Machiavelli and The Mayflower

Machiavelli and The Mayflower is a book that explains the behaviour and attitudes which separate Europeans from each other and from their American cousins.
In this work, Bob Gillespie, the author, widely quotes Niccolo Machiavelli, Max Weber and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, claiming that European behaviour is essentially defined by two millenia of religious and political values; he draws on references from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Immanuel Kant, C.S. Lewis and others. He writes that more Europeans have perished in religious and political wars than in any other; and that, as cultural insensitivity has destroyed peace treaties in the past, it continues to destroy international careers today.
Taking Catholicism and Calvinism as two religious poles, and monarchy and republic as two political ones, Gillespie creates a grid of European countries which groups nationals who show similar behavioural characteristics.
The author calls the four stereotypes of behaviour appearing in the corners of the grid, REFREP, ROMMON, ROMREP and REFMON. Each describes behavioural caricatures from "ROManist" or "REFormist" societies, and from "MONarchies" or "REPublics;" for example, those from largely Roman Catholic and republican France would show ROMREP characteristics, whereas those from largely protestant and monarchical Britain, would be REFMONs.
He stresses that European Christians in Western Europe, who consitute 80% of the population, can, in general, only be one of the four behavioural types; all fall into one or other of these four corners of the grid, but may evolve along the religious and political axes as their frame of beliefs changes; for example, a Swedish REFMON in Italy could take on progressively more ROMREP characteristics over time as he or she attempts to assimilate the local culture.
There are more ROMREPs in Europe than the other three categories combined, leaving the REFMONs REFREPs and ROMMONs in a significant minority.
Where two ROMREPs would tend to understand each other, the author claims a ROMREP and a REFMON may not; he finds that more culture gap separates the French from the English than any other European nation, and classes the Americans as the archetypal REFREPs, arguing that the Mayflower ethic was rooted in European Calvinism and that the American Republic was founded to combat British imperialism using European republican ideals (i.e. those of Jeremy Bentham, John Locke, David Hume and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.)
The author, Bob Gillespie, claims that the this-worldly, Moral Absolutism of American Calvinism is the major cultural distinguishing factor that divides the North Americans from their continental European cousins; it leads to inductive reasoning and to pragmatism which are both far removed from the dogmatic, deductive reasoning patterns of Roman Catholic, "Cartesian" Europe.
It is illuminating, interesting and also very challenging to the reader. It works at a number of levels: It satisfied any ignorance of much of the political and historical antecedents of Europe. It challenged some preconceptions about accumulated knowledge and it greatly enriched suspicions that Europeans and their interactions are far more complex than you might think. Does it answer all questions about Europeans? No. But it certainly advances the reader further along the road of understanding. In summary an excellent book that answers many questions and solves many conundrums but actually provokes the reader to ask more questions than they would have done prior to reading it.
Bob Gillespie, a Paris based Scot whose mother was Italian, is married to a Frenchwoman; he has worked both in the United States and throughout Europe.
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