European integration has been advanced institutionally since 1948 with the founding of theCouncil of Europe, and significantly through the realisation of theEuropean Union (EU), which represents today the majority of Europe.[15] The European Union is asupranational political entity that lies between aconfederation and afederation and is based on a system ofEuropean treaties.[16] The EU originated in Western Europe but has beenexpanding eastward since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. A majority of its members have adopted a common currency, theeuro, and participate in theEuropean single market anda customs union. A large bloc of countries, theSchengen Area, have also abolished internal border and immigration controls.Regular popular elections take place every five years within the EU; they are considered the second-largest democratic elections in the world afterIndia's. TheEU economy is the second-largest in the world by nominal GDP and third-largest by PPP-adjusted GDP.
Reconstruction of an earlyworld map made byAnaximander of the 6th century BCE, dividing the known world into three large landmasses, one of which was named Europe
In classicalGreek mythology,Europa (Ancient Greek:Εὐρώπη,Eurṓpē) was aPhoenician princess. One view is that her name derives from the Ancient Greek elementsεὐρύς (eurús) 'wide, broad', andὤψ (ōps,gen.ὠπός,ōpós) 'eye, face, countenance', hence their compositeEurṓpē would mean 'wide-gazing' or 'broad of aspect'.[17][18][19][20]Broad has been anepithet of Earth herself in the reconstructedProto-Indo-European religion and the poetry devoted to it.[17] An alternative view is that ofRobert Beekes, who has argued in favour of a pre-Indo-European origin for the name, explaining that a derivation fromeurus would yield a differenttoponym than Europa. Beekes has located toponyms related to that of Europa in the territory of ancient Greece, and localities such as that ofEuropos inancient Macedonia.[21]
There have been attempts to connectEurṓpē to a Semitic term forwest, this being eitherAkkadianerebu meaning 'to go down, set' (said of the sun) orPhoenician'ereb 'evening, west',[20] which is at the origin ofArabicmaghreb andHebrewma'arav.Martin Litchfield West stated that "phonologically, the match between Europa's name and any form of the Semitic word is very poor",[22] while Beekes considers a connection to Semitic languages improbable.[21]
Most major world languages use words derived fromEurṓpē orEuropa to refer to the continent. Chinese, for example, uses the wordŌuzhōu (歐洲/欧洲), which is an abbreviation of the transliterated nameŌuluóbā zhōu (歐羅巴洲) (zhōu means "continent"); a similar Chinese-derived termŌshū (欧州) is also sometimes used in Japanese such as in the Japanese name of the European Union,Ōshū Rengō (欧州連合), despite thekatakanaYōroppa (ヨーロッパ) being more commonly used. In some Turkic languages, the originally Persian nameFrangistan ("land of theFranks") is used casually in referring to much of Europe, besides official names such asAvrupa orEvropa.[23]
The prevalent definition of Europe as a geographical term has been in use since the mid-19th century.Europe is taken to be bounded by large bodies of water to the north, west and south; Europe's limits to the east and north-east are usually taken to be theUral Mountains, theUral River, and theCaspian Sea; to the south-east, theCaucasus Mountains, theBlack Sea, and the waterways connecting the Black Sea to theMediterranean Sea.[24]
Definitions used for the boundary between Asia and Europe in different periods of history.A medievalT and O map printed byGünther Zainer in 1472, showing the three continents as domains of the sons ofNoah – Asia to Sem (Shem), Europe to Iafeth (Japheth) and Africa to Cham (Ham)
Islands are generally grouped with the nearest continental landmass, henceIceland is considered to be part of Europe, while the nearby island of Greenland is usually assigned toNorth America, although politically belonging to Denmark. Nevertheless, there are some exceptions based on sociopolitical and cultural differences. Cyprus is closest toAnatolia (or Asia Minor), but is considered part of Europe politically[25] and it is a member state of the EU. Malta was considered an island ofNorth-western Africa for centuries, but now it is considered to be part of Europe as well.[26] "Europe", as used specifically inBritish English, may also refer toContinental Europe exclusively.[27]
The term "continent" usually implies thephysical geography of a large land mass completely or almost completely surrounded by water at its borders. Prior to the adoption of the current convention that includes mountain divides, the border between Europe and Asia had been redefined several times since its first conception inclassical antiquity, but always 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. CartographerHerman Moll suggested in 1715 Europe was bounded by a series of partly joined waterways directed towards the Turkish straits, and theIrtysh River draining into the upper part of theOb River and theArctic Ocean. In contrast, the present eastern boundary of Europe partially adheres to the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, which is somewhat arbitrary and inconsistent compared to any clear-cut definition of the term "continent".
