This article is about the continent. For other uses, see Europe ( disambiguation )
continent

Europe is a landmass variously recognised as separate of Eurasia or a continent in its own right, located wholly in the Northern Hemisphere and by and large in the Eastern Hemisphere. It comprises the westernmost peninsula of the continental landmass of Eurasia, [ 10 ] it shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with both Asia and Africa, and is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south and Asia to the east. Europe is normally considered to be separated from Asia by the river basin of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Greater Caucasus, the Black Sea and the waterways of the turkish Straits. [ 11 ] Although much of this border is over land, Europe is recognised as its own continent in some parts of the populace because of its great physical size and the weight unit of its history and traditions. Europe covers about 10.18 million km2 ( 3.93 million sq myocardial infarction ), or 2 % of the Earth ‘s coat ( 6.8 % of land area ), making it the second-smallest celibate ( using the seven-continent model ). politically, Europe is divided into about fifty sovereign states, of which Russia is the largest and most populous, spanning 39 % of the continent and comprising 15 % of its population. Europe had a total population of about 746 million ( about 10 % of the populace population ) in 2018. [ 2 ] [ 3 ] The european climate is largely affected by strong Atlantic currents that temper winters and summers on much of the celibate, even at latitudes along which the climate in Asia and North America is severe. Further from the sea, seasonal worker differences are more noticeable than near to the coast. european polish is the root of western refinement, which traces its linage back to ancient Greece and ancient Rome. [ 12 ] [ 13 ] The fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD and the subsequent Migration Period marked the end of Europe ‘s ancient history, and the beginning of the Middle Ages. Renaissance humanitarianism, exploration, art and science led to the modern era. Since the Age of Discovery, started by Portugal and Spain, Europe played a overriding character in ball-shaped affairs. Between the 16th and twentieth centuries, european powers colonised at diverse times the Americas, about all of Africa and Oceania, and the majority of Asia. The Age of Enlightenment, the subsequent french Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars shaped the celibate culturally, politically and economically from the end of the seventeenth hundred until the first half of the nineteenth century. The Industrial Revolution, which began in Great Britain at the end of the eighteenth century, gave get up to radical economic, cultural and social change in Western Europe and finally the wide world. Both worldly concern wars took place for the most part in Europe, contributing to a decline in western european laterality in universe affairs by the mid-20th century as the Soviet Union and the United States took prominence. [ 14 ] During the Cold War, Europe was divided along the Iron Curtain between NATO in the West and the Warsaw Pact in the East, until the revolutions of 1989, descend of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In 1949, the Council of Europe was founded with the theme of unifying Europe to achieve common goals and prevent future wars. far european integration by some states led to the formation of the European Union ( EU ), a offprint political entity that lies between a confederation and a confederation. [ 15 ] The EU originated in western Europe but has been expanding eastward since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The currency of most countries of the European Union, the euro, is the most normally used among Europeans ; and the EU ‘s Schengen Area abolishes margin, and immigration controls between most of its member states and some non-member states. There exists a political campaign favouring the development of the European Union into a one federation encompassing much of the celibate .

identify

In classical Greek mythology, Europa ( Ancient Greek : Εὐρώπη, Eurṓpē ) was a phoenician princess. One view is that her name derives from the Ancient Greek elements εὐρύς ( eurús ) ‘wide, broad ‘, and ὤψ ( ōps, gen. ὠπός, ōpós ) ‘eye, face, countenance ‘, hence their complex Eurṓpē would mean ‘wide-gazing ‘ or ‘broad of expression ‘. [ 16 ] [ 17 ] [ 18 ] [ 19 ] Broad has been an name of Earth herself in the remodel Proto-Indo-European religion and the poetry devoted to it. [ 16 ] An alternative scene is that of Robert Beekes, who has argued in party favor of a Pre-Indo-European origin for the name, explaining that a derivation from eurus would yield a different place name than Europa. Beekes has located place name related to that of Europa in the territory of ancient Greece, and localities such as that of Europos in ancient Macedonia. [ 20 ] There have been attempts to connect Eurṓpē to a semite term for west, this being either akkadian erebu think of ‘to go down, set ‘ ( said of the sun ) or phoenician ‘ereb ‘evening, west ‘, [ 21 ] which is at the origin of Arabic maghreb and Hebrew ma’arav. Martin Litchfield West stated that “ phonologically, the match between Europa ‘s name and any form of the Semitic parole is identical hapless ”, [ 22 ] while Beekes considers a connection to Semitic languages improbable. [ 20 ] Most major world languages use words derived from Eurṓpē or Europa to refer to the continent. chinese, for exercise, uses the give voice Ōuzhōu ( 歐洲/欧洲 ), which is an abbreviation of the transliterate name Ōuluóbā zhōu ( 歐羅巴洲 ) ( zhōu means “ continent ” ) ; a similar Chinese-derived terminus Ōshū ( 欧州 ) is besides sometimes used in japanese such as in the japanese name of the European Union, Ōshū Rengō ( 欧州連合 ), despite the katakana Yōroppa ( ヨーロッパ ) being more normally used. In some Turkic languages, the primitively iranian diagnose Frangistan ( ‘land of the Franks ‘ ) is used casually in referring to much of Europe, besides official names such as Avrupa or Evropa. [ 23 ]

definition

contemporary definition

The prevailing definition of Europe as a geographic terminus has been in use since the mid-19th century. Europe is taken to be bounded by large bodies of water system to the north, west and south ; Europe ‘s limits to the east and north-east are normally taken to be the Ural Mountains, the Ural River and the caspian Sea ; to the southeast, the Caucasus Mountains, the Black Sea and the waterways connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. [ 25 ]
Islands are by and large grouped with the nearest continental landmass, hence Iceland is considered to be separate of Europe, while the nearby island of Greenland is normally assigned to North America, although politically belonging to Denmark. Nevertheless, there are some exceptions based on sociopolitical and cultural differences. Cyprus is closest to Anatolia ( or Asia Minor ), but is considered contribution of Europe politically and it is a extremity state of matter of the EU. Malta was considered an island of Northwest Africa for centuries, but now it is considered to be part of Europe as well. [ 26 ] ” Europe ”, as used specifically in british English, may besides refer to Continental Europe entirely. [ 27 ] The terminus “ continent ” normally implies the physical geography of a large estate mass completely or about wholly surrounded by water at its borders. however, the Europe-Asia depart of the frame is reasonably arbitrary and discrepant with this definition because of its fond attachment to the Ural and Caucasus Mountains preferably than a series of partially joined waterways suggested by cartographer Herman Moll in 1715. These water system divides extend with a few relatively small interruptions ( compared to the aforesaid mountain ranges ) from the turkish straits running into the Mediterranean Sea to the upper part of the Ob River that drains into the Arctic Ocean. Prior to the adoption of the stream convention that includes mountain divides, the bound between Europe and Asia had been redefined several times since its first base invention in authoritative antiquity, but constantly as a series of rivers, seas and straits that were believed to extend an unknown distance east and north from the Mediterranean Sea without the inclusion of any mountain ranges. The stream division of Eurasia into two continents now reflects East-West cultural, linguistic and heathen differences which vary on a spectrum rather than with a sharp separate line. The geographic margin between Europe and Asia does not follow any state of matter boundaries and now lone follows a few bodies of water. turkey is generally considered a transcontinental nation divided wholly by water system, while Russia and Kazakhstan are only partially divided by waterways. France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom are besides transcontinental ( or more by rights, intercontinental, when oceans or bombastic seas are involved ) in that their chief land areas are in Europe while pockets of their territories are located on other continents separated from Europe by large bodies of water. Spain, for exercise, has territories south of the Mediterranean Sea namely Ceuta and Melilla which are parts of Africa, and contribution a margin with Morocco. According to the stream convention, Georgia and Azerbaijan are transcontinental countries where waterways have been wholly replaced by mountains as the divide between continents .

