ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the several historical cases, showing both the promise and the limits of the Europeans' successive interactions and dialogues with other civilizations. Over the course of its long history, the European theory and practice of intercultural dialogue with other civilizations has developed along many paths, and displayed numerous forms and degrees of effectiveness. European civilization, including the process of modernization and industrialization, was exported overseas by many means, sometimes relying on soft power but also employing imperial domination and violence. However, the majority of contemporary European observers considered the Americas either as a kind of immature object of history or as expansion of European civilization. Europe can contribute to global governance only by communicating the most innovative features of its distinctive way of theorizing and implementing multilateralism: For the first time, internal and external multilateralism may be consistent and coherent, with internal multilateralism serving as the background for external multilateralism.
