It was Europe and the ‘neo-Europes’ which it strewed around the world that upset the equilibrium between the traditional civilizations and set about reducing the world to a single social and economic regime. The beginning of ‘European supremacy’...begins here in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

R.I. Moore, The First European Revolution, c.970-1215. pp. 197-198

 

Although today Europe has been overtaken by the United States as a centre of world domination, it was Europe which made and populated the United States. Although today Europe has been overtaken by China as a manufacturing centre, it was ultimately from Europe that the Chinese obtained the foundations of their manufacturing technology.

The fact is that wherever you go in the modern world, you see European influence. It is as true in New England as it is in New Zealand, as true in the jungles of Central America as in the islands of the Pacific, as true in Amazonia as in Tasmania, as true on the snowed-on shores of Alaska as on the sunned-on savannah of Africa, as true in the Carribean as in the South China Sea, as true on the beaches of the Seychelles as in the forests of Siberia, as true on the plains of northern India as in the mountains of northern Japan. The fact that Europe, since the European military campaigns and ‘crusades’ of the eleventh century, followed by the voyages of European discovery in the fifteenth century, has shaped the modern world, is, for some, a reason to boast.

Having absorbed ancient Greek and Roman science and philosophy mainly via Arab civilization, having adopted Hindu numbers in their Arabic form, having absorbed the superior know-how of the Chinese, it is true that Europe gave the world modern technology. Europe gave the world printing and steel, factories and railways, trade and military know-how, modern universities and modern medicine, as well as the Gospel in two thousand languages, together with the customs of Catholicism and Protestantism. Europe has for centuries been central to the history of the world - but Europe has had both positive and negative influences on the world.

Indeed, when we look at the state of the modern world, it would be better not to boast of the fact that it is Europe that shaped it. Europe’s motivation in colonizing the world was not to bring the Truth and Life of Christ’s Gospel to it. It was to make profits through exploitation. Hence Europe’s incessant wars and conquests. Hence Europe’s slave-trade and imperialism. Hence the hatred of many for Europeans. And the hatred for Europeans continues in hatred for the politics of domination practised by Europe’s former colony, the United States. These politics are berated by some Europeans, but that is hypocritical, for they are not American in origin, they are European. The massive exploitation of the oil and natural resources of the world, as practised by the United States, is merely the continuation of European exploitation.

Today, Europe has lost all faith in itself, because it has lost the Faith of Christ, given to it in the First Millennium, which it then whittled away over the next thousand years of its ‘supremacy’. Twice in twenty-five years in the twentieth century, Europe triggered worldwide wars because it had lost that Faith. Therefore, the rest of the world also lost its faith in Europe. Thus, today, Europe merely walks along at a distance behind the United States, like a reluctant poodle following its master. Indeed, Europe will not have a word to say, until it recovers its own identity through recovering its Faith. Although Europe is central to the history and the destiny of the modern world, until Europe chooses between the duality of good and evil, its centrality will be irrelevant. And as for its redemption - that will remain in great doubt.

He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.