European Union is often seen as a cosmopolitan rejection of violent nationalism, although Europe has a long, problematic history in medieval times. Europe was synonymous with Christianity: and in the modern era, it became associated with whiteness. Kundnani, a European

Eurowhiteness exposes the EU as a vehicle for imperial amnesia. Kundnani, a European insider, an expert on Germany,, who has worked with Chatam House, and the European Council on Foreign Relations, wrote this book to “stimulate debate.” The ethnic cultural component of the contemporary European project wsa hidden by the fact of Europe’s cold war division, and the notion of the EU as a theoretically, infinitely extensible space of shared civic values: the rule of law, democracy, human rights., the social market economy. The idea that the EU could and should be a model for the world was understandably popular in Brussels at the turn of the 21^st century. The Euro crisis amd 2015 refugee crisis demonstrated the limits of European solidarity- let alone global solidarity. The ways the notion of Eurowhiteness could be abused in the exercise of power, like any other slogan. While EU remained open to the east- both to new member states and Ukranian refugees – it has been firmly shut to its south.  The idea of European unity as.a means of defending its civilisation against the other ( Islam, communism unbridled American capitalism.

The notion of Eurafrica was inherited from inter war pan Europeans, as one pioneering  and still active , group of intergrationists was known by postwar Europeans. Europe is something of a European public intellectual tradition, playout among the connoisseurs  of the genre.

EU later became a vehicle for “imperial Amnesia”.

The EEC’s border once lay across the Sahara – Algeria remained partially associated with the EEC until 1976. By highlighting the way colonial horrors were memory-holed , Mr. Kundnani points out that  other sins were mostly ignored. 

Eurowhiteness: Culture, Empire and Race in the European Project by Hans Kundnani, Hurst £14.99, 248 pages.