Occidental civilization’s axis shifted north to the Seine and Rhine

Evidence

For the first time in history the axis of Occidental civilization was displaced toward the North, and for many centuries it remained between the Seine and the Rhine. And the Germanic peoples, which had hitherto played only the negative part of destroyers, were now called upon to play a positive part in the reconstruction of European civilization. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 135