history of the concept

early history

Europa regina (‘Queen Europe’) in 1582 depicting of ( ‘Queen Europe ‘ ) in 1582 The first recorded usage of Eurṓpē as a geographic term is in the Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo, in reference to the westerly land of the Aegean Sea. As a mention for a partially of the know worldly concern, it is first base used in the sixth century BCE by Anaximander and Hecataeus. Anaximander placed the limit between Asia and Europe along the Phasis River ( the mod Rioni River on the territory of Georgia ) in the Caucasus, a conventionality still followed by Herodotus in the fifth century BCE. [ 28 ] Herodotus mentioned that the global had been divided by unknown persons into three parts, Europe, Asia and Libya ( Africa ), with the Nile and the Phasis forming their boundaries—though he besides states that some considered the River Don, preferably than the Phasis, as the boundary between Europe and Asia. [ 29 ] Europe ‘s easterly frontier was defined in the first hundred by geographer Strabo at the River Don. [ 30 ] The Book of Jubilees described the continents as the lands given by Noah to his three sons ; Europe was defined as stretching from the Pillars of Hercules at the Strait of Gibraltar, separating it from Northwest Africa, to the Don, separating it from Asia. [ 31 ] The conventionality received by the Middle Ages and surviving into modern usage is that of the Roman era used by Roman-era authors such as Posidonius, [ 32 ] Strabo [ 33 ] and Ptolemy, [ 34 ] who took the Tanais ( the modern Don River ) as the boundary. The term “ Europe ” is first used for a cultural sphere in the carolingian Renaissance of the ninth century. From that time, the term designated the sphere of influence of the western Church, as opposed to both the Eastern Orthodox churches and to the Islamic world. A cultural definition of Europe as the lands of Latin Christendom coalesced in the eighth century, signifying the newly cultural condominium created through the concourse of Germanic traditions and Christian-Latin culture, defined partially in contrast with Byzantium and Islam, and limited to northern Iberia, the british Isles, France, Christianised western Germany, the Alpine regions and northerly and central Italy. [ 35 ] The concept is one of the persistent legacies of the carolingian Renaissance : Europa much [ dubious – discuss ] figures in the letters of Charlemagne ‘s woo learner, Alcuin. [ 36 ]

advanced definitions

A New Map of Europe According to the Newest Observations (1721) by Hermann Moll draws the eastern boundary of Europe along the Don River flowing south-west and the Tobol, Irtysh and Ob rivers flowing north ( 1721 ) by Hermann Moll draws the eastern boundary of Europe along the Don River flowing southwest and the Tobol, Irtysh and Ob rivers flowing north 1916 political map of Europe showing most of Moll ‘s waterways replaced by von Strahlenberg ‘s Ural Mountains and Freshfield ‘s Caucasus Crest, land features of a type that normally defines a subcontinent The question of defining a accurate easterly boundary of Europe arises in the early Modern menstruation, as the easterly extension of Muscovy began to include North Asia. Throughout the Middle Ages and into the eighteenth century, the traditional division of the landmass of Eurasia into two continents, Europe and Asia, followed Ptolemy, with the boundary following the turkish Straits, the Black Sea, the Kerch Strait, the Sea of Azov and the Don ( ancient Tanais ). But maps produced during the 16th to 18th centuries tended to differ in how to continue the limit beyond the Don bending at Kalach-na-Donu ( where it is closest to the Volga, now joined with it by the Volga–Don Canal ), into territory not described in any detail by the ancient geographers. Around 1715, Herman Moll produced a map showing the northern separate of the Ob River and the Irtysh River, a major conducive of the early, as components of a series of partly-joined waterways taking the limit between Europe and Asia from the turkish Straits, and the Don River all the way to the Arctic Ocean. In 1721, he produced a more up to date map that was easier to read. however, his idea to use major rivers about entirely as the line of line was never taken up by other geographers. Four years late, in 1725, Philip Johan von Strahlenberg was the first to depart from the classical music Don limit by proposing that mountain ranges could be included as boundaries between continents whenever there were deemed to be no suitable waterways, the Ob and Irtysh rivers notwithstanding. He drew a modern line along the Volga, following the Volga north until the Samara Bend, along Obshchy Syrt ( the drain separate between Volga and Ural ), and then north along Ural Mountains. [ 37 ] This was endorsed by the Russian Empire and introduced the convention that would finally become normally accept, but not without criticism by many modern analytic geographers like Halford Mackinder who saw little cogency in the Ural Mountains as a boundary between continents. [ 38 ] The mapmakers continued to differ on the boundary between the lower Don and Samara well into the nineteenth century. The 1745 atlas published by the russian Academy of Sciences has the boundary follow the Don beyond Kalach deoxyadenosine monophosphate far as Serafimovich before cutting north towards Arkhangelsk, while early 18th- to 19th-century mapmakers such as John Cary followed Strahlenberg ‘s prescription. To the south, the Kuma–Manych Depression was identified circa 1773 by a german naturalist, Peter Simon Pallas, as a valley that once connected the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, [ 39 ] [ 40 ] and subsequently was proposed as a natural boundary between continents. By the mid-19th century, there were three independent conventions, one following the Don, the Volga–Don Canal and the Volga, the other following the Kuma–Manych Depression to the Caspian and then the Ural River, and the third abandoning the Don wholly, following the Greater Caucasus watershed to the Caspian. The motion was still treated as a “ controversy ” in geographic literature of the 1860s, with Douglas Freshfield advocating the Caucasus crest limit as the “ best possible ”, citing support from diverse “ modern geographers ”. [ 41 ] In Russia and the Soviet Union, the boundary along the Kuma–Manych Depression was the most normally used angstrom early as 1906. [ 42 ] In 1958, the soviet Geographical Society formally recommended that the boundary between the Europe and Asia be drawn in textbooks from Baydaratskaya Bay, on the Kara Sea, along the eastern foot of Ural Mountains, then following the Ural River until the Mugodzhar Hills, and then the Emba River ; and Kuma–Manych Depression, [ 43 ] frankincense placing the Caucasus wholly in Asia and the Urals wholly in Europe. [ 44 ] however, most geographers in the Soviet Union favoured the boundary along the Caucasus crest, [ 45 ] and this became the common conventionality in the later twentieth century, although the Kuma–Manych boundary remained in use in some 20th-century maps. Some view separation of Eurasia into Asia and Europe as a residue of eurocentrism : “ In forcible, cultural and historical diversity, China and India are comparable to the integral european landmass, not to a single european area. [ … ]. ”

history

prehistory

c. 15,000 BCE) Paleolithic cave paintings from Lascaux in France 15,000 BCE ) Homo erectus georgicus, which lived roughly 1.8 million years ago in Georgia, is the earliest hominin to have been discovered in Europe. [ 47 ] early hominin remains, dating back roughly 1 million years, have been discovered in Atapuerca, Spain. [ 48 ] Neanderthal man ( named after the Neandertal valley in Germany ) appeared in Europe 150,000 years ago ( 115,000 years ago it is found already in the district of contemporary Poland [ 49 ] ) and disappeared from the fossil record about 28,000 years ago, with their final recourse being contemporary Portugal. The Neanderthals were supplanted by advanced humans ( Cro-Magnons ), who appeared in Europe around 43,000 to 40,000 years ago. [ 50 ] The earliest sites in Europe dated 48,000 years ago are Riparo Mochi ( Italy ), Geissenklösterle ( Germany ) and Isturitz ( France ). [ 51 ] [ 52 ] The european Neolithic period—marked by the cultivation of crops and the raise of livestock, increased numbers of settlements and the far-flung use of pottery—began around 7000 BCE in Greece and the Balkans, probably influenced by earlier farming practices in Anatolia and the Near East. [ 53 ] It spread from the Balkans along the valley of the Danube and the Rhine ( linear Pottery culture ), and along the Mediterranean coast ( Cardial culture ). between 4500 and 3000 BCE, these cardinal european neolithic cultures developed further to the west and the north, transmitting newly acquired skills in producing copper artifacts. In westerly Europe the Neolithic menstruation was characterised not by large agrarian settlements but by field monuments, such as causeway enclosures, burying mounds and megalithic tombs. [ 54 ] The Corded Ware cultural horizon flourished at the transition from the Neolithic to the Chalcolithic. During this period giant megalithic monuments, such as the Megalithic Temples of Malta and Stonehenge, were constructed throughout western and Southern Europe. [ 55 ] [ 56 ] The European Bronze Age began c. 3200 BCE in Greece with the Minoan refinement on Crete, the beginning advance civilization in Europe. [ 57 ] The Minoans were followed by the Myceneans, who collapsed suddenly around 1200 BCE, ushering the European Iron Age. [ 58 ] Iron Age colonization by the Greeks and Phoenicians gave ascent to early Mediterranean cities. early Iron Age Italy and Greece from around the eighth hundred BCE gradually gave rise to historical Classical antiquity, whose begin is sometimes dated to 776 BCE, the year of the first Olympic Games. [ 59 ]

classical antiquity

Ancient Greece was the establish culture of westerly civilization. western democratic and rationalist acculturation are often attributed to Ancient Greece. [ 60 ] The greek city state, the polis, was the fundamental political unit of measurement of classical Greece. [ 60 ] In 508 BCE, Cleisthenes instituted the universe ‘s first democratic system of politics in Athens. [ 61 ] The greek political ideals were rediscovered in the late eighteenth hundred by european philosophers and idealists. Greece besides generated many cultural contributions : in philosophy, humanitarianism and rationalism under Aristotle, Socrates and Plato ; in history with Herodotus and Thucydides ; in dramatic and narrative verse, starting with the epic poem of Homer ; [ 62 ] in play with Sophocles and Euripides, in medicine with Hippocrates and Galen ; and in skill with Pythagoras, Euclid and Archimedes. [ 63 ] [ 64 ] [ 65 ] In the course of the fifth century BCE, respective of the Greek city states would ultimately check the Achaemenid Persian advance in Europe through the Greco-Persian Wars, considered a pivotal moment in earth history, [ 66 ] as the 50 years of peace that followed are known as Golden Age of Athens, the germinal period of ancient Greece that laid many of the foundations of western civilization .
Greece was followed by Rome, which left its cross off on police, politics, speech, technology, architecture, government and many more identify aspects in western refinement. [ 60 ] By 200 BCE, Rome had conquered Italy and over the follow two centuries it conquered Greece and Hispania ( Spain and Portugal ), the north African coast, much of the Middle East, Gaul ( France and Belgium ) and Britannia ( England and Wales ). Expanding from their base in cardinal Italy begin in the third century BCE, the Romans gradually expanded to finally rule the entire Mediterranean Basin and Western Europe by the turn of the millennium. The Roman Republic ended in 27 BCE, when Augustus proclaimed the Roman Empire. The two centuries that followed are known as the pax romana, a period of unprecedented peace, prosperity and political stability in most of Europe. [ 67 ] The empire continued to expand under emperors such as Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, who spent clock time on the Empire ‘s northerly molding fighting Germanic, Pictish and Scottish tribes. [ 68 ] [ 69 ] Christianity was legalised by Constantine I in 313 CE after three centuries of imperial persecution. Constantine besides permanently moved the capital of the empire from Rome to the city of Byzantium ( contemporary Istanbul ) which was renamed Constantinople in his award in 330 CE. Christianity became the sole official religion of the empire in 380 CE and in 391–392 CE, the emperor Theodosius outlawed heathen religions. [ 70 ] This is sometimes considered to mark the end of antiquity ; alternatively antiquity is considered to end with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE ; the closure of the heathen Platonic Academy of Athens in 529 CE ; [ 71 ] or the ascend of Islam in the early seventh century CE .