The current division of Eurasia into two continents now reflectsEast-West cultural, linguistic and ethnic differences which vary on a spectrum rather than with a sharp dividing line. The geographic border between Europe and Asia does not follow any state boundaries and now only follows a few bodies of water. Turkey is generally considered atranscontinental country divided entirely by water, while Russia andKazakhstan are only partly divided by waterways. France, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain are also transcontinental (or more properly, intercontinental, when oceans or large seas are involved) in that their main land areas are in Europe while pockets of their territories are located on othercontinents separated from Europe by large bodies of water. Spain, for example, has territories south of theMediterranean Sea—namely,Ceuta andMelilla—which are parts ofAfrica and share a border with Morocco. According to the current convention, Georgia and Azerbaijan are transcontinental countries where waterways have been completely replaced by mountains as the divide between continents.
The first recorded usage ofEurṓpē as a geographic term is in theHomeric Hymn toDelian Apollo, in reference to the western shore of theAegean Sea. As a name for a part of the known world, it is first used in the 6th century BCE byAnaximander andHecataeus. Anaximander placed the boundary between Asia and Europe along the Phasis River (the modernRioni River on the territory ofGeorgia) in the Caucasus, a convention still followed byHerodotus in the 5th century BCE.[28] Herodotus mentioned that the world had been divided by unknown persons into three parts—Europe, Asia, and Libya (Africa)—with theNile and the Phasis forming their boundaries—though he also states that some considered theRiver Don, rather than the Phasis, as the boundary between Europe and Asia.[29] Europe's eastern frontier was defined in the 1st century by geographerStrabo at the River Don.[30] TheBook of Jubilees described the continents as the lands given byNoah to his three sons; Europe was defined as stretching from thePillars of Hercules at theStrait of Gibraltar, separating it fromNorthwest Africa, to the Don, separating it from Asia.[31]
The convention received by theMiddle Ages and surviving into modern usage is that of theRoman era used by Roman-era authors such asPosidonius,[32]Strabo,[33] andPtolemy,[34] who took the Tanais (the modern Don River) as the boundary.
The Roman Empire did not attach a strong identity to the concept of continental divisions. However, following the fall of theWestern Roman Empire, theculture that developed in its place, linked to Latin and the Catholic church, began to associate itself with the concept of "Europe".[35] The term "Europe" is first used for a cultural sphere in theCarolingian Renaissance of the 9th century. From that time, the term designated the sphere of influence of theWestern Church, as opposed to both theEastern Orthodox churches and to theIslamic world.
A cultural definition of Europe as the lands ofLatin Christendom coalesced in the 8th century, signifying the new cultural condominium created through the confluence of Germanic traditions and Christian-Latin culture, defined partly in contrast withByzantium andIslam, and limited to northernIberia, the British Isles, France, Christianised western Germany, the Alpine regions and northern and central Italy.[36][37] The concept is one of the lasting legacies of theCarolingian Renaissance:Europa often[dubious –discuss] figures in the letters of Charlemagne's court scholar,Alcuin.[38] The transition of Europe to being a cultural term as well as a geographic one led to the borders of Europe being affected by cultural considerations in the East, especially relating to areas under Byzantine, Ottoman, and Russian influence. Such questions were affected by the positive connotations associated with the term Europe by its users. Such cultural considerations were not applied to the Americas, despite their conquest and settlement by European states. Instead, the concept of "Western civilisation" emerged as a way of grouping together Europe and these colonies.[39]
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.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 precise eastern boundary of Europe arises in the Early Modern period, as the eastern extension ofMuscovy began to includeNorth Asia. Throughout the Middle Ages and into the 18th century, the traditional division of the landmass ofEurasia into two continents, Europe and Asia, followed Ptolemy, with the boundary following theTurkish Straits, theBlack Sea, theKerch Strait, theSea of Azov and theDon (ancientTanais). But maps produced during the 16th to 18th centuries tended to differ in how to continue the boundary beyond the Don bend atKalach-na-Donu (where it is closest to the Volga, now joined with it by theVolga–Don Canal), into territory not described in any detail by the ancient geographers.
