One of the major analytical shortcomings regularly made by EU and NATO experts today lies with exclusively seeing the European defence project as a post-World War II (WWII) phenomenon and the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) as mainly a post-Cold War product. No analyst has so far seriously explored the idea of European defence predating WWII and the 20th century. Instead, since 1999 one frequently reads and hears about the ‘anomalous,’ ‘elusive’ CSDP suddenly complicating transatlantic relations. But the CSDP is hardly an oddity or aberration, and it is certainly not as mysterious as some might suggest. Drawing extensively from primary sources and predicated on an overarching evolutionist approach, this thesis shows that the present CSDP is an ephemeral security and defence concept, only the latest of its kind and full of potential. Drawing its deepest ideational roots from the (pre-)Enlightenment era, the CSDP leads to a pan-European defence almost irreversibly. A common defence for Europe is quite possible and, due to the growing impact of the exogenous (multipolar) momentum, can be realized sooner rather than later even without a full-fledged European federation. / May 2016