early Middle Ages

During the decline of the Roman Empire, Europe entered a long period of change arising from what historians call the “ Age of Migrations “. There were numerous invasions and migrations amongst the Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Goths, Vandals, Huns, Franks, Angles, Saxons, Slavs, Avars, Bulgars and, subsequently on, the Vikings, Pechenegs, Cumans and Magyars. [ 67 ] Renaissance thinkers such as Petrarch would later refer to this as the “ Dark Ages ”. [ 72 ] Isolated monk communities were the alone places to safeguard and compile written cognition accumulated previously ; apart from this identical few written records exist and much literature, doctrine, mathematics and other think from the classical music time period disappeared from Western Europe, though they were preserved in the east, in the Byzantine Empire. [ 73 ] While the Roman empire in the west continued to decline, Roman traditions and the Roman state remained impregnable in the predominantly Greek-speaking Eastern Roman Empire, besides known as the Byzantine Empire. During most of its being, the Byzantine Empire was the most mighty economic, cultural and military force in Europe. Emperor justinian I presided over Constantinople ‘s first gear golden age : he established a legal code that forms the footing of many modern legal systems, funded the construction of the Hagia Sophia and brought the christian church under state manipulate. [ 74 ] From the seventh hundred onwards, as the Byzantines and neighbouring Sasanid Persians were badly weakened due to the protracted, centuries-lasting and patronize Byzantine–Sasanian wars, the Muslim Arabs began to make inroads into historically Roman territory, taking the Levant and North Africa and making inroads into Asia Minor. In the mid-7th hundred, following the Muslim seduction of Persia, Islam penetrated into the Caucasus area. [ 75 ] Over the adjacent centuries Muslim forces took Cyprus, Malta, Crete, Sicily and parts of southern Italy. [ 76 ] Between 711 and 720, most of the lands of the Visigothic Kingdom of Iberia was brought under Muslim rule—save for small areas in the northwest ( Asturias ) and largely Basque regions in the Pyrenees. This territory, under the Arabic name Al-Andalus, became depart of the expanding Umayyad Caliphate. The unsuccessful second siege of Constantinople ( 717 ) weakened the Umayyad dynasty and reduced their prestige. The Umayyads were then defeated by the frankish drawing card Charles Martel at the Battle of Poitiers in 732, which ended their north progress. In the outside regions of north-western Iberia and the middle Pyrenees the exponent of the Muslims in the confederacy was hardly felt. It was here that the foundations of the Christian kingdoms of Asturias, Leon and Galicia were laid and from where the reconquest of the iberian Peninsula would start. however, no align attack would be made to drive the Moors out. The christian kingdoms were chiefly focussed on their own home power struggles. As a result, the Reconquista took the greater separate of eight hundred years, in which period a long list of Alfonsos, Sanchos, Ordoños, Ramiros, Fernandos and Bermudos would be fighting their christian rivals a much as the Muslim invaders .
During the Dark Ages, the western Roman Empire fell under the see of assorted tribes. The Germanic and Slav tribes established their domains over westerly and Eastern Europe, respectively. [ 77 ] finally the frankish tribes were united under Clovis I. [ 78 ] Charlemagne, a frankish king of the carolingian dynasty who had conquered most of Western Europe, was anointed “ Holy Roman Emperor “ by the Pope in 800. This led in 962 to the establish of the Holy Roman Empire, which finally became centred in the german principalities of central Europe. [ 79 ] east Central Europe saw the initiation of the first Slavic states and the adoption of Christianity ( c. 1000 CE ). The herculean West Slavic country of Great Moravia spread its territory all the way south to the Balkans, reaching its largest territorial extent under Svatopluk I and causing a series of armed conflicts with East Francia. Further south, the inaugural South Slavic states emerged in the deep 7th and eighth hundred and adopted christianity : the First Bulgarian Empire, the serbian Principality ( late Kingdom and Empire ) and the Duchy of Croatia ( later Kingdom of Croatia ). To the East, the Kievan Rus expanded from its capital in Kyiv to become the largest submit in Europe by the tenth century. In 988, Vladimir the Great adopted Orthodox Christianity as the religion of state. Further East, Volga Bulgaria became an Islamic state in the tenth hundred, but was finally absorbed into Russia respective centuries late. [ 82 ]

gamey and deep Middle Ages

[83][84] The maritime republics of chivalric Italy reestablished contacts between Europe, Asia and Africa with extensive trade networks and colonies across the Mediterranean, and had an essential role in the Crusades The period between the year 1000 and 1250 is known as the High Middle Ages, followed by the Late Middle Ages until c. 1500. During the High Middle Ages the population of Europe experienced meaning growth, culminating in the Renaissance of the twelfth hundred. Economic growth, together with the miss of base hit on the mainland trade routes, made potential the development of major commercial routes along the slide of the Mediterranean and Baltic Seas. The growing wealth and independence acquired by some coastal cities gave the Maritime Republics a leading function in the european scene. The Middle Ages on the mainland were dominated by the two amphetamine echelons of the sociable structure : the nobility and the clergy. Feudalism developed in France in the early Middle Ages, and soon spread throughout Europe. [ 85 ] A struggle for influence between the nobility and the monarchy in England led to the writing of the Magna Carta and the administration of a fantan. [ 86 ] The elementary reservoir of culture in this period came from the Roman Catholic Church. Through monasteries and cathedral schools, the Church was responsible for education in much of Europe. [ 85 ]
The Papacy reached the stature of its power during the High Middle Ages. An East-West schism in 1054 split the former Roman Empire scrupulously, with the Eastern Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire and the Roman Catholic Church in the former Western Roman Empire. In 1095 Pope Urban II called for a crusade against Muslims occupying Jerusalem and the Holy Land. [ 87 ] In Europe itself, the Church organised the Inquisition against heretics. In the iberian Peninsula, the Reconquista concluded with the fall of Granada in 1492, ending over seven centuries of Islamic rule in the south-western peninsula. [ 88 ] In the east, a resurgent Byzantine Empire recaptured Crete and Cyprus from the Muslims, and reconquered the Balkans. Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest city in Europe from the 9th to the 12th centuries, with a population of approximately 400,000. [ 89 ] The Empire was weakened following the kill at Manzikert, and was weakened well by the sack of Constantinople in 1204, during the Fourth Crusade. [ 90 ] [ 91 ] [ 92 ] [ 93 ] [ 94 ] [ 95 ] [ 96 ] [ 97 ] [ 98 ] Although it would recover Constantinople in 1261, Byzantium fell in 1453 when Constantinople was taken by the Ottoman Empire. [ 99 ] [ 100 ] [ 101 ]
In the 11th and 12th centuries, constant incursions by mobile Turkic tribe, such as the Pechenegs and the Cuman-Kipchaks, caused a massive migration of Slavic populations to the safe, heavily forested regions of the north, and temporarily halted the expansion of the Rus ‘ state of matter to the south and east. [ 102 ] Like many other parts of Eurasia, these territories were overrun by the Mongols. [ 103 ] The invaders, who became known as Tatars, were by and large turkic-speaking peoples under Mongol suzerainty. They established the state of the Golden Horde with headquarters in Crimea, which later adopted Islam as a religion, and ruled over contemporary southern and central Russia for more than three centuries. [ 104 ] [ 105 ] After the collapse of Mongol dominions, the first romanian states ( principalities ) emerged in the fourteenth hundred : Moldavia and Walachia. previously, these territories were under the consecutive master of Pechenegs and Cumans. [ 106 ] From the 12th to the fifteenth centuries, the Grand Duchy of Moscow grew from a humble principality under Mongol rule to the largest state in Europe, overthrowing the Mongols in 1480, and finally becoming the Tsardom of Russia. The country was consolidated under Ivan III the Great and Ivan the Terrible, steadily expanding to the east and south over the next centuries. The Great Famine of 1315–1317 was the first crisis that would strike Europe in the late Middle Ages. [ 107 ] The menstruation between 1348 and 1420 witnessed the heaviest loss. The population of France was reduced by half. [ 108 ] [ 109 ] Medieval Britain was afflicted by 95 famines, [ 110 ] and France suffered the effects of 75 or more in the like period. [ 111 ] Europe was devastated in the mid-14th century by the Black Death, one of the most deadly pandemics in human history which killed an estimated 25 million people in Europe alone—a third of the european population at the time. [ 112 ] The plague had a crushing effect on Europe ‘s social structure ; it induced people to live for the moment as illustrated by Giovanni Boccaccio in The Decameron ( 1353 ). It was a serious fellate to the Roman Catholic Church and led to increased persecution of Jews, beggars and lepers. [ 113 ] The blight is thought to have returned every generation with varying virulence and mortalities until the eighteenth hundred. [ 114 ] During this time period, more than 100 infestation epidemics swept across Europe. [ 115 ]

