of Mr Putin, the Russian ideologist, the stated Russian foreign policy in 2013. 455 00:50:50,530 --> 00:51:08,110 So the Empire comes back in 2013 between Russia and Ukraine, and strikingly, it comes back as narrative, amongst many other things, 456 00:51:08,110 --> 00:51:14,080 becomes that traditionally it comes back as the argument of centres and peripheries about who is central, who is peripheral. 457 00:51:14,080 --> 00:51:18,280 It comes back to the Russian argument that Ukraine is not really a state. 458 00:51:18,280 --> 00:51:22,750 It comes back in the argument that one state can define the ethnicity of citizens in another state. 459 00:51:22,750 --> 00:51:29,020 These are all things that are very familiar, and it comes back as generation as very powerful, I would say. 460 00:51:29,020 --> 00:51:32,620 Almost hypnotically powerful narration. 461 00:51:32,620 --> 00:51:40,780 And the reason why the narration was so not important was that there was something new about it, which was that it was targeted. 462 00:51:40,780 --> 00:51:51,010 So and now we're moving closer to the subject of the digital world. When Russia tried to persuade you that invading Ukraine was a good idea, 463 00:51:51,010 --> 00:51:58,240 that wasn't happening anyway, that's the way that they ended upon who you work, work. 464 00:51:58,240 --> 00:52:02,140 If you were known to be on the British left, 465 00:52:02,140 --> 00:52:11,740 your social media in 2014 told you that Ukrainians were all fascists if you were known to be on the British farmers. 466 00:52:11,740 --> 00:52:19,330 It did not know that these narratives contradicted because in the digital world, we don't actually have personal contact. 467 00:52:19,330 --> 00:52:26,230 All that matters is that the narratives reach you and disarm. You were just in how were you the way that they are meant to do? 468 00:52:26,230 --> 00:52:33,310 But what's interesting about this is that narrative returns this time self-consciously. 469 00:52:33,310 --> 00:52:39,760 So I would I say that narrative is imperial. I'm not just making a playful claim. 470 00:52:39,760 --> 00:52:46,210 I believe this to be the case. I mean, is imperial in its internal intellectual sense, 471 00:52:46,210 --> 00:52:52,210 the way that no matter what it is that you argue for whatever academic or other position it can be described as your narrative? 472 00:52:52,210 --> 00:53:00,070 Right? That's that's impure. That's imperial right down to two plus two is four, which is where Orwell tries to draw the line. 473 00:53:00,070 --> 00:53:03,610 You can say, well, that's the two plus two is for sister narrative. Right? 474 00:53:03,610 --> 00:53:10,180 I mean, I thought another narrative and I've got a way of identifying with two, which two feels like two is more than two. 475 00:53:10,180 --> 00:53:18,310 And the other two feels like a little bit down today, you know? So the thing that's interesting is that this kind of narrative is self-conscious. 476 00:53:18,310 --> 00:53:23,530 So the young Russian Studies programme and its wisdom during the beginning of the Russian 477 00:53:23,530 --> 00:53:28,030 invasion of Ukraine divided the Russian ambassador to come together and explain it, 478 00:53:28,030 --> 00:53:36,190 which he did and his explanation. I mean, beautifully stay clear of anything which might resemble a fact. 479 00:53:36,190 --> 00:53:42,100 And at the end of it, a Yale student raised his hand tentatively and asked, 480 00:53:42,100 --> 00:53:49,630 What about the Russian troops that are actually right now on the territory of sovereign territory of Ukrainian state? 481 00:53:49,630 --> 00:54:02,020 And the answer was, you have your narrative and I have my narrative and there is a self that was deliberately set right. 482 00:54:02,020 --> 00:54:06,490 And there is a feeling that there is a self-consciousness about narrative here. 483 00:54:06,490 --> 00:54:11,990 And one when you think about this is that, you know, is in the famous story, which is probably not true, 484 00:54:11,990 --> 00:54:15,400 that we only say the stories are a bit of the famous story about the lead in Bertrand Russell. 485 00:54:15,400 --> 00:54:22,000 When he says, you know, she says it's turtles all the way down. It's narrative all the way down. 486 00:54:22,000 --> 00:54:29,590 It's narrative all the way down, which which brings me to where to where I want to close. 487 00:54:29,590 --> 00:54:39,580 What it what is the European Union, really when we get away from your stupid, self destructive fable for Live Nation? 