In this provocative, wide-ranging history of how the continent of Europe came to be conceived as divided into "Western Europe" and "Eastern Europe," the author shows that it was not a natural distinction, or even an innocent one, but instead was a work of cultural creation, of intellectual artifice, of ideological self-interest and self-promotion.

This is a wide-ranging intellectual history of how, in the 18th century, Europe came to be conceived as divided into "Western Europe" and "Eastern Europe". The author argues that this conceptual reorientation from the previously accepted "Northern" and "Southern" was a work of cultural construction and intellectual artifice created by the philosophes of the Enlightenment. He shows how the philosophers viewed the continent from the perspective of Paris and deliberately cultivated an idea of the backwardness of "Eastern Europe" the more readily to affirm the importance of "Western Europe".