early modern period

The Renaissance was a period of cultural exchange originating in Florence, and late spreading to the remainder of Europe. The rise of a new humanism was accompanied by the convalescence of forget classical greek and Arabic cognition from monk libraries, much translated from Arabic into Latin. [ 116 ] [ 117 ] [ 118 ] The Renaissance bedspread across Europe between the 14th and 16th centuries : it saw the bloom of art, philosophy, music and the sciences, under the joint trade of royalty, the nobility, the Roman Catholic Church and an emerging merchant class. [ 119 ] [ 120 ] [ 121 ] Patrons in Italy, including the Medici family of Florentine bankers and the Popes in Rome, funded fecund quattrocento and cinquecento artists such as Raphael, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. [ 122 ] [ 123 ] political intrigue within the church in the mid-14th hundred caused the western Schism. During this forty-year period, two popes—one in Avignon and one in Rome—claimed rulership over the Church. Although the schism was finally healed in 1417, the papacy ‘s spiritual agency had suffered greatly. [ 124 ] In the fifteenth hundred, Europe started to extend itself beyond its geographic frontiers. Spain and Portugal, the greatest naval powers of the time, took the run in exploring the earth. [ 125 ] [ 126 ] Exploration reached the Southern Hemisphere in the Atlantic and the Southern tip of Africa. Christopher Columbus reached the New World in 1492, and Vasco da Gama opened the ocean route to the East linking the Atlantic and indian Oceans in 1498. The Portuguese-born explorer Ferdinand Magellan reached Asia westward across the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans in a spanish expedition, resulting in the first circumnavigation of the ball, completed by the Spaniard Juan Sebastián Elcano ( 1519–1522 ). soon after, the spanish and portuguese began establishing large global empires in the Americas, Asia, Africa and Oceania. [ 127 ] France, the Netherlands and England soon followed in building big colonial empires with huge holdings in Africa, the Americas and Asia. In 1588, a spanish armada failed to invade England. A year later England tried unsuccessfully to invade Spain, allowing Philip II of Spain to maintain his dominant war capacitance in Europe. This english disaster besides allowed the spanish fleet to retain its capability to wage war for the adjacent decades. however, two more spanish armada failed to invade England ( 2nd Spanish Armada and 3rd spanish Armada ). [ 128 ] [ 129 ] [ 130 ] [ 131 ]
The Church ‘s exponent was further weakened by the Protestant Reformation in 1517 when german theologian Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses criticising the sell of indulgences to the church service door. He was subsequently excommunicated in the papal bull Exsurge Domine in 1520 and his followers were condemned in the 1521 Diet of Worms, which divided german princes between Protestant and Roman Catholic faiths. [ 133 ] Religious fighting and war spread with Protestantism. [ 134 ] The loot of the empires of the Americas allowed Spain to finance religious persecution in Europe for over a century. [ 135 ] The Thirty Years War ( 1618–1648 ) crippled the Holy Roman Empire and devastated much of Germany, killing between 25 and 40 percentage of its population. [ 136 ] In the consequence of the Peace of Westphalia, France rose to predominance within Europe. [ 137 ] The seventeenth century in central and parts of eastern Europe was a period of general decline ; [ 138 ] the region experienced more than 150 famines in a 200-year period between 1501 and 1700. [ 139 ] From the Union of Krewo ( 1385 ) east-central Europe was dominated by the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The hegemony of the huge Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth had ended with the devastation brought by the Second Northern War ( Deluge ) and subsequent conflicts ; [ 140 ] the state itself was partitioned and ceased to exist at the end of the eighteenth hundred. [ 141 ] From the 15th to 18th centuries, when the disintegrating khanates of the Golden Horde were conquered by Russia, Tatars from the Crimean Khanate frequently raided Eastern Slavic lands to capture slaves. [ 142 ] Further east, the Nogai Horde and Kazakh Khanate frequently raided the Slavic-speaking areas of contemporary Russia and Ukraine for hundreds of years, until the russian expansion and seduction of most of northerly Eurasia ( i.e. Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Siberia ). The Renaissance and the New Monarchs marked the start of an Age of Discovery, a time period of exploration, invention and scientific development. [ 143 ] Among the bang-up figures of the western scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries were Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and Isaac Newton. [ 144 ] According to Peter Barrett, “ It is wide accepted that ‘modern science ‘ rebel in the Europe of the seventeenth hundred ( towards the end of the Renaissance ), introducing a new understand of the lifelike worldly concern. ” [ 116 ]

18th and 19th centuries

The Age of Enlightenment was a brawny intellectual movement during the eighteenth hundred promoting scientific and reason-based thoughts. [ 145 ] [ 146 ] [ 147 ] discontented with the nobility and clergy ‘s monopoly on political power in France resulted in the french Revolution, and the establishment of the First Republic as a leave of which the monarchy and many of the nobility perished during the initial reign of terror. [ 148 ] Napoleon Bonaparte rose to world power in the aftermath of the french Revolution, and established the First French Empire that, during the Napoleonic Wars, grew to encompass large parts of Europe before collapsing in 1815 with the Battle of Waterloo. [ 149 ] [ 150 ] Napoleonic rule resulted in the foster dissemination of the ideals of the french Revolution, including that of the nation state, ampere well as the widespread adoption of the french models of government, police and education. [ 151 ] [ 152 ] [ 153 ] The Congress of Vienna, convened after Napoleon ‘s downfall, established a new remainder of might in Europe centred on the five “ Great Powers “ : the UK, France, Prussia, Austria and Russia. [ 154 ] This balance would remain in plaza until the Revolutions of 1848, during which liberal uprisings affected all of Europe except for Russia and the UK. These revolutions were finally put down by conservative elements and few reforms resulted. [ 155 ] The class 1859 saw the fusion of Romania, as a nation state, from smaller principalities. In 1867, the Austro-Hungarian empire was formed ; 1871 saw the unifications of both Italy and Germany as nation-states from smaller principalities. [ 156 ] In parallel, the Eastern Question grew more complex ever since the Ottoman defeat in the Russo-Turkish War ( 1768–1774 ). As the profligacy of the Ottoman Empire seemed at hand, the Great Powers struggled to safeguard their strategic and commercial interests in the Ottoman domains. The russian Empire stood to benefit from the decline, whereas the Habsburg Empire and Britain perceived the preservation of the Ottoman Empire to be in their best interests. meanwhile, the serbian rotation ( 1804 ) and Greek War of Independence ( 1821 ) marked the beginning of the end of Ottoman rule in the Balkans, which ended with the Balkan Wars in 1912–1913. [ 157 ] Formal recognition of the de facto mugwump principalities of Montenegro, Serbia and Romania ensued at the Congress of Berlin in 1878 .
The Industrial Revolution started in Great Britain in the last part of the eighteenth century and circulate throughout Europe. The invention and implementation of new technologies resulted in rapid urban growth, mass use and the advance of a new work classify. [ 158 ] Reforms in social and economic spheres followed, including the first laws on child labor, the legalization of trade unions, [ 159 ] and the abolition of slavery. [ 160 ] In Britain, the Public Health Act of 1875 was passed, which significantly improved living conditions in many british cities. [ 161 ] Europe ‘s population increased from about 100 million in 1700 to 400 million by 1900. [ 162 ] The last major dearth recorded in Western Europe, the Great Famine of Ireland, caused death and batch emigration of millions of irish people. [ 163 ] In the nineteenth century, 70 million people left Europe in migrations to diverse european colonies abroad and to the United States. [ 164 ] Demographic growth meant that, by 1900, Europe ‘s share of the world ‘s population was 25 %. [ 165 ]

