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Information about History of Europe

The origins

Neanderthals settled Europe long before the emergence of modern humans, Homo
sapiens. The earliest appearance of modern people in Europe has been dated
to 35,000 B.C. Evidence of permanent settlement dates from 7,000 B.C.

The first well-known civilization in Europe was that of the Minoans of the
island of Crete and the Achaeans in the adjacent parts of Greece, starting
at the beginning of the 2nd millennium B.C. Around the same time, the Celts
spread over most of the interior as far as Iberic Peninsula (in our days
Spain and Portugal), and later Anatolia. As they did not use a written
language, knowledge of them is piecemeal. The Romans encountered them and
recorded a great deal about them; these records and the results of
archaeological digs form our primary understanding of this extremely
influential culture. The Celts posed a formidable, if disorganized,
competition to the Roman state, that later colonized and conquered much of
the southern portion of Europe.

The Greeks

At the end of the Bronze Age the older Greek kingdoms collapsed and a
brilliant new civilization grew up in their place. The Hellenic civilization
took the form of a collection of city-states (the most important being
Athens and Sparta), many having vastly differing types of government and
cultures, including what are more-or-less unprecedented developments in
various governmental forms, philosophy, science, politics, sports, theater
and music. The Hellenic city-states founded a large number of colonies on
the shores of the Black Sea and all over the Mediterranean sea, Asia Minor,
Sicily and Southern Italy, but in the 4th century B.C. their internal wars
made them an easy prey for king Philip II of Macedonia. The campaigns of his
son Alexander the Great spread Greek culture into Persia, Egypt and India,
but also favoured contact with the older learnings of those countries,
opening up a new period of developments, known as Hellenism.

Rome

Much of Greek learning was assimilated by the nascent Roman state as it
expanded outward from Italy, taking advantage of its enemies' inability to
unite: the only real challenge to Roman ascent came from the Phoenician
colony of Carthage, but its defeat in the end of the 3rd century B.C. marked
the start of Roman hegemony. First governed by kings, then as a senatorial
republic (see Roman republic), Rome finally became an empire at the end of
the 1st century B.C., under Augustus and his authoritarian successors. The
Roman Empire had its centre in the Mediterranean Sea, controlling all the
countries on its shores; the northern border was marked by the Rhine and
Danube rivers; under emperor Trajan (2nd century A.D.) the empire reached
its maximum expansion, including England, Rumania and parts of Mesopotamia.
The empire brought peace, civilization and an efficient centralized
government to the subject territories, but in the 3rd century A.D. a series
of civil wars undermined its economic and social strength. In the 4th
century, the emperors Diocletian and Constantine were able to slow down the
process of decline by splitting the empire into a Western and an Eastern
part. Whereas Diocletian severely persecuted Christianity, Constantine
declared an official end to state-sponsored persecution of Christians in 313
with the Edict of Milan, thus setting the stage for the empire to later
become officially Christian in about 380 (which would cause the Church to
become an important institution).

Early Middle Ages

Western Europe emerged as the site of a distinct civilization after the fall
of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century, as barbarian invasions
separated it from the rest of the Mediterranean, where the Eastern Roman
Empire (a.k.a. Byzantine Empire) survived for another millennium. In the 7th
century the Arab expansion brought Islamic cultures to the southern
Mediterranean shores (from Turkey to Sicily and Spain), further enlarging
the differences between the various Mediterranean civilizations. Huge
amounts of technology and learning were lost, trade languished and people
returned to local agrarian communities. Feudalism replaced the centralized
Roman administration. The only institution surviving the collapse of the
Roman Empire was the Church, which preserved part of the Roman cultural
inheritance and remained the only source of learning at least until the 13th
century; the bishop of Rome, known as the Pope, became the leader of the
western church (in the east his supremacy was never accepted).

The Holy Roman Empire emerged around 800 AD, as Charlemagne, king of the
Franks, subdued western Germany, large parts of Italy and chunks of
surrounding countries; he received substantial help from an alliance with
the Pope, who wanted to cut the remaining ties with the Byzantine Empire; in
this way the domains of the Pope became an independent state in central Italy.

The subsequent period, ending around 1000 A.D., saw the further growth of
feudalism, which weakened the Holy Roman Empire and the development of the
Church as a major power.

