Larry Wolff’s Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Enlightenment, provides a cultural and intellectual analysis of the enlightenment period. Specifically, the book presents the enlightenment in a different light than most scholarly works. The Enlightenment was the age of reason and words like tolerance were thrown around; Wolff presents a book that challenges how much reason scholars had at that time. The book centers on the cultural aspect of Western Europe and how Western Europeans viewed their eastern neighbors, the Slavs. The argument presented in the book is that because Western Europeans were enlightened they looked down on the neighboring white people in the east. In fact, multiple cases compared the eastern white people to Africans. This was a major shock to read and has created controversy. In reviews, there is a divide among scholars alone the east and west lines. Wolff presents Eastern Europe as a cultural bridge between civilization and barbarism constructed by French historians. The book presents a compelling argument that challenges the way one views the enlightenment. It also challenges the idea that Europe is a single entity. The book is very applicable to the modern studies in the current political environment.

About the Author

      Larry Wolff is an expert in the region of Eastern Europe which makes it possible for him to present a controversial work. Wolff is a cultural historian who focuses on the Habsburg Monarchy and the Enlightenment. He is the director for the Center for European and Mediterranean Studies at Ney York University. He has a doctoral degree from Stanford University.¹ His research is quite interesting because he focuses on the cultural understanding of Eastern Europe. Wolff was inspired by the fact that he thought the scholarship on the reason why Eastern Europe was backward was completely untrue.² When Wolff travelled to Eastern Europe and the Vatican Secret Archive, the original purpose was to research Poland’s relationship with the Vatican. He noticed cultural distinctness between Western Europeans and the Slavs.³ He has received six academic awards for his research.⁴

Structure of the Book

      The book is well structured to provide a complete overview of cultural aspects of the enlightenment. There are nine chapters built into the book. The first part of the books provides a basic overview of the enlightenment. There is also a cultural overview of the Enlightenment that deals with gender differences and cultural distinctness. Slavic women were considered to be more firmer and heroic than men.⁵ The second half of the book focuses on the writings of Voltaire and Rousseau. The final two chapters discuss how the enlighten scholars wrote about anthropology. Wolff mixes a diverse number of sources from accounts from travelers, diplomats, geographers, and philosophers.⁶ The format is great at funneling the reader towards a deep understanding of how enlightened thinkers viewed the Slavs.

