ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book traces the sources of such attitudes to nineteenth-century imaginative geographies found in fictional and autobiographical narratives of European travel. It examines the nineteenth-century construction of Europe's peripheries that influences by the formation of the British state and by the unique characteristics of the English national identity. In the course of the nineteenth century, industrial development and colonial expansion led to a consolidation of what Jacques Derrida describes as the northwestern 'headland' of Europe that differentiated itself from the rest of the continent, particularly the South and the East. In order to provide context for nineteenth-century British adaptations of their hierarchical Enlightenment view of European civilization, it is helpful to briefly outline their key contributions to the idea of Europe as well as the most relevant scholarship on the historical polarization of Europe.