Around 1715,Herman Moll produced a map showing the northern part of theOb River and theIrtysh River, a major tributary of the Ob, as components of a series of partly joined waterways taking the boundary 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 proposal to adhere to major rivers as the line of demarcation was never taken up by other geographers who were beginning to move away from the idea of water boundaries as the only legitimate divides between Europe and Asia.
Four years later, in 1725,Philip Johan von Strahlenberg was the first to depart from the classical Don boundary. He drew a new line along theVolga, following the Volga north until theSamara Bend, alongObshchy Syrt (thedrainage divide between the Volga andUral Rivers), then north and east along the latter waterway to its source in theUral Mountains. At this point he proposed that mountain ranges could be included as boundaries between continents as alternatives to nearby waterways. Accordingly, he drew the new boundary north alongUral Mountains rather than the nearby and parallel running Ob and Irtysh rivers.[40] This was endorsed by the Russian Empire and introduced the convention that would eventually become commonly accepted. However, this did not come without criticism.Voltaire, writing in 1760 aboutPeter the Great's efforts to make Russia more European, ignored the whole boundary question with his claim that neither Russia, Scandinavia, northern Germany, nor Poland were fully part of Europe.[35] Since then, many modern analytical geographers likeHalford Mackinder have declared that they see little validity in the Ural Mountains as a boundary between continents.[41]
The mapmakers continued to differ on the boundary between the lower Don and Samara well into the 19th century. The1745 atlas published by theRussian Academy of Sciences has the boundary follow the Don beyond Kalach as far asSerafimovich before cutting north towardsArkhangelsk, while other 18th- to 19th-century mapmakers such asJohn Cary followed Strahlenberg's prescription. To the south, theKuma–Manych Depression was identifiedc. 1773 by a German naturalist,Peter Simon Pallas, as a valley that once connected the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea,[42][43] and subsequently was proposed as a natural boundary between continents.
By the mid-19th century, there were three main conventions, one following the Don, theVolga–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 altogether, following theGreater Caucasus watershed to the Caspian. The question was still treated as a "controversy" in geographical literature of the 1860s, withDouglas Freshfield advocating the Caucasus crest boundary as the "best possible", citing support from various "modern geographers".[44]
In Russia and theSoviet Union, the boundary along the Kuma–Manych Depression was the most commonly used as early as 1906.[45] In 1958, the Soviet Geographical Society formally recommended that the boundary between the Europe and Asia be drawn in textbooks fromBaydaratskaya Bay, on theKara Sea, along the eastern foot of Ural Mountains, then following theUral River until theMugodzhar Hills, and then theEmba River; and Kuma–Manych Depression,[46] thus placing the Caucasus entirely in Asia and the Urals entirely in Europe.[47] TheFlora Europaea adopted a boundary along theTerek andKuban rivers, so southwards from the Kuma and the Manych, but still with the Caucasus entirely in Asia.[48][49] However, most geographers in the Soviet Union favoured the boundary along the Caucasus crest,[50] and this became the common convention in the later 20th century, although the Kuma–Manych boundary remained in use in some 20th-century maps.
