Encountering non-European peoples strained Europe’s Christian idea of human unity

Evidence

In the course of the sixteenth century, Europe’s ‘discovery’ of grandiose civilizations hitherto only dimly rumoured – in China, Japan, Southeast Asia, and the Indian subcontinent – or completely unknown – Aztec Mexico and Incan Peru – suggested an irremediable human pluralism. Most of these civilizations had developed quite separate from the known history of Europe, Christendom, Antiquity, indeed man: their genealogies lay outside of and were unassimilable to Eden. (Only homogeneous, empty time would offer them accommodation.) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 288 (#expands, via linked claim)

This tension has relevance to modern scholarship on the history of Christian Islamophobia. Often authors paint Christians and Christendom as a single united entity, however, such generalizations ignore the prominence of theological tension within, even during times when one would most expect all of Christianity to be united against an adversary. I hope to have shown how such authors take Christianity as more unified than it was; only by acknowledging and moving beyond this generalization of Christian unity can we have a more nuanced discourse. History instead shows that perhaps a foreign religious enemy is better than a co-religious enemy. — Ali Qureshi, The Fall of Constantinople, 62 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Europe’s discovery of other civilizations forced recognition of irremediable human pluralism. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 288; European identity formed through internal cohesion paired with contrast to other worlds; Historical scholarship overstates Christianity’s unity against adversaries. — Ali Qureshi, The Fall of Constantinople: A Critical…, 62 (+2 more)

Related

• Europe’s discovery of other civilizations forced recognition of irremediable human pluralism. (similarity 0.85)
• Historical scholarship overstates Christianity’s unity against adversaries. (similarity 0.82)
• Islam served as Europe’s constitutive outsider against which its civilization defined itself (similarity 0.80)
• Christians treated all non-Christian monstrous figures as interchangeable enemies (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Europe’s discovery of other civilizations forced recognition of irremediable human pluralism. #expands (0.95) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 288
• European identity formed through internal cohesion paired with contrast to other worlds #expands (0.85)
• Historical scholarship overstates Christianity’s unity against adversaries. #qualifies (0.80) — Ali Qureshi, The Fall of Constantinople, 62
• Europeans project their repressed evil onto the racialized Other #expands (0.75)