488 00:54:39,580 --> 00:54:43,390 What is the European Union, really and what is it? 489 00:54:43,390 --> 00:54:51,370 What is it, in fact? And you're able to recall what brought there and more so at the end of that conference or as a student, 490 00:54:51,370 --> 00:54:56,880 I want to recall the toast that you raised at dinner on the last day, which I only half understood at the time. 491 00:54:56,880 --> 00:55:01,210 That was still comes back to you regularly in different ways, he said. 492 00:55:01,210 --> 00:55:09,010 Above all, I wish to see the end of class Clash of Clans. 493 00:55:09,010 --> 00:55:19,900 What does he do? And then last night after dinner, I was talking to I was talking to generals, I suppose. 494 00:55:19,900 --> 00:55:32,520 And I also said, who has narratives? Public relations, people and ethnographers narratives are about not states. 495 00:55:32,520 --> 00:55:42,030 And this gets me thinking about where a narrative might actually be leaving us because and an imperial narrative that goes all the way down, 496 00:55:42,030 --> 00:55:48,280 which which has no other option but to lead you astray from the institutions that you already have, 497 00:55:48,280 --> 00:55:58,680 European institutions are the most important example, maybe leading us back to a place which is a lot like clan life and what is what I want. 498 00:55:58,680 --> 00:56:06,870 I want to propose here is that it is your it is the stable of a wise nation that is making this possible. 499 00:56:06,870 --> 00:56:15,270 OK, so what is the European nation? What is your opinion? Really, the European Union really is something fascinating and new. 500 00:56:15,270 --> 00:56:20,730 The case that I would make the European Union is not ready in case it is an example of mentality. 501 00:56:20,730 --> 00:56:24,180 It's an example of people creating something new in the world. 502 00:56:24,180 --> 00:56:31,800 There's never been anything like this before, and it has, as a result, surprising origins and also surprising potentialities. 503 00:56:31,800 --> 00:56:38,310 And both the origins and the potentialities are overlooked when we stay within the familiar narrative. 504 00:56:38,310 --> 00:56:43,740 It's not a collection of nation states because those Nation-States didn't exist. 505 00:56:43,740 --> 00:56:45,270 It's also not an empire, 506 00:56:45,270 --> 00:56:54,480 because the way that it treats is they treat its own constituent elements and its citizens has to do with with an overemphasis on law and equality. 507 00:56:54,480 --> 00:57:00,220 But what I want to say about this is that this and this is how so and not just against America, right? 508 00:57:00,220 --> 00:57:08,800 I'm against narrative here. If one does not understand that historically, if one sees it as narrative and one of the things that historically, 509 00:57:08,800 --> 00:57:19,030 then what is exposing it to to weakness in the creation of the European Union, understanding that Empire was coming to an end was crucial. 510 00:57:19,030 --> 00:57:25,090 But that is what made the European Union possible. Of course, you make good decisions for one reason that you forget about them. 511 00:57:25,090 --> 00:57:27,480 Right? I mean, but that's what made it possible. 512 00:57:27,480 --> 00:57:36,580 I'm going to submit that getting that history right now is probably just as existentially important because if one gets the history wrong, 513 00:57:36,580 --> 00:57:39,960 if one if one accepts the Fanzone of the Nation-State, 514 00:57:39,960 --> 00:57:48,660 I think where you end up going is chasing the Phantom of the Nation-State right into the imperial of this, 515 00:57:48,660 --> 00:57:54,840 because the thing about the people of the wise nation is that it creates a huge problem 516 00:57:54,840 --> 00:58:00,060 in domestic debates and therefore a dynastic policy because the people civilised nation, 517 00:58:00,060 --> 00:58:06,840 the narrative of the good guys precisely opens up a tremendous opportunity for the bad guys. 518 00:58:06,840 --> 00:58:12,210 I'm sorry, I don't mean that you're a bad guy. I mean that each referenced yesterday. 519 00:58:12,210 --> 00:58:18,930 It opens up. It opens up an opportunity for those who wish to bring European Union to an end. 520 00:58:18,930 --> 00:58:24,420 Because there is an axiomatic consensus about what the European Union is, 521 00:58:24,420 --> 00:58:32,100 the axiomatic consensus is that it is a group of nation states who in their duration and wisdom learnt that war without it, right? 522 00:58:32,100 --> 00:58:39,150 That is very convenient for people like the European Union, and it is also in quotes the good guys and bad guys. 523 00:58:39,150 --> 00:58:47,700 It would be. It's all very convenient for the good guys because you can say we have learnt that's very positive. 