Some view the separation ofEurasia into Asia and Europe as a residue ofEurocentrism: "In physical, cultural and historical diversity, China and India are comparable to the entire European landmass, not to a single European country. [...]."[51]
During the 2.5 million years of thePleistocene, numerous cold phases calledglacials (Quaternary ice age), or significant advances of continental ice sheets, in Europe and North America, occurred at intervals of approximately 40,000 to 100,000 years. The long glacial periods were separated by more temperate and shorterinterglacials which lasted about 10,000–15,000 years. The last cold episode of thelast glacial period ended about 10,000 years ago.[53] Earth is currently in an interglacial period of the Quaternary, called theHolocene.[54]
Homo erectus georgicus, which lived roughly 1.8 million years ago inGeorgia, is the earliesthominin to have been discovered in Europe.[55]Other hominin remains, dating back roughly 1 million years, have been discovered inAtapuerca,Spain.[56]Neanderthal man (named after theNeandertal valley inGermany) appeared in Europe 150,000 years ago (115,000 years ago it is found already in the territory of present-dayPoland[57]) and disappeared from the fossil record about 40,000 years ago,[58] with their final refuge being the Iberian Peninsula. The Neanderthals were supplanted by modern humans (Cro-Magnons), who seem to have appeared in Europe around 43,000 to 40,000 years ago.[59] However, there is also evidence that Homo sapiens arrived in Europe around 54,000 years ago, some 10,000 years earlier than previously thought.[60] The earliest sites in Europe dated 48,000 years ago areRiparo Mochi (Italy),Geissenklösterle (Germany) andIsturitz (France).[61][62]
TheEuropean Neolithic period—marked by the cultivation of crops and the raising of livestock, increased numbers of settlements and the widespread use of pottery—began around 7000 BCE inGreece and theBalkans, probably influenced by earlier farming practices inAnatolia and theNear East.[63] It spread from the Balkans along the valleys of theDanube and theRhine (Linear Pottery culture), and along theMediterranean coast (Cardial culture). Between 4500 and 3000 BCE, these central European neolithic cultures developed further to the west and the north, transmitting newly acquired skills in producing copper artifacts. In Western Europe the Neolithic period was characterised not by large agricultural settlements but by field monuments, such ascausewayed enclosures,burial mounds andmegalithic tombs.[64] TheCorded Ware cultural horizon flourished at the transition from the Neolithic to theChalcolithic. During this period giantmegalithic monuments, such as theMegalithic Temples of Malta andStonehenge, were constructed throughout Western and Southern Europe.[65][66]
Expanding from their base in central Italy beginning in the third century BCE, the Romans gradually expanded to eventually rule the entire Mediterranean basin and Western Europe by the turn of the millennium. TheRoman Republic ended in 27 BCE, whenAugustus proclaimed theRoman Empire. The two centuries that followed are known as thepax romana, a period of unprecedented peace, prosperity and political stability in most of Europe.[80] The empire continued to expand under emperors such asAntoninus Pius andMarcus Aurelius, who spent time on the Empire's northern border fightingGermanic,Pictish andScottish tribes.[81][82]Christianity waslegalised byConstantine I in 313 CE after three centuries ofimperial persecution. Constantine also permanently moved the capital of the empire from Rome to the city ofByzantium (modern-dayIstanbul) which was renamedConstantinople in his honour in 330 CE. Christianity became the sole official religion of the empire in 380 CE, and in 391–392 CE the emperorTheodosius outlawed pagan religions.[83] This is sometimes considered to mark the end of antiquity; alternatively antiquity is considered to end with thefall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE; the closure of the paganPlatonic Academy of Athens in 529 CE;[84] or the rise of Islam in the early 7th century CE. During most of its existence, theByzantine Empire was one of the most powerful economic, cultural, and military forces in Europe.[85]
Isolated monastic communities were the only places to safeguard and compile written knowledge accumulated previously; apart from this, very few written records survive. Much literature, philosophy, mathematics, and other thinking from the classical period disappeared from Western Europe, though they were preserved in the east, in the Byzantine Empire.[87]
While the Roman empire in the west continued to decline, Roman traditions and the Roman state remained strong in the predominantly Greek-speakingEastern Roman Empire, also known as theByzantine Empire. During most of its existence, the Byzantine Empire was the most powerful economic, cultural, and military force in Europe. EmperorJustinian I presided over Constantinople's first golden age: he established alegal code that forms the basis of many modern legal systems, funded the construction of theHagia Sophia and brought the Christian church under state control.[88]
From the 7th century onwards, as the Byzantines and neighbouringSasanid Persians were severely weakened due to the protracted, centuries-lasting and frequentByzantine–Sasanian wars, the Muslim Arabs began to make inroads into historically Roman territory, taking the Levant and North Africa and making inroads intoAsia Minor. In the mid-7th century, following theMuslim conquest of Persia, Islam penetrated into theCaucasus region.[89] Over the next centuries Muslim forces tookCyprus,Malta,Crete,Sicily, andparts of southern Italy.[90] Between 711 and 720, most of the lands of theVisigothic Kingdom ofIberia were brought underMuslim rule—save for small areas in the northwest (Asturias) and largelyBasque regions in thePyrenees. This territory, under the Arabic nameAl-Andalus, became part of the expandingUmayyad Caliphate. The unsuccessfulsecond siege of Constantinople (717) weakened theUmayyad dynasty and reduced their prestige. The Umayyads were then defeated by theFrankish leaderCharles Martel at theBattle of Poitiers in 732, which ended their northward advance. In the remote regions of north-western Iberia and the middlePyrenees the power of the Muslims in the south was scarcely felt. It was here that the foundations of the Christian kingdoms ofAsturias,Leon, andGalicia were laid and from where the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula would start. However, no coordinated attempt would be made to drive theMoors out. The Christian kingdoms were mainly focused on their own internal power struggles. As a result, theReconquista took the greater part of eight hundred years, in which period a long list of Alfonsos, Sanchos, Ordoños, Ramiros, Fernandos, and Bermudos would be fighting their Christian rivals as much as the Muslim invaders.
