Europe of Frontiers

It helps to understand the differences in European values and attitudes by thinking in geographical terms, what Richard Hill calls the ‘Macro-Divides’. There are at least three: the Island-Continent Divide, the East-West Divide and, for want of a better description, the ‘South-North Incline’.

Europe’s cultural mosaic is a rich and extraordinary one. The differences throughout the continent are due to a mixture of historical accident and arranged marriages, writes Richard Hill, author of the best-selling book, We Europeans.

I. The Island-Continent Divide is the most obvious one, particularly to the English/Irish side! There is something about islands. Maybe because you have so many people rubbing shoulders in a relatively confined space, they tend to produce strict social hierarchies. In that respect, Britain is not unlike Japan, and very different from most Continental societies. But there is another thing, too, namely that the English and the Irish have an approach to life that is fundamentally different from that of many continentals. Note that I say the English, the word ‘British’ being a political and not a cultural definition. The Scots in particular diverge to some extent from the English tradition.

Continentals tend to be ‘regulatory-minded’, whereas the English/Irish approach to life is characterized by a relatively laissez-faire, laid-back attitude and a significant tolerance of ambiguity - something that Continentals tend to fight shy of. No doubt a number of reasons account for this, in particular the influence of Roman Law or the Civil Code, which applies in most Continental countries in one form or another, and even applies to Scotland. It also owes something to the fact that the English have been spared invaders and occupiers for nearly 1,000 years. It owes a lot to the country’s philosophers, particularly the Bacons, Roger and Francis. It may even have something to do with the nature of the English climate - or should I say weather? One of the results is that a Scottish historian, Thomas Carlyle, was able to say 150 years ago, that “of the Continental nuisance called ‘Bureaucracy’ I can see no risk or possibility in England”. Another consequence, according to the Welsh-American researcher Dr David Weeks, is that the English boast a higher ratio of “eccentrics” than any other Western European country - twice as high as that of Germany.

II. The East-West Divide Depending on how far you extend the eastern frontiers of Europe (to the Urals?), The East-West Divide virtually splits Europe in half. Many of the people to the west of this dividing line are - together with the North Americans, the Australians, the New Zeelanders and the South Africans - members of a global minority: the individualist, issue-oriented folk who make up perhaps no more than five per cent of the world’s population. The people to the east of this line are, like most other people in the world, collectivist in spirit and relationship-oriented.

The line is essentially the limit between the western Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church It all started when the Roman Empire was divided into two for administrative reasons in AD 395. Subsequently, the two Christian churches - Rome and Constantinople - went their separate ways, leading to a complete schism in the year 1028 when, rather quaintly, the two Popes mutually excommunicated one other. By this time the eastern church had matured into a powerful social organization associated with state authority, heavy in ritual and collective worship but largely devoid of dogma. Its influence on the hearts and minds of the people in the Orthodox countries was such that they developed a very strong sense of community and an equally strong acceptance of hierarchy and authoritarianism. One only has to follow international news to know that this collectivist mindset is still there. All the research undertaken confirms these tendencies. One study in collectivism puts Russia close to the global top limit, just below South Korea and Venezuela, followed by Bulgaria and Greece. Russia, Bulgaria, Greece - all Orthodox countries!

III. The South-North Incline less self-evident than the others, is the third major feature of the European Peninsula. As you move northwards from the Mediterranean littoral, the social constraints experienced largely at an almost subconscious level by southern cultures emerge further north as clear-cut, expressly stated and universally held social attitudes. This has nothing to do with the law. Italy has the European record for lawmaking (it was recently estimated that the conduct of the Italian citizen is governed by no less than 800,000 rules and regulations), yet the system is so top-heavy that the man-and-woman-in-the-street has no choice but to circumvent the law with typically Italian ingenuity. The ‘incline’ has to do with values like accountability and transparency, which are much more integral to everyday life in the countries of the North.

This South-North Incline pops up time and time again in national statistics. For example payment delays in business, where the promptest payers are the Finns and the slowest are the Greeks, or new product take-off times, which are twice as long in Greece as in the Nordic countries. Maybe this explains why the Greeks lead relatively stress-free lives, with the lowest suicide rate in Europe…

Reference: Richard Hill, We Europeans: The cultural complexes of the Old World, 1998
- Richard Hill is the author of We Europeans, a study of the cultures of western Europe; EuroManagers & Martians, an analysis of European business styles; Great Britain Little England; The Newcomers, an introduction to Austria, Finland and Sweden; and The Art of being Belgian.

cultural divides, macro divides, east-west, island-continent, south-north, protestant, catholic, European