This book makes an important contribution to the vibrant debate among intellectual and cultural historians about the binary opposition between a modern, progressive „Northern“ Europe and a backward European „South“.1 Lepenies draws out this contrast by narrating the complex relationship between French and German culture and politics from the nineteenth century up to the present day. In particular, the book discusses the French dream, and self-definition, to become the leader of the southern European countries and the Union pour la Méditerranée, and the main cultural agent of Latinität. However, this should not be thought of as a study of the Mediterranean, as Lepenies himself cautions: „Dies ist kein Mittelmeerbuch. Ich konzentriere mich auf die Versuche ‚lateinischer‘ Koalitionsbildungen in der Auseinandersetzung zwischen Frankreich und Deutschland“ (p. 14). Indeed, the work refers neither to recent scholarship on the Mediterranean nor to studies that have reflected on trans-Mediterranean relations and which have moved away from the Eurocentric narratives of the Mediterranean.2

Lepenies’s study is informed by the current political debate on the Union Méditerranéenne. At the centre of his book lies Latinität, a concept embodying the characteristics of the Romance languages and Catholicism. When, in 2013, the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben revisited Alexandre Kojève’s idea in his Esquisse d’une doctrine de la politique française (1945) to build a „Latin Empire“, the dispute between the French and German governments about the measures required to solve the financial and debt crisis in the EU had reached its peak. According to Lepenies, the conflict between the two governments has sparked calls to revive the project to found a Latin empire as a counter to Germany; the crisis has also opened a new phase in the European north–south divide, in which France and Germany have been the main protagonists since the beginning of the nineteenth century.

In the first part of the book, Lepenies addresses the debate about Latinität and discusses the creation and failure of the Union Méditerranéenne project in French culture and politics since the end of the Second World War. He interprets Kojève’s pamphlet as an expression of the French desire to actively shape the future of Europe, emphasizing the Hegelian nature of Kojève’s description of a different paradigm of modernity for the Latin world. In Hegel’s philosophy of history, the Protestant Reformation embodied modernity, and the narrative of the Protestant supremacy is one of the more enduring cultural legacies of the nineteenth century. To challenge this narrative, Kojève advocated the necessity of a Latin empire, the realization of which lies in France. This imperial idea is based on the „Latin mentality“, a mentality shaped by an art of leisure and the ability to produce a douceur de vivre which has nothing to do with material comfort and the pursuit of economic success and political ambition. After exploring Charles de Gaulle’s project of a Catholic western Europe – a „European Europe“ – Lepenies discusses François Mitterrand’s Southern Socialist project before turning to a consideration of Nicolas Sarkozy’s recovery of the Mediterranean Union project.

In the second part of the book, the conflict between northern and southern Europe is traced back to Montesquieu’s theory of climatology, which Lepenies explores within a wider context of nineteenth-century thought and Franco-German rivalry and conflict. Furthermore, he discusses the extension of the project of the alliance between the Latin nations to other regions of the world, where Latinity has played a major historical role, most notably in Latin America and Latin Africa. While other scholars have highlighted the gradual shift from a Francocentric to a Germanocentric Europe 3, Lepenies clearly demonstrates the important dimension of the political conflict. He notes that the capitulation of France in 1871 was perceived by the French educated classes as the defeat of Latin civilization. This perception marked the beginning of the desire for revenge that manifested itself in the plans for a Latin Union or a Latin empire against Germany. In his analysis of the dream of a Latin Union during the period from the First World War to the era of European dictatorships, Lepenies develops the leitmotif of a European identity defined by conflict, and above all the conflict between France and Germany.

Lepenies discusses these French attempts to define a Latin identity as the potential ground on which to build a Mediterranean union, and he connects them to current debates about the shaping of European modernity. The topic is presented as urgent in light of the current political challenges facing Europe. In addition to Lepenies’s emphasis on the financial crisis, the ongoing crisis of refugees and economic migrants at the southern European borders must be considered a key element in the attempt to recreate a Mediterranean union. Although the Mediterranean in his book is still the „European Sea“ – the dominion of alternating European powers which have laid claim to its ownership, rather than an open space of diasporas where the classical European conflicts are reshaped – Lepenies’s book nevertheless provides an original contribution to the longstanding debate on the shaping of the European identity and especially to the definition of a European modernity. Built on consistently high-quality analysis, this book is essential reading for all intellectual historians of modern Europe.

Notes:
1 Claus Leggewie, Zukunft im Süden. Wie die Mittelmeerunion Europa wiederbeleben kann, Hamburg 2012; Martin Baumeister / Roberto Sala (eds.), Southern Europe? Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece from the 1950s until the Present Day, Frankfurt 2015; Michael Iarocci, Properties of Modernity: Romantic Spain, Modern Europe and the Legacies of Empire, Nashville 2006.
2 Maurizio Isabella / Konstantina Zanou (eds.), Mediterranean Diasporas. Politics and Ideas in the Long Nineteenth Century, London 2015.
3 Roberto Dainotto, Europe (in Theory), Durham 2007.