During the Dark Ages, theWestern Roman Empire fell under the control of various tribes. The Germanic and Slav tribes established their domains over Western and Eastern Europe, respectively.[91] Eventually the Frankish tribes were united underClovis I.[92]Charlemagne, a Frankish king of theCarolingian dynasty who had conquered most of Western Europe, was anointed "Holy Roman Emperor" by the Pope in 800. This led in 962 to the founding of theHoly Roman Empire, which eventually became centred in the German principalities of central Europe.[93]
Themaritime republics of medievalItaly reestablished contacts between Europe, Asia and Africa with extensive trade networks and colonies across the Mediterranean, and had an essential role in theCrusades.[97][98]
During the High Middle Ages the population of Europe experienced significant growth, culminating in theRenaissance of the 12th century. Economic growth, together with the lack of safety on the mainland trading routes, made possible the development of major commercial routes along the coast of theMediterranean andBaltic Seas. The growing wealth and independence acquired by some coastal cities gave theMaritime Republics a leading role in the European scene.
The Middle Ages on the mainland were dominated by the two upper echelons of the social structure: the nobility and the clergy.Feudalism developed inFrance in the Early Middle Ages, and soon spread throughout Europe.[99] A struggle for influence between thenobility and themonarchy in England led to the writing ofMagna Carta and the establishment of aparliament.[100] The primary source of culture in this period came from the RomanCatholic Church. Through monasteries andcathedral schools, the Church was responsible for education in much of Europe.[99]
In the 11th and 12th centuries, constant incursions by nomadicTurkic tribes, such as thePechenegs and theCuman-Kipchaks, caused a massive migration ofSlavic populations to the safer, heavily forested regions of the north, and temporarily halted the expansion of the Rus' state to the south and east.[116] Like many other parts ofEurasia, these territories wereoverrun by the Mongols.[117] The invaders, who became known asTatars, were mostly Turkic-speaking peoples under Mongol suzerainty. They established the state of theGolden Horde with headquarters in Crimea, which later adopted Islam as a religion, and ruled over modern-day southern and central Russia for more than three centuries.[118][119] After the collapse of Mongol dominions, the first Romanian states (principalities) emerged in the 14th century:Moldavia andWalachia. Previously, these territories were under the successive control of Pechenegs and Cumans.[120] From the 12th to the 15th centuries, theGrand Duchy of Moscow grew from a small principality under Mongol rule to the largest state in Europe, overthrowing the Mongols in 1480, and eventually becoming theTsardom of Russia. The state was consolidated underIvan III the Great andIvan the Terrible, steadily expanding to the east and south over the next centuries.