twentieth hundred to the salute

Map of European colonial empires throughout the world in 1914. Two world wars and an economic depression dominated the first half of the twentieth hundred. World War I was fought between 1914 and 1918. It started when Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated by the Yugoslav nationalist [ 166 ] Gavrilo Princip. [ 167 ] Most european nations were drawn into the war, which was fought between the Entente Powers ( France, Belgium, Serbia, Portugal, Russia, the United Kingdom, and later Italy, Greece, Romania and the United States ) and the Central Powers ( Austria-Hungary, Germany, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire ). The war left more than 16 million civilians and military dead. [ 168 ] Over 60 million european soldiers were mobilised from 1914 to 1918. [ 169 ]
Russia was plunged into the russian Revolution, which threw down the Tsarist monarchy and replaced it with the communist Soviet Union. [ 170 ] austria-hungary and the Ottoman Empire collapsed and broke up into separate nations, and many other nations had their borders redrawn. The Treaty of Versailles, which officially ended World War I in 1919, was harsh towards Germany, upon whom it placed full responsibility for the war and imposed heavy sanctions. [ 171 ] Excess deaths in Russia over the course of World War I and the Russian Civil War ( including the postwar famine ) amounted to a combine total of 18 million. [ 172 ] In 1932–1933, under Stalin ‘s leadership, confiscations of grain by the Soviet authorities contributed to the second Soviet dearth which caused millions of deaths ; [ 173 ] surviving kulaks were persecuted and many send to Gulags to do forced tug. Stalin was besides responsible for the Great Purge of 1937–38 in which the NKVD executed 681,692 people ; [ 174 ] millions of people were deported and exiled to remote areas of the Soviet Union. [ 175 ]
The social revolutions sweeping through Russia besides affected early european nations following The Great War : in 1919, with the Weimar Republic in Germany and the First Austrian Republic ; in 1922, with Mussolini ‘s one-party fascist government in the Kingdom of Italy and in Atatürk ‘s Turkish Republic, adopting the western alphabet and department of state secularism. Economic instability, caused in partially by debts incurred in the First World War and ‘loans ‘ to Germany played havoc in Europe in the late 1920s and 1930s. This, and the Wall Street Crash of 1929, brought about the global Great Depression. Helped by the economic crisis, social instability and the threat of communism, fascist movements developed throughout Europe placing Adolf Hitler in power of what became Nazi Germany. [ 181 ] [ 182 ] In 1933, Hitler became the drawing card of Germany and began to work towards his goal of build up Greater Germany. Germany re-expanded and took back the Saarland and Rhineland in 1935 and 1936. In 1938, Austria became a contribution of Germany following the Anschluss. Later that year, following the Munich Agreement signed by Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Italy, Germany annexed the Sudetenland, which was a separate of Czechoslovakia inhabited by ethnic Germans, and in early 1939, the end of Czechoslovakia was split into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, controlled by Germany and the Slovak Republic. At the meter, Britain and France preferred a policy of appeasement .
Bombed and burned-out buildings in Hamburg, 1944/45 With tensions mounting between Germany and Poland over the future of Danzig, the Germans turned to the Soviets and signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, which allowed the Soviets to invade the Baltic states and parts of Poland and Romania. Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, prompting France and the United Kingdom to declare war on Germany on 3 September, opening the European Theatre of World War II. [ 183 ] [ 184 ] [ 185 ] The soviet invasion of Poland started on 17 September and Poland fell soon thereafter. On 24 September, the Soviet Union attacked the baltic countries and, late, Finland. The british hoped to land at Narvik and send troops to help Finland, but their primary objective in the bring was to encircle Germany and cut the Germans off from scandinavian resources. Around the lapp time, Germany moved troops into Denmark. The Phoney War continued. In May 1940, Germany attacked France through the low Countries. France capitulated in June 1940. By August, Germany began a bombing offensive on Britain, but failed to convince the Britons to give up. [ 186 ] In 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa. [ 187 ] On 7 December 1941 Japan ‘s approach on Pearl Harbor drew the United States into the conflict as allies of the british Empire, and other allied forces. [ 188 ] [ 189 ]
After the stagger Battle of Stalingrad in 1943, the german offensive in the Soviet Union turned into a continual disengagement. The Battle of Kursk, which involved the largest tank battle in history, was the last major german offensive on the Eastern Front. In June 1944, british and american forces invaded France in the D-Day landings, opening a raw front man against Germany. Berlin finally fell in 1945, ending World War II in Europe. The war was the largest and most destructive in human history, with 60 million absolutely across the world. [ 190 ] More than 40 million people in Europe had died as a result of World War II, [ 191 ] including between 11 and 17 million people who perished during the Holocaust. [ 192 ] The Soviet Union lost around 27 million people ( largely civilians ) during the war, about one-half of all World War II casualties. [ 193 ] By the end of World War II, Europe had more than 40 million refugees. [ 194 ] several post-war expulsions in Central and Eastern Europe displaced a entire of about 20 million people, [ 195 ] in particular, German-speakers from all over Eastern Europe .
World War I, and particularly World War II, diminished the eminence of Western Europe in world affairs. After World War II the map of Europe was redrawn at the Yalta Conference and divided into two bloc, the western countries and the communist Eastern bloc, separated by what was subsequently called by Winston Churchill an “ Iron Curtain “. The United States and Western Europe established the NATO confederation and, late, the Soviet Union and Central Europe established the Warsaw Pact. [ 196 ] Particular hot spots after the second base World War were Berlin and Trieste, whereby the Free Territory of Trieste, founded in 1947 with the UN, was dissolved in 1954 and 1975, respectively. The Berlin blockade in 1948 and 1949 and the structure of the Berlin Wall in 1961 were one of the bang-up international crises of the Cold War. [ 197 ] [ 198 ] [ 199 ] The two raw superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, became locked in a fifty-year-long Cold War, centred on nuclear proliferation. At the same prison term decolonization, which had already started after World War I, gradually resulted in the independence of most of the european colonies in Asia and Africa. [ 14 ]
In the 1980s the reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev and the Solidarity movement in Poland weakened the previously rigid communist system. The afford of the Iron Curtain at the Pan-European Picnic then set in movement a passive chain reaction, at the end of which the eastern bloc, the Warsaw Pact and communism collapsed, and the Cold War ended. [ 201 ] [ 202 ] [ 203 ] Germany was reunited, after the emblematic fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the maps of Central and Eastern Europe were redrawn once more. [ 204 ] This made erstwhile previously interrupted cultural and economic relationships possible, and previously isolate cities such as Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest and Trieste were now again in the concentrate of Europe. [ 181 ] [ 205 ] [ 206 ] [ 207 ] european consolidation besides grew after World War II. In 1949 the Council of Europe was founded, following a speech by Sir Winston Churchill, with the estimate of unifying Europe to achieve common goals. It includes all european states except for Belarus and Vatican City. The Treaty of Rome in 1957 established the european Economic Community between six western european states with the goal of a unite economic policy and common market. [ 208 ] In 1967 the EEC, european Coal and Steel Community, and Euratom formed the European Community, which in 1993 became the European Union. The EU established a parliament, court and cardinal depository financial institution, and introduced the euro as a unify currentness. [ 209 ] Between 2004 and 2013, more cardinal and eastern european countries began joining, expanding the EU to 28 european countries and once more making Europe a major economical and political center of baron. [ 210 ] however, the United Kingdom withdrew from the EU on 31 January 2020, as a resultant role of a June 2016 referendum on EU membership. [ 211 ]

geography

Map of populous Europe and surrounding regions showing physical, political and population characteristics, as per 2018 Europe makes up the western fifth of the eurasian landmass. [ 25 ] It has a higher proportion of coast to landmass than any early celibate or subcontinent. [ 212 ] Its nautical borders consist of the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west and the Mediterranean, Black and Caspian Seas to the south. [ 213 ] Land stand-in in Europe shows great variation within relatively small areas. The southerly regions are more cragged, while moving north the terrain descends from the high Alps, Pyrenees and Carpathians, through cragged highland, into broad, low northerly plains, which are huge in the east. This extend lowland is known as the great european Plain and at its heart lies the north german Plain. An arch of uplands besides exists along the north-western seaside, which begins in the western parts of the islands of Britain and Ireland, and then continues along the mountainous, fjord -cut spine of Norway. This description is simplified. Sub-regions such as the iberian Peninsula and the italian Peninsula contain their own complex features, as does mainland Central Europe itself, where the relief contains many plateaus, river valleys and basins that complicate the general course. Sub-regions like Iceland, Britain and Ireland are special cases. The former is a land unto itself in the northern ocean which is counted as part of Europe, while the latter are upland areas that were once joined to the mainland until rising sea levels cut them off .

climate

Europe lies chiefly in the temperate climate zones, being subjected to prevailing westerlies. The climate is milder in comparison to other areas of the same latitude around the earth due to the influence of the Gulf Stream. [ 214 ] The Gulf Stream is nicknamed “ Europe ‘s central heat ”, because it makes Europe ‘s climate ardent and wetter than it would otherwise be. The Gulf Stream not merely carries warm water to Europe ‘s slide but besides warms up the predominate westbound winds that blow across the continent from the Atlantic Ocean. consequently, the average temperature throughout the year of Aveiro is 16 °C ( 61 °F ), while it is only 13 °C ( 55 °F ) in New York City which is about on the lapp latitude, bordering the lapp ocean. Berlin, Germany ; Calgary, Canada ; and Irkutsk, in far south-eastern Russia, dwell on around the same latitude ; January temperatures in Berlin average approximately 8 °C ( 14 °F ) higher than those in Calgary and they are about 22 °C ( 40 °F ) higher than average temperatures in Irkutsk. [ 214 ] The bombastic water masses of the Mediterranean Sea, which equalise the temperatures on an annual and daily average, are besides of finical importance. The water of the Mediterranean extends from the Sahara desert to the Alpine discharge in its northernmost part of the Adriatic Sea near Trieste. [ 215 ]

In general, Europe is not precisely colder towards the north compared to the confederacy, but it besides gets cold from the west towards the east. The climate is more oceanic in the west and less then in the east. This can be illustrated by the following table of average temperatures at locations approximately following the 64th, 60th, 55th, 50th, 45th and 40th latitudes. none of them is located at high altitude ; most of them are stopping point to the sea. ( localization, estimate latitude and longitude, cold calendar month average, hot calendar month average and annual average temperatures in degrees C )