Ideas of The Past and Present

      Over the course of time the ideas that are presented in this book are still relevant today. Wolff unknowingly has created a book that is essential reading for understanding the debate on what is Europe. One of the unintended consequence of the enlightenment in Wolff’s mind, is that Western thinkers artificially constructed the idea of Eastern Europe. The Enlightenment is hard to simply define but it is considered to be a secular cultural movement with a humanist, universalist, and rationalist worldview.⁷ The idea of Europe, as most people know it, comes from a Western lens. There is a paradox in the idea of Europe because the Slavic people are included and excluded instantaneously.⁸ Wolff points this out comically by saying that people associate Vienna with the West and Prague with the East. He notes that Prague is to the west of Vienna.⁹ Even with the facts discussed, there is a cultural difference, the West is viewed as enlightened and the East is a mix between civilization and barbarism.¹⁰ Michael Confino points out that the Enlightenment is universalist and is curious why the universal ideas of Europe are not included.¹¹ Confino argued that under the enlightenment the ideas of one Europe and one humanity should be clear.¹² Wolff did answer this concern by using examples of writers arguing for expansions to help enlighten the east. Amongst the condescending tone of the sources, the authors hoped that the Western enlightened monarchs help bring the Slavs to the light.¹³
      Voltaire constructed Europe between the ones that have knowledge and the ones who do not.¹⁴ Thinkers like Volney, who wrote of a vanguard nation that will be imitated so that all nations would be enlighten.¹⁵ Voleny’s idea is very similar to the foreign policy of United States and Western European Union members to Eastern Europe. Wolff considered Archetti’s work to be condescending.¹⁶ People considered Slavs to be inferior and for white people to be inferior leads to the justification of the Western conquest in the name of enlightening the Asiatic white people.¹⁷ Voltaire considered the Slavs “the strangest people who are on the earth.”¹⁸ Count de Ségur who travelled from Prussia to Partitioned Poland, wrote that he felt that he left Europe to enter the woods with demi-savages.¹⁹ Ségur came to the conclusion as demonstrated throughout the chapters that Eastern Europe is neither Europe or Asia. Eastern Europe is something in-between Europe and Asia.²⁰
     Wolff did a great job balancing the debate between Voltaire and Rousseau in defining Eastern Europe. Voltairre supported the enlightened ideas of power which lead his support of Catherine the Great. Rousseau backed the Poles and celebrated the diversity of the Slavic nations.²¹ Wolff points out this debate on the political make up of Eastern Europe is what defined the region. The West Slavic nations embraced their national identity. The Russians embraced the absolutist sovereign ruler.²² Eastern Europe was “the laboratory of ideological experimentation in which the Enlightenment explored political possibilities by performing theoretical operations within a hypothetical domain.”²³ Wolff pointed out that Joseph II did not heed Rousseau’s warning about multi-national states with a core nation not understanding the other nations would result in the state’s failure.²⁴
     Confino did have problems by the way Wolff used Voltaire. Confino notes that Voltaire never used the term Eastern Europe. He argues that Wolff is substituting Eastern Europe into Voltaire’s work to makes a sound argument.²⁵ Confino misses the entire point because sources like Voltaire’s work created an image that is commonly associated with Eastern Europe. There is no single Enlightenment vision of the East but all these sources created the foundation to what we have today.²⁶ Wolff is not saying that the term Eastern Europe was created but the stigma was created. Marshall Poe has the same problem as Confino. Poe conflates the creation of the ideas of Eastern Europe with the creation of the term Eastern Europe.²⁷ This disagreement seems to be on ideological differences between Atlanticists and Eurasianists.

Slavery

     The author’s second chapter is probably the most impactful and saddening part of the book. The discussion of slavery in Eastern Europe makes the reader angry that it is not discussed to the extent that it should. Wolff uses Casonova as a primary source in the discussion. Casonova was a traveler going from France to Russia passing through Poland. Through his travels he noticed the difference in women. He became attracted to Slavic women and felt the temptation to buy a peasant girl’s services.²⁸ He used her and he tried to indoctrinate her to make her civilized. He forced her to dress in French clothes and beat her until she learned to speak Italian.²⁹ This was very horrifying to read. The discussion on slavery in Poland was infuriating. Ségur discussed the slavery of the Poles and the slave trade that went on during the Ottoman’s rule. He considered the enslavement of the Slavs as immoral. This was probably an eye-opening view of slavery. When people began to equate Slavs with Africans to justify slavery it bothered thinkers.³⁰ What makes me angry is that hardly anyone has discussed this topic at length. Reviewers from the journals that focus on the Slavic world appreciate that an entire chapter is focused this subject. Elise Wirtschafter has been a curious slavophobia, and of how it has developed in the modern day.³¹ Wolff provides answer to this development by showing that enlightened thinkers saw Slavs as whites who were not enlightened. In some cases, the sources said that Slavs were fit for slavery.³²

Criticism

     One issue I have with the book is that Wolff does not consider variables that were before the time of the Enlightenment. The development of the Slavic languages and the resistance towards Germanization. Wirtschafter also asks if the division of Catholic and Orthodox Christianity, influences from the Roman empire, and invasions by the Mongols played a role on the image of Eastern Europe developed.³³ Peter Fuchs would have liked to see the debate between scholars who have and haven’t travelled East. Fuchs believes that not all of the travelers considered Slavs demi-savages.³⁴
     One major aspect of the book that is greatly appreciated is the fact that Wolff focused on the culture. Scholars like Wallerstein and Brenner focused only on the economic aspect on the differences between Eastern and Western Europe. Wolff’s book vindicates Eurasianist scholars. The book displays that there was a cultural construction of the Slavs.³⁵ In some cases there were sources that never traveled to the Slavic lands.³⁶ Atlanticists are correct that nations in Eastern Europe are imagined but it is the Atlanticists that have done the imagining. The nations are on the crossroads of Europe and Asia and have been around for a long time.³⁷