TheGreat Famine of 1315–1317 was the firstcrisis that would strike Europe in the late Middle Ages.[121] The period between 1348 and 1420 witnessed the heaviest loss. The population ofFrance was reduced by half.[122][123] Medieval Britain was afflicted by 95 famines,[124] and France suffered the effects of 75 or more in the same period.[125] Europe was devastated in the mid-14th century by theBlack Death, one of the most deadlypandemics in human history which killed an estimated 25 million people in Europe alone—a third of theEuropean population at the time.[126]
The plague had a devastating effect on Europe's social structure; it induced people to live for the moment as illustrated byGiovanni Boccaccio inThe Decameron (1353). It was a serious blow to the Roman Catholic Church and led to increasedpersecution of Jews,beggars andlepers.[127] The plague is thought to have returned every generation with varyingvirulence and mortalities until the 18th century.[128] During this period, more than 100 plagueepidemics swept across Europe.[129]
Political intrigue within the Church in the mid-14th century caused theWestern Schism. During this 40-year period, two popes—one inAvignon and one in Rome—claimed rulership over the Church. Although the schism was eventually healed in 1417, the papacy's spiritual authority had suffered greatly.[138] In the 15th century, Europe started to extend itself beyond its geographic frontiers. Spain and Portugal, the greatest naval powers of the time, took the lead in exploring the world.[139][140] Exploration reached theSouthern Hemisphere in the Atlantic and the southern tip of Africa.Christopher Columbus reached theNew World in 1492, andVasco da Gama opened the ocean route to the East, linking the Atlantic andIndian Oceans in 1498. The Portuguese-born explorerFerdinand Magellan reached Asia westward across the Atlantic and thePacific Oceans in a Spanish expedition, resulting in the firstcircumnavigation of the globe, completed by the SpaniardJuan Sebastián Elcano (1519–1522). Soon after, the Spanish and Portuguese began establishing large global empires in theAmericas, Asia, Africa and Oceania.[141] France, theNetherlands and England soon followed in building large colonial empires with vast holdings in Africa, the Americas and Asia. In 1588, theSpanish Armada failed to invade England. A year later,England tried unsuccessfully to invade Spain, allowingPhilip II of Spain to maintain his dominant war capacity in Europe. This English disaster also allowed the Spanish fleet to retain its capability to wage war for the next decades. However, two more Spanish armadas failed to invade England (2nd Spanish Armada and3rd Spanish Armada).[142][143][144][145]
From the 15th to 18th centuries, when the disintegrating khanates of theGolden Horde were conquered by Russia,Tatars from theCrimean Khanate frequentlyraided Eastern Slavic lands tocapture slaves.[157] Further east, theNogai Horde andKazakh Khanate frequently raided the Slavic-speaking areas of contemporary Russia and Ukraine for hundreds of years, until the Russian expansion and conquest of most of northern Eurasia (i.e. Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Siberia).
The Renaissance and theNew Monarchs marked the start of an Age of Discovery, a period of exploration, invention and scientific development.[158] Important figures of theScientific Revolution during the 16th and 17th centuries includedCopernicus,Kepler,Galileo, andIsaac Newton.[159] According to Peter Barrett, "It is widely accepted that 'modern science' arose in the Europe of the 17th century (towards the end of the Renaissance), introducing a new understanding of the natural world."[130]
The Age of Enlightenment was a powerful intellectual movement during the 18th century promoting scientific and reason-based thoughts.[161][162][163] Discontent with the aristocracy and clergy's monopoly on political power in France resulted in the French Revolution, and the establishment of theFirst Republic as a result of which the monarchy and many of the nobility perished during the initialreign of terror.[164]Napoleon Bonaparte rose to power in the aftermath of the French Revolution, and established theFirst French Empire that, during theNapoleonic Wars, grew to encompass large parts of Europe before collapsing in 1815 with theBattle of Waterloo.[165][166]Napoleonic rule resulted in the further dissemination of the ideals of the French Revolution, including that of thenation state, as well as the widespread adoption of the French models ofadministration,law andeducation.[167][168][169] TheCongress of Vienna, convened after Napoleon's downfall, established a newbalance of power in Europe centred on the five "great powers": the UK, France,Prussia,Austria, and Russia.[170] This balance would remain in place until theRevolutions of 1848, during which liberal uprisings affected all of Europe except for Russia and the UK. These revolutions were eventually put down by conservative elements and few reforms resulted.[171] The year 1859 saw the unification of Romania, as a nation state, from smaller principalities. In 1867, theAustro-Hungarian empire wasformed; 1871 saw the unifications of bothItaly andGermany as nation-states from smaller principalities.[172]
In parallel, theEastern Question grew more complex ever since the Ottoman defeat in theRusso-Turkish War (1768–1774). As the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire seemed imminent, theGreat Powers struggled to safeguard their strategic and commercial interests in the Ottoman domains. TheRussian Empire stood to benefit from the decline, whereas theHabsburg Empire and Britain perceived the preservation of the Ottoman Empire to be in their best interests. Meanwhile, theSerbian Revolution (1804) andGreek War of Independence (1821) marked the beginning of the end of Ottoman rule in theBalkans, which ended with theBalkan Wars in 1912–1913.[173] Formal recognition of thede facto independent principalities ofMontenegro,Serbia andRomania ensued at theCongress of Berlin in 1878.