Temperatures in °C
Location Latitude Longitude Coldest
month
Hottest
month
Annual
average
Reykjavík 64 N 22 W 0.1 11.2 4.7
Umeå 64 N 20 E −6.2 16.0 3.9
Oulu 65 N 25.5 E −9.6 16.5 2.7
Arkhangelsk 64.5 N 40.5 E −12.7 16.3 1.3
Lerwick 60 N 1 W 3.5 12.4 7.4
Stockholm 59.5 N 19 E −1.7 18.4 7.4
Helsinki 60 N 25 E −4.7 17.8 5.9
Saint Petersburg 60 N 30 E −5.8 18.8 5.8
Edinburgh 55.5 N 3 W 4.2 15.3 9.3
Copenhagen 55.5 N 12 E 1.4 18.1 9.1
Klaipėda 55.5 N 21 E −1.3 17.9 8.0
Moscow 55.5 N 30 E −6.5 19.2 5.8
Isles of Scilly 50 N 6 W 7.9 16.9 11.8
Brussels 50.5 N 4 E 3.3 18.4 10.5
Krakow 50 N 20 E −2.0 19.2 8.7
Kyiv 50.5 N 30 E −3.5 20.5 8.4
Bordeaux 45 N 0 6.6 21.4 13.8
Venice 45.5 N 12 E 3.3 23.0 13.0
Belgrade 45 N 20 E 1.4 23.0 12.5
Astrakhan 46 N 48 E −3.7 25.6 10.5
Coimbra 40 N 8 W 9.9 21.9 16.0
Valencia 39.5 N 0 11.9 26.1 18.3
Naples 40.5 N 14 E 8.7 24.7 15.9
Istanbul 41 N 29 E 6.0 23.8 11.4

[ 217 ] It is noteworthy how the median temperatures for the coldest calendar month, adenine well as the annual average temperatures, flatten from the west to the east. For example, Edinburgh is warmer than Belgrade during the coldest month of the year, although Belgrade is around 10° of latitude farther south .

geology

The geological history of Europe traces back to the formation of the Baltic Shield ( Fennoscandia ) and the Sarmatian craton, both around 2.25 billion years ago, followed by the Volgo–Uralia shield, the three together leading to the East european craton ( ≈ Baltica ) which became a separate of the supercontinent Columbia. Around 1.1 billion years ago, Baltica and Arctica ( as share of the Laurentia block ) became joined to Rodinia, late resplitting around 550 million years ago to reform as Baltica. Around 440 million years ago Euramerica was formed from Baltica and Laurentia ; a far join with Gondwana then leading to the formation of Pangea. Around 190 million years ago, Gondwana and Laurasia split apart ascribable to the widening of the Atlantic Ocean. Finally and very soon afterwards, Laurasia itself split up again, into Laurentia ( North America ) and the eurasian continent. The estate connection between the two persisted for a considerable time, via Greenland, leading to exchange of animal species. From around 50 million years ago, rising and falling sea levels have determined the actual shape of Europe and its connections with continents such as Asia. Europe ‘s present form dates to the belated Tertiary time period about five million years ago. [ 218 ] The geology of Europe is enormously vary and complex and gives rise to the across-the-board variety of landscapes found across the continent, from the scots Highlands to the rolling plains of Hungary. [ 219 ] Europe ‘s most meaning feature is the dichotomy between upland and cragged Southern Europe and a huge, partially subaqueous, northern plain ranging from Ireland in the west to the Ural Mountains in the east. These two halves are separated by the batch chains of the Pyrenees and Alps / Carpathians. The northern plains are delimited in the west by the scandinavian Mountains and the cragged parts of the british Isles. Major shallow water bodies submerging parts of the northerly plains are the Celtic Sea, the North Sea, the Baltic Sea complex and Barents Sea. The northern apparent contains the old geological continent of Baltica and so may be regarded geologically as the “ main continent ”, while peripheral highlands and mountainous regions in the south and west appoint fragments from respective other geological continents. Most of the older geology of western Europe existed as separate of the ancient microcontinent Avalonia .

Flora

Land function map of Europe with arable cultivated land ( yellow ), forest ( dark green ), eatage ( ignite green ) and tundra, or bogs, in the union ( dark jaundiced ) Floristic regions of Europe and neighbouring areas, according to Wolfgang Frey and Rainer Lösch Having lived side by side with agrarian peoples for millennium, Europe ‘s animals and plants have been profoundly affected by the bearing and activities of man. With the exception of Fennoscandia and northern Russia, few areas of unmoved wilderness are presently found in Europe, except for diverse national parks. The chief natural vegetation breed in Europe is assorted forest. The conditions for emergence are very favorable. In the north, the Gulf Stream and North Atlantic Drift warm the continent. Southern Europe could be described as having a warm, but balmy climate. There are frequent summer droughts in this region. batch ridges besides affect the conditions. Some of these ( Alps, Pyrenees ) are oriented east–west and allow the scent to carry large masses of urine from the ocean in the inside. Others are oriented south–north ( scandinavian Mountains, Dinarides, Carpathians, Apennines ) and because the rain falls primarily on the side of mountains that is oriented towards the sea, forests grow well on this side, while on the other side, the conditions are much less golden. few corners of mainland Europe have not been grazed by livestock at some sharpen in time and the cutting down of the pre-agricultural forest habitat caused disruption to the master establish and animal ecosystems. possibly 80 to 90 percentage of Europe was once covered by forest. [ 220 ] It stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the Arctic Ocean. Although over one-half of Europe ‘s original forests disappeared through the centuries of deforestation, Europe hush has over one quarter of its land area as forest, such as the broadleaf and assorted forests, taiga of Scandinavia and Russia, blend rainforests of the Caucasus and the Cork oak forests in the westerly Mediterranean. During recent times, deforestation has been slowed and many trees have been planted. however, in many cases monoculture plantations of conifers have replaced the original mix natural forest, because these grow agile. The plantations now cover huge areas of land, but offer poorer habitats for many european forest dwelling species which require a assortment of tree species and divers afforest social organization. The come of natural forest in Western Europe is fair 2–3 % or less, while in its western Russia its 5–10 %. The european country with the smallest share of afforest area is Iceland ( 1 % ), while the most forested country is Finland ( 77 % ). [ 221 ] In temperate Europe, shuffle afforest with both broadleaf and coniferous trees dominate. The most important species in central and western Europe are beech and oak. In the north, the taiga is a interracial spruce – pine – birch forest ; promote north within Russia and extreme northern Scandinavia, the taiga gives way to tundra as the Arctic is approached. In the Mediterranean, many olive trees have been planted, which are identical well adapted to its arid climate ; Mediterranean Cypress is besides widely planted in southerly Europe. The semi-arid Mediterranean region hosts much scrub forest. A narrow east–west tongue of eurasian grassland ( the steppe ) extends westwards from Ukraine and southern Russia and ends in Hungary and traverses into taiga to the north .

Fauna

glaciation during the most holocene ice rink long time and the bearing of man affected the distribution of european animal. As for the animals, in many parts of Europe most large animals and crown marauder species have been hunted to extinction. The lanate mammoth was extinct before the end of the Neolithic period. today wolves ( carnivores ) and bears ( omnivores ) are endangered. Once they were found in most parts of Europe. however, deforestation and hunt caused these animals to withdraw further and further. By the Middle Ages the bears ‘ habitats were limited to more or less inaccessible mountains with sufficient forest brood. nowadays, the brown wear lives chiefly in the Balkan peninsula, Scandinavia and Russia ; a minor number besides persist in other countries across Europe ( Austria, Pyrenees etc. ), but in these areas brown yield populations are fragmented and marginalised because of the destruction of their habitat. In addition, diametric bears may be found on Svalbard, a norwegian archipelago army for the liberation of rwanda north of Scandinavia. The wolf, the second largest predator in Europe after the brown digest, can be found primarily in Central and Eastern Europe and in the Balkans, with a handful of packs in pockets of Western Europe ( Scandinavia, Spain, etc. ) .
european baseless cat, foxes ( specially the crimson fox ), jackal and different species of martens, hedgehogs, unlike species of reptiles ( like snakes such as vipers and grass snakes ) and amphibians, unlike birds ( owls, hawks and other birds of prey ). crucial european herbivores are snails, larva, fish, unlike birds and mammals, like rodents, deer and roe deer, boars and living in the mountains, marmots, steinbocks, chamois among others. A number of insects, such as the small tortoiseshell butterfly, add to the biodiversity. [ 224 ] The extinction of the dwarf hippopotamus and dwarf elephants has been linked to the earliest arrival of humans on the islands of the Mediterranean. [ 225 ] Sea creatures are besides an important share of european flora and fauna. The ocean vegetation is chiefly phytoplankton. crucial animals that live in european seas are zooplankton, mollusk, echinoderms, different crustaceans, squids and octopuses, fish, dolphins and whales. Biodiversity is protected in Europe through the Council of Europe ‘s Bern Convention, which has besides been signed by the European Community deoxyadenosine monophosphate well as non-European states .

