Origin of the name of Eastern Europe

Nowadays, whenever we talk about Eastern Europe what comes to mind is a particular area in the world, placed next to Germany, Austria and Italy and expands to the Ural mountains. But as Larry Worlff argues in his book "Inventing Eastern Europe" (1994) this name is more than a mere label to refer to a geographical place but indeed entangles a certain conception of Europe as a whole that goes back to the age of Enlightnment. Why then would we consider Poland part of Eastern Europe and not Finnland if they are both moreless located on the same meridian? If we call this area "Eastern Europe" then where lies the center of Europe?

To Wolff, the concept of Eastern Europe was born after the second half of the 18th century, when Dutch, German and especially French intellectuals visited Russia and Poland and started to write diaries and official reports. To these personalities, embedded in the world of "raison" and encyclopedism, the peoples of Eastern Europe appeared to be "rude" "uneducated" ones. In the memoires of the heroe of American Revolutionary War Lous-Philippe, count of Ségur, as he passed the Prussian border to Poland heading to St. Petersburg one can read:"(he felt he) had left Europe entirely and had moved back ten centuries". In fact, it is to this same man that we owe the first calling Eastern Europe like this: "the east of Europe" (l'orient de l'Europe), as Wolff explains.

The creation of the concept of Eastern Europe led to major implications, as encyclopedians tried to englobe a large number of peoples and cultures under the same concept. A common identity for Eastern Europeans had to be created (even if sometimes similarities among them were difficult to find) and so names such as Scythians (a word coined by Herodotus) were employed until Herder developed another identification: Slavs, as Wolf explains.

Attemps to find a common identity in the terrain of economics can also be found in modern literature. As Immanuel Wallerstein argues in his book "Origins of thr European-World Economy" Western Europe acted as the core of European economy during the 16th century, while Eastern Europe countries acted as a periphery because their sole purpose was to provide the core with raw resources. However, this can only be applied to Poland, which indeed was a major grain supplier, but not to the Russian Empire, which had nearly no commercial relations with Western European countries.

How much of this "differenciating purpose" is still implicit when nowadays scholars use the term "Eastern Europe"? This is something we have to take into serious consideration, as the use of this name can imply a certain number of assumptions.

References:

–WOLFF, L. (1994) Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilisation on the Mind of the Elightenment, Standford, Standford University Press.