ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests replacing the notion of a single Europe producing multiple modernity's by the one of multiple Europe's with different and unequal roles in shaping the hegemonic definition of modernity and in ensuring its propagation. It aims to show how the emphasis on tensions within and clashes between civilisations serves to reassert both the uniqueness of the West and its ontological autonomy. Shmuel Eisenstaedt's complex relationship with the modernisation paradigm has met with diametrically opposed interpretations. The thrust of Huntington's clash of civilisations thesis, formulated a few years after the collapse of state socialism in Eastern Europe, was directed particularly against those interpreting the end of the Cold War as the end of global conflict. The heuristic model of multiple Europe proposed here is intended to clarify the multiplicity of historical paths, the geopolitical linkages and the power hierarchies emerged within the European continent since the colonial expansion.