524 00:58:47,700 --> 00:58:55,920 You can say we're smarter than the Americans, right? That's the undertone the Americans have learnt the world is bad and we learnt that almost that. 525 00:58:55,920 --> 00:59:02,250 And most because it allows you to suppress and displace that history of empire. 526 00:59:02,250 --> 00:59:08,200 The history of the Treaty of Rome suppresses and displaces the history of life in general. 527 00:59:08,200 --> 00:59:12,480 This whole story of European nation states learning and the fact that the action 528 00:59:12,480 --> 00:59:17,310 takes place on the continent of Europe allows everything else to just go away. 529 00:59:17,310 --> 00:59:23,460 It's more narrative, the narrative, the good guys, which allows the colonial history to vanish completely. 530 00:59:23,460 --> 00:59:32,100 But this creates a risk in domestic policy for the people like European Union because the opponents of the European Union simply 531 00:59:32,100 --> 00:59:41,460 have to accept your terms of engagement if they if you say the Nation-State was always there and it learnt stuff from war, 532 00:59:41,460 --> 00:59:47,310 then the opponents, in your opinion, you can just say, Well, the nation state is always there. 533 00:59:47,310 --> 00:59:50,730 What can possibly happen if we leave the European Union? 534 00:59:50,730 --> 00:59:58,140 And no one has a counterargument for that because they've accepted your terms of engagement, whereas in reality, 535 00:59:58,140 --> 01:00:02,760 there is no particular historical reason to believe that any of the existing entities inside 536 01:00:02,760 --> 01:00:08,100 the European Union would survive recognisably as states if they left the European Union. 537 01:00:08,100 --> 01:00:14,700 It is, to put it mildly, an open question. I think in the case of the existing United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 538 01:00:14,700 --> 01:00:20,100 the chances that it would survive as a state under that name for more than years a prisoner. 539 01:00:20,100 --> 01:00:22,620 But it's a general to the general point. 540 01:00:22,620 --> 01:00:30,960 Now it opens up this problem of domestic discourse and policy, but it also opens up a huge vulnerability in foreign policy. 541 01:00:30,960 --> 01:00:41,260 And here are to. Because the way that digital foreign policy works is that it plays on pre-existing vulnerabilities. 542 01:00:41,260 --> 01:00:46,090 When Russia intervened in the American elections, these were things like fear of black people, 543 01:00:46,090 --> 01:00:50,800 fear of Muslims when Russia intervenes in Brexit, which it did. 544 01:00:50,800 --> 01:00:57,670 I await the British voter report and pay the price when Russia intervened, intervenes in Brexit or intervenes in Germany, 545 01:00:57,670 --> 01:01:04,480 after which it does or intervenes on behalf of the financing of France, which it does, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. 546 01:01:04,480 --> 01:01:11,080 Interesting. The vulnerability that they play on is precisely the fabled realisation. 547 01:01:11,080 --> 01:01:18,730 One of the main lines of Russian digital propaganda is to say, Well, yes, of course you always have a wonderful nation state. 548 01:01:18,730 --> 01:01:23,800 Putin himself even formulated this personally during the Brexit campaign. Are you sure the British? 549 01:01:23,800 --> 01:01:28,680 That all would be well and the Great Britain had always existed and none of its commitments, wherever binding? 550 01:01:28,680 --> 01:01:38,080 Right? He went out of his way personally to affirm the people, the wise nation they are on tune who they see as his vulnerability. 551 01:01:38,080 --> 01:01:44,950 What you think is true, right? They see his vulnerability, what you think is true. 552 01:01:44,950 --> 01:01:46,300 And that's what a narrative is. 553 01:01:46,300 --> 01:01:55,510 And there is the thing that you don't see which hurts when someone else goes for it, either by trying to explain it or by trying to exploit it. 554 01:01:55,510 --> 01:02:07,990 Now the reason why this matters so deeply is that the people the wise nation allows the whole category of empire to be put somewhere very far away. 555 01:02:07,990 --> 01:02:14,170 Right. So even in our efforts to say we have to bring back the global south or British history or talk about, 556 01:02:14,170 --> 01:02:21,190 you know, the first globalisation and empire is a thing, it's still very far away. 557 01:02:21,190 --> 01:02:28,000 Europeans contesting whether they should be in the European Union or not are not thinking empire. 558 01:02:28,000 --> 01:02:32,680 They're thinking nation state. And this is the trap. 559 01:02:32,680 --> 01:02:42,470 This is the trap. The idea that you're going to go back to a nation state is purely a result of the logic of the people of the nation. 