Abstract

Europe's position in the world is analyzed in relation to a specification of globalization into five global processes, whereby Europe stands out as the central node of global flows of trade and capital and as the region of uniquely high transnational entanglements, as an area of transnational normativity. The historical background and inter-relation of foreign trade and trans-polity law within Europe, both in early modern social theory and in post-Second World War institution-building, are highlighted, as well as the spread of European law to other continents. The concepts of position, role, and identity should be distinguished. This historical and current position of Europe in the world is little expressed in the roles that contemporary European leaders want to play and in contemporary formulations of European heritage and identity. This is due partly to a nostalgic misjudgment by former great power politicians, but largely because of the delimited position of conventional trade and law in Europe, and of the actual but untheorized transformation of trading traditions into socially embedded trade and of the legal tradition into democratic international normativity. It is finally argued that these European practices of trade and law in fact correspond to many current critical views on global trade and global governance.