Later Middle Ages

Early signs of the rebirth of western civilization began to appear in the
11th century as trade started again in Italy, leading to the economic and
cultural growth of independent city states such as Venice and Florence; at
the same time, nation-states began to take form in places such as France,
England and Spain, although the process of their formation (usually marked
by rivalry between the monarchy, the aristocratic feudal lords and the
church) actually took several centuries. On the other hand, the Holy Roman
Empire, essentially based in Germany and Italy, further fragmented into a
myriad of feudal principalities or small city states, whose subjection to
the emperor was only formal.

One of the largest catastrophes to have hit Europe was the Black Death.
There were numerous outbreaks, but the most severe in the mid-1300s is
estimated to have killed a third of Europe's population. (? keep it ?)

The conventional end of the Middle Ages is usually associated with the fall
of Constantinople and of the Byzantine Empire to the Ottoman Turks in 1453.
The Turks made the city (with the new name of Istanbul) the capital of their
Ottoman Empire, which lasted until 1919 and also included Egypt, Syria and
most of the Balkans.

Renaissance and Reformation

In the 15th century, at the end of the Middle Ages, powerful nation states
had appeared. Contrariwise, the Church was losing much of its power because
of corruption, internal conflicts, and the spread of culture leading to the
artistic, philosophical, scientific and technological improvements of the
Renaissance era.

The new national states were frequently in a state of political flux and
war. In particular, after Martin Luther started the Reformation in 1518,
wars of politics and religion ravaged the continent: the schism of the
dominant western church was to have major political, social and cultural
implications for Europe. What became the split between Catholicism and
Protestantism was particularly pronounced in England (where the king Henry
VIII severed ties with Rome and proclaimed himself head of the church), and
in Germany (where the Reformation united the various Protestant princes
against the Catholic Hapsburg emperors).

Colonial expansion

The numerous wars did not prevent the new states from exploring and
conquering wide portions of the world, particularly in Asia (Siberia) and in
the newly-discovered America. In the early 16th century Spain and Portugal,
who led the way in geographical exploration, were the first states to set up
colonies in South America and trade stations on the shores of Africa and
Asia, but they were soon followed by France, England and the Netherlands.

Colonial expansion proceeded in the following centuries (with some setbacks,
such as the American Revolution and the wars of independence in many South
American colonies). Spain had control of a great deal of South America and
the Philippines; Britain took the whole of Australia and New Zealand, most
of India, and large parts of Africa and North America; France held what to
become Canada and parts of India (nearly all lost to England in 1763),
Indochina and large parts of Africa; the Netherlands gained the East Indies
(now Indonesia) and islands in the Caribbean; Portugal obtained Brazil and
several territories in Africa and Asia; and later, powers like Germany,
Belgium, Italy, Russia, the U.S.A. and Japan acquired further colonies.

The 16th, 17th and 18th century

This period is often known as Early Modern. The Reformation had profound
effects on the unity of Europe. Not only were nations divided one from
another by their religious orientation, but some states were torn apart
internally by religious strife, avidly fostered by their external enemies.
France suffered this fate in the sixteenth century in the series of
conflicts known as the French Wars of Religion, which ended in the triumph
of the Bourbon Dynasty. England avoided this fate for a while and settled
down under Elizabeth to a moderate Anglicanism. Germany, divided into
numerous small states under the theoretical framework of the Holy Roman
Empire, was also divided along internally drawn sectarian lines, until the
Thirty Years' War seemed to see religion replaced by nationalism as the
motor of European conflict.

Throughout the early part of this period, capitalism was replacing feudalism
as the principal form of economic organisation, at least in the western half
of Europe. The expanding colonial frontiers resulted in a Commercial
Revolution. The period is noted for the rise of modern science and the
application of its findings to technological improvements, which culminated
in the Industrial Revolution. New forms of trade and expanding horizons made
new developments in International Law necessary.

After the Treaty of Westphalia which ended the Thirty Years' War, Absolutism
became the norm of the continent, while parts of Europe experimented with
constitutions foreshadowed by the English Civil War and particularly the
Glorious Revolution. European military conflict did not cease, but had less
disruptive effects on the lives of Europeans. In the advanced north-west,
the Enlightenment gave a philosophical underpinning to the new outlook, and
the continued spread of literacy, made possible by the printing press,
created new secular forces in thought.

