Europe as a self-conscious identity boundary is surprisingly modern (nineteenth-twentieth century)

Evidence

“Europe” is an old concept it did not gain currency until the seventeenth century and, by and large, only became an active boundary as such in the course of the nineteenth century and particularly from the beginning of the twentieth century. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 175

Categorization

• QUESTION: What drove Europe’s boundary becoming ‘active’ around 1900 — race science, colonial expansion, internal nationalism? Worth chasing.
• XREF: Parallels the familiar shock that national identities like Italian/German unification are recent inventions.