Maps illustrating this post

The TEP is useful in understanding European colonial expansion and its legacy. To begin with: in earlier eras of history, empires expanded overland from their core state until they reached the sea, or the boundaries of another empire. Even before the age of navigation, this did not happen in Europe. The empire of the Habsburgs, for example, was "all over Europe," but only in its latter years was it a single contiguous territory. This phenomenon was unique: a class of rulers, who swapped territories with other until the Age of Revolutions. At one time, Hungary and England were ruled by a Norman family from France; Scotland and a duchy in France, by an Italian family; the Dutch were ruled by the Spanish, while the Russian ruling house sought to establish itself in Greece.

Like glaciation, the TEP rode roughshod across tribal and linguistic boundaries. Like glaciation, it was both a cause and an effect of ecological transformation.

The Crusades themselves were a departure from the "normal" dynastic jockeying for river valleys in Europe: an association of aristocrats set off for Palestine, defeated the Shi'a rulers of the place (probably by the sheer weirdness of the concept), and established a cluster of wildly dysfunctional states). After three generations, the Crusader states were ejected by the Egyptians (now under Kurdish management) and the Crusading organizations relocated. One, the Teutonic Knights, thought the longitude was right, but the latitude was the problem; it invaded the eastern hinterlands of the Baltic Sea.

Just as we cannot give a meaningful date when, for example, the various political entities of the Holy Roman Empire became "Germany," we cannot say for certain when the TEP came into being. Yet there is irrefutably a thing called "Germany," and it is distinctively German. The TEP emerged in part as a result of the Napoleonic Wars, partly as an accident: Britain refused to become permanently involved in the political affairs of the Continent, and confined itself to the lucrative opportunities overseas. As a result of the Napoleonic Wars, though, it had absorbed the strategic interests of once-occupied imperial powers Portugal, Holland, and Spain. These countries had fought wars with England for control of the overseas empire; now they enjoyed the benefits of the UK's defense of their empires abroad (e.g., Holland's empire in Indonesia). Likewise, Britain fought a minor war with the USA over freedom of the seas (1812-15). After the war, the new alignment of political interests inside both Britain and the USA allowed the two to collaborate using each other's institutions.

The tendency for countries to use the surplus capacity of each other for imperialism was a novelty of the Napoleonic Wars, when (a) many of the great powers had vied long and hard for empires overseas, and (b) now suffered French occupation. The British, having helped to restore the Bourbons, now allowed the restored ancien regime access to capital markets, its former sugar colonies, and technical innovations—in short, what it needed to survive and win the favor of the French. Decades later, these commercial networks enabled the comprehensive industrialization of the continent of Europe. At some point afterwards, we can speak of the TEP acting in tacit harmony to conquer the rest of the world and achieving the first experience of world domination by a single state.

BOUNDARIES OF THE TRANS-EUROPEAN PROJECT

The difference between the territory of TEP and TEP-impacted zones is that the entire populations of the TEP have been recruited into the project of ecological redemption. Not only that, but they have for well over a century. Greece and Turkey lie on the very periphery, while Russia and Japan have long been essentially different, detached projects of ecological expansion and transformation. There has been some considerable Russo-German cooperation in the capture of Ukraine from the Ottoman Empire, and the Czarina of Russia at the time was in fact a native of Germany; but for the most part, the Russian conveyor belt of coercion and expansion¹, functioned without major Western input until the 1860's. (The famous interval of Peter I and Catherine II largely influenced the creation of a proto-industrial bureaucracy in the Moscow-Petersburg region. However, the Russian technology of firearms was largely an import from Western producers).

Latin America, while dominated politically by TEP-oriented elites, is still a work in progress. Only Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile fit my definition, and there remains a substantial share of the population outside Buenos Aires that have not really been assimilated to the project of ecological transformation. This is because the formal sector of the economy has failed them so completely that they have, in effect, reverted to the informal sector. The great majorities of the other Latin American economies are either IN THE WAY OF, or THE TARGET OF, or A POTENTIAL RESOURCE IN, the process of ecological redemption.

Readers may wonder what the historical significance of the TEP is. Why speak of a unified entity? Why exclude some nations, like Russia? Brazil? Argentina? Given the volume of trade flows between China and the TEP member states, why isn't China part of the TEP? Didn't the great powers fight bloody wars over empires abroad? This, I shall post about next.

(Part 2)

[Democracy] [Ecology] [Europe] [Imperialism] [Japan] [Russia] [USA]

ADDITIONAL READING: "Making War, Forging Revolution: Russia’s Continuum of Crisis, 1914–1921" (PDF), Peter Holquist, 2002