The French Revolution and Napoleon

At the end of the 18th century the refusal of the king Louis XVI (endorsed
by the nobility and the clergy) to share his political powers with the
so-called Third Estate led to the 1789 French Revolution, a significant
attempt to create a new form of government based on the principles of
LibertŽ, ƒgalitŽ, FraternitŽ (freedom, equality and brotherhood). The king
was executed, France was proclaimed a Republic and a sort of democratic
government was established. In the subsequent turmoil (associated with the
coalition of most European monarchies waging war against republican France)
general Napoleon Bonaparte took power. In the many wars of the Napoleonic
Era, he repeatedly defeated Austria (whose emperor was forced to resign the
title of Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire), Russia, Prussia and other powers
allied for the most part with Britain. After being proclaimed French emperor
in 1804, he was finally defeated in 1815 at Waterloo.

The 19th century

After the defeat of revolutionary France, the other great powers tried to
restore the situation which existed before 1789. Their efforts were unable
to stop the spread of revolutionary movements: the middle classes had been
deeply influenced by the ideals of democracy of the French revolution; on
the other hand, the Industrial Revolution brought important economical and
social changes, and the lower classes started to be influenced by Socialist,
Communist and Anarchistic ideas, especially those summarized by Karl Marx in
the Manifesto of the Communist Party. Further instability came from the
formation of several nationalist movements (in Germany, Italy, Poland etc.),
seeking national unification and/or liberation from foreign rule. As a
result, the period between 1815 and 1871 saw a large number of revolutionary
attempts and independence wars: even if the revolutionaries were often
defeated, in 1871 most European states had become constitutional (rather
than absolute) monarchies, and Germany and Italy had developed into nation states.

Early 20th century: the World Wars

After the relatively peaceful belle epoque, the rivalry between European
powers exploded in 1914, when World War I started. On one side were Germany,
Austria-Hungary and Turkey (the Central Powers), while on the other side
stood Serbia and the Triple Entente - the loose coalition of France, Britain
and Russia, which were joined by Italy in 1915 and by the United States in
1917. Despite the defeat of Russia in 1917 (the war was one of the major
causes of the Russian Revolution, leading to the formation of the communist
Soviet Union), the Entente finally prevailed in the autumn of 1918.

In the Treaty of Versailles (1919) the winners imposed hard conditions on
Germany and recognised the new states (such as Poland, Czechoslovakia and
Yugoslavia) created in eastern Europe out of the defunct German,
Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires, supposedly on the basis of national
self-determination. In the following decades, fear of Communism and the
economic Depression of 1929-33 led to the rise of extreme governments -
Fascist or Nazi - in Italy (1922), Germany (1933), Spain (after a civil war
ending in 1939) and other countries such as Hungary.

After allying with Italy in the "Pact of Steel" and signing a non-aggression
pact with the Soviet Union, the German leader Adolf Hitler started World War
II in September 1939 following a build-up throughout the late 1930s. After
initial successes (mainly the conquest of western Poland, France and the
Balkans before 1941) Germany began to over-extend itself in 1941 by
attacking Russia; despite initial successes, the German army was stopped
close to Moscow in December 1941, and one year later it suffered a decisive
defeat in the battle of Stalingrad. Meanwhile, Japan (allied to Germany and
Italy since September 1940) attacked the United States on December 7, 1941;
Germany then completed its over-extension by declaring war on the United
States. Allied forces won in North Africa and invaded Italy in 1943 and
France in 1944. In the spring of 1945 Germany itself was invaded in the east
and the west by Russia and the other Allies respectively; Hitler committed
suicide and Germany surrendered in early May. The last Axis power, Japan,
surrendered in August 1945, after the Soviet Union declared war and two
atomic bombs destroyed the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Late 20th century: the Cold War

World War I and especially World War II ended the pre-eminent position of
western Europe. The map of Europe was redrawn and divided as it became the
principal zone of contention in the Cold War between the two newly emergent
world powers, the capitalistic United States and the communist Soviet Union.
The U.S.A. placed western Europe (Britain, France, Italy, West Germany,
Spain etc.) under their sphere of influence, establishing the NATO alliance
as a protection against a possible Soviet invasion; the Soviet Union claimed
eastern Europe (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, East
Germany) and formed the Warsaw Pact. Europe was divided by a "Iron Curtain".
This situation lasted until 1989, when the weakening of the Soviet Union led
to glasnost and the ending of the division of Europe - Soviet satellites
were free to remove Communist regimes (and the two Germanies were able to
re-unify). In 1991 the Soviet Union itself collapsed, splitting into several
states (the main one remaining the Russian Federation) and removing
communists from most governments.

After the end of World War II, western Europe slowly began a process of
political and economic integration, desiring to unite Europe and prevent
another war. This process resulted eventually in the development of
organisations such as the European Union, a process which continues today
(2003).

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