Politics

A clickable Euler diagram showing the relationships between versatile multinational european organisations and agreements. The political map of Europe is substantially derived from the re-organisation of Europe following the Napoleonic Wars in 1815. The prevailing form of government in Europe is parliamentary democracy, in most cases in the mannequin of Republic ; in 1815, the prevailing form of politics was still the Monarchy. Europe ‘s remaining eleven monarchies [ 226 ] are constituent. european integration is the process of political, legal, economic ( and in some cases social and cultural ) consolidation of european states as it has been pursued by the powers sponsoring the Council of Europe since the end of World War II The European Union has been the focus of economic consolidation on the continent since its foundation garment in 1993. More recently, the eurasian Economic Union has been established as a counterpart comprising former soviet states. 27 european states are members of the politico-economic European Union, 26 of the border-free Schengen Area and 19 of the monetary union Eurozone. Among the smaller european organisations are the Nordic Council, the Benelux, the Baltic Assembly and the Visegrád Group .

tilt of states and territories

The list below includes all entities [ clarification needed ] falling even partially under any of the diverse common definitions of Europe, [ clarification needed ] geographic or political .
Within the above-mentioned states are several de facto independent countries with limited to no international realization. none of them are members of the united nations :
respective dependencies and similar territories with broad autonomy are besides found within or in close proximity to Europe. This includes Åland ( a region of Finland ), two component countries of the Kingdom of Denmark ( other than Denmark itself ), three Crown dependencies and two british Overseas Territories. Svalbard is besides included due to its singular condition within Norway, although it is not autonomous. not included are the three countries of the United Kingdom with devolve powers and the two autonomous Regions of Portugal, which despite having a unique academic degree of autonomy, are not largely autonomous in matters early than international affairs. Areas with fiddling more than a singular tax condition, such as Heligoland and the Canary Islands, are besides not included for this reason .

economy

european and bordering nations by GDP ( PPP ) per caput As a continent, the economy of Europe is presently the largest on earth and it is the richest area as measured by assets under management with over $ 32.7 trillion compared to North America ‘s $ 27.1 trillion in 2008. [ 228 ] In 2009 Europe remained the wealthiest region. Its $ 37.1 trillion in assets under management represented one-third of the worldly concern ‘s wealth. It was one of several regions where wealth surpassed its precrisis year-end peak. [ 229 ] As with other continents, Europe has a large variation of wealth among its countries. The richer states tend to be in the West, followed by Central Europeans, while some of the Eastern Europe economies are still emerging from the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of Yugoslavia. The model of the Blue Banana was designed as an economic geographic representation of the respective economic power of the regions, which was further developed into the Golden Banana or Blue Star. The trade between East and West, equally well as towards Asia, which had been disrupted for a retentive time by the two worldly concern wars, raw borders and the Cold War, increased aggressively after 1989. In accession, there is new drift from the chinese Belt and Road Initiative across the Suez Canal towards Africa and Asia. [ 230 ] The European Union, a political entity composed of 27 european states, comprises the largest single economic area in the world. nineteen EU countries share the euro as a coarse currency. Five european countries rank in the top ten of the world ‘s largest national economies in GDP ( PPP ). This includes ( ranks according to the CIA ) : Germany ( 6 ), Russia ( 7 ), the United Kingdom ( 10 ), France ( 11 ) and Italy ( 13 ). [ 231 ] There is huge disparity between many european countries in terms of their income. The richest in terms of nominal GDP is Monaco with its US $ 185,829 per caput ( 2018 ) and the poorest is ukraine with its US $ 3,659 per head ( 2019 ). [ 232 ] Monaco is the richest country in terms of GDP per caput in the world according to the World Bank composition. As a wholly, Europe ‘s GDP per head is US $ 21,767 according to a 2016 International Monetary Fund assessment. [ 233 ]

Rank Country GDP (nominal, Peak Year)
millions of USD
Peak Year
 European Union 19,226,235 2008
1  Germany 4,230,172 2021
2  United Kingdom 3,108,416 2021
3  France 2,940,428 2021
4  Italy 2,408,392 2008
5  Russia 2,288,428 2013
6  Spain 1,631,685 2008
7  Netherlands 1,007,562 2021
8  Turkey 957,504 2013
9   Switzerland 810,830 2021
10  Poland 655,332 2021
Rank Country GDP (PPP, Peak Year)
millions of USD
Peak Year
 European Union 22,825,236 2019
1  Germany 4,843,389 2021
2  Russia 4,447,477 2021
3  France 3,322,310 2021
4  United Kingdom 3,276,143 2021
5  Turkey 2,873,841 2021
6  Italy 2,697,137 2021
7  Spain 2,006,709 2019
8  Poland 1,412,297 2021
9  Netherlands 1,079,164 2021
10   Switzerland 677,269 2021

economic history

Industrial growth (1760–1945)

capitalism has been dominant in the western world since the end of feudalism. [ 234 ] From Britain, it gradually spread throughout Europe. [ 235 ] The Industrial Revolution started in Europe, specifically the United Kingdom in the late eighteenth century, [ 236 ] and the nineteenth hundred saw Western Europe industrialize. Economies were disrupted by World War I but by the beginning of World War II they had recovered and were having to compete with the growing economic forte of the United States. World War II, again, damaged much of Europe ‘s industries .

Cold War (1945–1991)

After World War II the economy of the UK was in a state of matter of laying waste, [ 237 ] and continued to suffer proportional economic decline in the take after decades. [ 238 ] Italy was besides in a poor people economic condition but regained a high charge of emergence by the 1950s. West Germany recovered cursorily and had doubled production from pre-war levels by the 1950s. [ 239 ] France besides staged a noteworthy rejoinder enjoying rapid emergence and modernization ; late on Spain, under the leadership of Franco, besides recovered and the nation recorded huge unprecedented economic growth beginning in the 1960s in what is called the spanish miracle. [ 240 ] The majority of Central and Eastern European states came under the restraint of the Soviet Union and therefore were members of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance ( COMECON ). [ 241 ] The states which retained a free-market system were given a boastfully come of care by the United States under the Marshall Plan. [ 242 ] The western states moved to link their economies together, providing the basis for the EU and increasing cross frame trade. This helped them to enjoy quickly improving economies, while those states in COMECON were struggling in a big part due to the cost of the Cold War. Until 1990, the European Community was expanded from 6 founding members to 12. The emphasis placed on resurrecting the west german economy led to it overtaking the UK as Europe ‘s largest economy .

Reunification (1991–present)

With the drop of communism in Central and Eastern Europe in 1991, the post-socialist states began complimentary market reforms. After East and West Germany were reunited in 1990, the economy of West Germany struggled as it had to support and largely rebuild the infrastructure of East Germany. By the millennium change, the EU dominated the economy of Europe comprising the five largest european economies of the time namely Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Spain. In 1999, 12 of the 15 members of the EU joined the Eurozone replacing their erstwhile national currencies by the park euro. The three who chose to remain outside the Eurozone were : the United Kingdom, Denmark and Sweden. The European Union is now the largest economy in the world. [ 244 ] Figures released by Eurostat in 2009 confirmed that the Eurozone had gone into recess in 2008. [ 245 ] It impacted much of the region. [ 246 ] In 2010, fears of a sovereign debt crisis [ 247 ] developed concerning some countries in Europe, specially Greece, Ireland, Spain and Portugal. [ 248 ] As a consequence, measures were taken, specially for Greece, by the leading countries of the Eurozone. [ 249 ] The EU-27 unemployment rate was 10.3 % in 2012. [ 250 ] For those aged 15–24 it was 22.4 %. [ 250 ]

Demographics

In 2017, the population of Europe was estimated to be 742 million according to the 2019 revision of the World Population Prospects [ 2 ] [ 3 ], which is slightly more than one-ninth of the populace ‘s population. [ a ] A hundred ago, Europe had closely a draw of the global ‘s population. [ 252 ] The population of Europe has grown in the past century, but in other areas of the world ( in finical Africa and Asia ) the population has grown far more quickly. [ 253 ] Among the continents, Europe has a relatively high population density, second lone to Asia. Most of Europe is in a manner of Sub-replacement fertility, which means that each new ( -born ) generation is being less populous than the older. The most densely populate nation in Europe ( and in the earth ) is the microstate of Monaco .

