One subject pop up around me these days is the notion of country failure. First when visiting Serbia, which is certainly a country with its share of problem, and where the ghost of Yugoslavia still lingers. Second, as a general subject about the USA, typically contrasted with Europe. I can’t say that this is a very structured subject, but here are some random thoughts.
When the theme of the USA failing pops up, there will always be someone explaining that Europe will fail more. The thing is, Europe is not a country, it is a continent, which includes parts of Russia and Turkey. The EU does not cover Europe, and has bits all over the planet, France’s longest land border is with Brazil, and this summer’s headlines were about a bit of Europe which happens to be on the African continent. The Eurozone will give you another map, so will the Schengen treaty, or even the countries participating in the Eurovision (which includes Israel). In short, Europe is not a particularly well defined concept, it’s more of a vibe.
The one common thing about Europe is that it runs on failed empires. Wherever you go, there are traces of past Pan-European projects: buildings, administratives lines, registers of land ownership, roads, waterways and temples. The Warsaw pact failed during my lifetime, NATO might be next. Brexit shows what happens when such a project fails, not good, but life goes on. Individual countries also fail, they break up, like Yugoslavia did, or disappear, like Eastern Germany. While Empire fail, they typically leave a legacy of structures upon which Europe is basically built, some examples:
- Roman Empire
- Laws, road-alignements, land divisions, writing system
- Carolingian Empire
- Administrative divisions (Gaue), compulsory education (Admonitio generalis), writing system
- The Hanseatic League
- Corporate trade governance, maritime arbitration
- Napoleonic Empire
- Laws, Unit-system (metric)
- Austro-Hungarian Empire
- Railway infrastructure and standards, the European time-zone, cadastral systems.
- The Latin Monetary Union
- Prototype of the Eurozone
- Eastern European communist block
- MIR electrical network
- Venetian Republic
- Maritime Law, arsenal and industrial standardisation, diplomatic networks and consular representations
- Ottoman Empire
- Fountains, baths, administrative structures
- Al-Andalus (Umayyad Caliphate of Córdoba)
- Irrigation systems, agriculture (citrus, rice), water-rights law, cisterns and bathhouses
- Viking expansion
- Assembly/parliamentary systems, legal structures.
Chances are, you never heard of some of these, but that’s the point. What is worth noting is none of these structures fully align with modern structures. Germany overlaps the Hanseatic League (in the North), the Carolingian Empire, the Eastern European block. The city of Zadar in Dalmatia was part of the Roman Empire, the Venetian Republic, the Napoleonic Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Eastern European communist block.