Historians have been pronouncing the end of ‘western civilisation’ ever since the concept was first proposed by English-speaking historians and thinkers in the 19th century. Part of the problem is what anyone actually means by ‘the west’. Most of us assume it emerged from classical Greece and Rome, and that Christendom rediscovered their civilised values of freedom, tolerance, progress and science in the Renaissance – another 19th-century term, from the French meaning ‘rebirth’ – that in turn gave rise to the Enlightenment and modernity.
Like so many grand narratives of historical change, they were