Conclusion

     Larry Wolff’s Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment is a must-read book that provides answers that the East and West debate in Europe. The focus of the cultural and intellectual aspects of the Enlightenment provides the reader a glimpse on how the stigma of Eastern Europe was created. The book shows how the enlightened became elitists and looked down on the white neighbors in the East. This elitism created interesting logic that allowed for Slavs to be equated to Africans. The social construction of Eastern Europe from the Enlightenment are still remnants today. Some of the exact logic still remains as well, this is especially true in how some scholars from the US and Western EU countries believe they have the mission to make the East exemplary.

Endnotes

¹“Administration,” Center for European and Mediterranean Studies, 2017, http://as.nyu.edu/cems/people/administration.html (accessed November 26, 2017).
²Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Enlightenment (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 8.
³Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe, 13; Center for European and Mediterranean Studies, “Administration.”
⁴“Larry Wolff,” Center for European and Mediterranean Studies, 2017, http://as.nyu.edu/cems/people/faculty.lawrence-wolff.html (accessed November 26, 2017).
⁵Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe, 18.
⁶Michael Confino, review of Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Enlightenment, by Larry Wolff, Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne des Slavistes 36, no. 3 (September-December 1994): 505-507, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40869682.
⁷Confino, review of Inventing Eastern Europe, 505.
⁸Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe, 7.
⁹Ibid., 8.
¹⁰Ibid., 22.
¹¹Confino, review of Inventing Eastern Europe, 517.
¹²Ibid., 518.
¹³Paschalis M. Kitromilides, review of Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Enlightenment, by Larry Wolff, Eighteenth-Century Studies 30, no. 4 (Summer 1997): 457, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30053876.
¹⁴Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe, 90.
¹⁵Ibid., 8-16.
¹⁶Ibid., 14.
¹⁷Ibid., 18-21.
¹⁸Ibid., 92.
¹⁹Ibid., 19-22.
²⁰Ibid., 19.
²¹ Ibid., 197.
²² Ibid., 197-200.
²³ Ibid., 236.
²⁴Ibid., 236; 310-315.
²⁵Confino, review of Inventing Eastern Europe, 511.
²⁶ Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter, review of Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Enlightenment, by Larry Wolff, The Slavic and East European Journal 9, no. 4 (Winter 1995): 643, http://www.jstor.org/stable/309129.
²⁷ Marshall Poe, review of Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Enlightenment, by Larry Wolff, The Russian Review 55, no. 4 (October 1996): 713 http://www.jstor.org/stable/131885.
²⁸ Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe, 50-52.
²⁹ Ibid., 53-56.
³⁰ Ibid., 62-81.
³¹ “Anti-Polish cards in Huntingdon after EU referendum,” BBC, June 26, 2016, http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-36633388 (accessed November 26, 2017).
³² Wirtschafter, review of Inventing Eastern Europe, 643.
³³Ibid., 644.
³⁴ Peter Fuchs, review of Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Enlightenment, by Larry Wolff, Historische Zeitschrift 256, no. 1 (February 1996): 260-61, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27630642.
³⁵Maria Todorova, review of Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Enlightenment, by Larry Wolff, Slavic Review 56, no. 1 (Spring 1997): 124, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2500659.
³⁶Todorova, review of Inventing Eastern Europe, 124.
³⁷Ibid., 125.

Bibliography

BBC. “Anti-Polish cards in Huntingdon after EU referendum.” June 26, 2016. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-36633388 (accessed November 26, 2017).
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