European identity and the myth of Islam: a reassessment

There has been a fashionable tendency in some recent scholarship on Europea n history to look for some of the most important roots of European identity formation in the cultural, social and political interaction with the Islam ic world. This article argues that this view is an exaggerated and over-sim plistic one. In a long historical survey from the era of the Crusades to th e nineteenth century, it seeks to show that the theme in European continent al identity was frequently subordinated to political and diplomatic rivalri es. While cultural themes in IR are important, they do need to be distingui shed from realpolitik in the dynamics of international power politics.