Matthijs Lok, "Europe Against Revolution: Conservatism, Enlightenment, and the Making of the Past" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

Jan 12, 2026

Matthijs Lok, a senior lecturer in modern European history at the University of Amsterdam, dives into the complexities of conservatism in Europe. He explores the roots of counter-revolutionary thought during the French Revolution and how these ideas shaped modern European identity. Lok critically examines historical Europeanism, the duality of Enlightenment adoption by conservatives, and how past thinkers influenced contemporary debates. With intriguing insights, he offers a cautious optimism for the future of the European project amidst rising nationalism.

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INSIGHT

Europe Decline Is A Recurrent Political Trope

The trope of European decline is very old and often tied to fears about the Enlightenment eroding institutions and religion.
Counter-revolutionaries framed decline as a political call to action, proposing regeneration strategies rather than mere lamentation.

INSIGHT

Europe As A Product Of Slow Historical Development

'Historical Europeanism' was invented by counter-revolutionaries who saw Europe as the product of slow institutional development.
They argued the French Revolution interrupted that historical development and destroyed Europe's continuity.

INSIGHT

Enlightenment Can Serve Conservative Ends

Enlightenment ideas became polarized at the Revolution and were claimed by both revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries.
Counter-revolutionaries created a 'conservative Enlightenment' using Enlightenment tools to defend tradition and moderation.

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Contemporary Europe seems to be divided between progressive cosmopolitans sympathetic to the European Union and the ideals of the Enlightenment, and counter-enlightened conservative nationalists extolling the virtues of homelands threatened by globalised elites and mass migration.

Europe Against Revolution: Conservatism, Enlightenment, and the Making of the Past (Cambridge UP, 2023) seeks to uncover the roots of historically informed ideas of Europe, while at the same time underlining the fundamental differences between the writings of the older counter-revolutionary Europeanists and their self-appointed successors and detractors in the twenty-first century. In the decades around 1800, the era of the French Revolution, counter-revolutionary authors from all over Europe defended European civilisation against the onslaught of nationalist revolutionaries, bent on the destruction of the existing order, or so they believed. In opposition to the new revolutionary world of universal and abstract principles, the counter-revolutionary publicists proclaimed the concept of a gradually developing European society and political order, founded on a set of historical and - ultimately divine - institutions that had guaranteed Europe's unique freedom, moderation, diversity, and progress since the fall of the Roman Empire. These counter-revolutionary Europeanists drew on the cosmopolitan Enlightenment and simultaneously criticized its alleged revolutionary legacy. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, these ideas of European history and civilisation were rediscovered and adapted to new political contexts, shaping in manifold ways our contested idea of European history and memory until today.

Matthijs Lok, Senior Lecturer in Modern European History, Universiteit van Amsterdam

Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter.

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