560 01:02:42,470 --> 01:02:49,700 Purely as a result of nothing else, it's not a result of the history of Europe for sure, it's a result of the fabled wise nation. 561 01:02:49,700 --> 01:02:55,940 The idea that there's a default category of nation state and all you have to do is peel away the artificial layers of European integration, 562 01:02:55,940 --> 01:03:05,090 which lie on top of it. All right. That's the feeble. There never was a Britain, just like there never was a France or Netherlands or German. 563 01:03:05,090 --> 01:03:09,710 There never was a nation state on which this all accumulated. 564 01:03:09,710 --> 01:03:14,600 Instead, you had a post-imperial unit which became a European Union. 565 01:03:14,600 --> 01:03:19,530 And the difficulties of the British Parliament has with Brexit or, amongst other things, 566 01:03:19,530 --> 01:03:25,310 a reflection of this fundamental reality of the reason why it seems so strange is 567 01:03:25,310 --> 01:03:29,630 that the thing which is being talked about is not in fact exist and has never, 568 01:03:29,630 --> 01:03:34,850 in fact existed. Now why does it matter? 569 01:03:34,850 --> 01:03:49,700 Because it matters so deeply, because out here in the rest of the world, out here in the EU, world empire never stopped, never stopped. 570 01:03:49,700 --> 01:03:54,560 And Empire is here waiting for you and the people. 571 01:03:54,560 --> 01:04:01,260 The people who are working so energetically are usually working on behalf directly. 572 01:04:01,260 --> 01:04:13,160 Too often, I should say, working directly or indirectly for one of these empires tomorrow, the Russian one, the Chinese one, the various digital ones. 573 01:04:13,160 --> 01:04:20,720 Why is it exactly that? Digital technology is so prominent in the effort to break up the European Union? 574 01:04:20,720 --> 01:04:23,930 Could that possibly have something to do with the fact that the European Union 575 01:04:23,930 --> 01:04:28,850 is the only entity which seems able to do anything about digital rights? 576 01:04:28,850 --> 01:04:33,620 Could that possibly be the case? Could there possibly be a connexion there? 577 01:04:33,620 --> 01:04:41,450 Chinese, American and Russian efforts to disrupt the European Union lean heavily on digital technology, 578 01:04:41,450 --> 01:04:49,580 and I'm stressing it's not as a matter of technique because I want to close this lecture by trying to get a sense of what the empire out 579 01:04:49,580 --> 01:04:58,880 there is actually what the empire out there is not just Chinese power investors and Russian powered investors and American power investors. 580 01:04:58,880 --> 01:05:06,500 The empire out there against which the EU is imperfect, the only known projection is also a digital empire. 581 01:05:06,500 --> 01:05:11,390 It's an empire in which various kinds of entities, corporations, corporations, 582 01:05:11,390 --> 01:05:21,950 individuals and states are using a technology which allows you to be seen in terms of your preferences or really your vulnerabilities. 583 01:05:21,950 --> 01:05:26,540 It's a technology which takes advantage of psychological practises, 584 01:05:26,540 --> 01:05:32,190 namely behaviourism to categorise all of us into groups and then define the ways that the most, 585 01:05:32,190 --> 01:05:38,360 most fruitful react to stimulation from funnel who was a psychiatrist. 586 01:05:38,360 --> 01:05:47,900 As you all know very much a and conservative colonialism rights in black and white masks that the problem with his profession in 587 01:05:47,900 --> 01:05:57,950 colonial settings for imperial centuries is the way that it allows humans to be transformed from wild creatures into how creatures, 588 01:05:57,950 --> 01:06:06,770 which is one definition of what imperialism does. Some of us are white creatures, but the rest of us, the colonial objects or how creatures. 589 01:06:06,770 --> 01:06:10,580 I can't go into this more deeply, but I want to suggest the West on all this. 590 01:06:10,580 --> 01:06:18,850 Thinking about traditional imperialism also applies to the digital imperialism which is out there, which is and which is active. 591 01:06:18,850 --> 01:06:33,670 So my, my, my, my closing, my closing thought is that the way that the EU is historically interesting that it is a soft landing after empire? 592 01:06:33,670 --> 01:06:39,580 Is the same way that the EU has a future that is a buffer and a protection 593 01:06:39,580 --> 01:06:44,650 against the empires which are still there and which are forming up in different, 594 01:06:44,650 --> 01:06:51,490 in different ways. In this sense, you can say that the EU is a fool. 595 01:06:51,490 --> 01:07:07,083 But my argument is that the Phoenix, if it wants to revive, has to know the manner of its own passing.