Jill Rees: Welcome Press

The old European nations are like old ladies sitting in their dilapidated old mansions sifting through their family jewellery with their memories. Sometimes, like Austria, they’re looking back at past glories. More typically, like Britain and France, they still think they’re players, and are again looking to play their part in the world. Nations with a past they would like to forget, such as Germany, are players but keep themselves to themselves. Some of the nations are struggling back to the surface after the devastation of World War II. There are new democracies, new nations, new economic systems. Many have already joined the European Union, others are trying to qualify. Turkey, bridging the Bosphoros between Europe and Asia, has chosen to be considered European, its mainly, but not only, Moslem population. And finally the nations who are still dreaming, like Bulgaria, not yet realising what it means to be European, the most privileged of the world regions.

Although there have been shifts in the peoples of Europe from time to time, the basic thought systems come from the ancient Greeks, whose thoughts and ideas permeate the European nations since the 5^th century BC, being largely adopted by the nascent Christian civilisations. During the last century, some of the cultures suppressed by this neo-classical culture, such as the ‘Celtic’ peoples of Spain, Brittany, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, have had a revival in recent years, helped not least by the Mel Gibson movie Braveheart! Is there an identity to being European? Yes, I think it would be a nod of the head to the classical civilisations of Rome and Greece, still regarded with the greatest respect in Europe, taken with the inventiveness of the indigenous peoples.

The former Eastern bloc countries, closed to the rest of the world as insular Soviet satellite countries for much of the late 20^th century, have found it surprisingly easy to return to their pre-war roles. The great romantic cities of Budapest, Prague and Sofia are once again at the heart of culture, drawing other European travellers as if by a magnet, the magnet of myth. Their old glory is still within living memory, and is so deeply embedded in their culture that it remains untouched by Soviet oppression. The melting pot of Celts, Slavs, Latins, Moors, Saxons, Scandinavians, all forming a delightfully varied but primarily united civilisations we can call European.

Of course there is a crossover with Africa. The distance between the continents on the Spanish/Moroccan crossing is only nine miles. The Celts are related to the Berber people who once formed a great Empire until finally defeated by the Arabs, and are now undergoing a cultural revival in the same vein as the European Celts. The Kabyle people of Algeria often have light skin and blue eyes, coming as they do originally from the Aryan peoples of ancient Greece. The Arab or Moorish empire stretched into southern Europe as far north as the Loire, and is the origin of the saying that the south starts at this East/West river, below which people tend to be darker in skin and hair colour, and the lifestyle more relaxed.

Africa is home to great empires too, the Berbers, the Arabs, the Malian Empire which was so wealthy from trading that the streets of Timbuktu were said to be paved with gold, the great Ethiopian Empire,Ghana, Bambara, Garamantes, Egypt. What does it mean to an African to remember these great peoples? The colourful Berber in Algiers, reclaiming his heritage; the purple-scarved Touareg, mapping the peoples of the immeasurable Sahara; the Malian farmer, surveying the quality of his cotton crop, the displaced farm worker of catastrophic Zimbabwe; the children sheltering from the bombardment in Iraq; the Nigerian tradesman counting his money and planning to smuggle it to the UK!. The Muslim villager, struggling to live with honour; the miners of South Africa; the gallant Ethiopian, whose borders remain uninvaded for the longest of all nations on earth, home of Shakespeare’s Othello.

Austria of course used to be a great Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, who fought the Ottomans more or less continuously and derived a lot of their reputations and pride from these great battles. How unfortunate that troubles in the Balkan states led to wars they could not win, and in which they were minor players, and how misguided to side with Hitler and be faced now with the memory of grandeur, and also the mantle of shame. To remember or to forget - which is least painful?

Great peoples and great histories are in all our memories, as well as stories of shame. The result of the end of the Malian empire, defeated at the hands of the Arabs, marked the beginning of slave-trading within Africa, and eased the way for the white slave traders later. Involvement in the slave trade brought a sense of shame on the European empires long before they began to fade. These common histories join us as much as they divide us.

Africa, is divided by the false borders of the former colonies, divided by borders and by languages, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Afrikaans Dutch; divided by tribes, some of which stretch over the old borders, some which create bloodshed to rival twentieth century Europe, like the murderous genocide in Rwanda; divided by religion, especially by Islam and Christianity, a story going back centuries, yet these two religions so close as to be siblings in the same family. Africa, who sometimes wants to progress by emulating the northern industrialised nations, and sometimes wants to find its own culture, buried in half-forgotten traditions. Ruined cities, archaeological treasures beyond the imagination of Europeans, newly uncovered in the desert winds, fossils from the beginning of time, the memory of man. The heritage of Africa lies also in the sculpture, textiles and music which form the basis of white culture in the guitar-blues of Mali, the dancers of Senegal, the colours of Kenya.

Most importantly, modern Africa, more modern than anybody, has taught us how to end division by forgiveness and by moving forward, when Bishop Tutu devised the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Africa gave birth to the greatest humanitarian statesman of them all in Nelson Mandela. Africa has its own future, taking its place again at the heart of the world’s great civilisations, this time founded on culture and dialogue instead of destruction and war. Africa and Europe, we have so much more that joins us, than divides us.

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