ethnic groups

Pan and Pfeil ( 2004 ) consider 87 distinct “ peoples of Europe ”, of which 33 shape the majority population in at least one sovereign submit, while the remaining 54 establish cultural minorities. [ 254 ] According to UN population protrusion, Europe ‘s population may fall to about 7 % of world population by 2050, or 653 million people ( medium variant, 556 to 777 million in low and high variants, respectively ). [ 253 ] Within this context, significant disparities exist between regions in relation to fertility rates. The median count of children per female of child-bearing age is 1.52. [ 255 ] According to some sources, [ 256 ] this pace is higher among Muslims in Europe. The UN predicts a steadily population decline in Central and Eastern Europe as a leave of emigration and low parentage rates. [ 257 ]

migration

Map showing areas of european settlement ( people who claim full european descent ) Europe is home to the highest numeral of migrants of all global regions at 70.6 million people, the IOM ‘s report said. [ 258 ] In 2005, the EU had an overall internet profit from immigration of 1.8 million people. This accounted for about 85 % of Europe ‘s total population growth. [ 259 ] In 2008, 696,000 persons were given citizenship of an EU27 member state, a decrease from 707,000 the former class. [ 260 ] In 2017, approximately 825,000 persons acquired citizenship of an EU28 extremity department of state. [ 261 ] 2.4 million immigrants from non-EU countries entered the EU in 2017. [ 262 ] early modern emigration from Europe began with spanish and portuguese settlers in the sixteenth century, [ 263 ] [ 264 ] and french and english settlers in the seventeenth century. [ 265 ] But numbers remained relatively small until waves of mass emigration in the nineteenth century, when millions of inadequate families left Europe. [ 266 ] today, large populations of european origin are found on every continent. european lineage predominates in North America and to a lesser degree in South America ( peculiarly in Uruguay, Argentina, Chile and Brazil, while most of the other latin american countries besides have a considerable population of european origins ). Australia and New Zealand have big European-derived populations. Africa has no countries with European-derived majorities ( or with the exception of Cape Verde and probably São Tomé and Príncipe, depending on context ), but there are significant minorities, such as the White South Africans in South Africa. In Asia, European-derived populations, ( specifically Russians ), predominate in North Asia and some parts of Northern Kazakhstan. [ 267 ]

Languages

Europe has about 225 autochthonal languages, [ 268 ] by and large falling within three indo-european language groups : the Romance languages, derived from the Latin of the Roman Empire ; the Germanic languages, whose ancestor language came from southern Scandinavia ; and the Slavic languages. [ 218 ] Slavic languages are largely spoken in Southern, Central and Eastern Europe. woo languages are spoken primarily in western and Southern Europe, deoxyadenosine monophosphate well as in Switzerland in Central Europe and Romania and Moldova in Eastern Europe. Germanic languages are spoken in westerly, Northern and Central Europe equally well as in Gibraltar and Malta in Southern Europe. [ 218 ] Languages in adjacent areas show significant overlaps ( such as in English, for case ). early indo-european languages outside the three independent groups include the Baltic group ( latvian and lithuanian ), the Celtic group ( Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx, Welsh, Cornish and Breton [ 218 ] ), Greek, Armenian and Albanian. A distinct non-Indo-European family of Uralic languages ( estonian, finnish, hungarian, Erzya, Komi, Mari, Moksha and Udmurt ) is spoken chiefly in Estonia, Finland, Hungary and parts of Russia. Turkic languages include Azerbaijani, Kazakh and Turkish, in addition to smaller languages in Eastern and Southeast Europe ( Balkan Gagauz Turkish, Bashkir, Chuvash, Crimean Tatar, Karachay-Balkar, Kumyk, Nogai and Tatar ). Kartvelian languages ( georgian, Mingrelian and Svan ) are spoken chiefly in Georgia. Two other language families reside in the North Caucasus ( termed Northeast Caucasian, most notably including Chechen, Avar and Lezgin ; and Northwest Caucasian, most notably including Adyghe ). maltese is the only semitic language that is official within the EU, while Basque is the lone european linguistic process isolate. Multilingualism and the protection of regional and minority languages are recognised political goals in Europe nowadays. The Council of Europe Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and the Council of Europe ‘s european Charter for Regional or Minority Languages set up a legal framework for language rights in Europe .

major cities and urban areas

The four largest urban areas of Europe are Istanbul, Moscow, London and Paris. All have over 10 million residents, [ 269 ] and as such have been described as megacities. [ 270 ] While Istanbul has the highest sum city population, it lies partially in Asia, making Moscow the largest city entirely in Europe. The adjacent largest cities in order of population are Saint Petersburg, Madrid, Berlin and Rome, each having over 3 million residents. [ 269 ] When considering the commuter belts or metropolitan areas, within the EU ( for which comparable data is available ) Moscow covers the largest population, followed in orderliness by Istanbul, London, Paris, Madrid, Milan, Ruhr Area, Saint Petersburg, Rhein-Süd, Barcelona and Berlin. [ 271 ]

culture

contemporary political map of Europe showing cultural proximities “ Europe ” as a cultural concept is substantially derived from the shared inheritance of ancient Greece and the Roman Empire and its cultures. The boundaries of Europe were historically understand as those of Christendom ( or more specifically Latin Christendom ), as established or defended throughout the chivalric and early advanced history of Europe, particularly against Islam, as in the Reconquista and the Ottoman wars in Europe. [ 272 ]
This shared cultural inheritance is combined by overlapping autochthonal national cultures and folklores, roughly divided into Slavic, Latin ( Romance ) and Germanic, but with several components not part of either of these group ( notably Greek, Basque and Celtic ). Historically, special examples with overlapping cultures are Strasbourg with Latin ( Romance ) and Germanic or Trieste with Latin, Slavic and Germanic roots. cultural contacts and mixtures shape a bombastic separate of the regional cultures of Europe. It is frequently described as “ maximal cultural diversity with minimal geographic distances ”. unlike cultural events are organised in Europe, with the target of bringing unlike cultures closer together and raising awareness of their importance, such as the European Capital of Culture, the european Region of Gastronomy, the European Youth Capital and the european capital of Sport .

religion

historically, religion in Europe has been a major influence on european art, acculturation, doctrine and law. There are six patron saints of Europe venerated in Roman Catholicism, five of them so declared by Pope John Paul II between 1980 and 1999 : Saints Cyril and Methodius, Saint Bridget of Sweden, Catherine of Siena and Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross ( Edith Stein ). The exception is Benedict of Nursia, who had already been declared “ Patron Saint of all Europe ” by Pope Paul VI in 1964. [ 276 ] [ circular reference ] The largest religion in Europe is Christianity, with 76.2 % of Europeans considering themselves Christians, [ 277 ] including Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and versatile Protestant denominations. Among Protestants, the most popular are historically state-supported european denominations such as Lutheranism, Anglicanism and the Reformed religion. other protestant church denominations such as historically significant ones like Anabaptists were never supported by any express and therefore are not sol far-flung, american samoa well as these newly arriving from the United States such as Pentecostalism, Adventism, Methodism, Baptists and respective evangelical Protestants ; although Methodism and Baptists both have european origins. The notion of “ Europe ” and the “ westerly World “ has been closely connected with the concept of “ Christianity and Christendom “ ; many tied attribute Christianity for being the link that created a unite european identity. [ 278 ] historically, Europe has been the center and “ birthplace of christian culture “. [ 279 ] [ 280 ] [ 281 ] [ 282 ] Christianity, including the Roman Catholic Church, [ 283 ] [ 284 ] has played a outstanding role in the determine of western civilization since at least the fourth hundred, [ 285 ] [ 286 ] [ 287 ] [ 288 ] and for at least a millennium and a half, Europe has been closely equivalent to christian culture, even though the religion was inherited from the Middle East. christian culture was the overriding violence in westerly civilization, guiding the path of philosophy, art and skill. [ 289 ] [ 290 ] In 2012 Europe had the world ‘s largest christian population. [ 8 ] The second most popular religion is Islam ( 6 % ) [ 291 ] concentrated chiefly in the Balkans and Eastern Europe ( Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Kosovo, Kazakhstan, North Cyprus, Turkey, Azerbaijan, North Caucasus and the Volga-Ural area ). other religions, including Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism are minority religions ( though Tibetan Buddhism is the majority religion of Russia ‘s Republic of Kalmykia ). The twentieth hundred saw the revival of Neopaganism through movements such as Wicca and Druidry. Europe has become a relatively worldly celibate, with an increasing number and proportion of irreligious, atheist and agnostic people, who make up about 18.2 % of Europe ‘s population, [ 292 ] presently the largest laic population in the western world. There are a particularly high number of self-described non-religious people in the Czech Republic, Estonia, Sweden, former East Germany and France. [ 293 ]

sport

This section is an excerpt from Sport in Europe Football is one of the most popular sports in Europe. Camp Nou stadium in Barcelona, the largest in Europe. sport in Europe tends to be highly organized with many sports having professional leagues .
The origins of many of the world’s most popular sports today lie in the codification of many traditional games, especially in Great Britain. However, a paradoxical feature of European sport is the remarkable extent to which local, regional and national variations continue to exist, and even in some instances to predominate.[294] The origins of many of the populace ‘s most popular sports nowadays lie in the codification of many traditional games, particularly in Great Britain. however, a paradoxical have of european sport is the remarkable extent to which local, regional and national variations continue to exist, and even in some instances to predominate .

See besides

Notes

  1. ^ This number includes Siberia, ( about 38 million people ) but exclude european Turkey ( about 12 million ) .

References

Sources

  • National Geographic Society (2005). National Geographic Visual History of the World. Washington, DC: National Geographic Society. ISBN 0-7922-3695-5.
  • Bulliet, Richard; Crossley, Pamela; Headrick, Daniel; Hirsch, Steven; Johnson, Lyman (2011). The Earth and Its Peoples, Brief Edition. 1. Cengage Learning. ISBN 978-0-495-91311-5.
  • Brown, Stephen F.; Anatolios, Khaled; Palmer, Martin (2009). O’Brien, Joanne (ed.). Catholicism & Orthodox Christianity. Infobase Publishing. ISBN 978-1-60413-106-2.

Historical Maps