Conservative History Writing and the Idea of Europe

In my paper, I will examine to what extent a 'historical idea of Europe', the notion that Europe was continent determined by its history, was constructed by French conservatives after the French Revolution between 1795-1830 as a reaction to French revolutionary universalism. Usually the notion of 'historical europe' is taken be a selfevident and timeless aspect of the European idea. However, I intend to demonstrate that this notion of Europe as a 'historical continent' is in fact rather new and can be dated back to the postrevolutionary era around 1800. In the sixteenth or seventeeth century, contemporaries for instance would not perceive Europe as a 'historical continent', but mainly as a Chirstian continent. Conservative constructed as it where a historical idea of Europe to counter the universal and timeless revolutionary European order based on the righs of man.