Machiavelli and The Mayflower Home Page

Are you a REFREP or are you a ROMMON?
You might be one or the other, or you might even be a ROMREP or a REFMON.
Would you care? You would if you had to work with one!

These terms describe the behaviour of those who have grown up in ROManist or REFormist societies, and in MONarchies or in REPublics. A person from Roman Catholic and Republican France would be a ROMREP, but someone from Protestant and Monarchical Britain, would be a REFMON.

Common understanding and behaviour is dictated by religious and political values: Catholicism was violently shaken by the Reformation, introducing more pragmatism among the Northern Europeans; and feudal monarchy, which survived in Europe until the Great War, began to crumble under the sledgehammer blow of the French Revolution, leading many nations to Republicanism.

Europeans can't get away from two millennia of Roman Catholicism, one of feudal monarchy, half a millennium of Reformation and a quarter a millennium of Republican Revolution.

Two ROMREPs understand would each other, where a ROMREP and a REFMON might not: the Portuguese and the Poles seem to get along quite well with the French; all are ROMREPs; but they are less at home with the REFMON English, who feel more comfortable with the REFMON Scandinavians and Dutch.

Many have written about these beliefs, but none as well as Machiavelli about Monarchy; nor as Rousseau about the Republic; nor as Weber about Protestantism, its Work Ethic, its view of money and the birth of Capitalism; nor as the Church fathers and the Roman Catechism about Catholicism. Mapping this on a grid throws into contrast national behaviour; European countries cluster around each other to show common national caricatures; the grid helps a Finn to predict how a Spaniard might react, or a Norwegian to understand what to expect from an Italian.

Is this important? It is! Very!

More Europeans have perished in wars of religion and politics than in any other; European cultural insensitivity has destroyed peace treaties and business contracts; well-meant behaviour has actually insulted others; the heads of monarchs and of 15,000 aristocrats during the French revolution have tumbled; and today optimists believe we can forget all that and create a federal Europe in two shakes of Lamb's tail!