TheIndustrial Revolution started inGreat Britain in the last part of the 18th century and spread throughout Europe. The invention and implementation of new technologies resulted in rapid urban growth, mass employment and the rise of a new working class.[174] Reforms in social and economic spheres followed, including thefirst laws onchild labour, the legalisation oftrade unions,[175] and theabolition of slavery.[176] In Britain, thePublic Health Act of 1875 was passed, which significantly improved living conditions in many British cities.[177] Europe's population increased from about 100 million in 1700 to 400 million by 1900.[178] The last major famine recorded in Western Europe, theGreat Famine of Ireland, caused death and mass emigration of millions of Irish people.[179] In the 19th century, 70 million people left Europe in migrations to various European colonies abroad and to the United States.[180] The industrial revolution also led to large population growth, and theshare of the world population living in Europe reached a peak of slightly above 25% around the year 1913.[181][182]
Map depicting the military alliances of theFirst World War in 1914–1918
Russia was plunged into theRussian Revolution, which threw down theTsarist monarchy and replaced it with thecommunistSoviet Union,[187] leading also to the independence of many formerRussian governorates, such asFinland,Estonia,Latvia andLithuania, as new European countries.[188]Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire collapsed and broke up into separate nations, and many other nations had their borders redrawn. TheTreaty of Versailles, which officially ended the First World War in 1919, was harsh towards Germany, upon whom it placed full responsibility for the war and imposed heavy sanctions.[189] Excess deaths in Russia over the course of the First World War and theRussian Civil War (including the postwarfamine) amounted to a combined total of 18 million.[190] In 1932–1933, underStalin's leadership, confiscations of grain by the Soviet authorities contributed to thesecond Soviet famine which caused millions of deaths;[191] survivingkulaks were persecuted and many sent toGulags to doforced labour. Stalin was also responsible for theGreat Purge of 1937–38 in which theNKVD executed 681,692 people;[192] millions of people weredeported and exiled to remote areas of the Soviet Union.[193]
In 1933, Hitler became the leader of Germany and began to work towards his goal of building Greater Germany. Germany re-expanded and took back theSaarland andRhineland in 1935 and 1936. In 1938,Austria became a part of Germany following theAnschluss. Following theMunich Agreement signed by Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Italy, later in 1938 Germany annexed theSudetenland, which was a part ofCzechoslovakia inhabited by ethnic Germans. In early 1939, the remainder of Czechoslovakia was split into theProtectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, controlled by Germany and theSlovak Republic. At the time, the United Kingdom and France preferred a policy ofappeasement.
With tensions mounting between Germany andPoland over the future ofDanzig, the Germans turned to the Soviets and signed theMolotov–Ribbentrop Pact, which allowed the Soviets to invade the Baltic states and parts of Poland and Romania. Germanyinvaded Poland on 1 September 1939, prompting France and the United Kingdom to declare war on Germany on 3 September, opening theEuropean Theatre of the Second World War.[201][202][203] TheSoviet invasion of Poland started on 17 September and Poland fell soon thereafter. On 24 September, the Soviet Union attacked theBaltic countries and, on 30 November, Finland, the latter of which was followed by the devastatingWinter War for the Red Army.[204] The British hoped to land atNarvik and send troops to aid Finland, but their primary objective in the landing was to encircle Germany and cut the Germans off from Scandinavian resources. Around the same time, Germany moved troops into Denmark. ThePhoney War continued.
After the staggeringBattle of Stalingrad in 1943, the German offensive in the Soviet Union turned into a continual fallback. TheBattle of Kursk, which involved the largesttank battle in history, was the last major German offensive on theEastern Front. In June 1944, British and American forces invaded France in theD-Day landings, opening a new front against Germany. Berlin finallyfell in 1945, ending the Second World War in Europe. The war was the largest and most destructive in human history, with60 million dead across the world.[209] More than 40 million people in Europe had died as a result of the Second World War,[210] including between 11 and 17 million people who perished duringthe Holocaust.[211] The Soviet Unionlost around 27 million people (mostly civilians) during the war, about half of all Second World War casualties.[212] By the end of the Second World War, Europe had more than 40 millionrefugees.[213][214][215] Severalpost-war expulsions in Central and Eastern Europe displaced a total of about 20 million people.[216]
The First World War, and especially the Second World War, diminished the eminence of Western Europe in world affairs. After the Second World War the map of Europe was redrawn at theYalta Conference and divided into two blocs, the Western countries and the communist Eastern bloc, separated by what was later called byWinston Churchill an "Iron Curtain". The United States and Western Europe established theNATO alliance and, later, the Soviet Union and Central Europe established theWarsaw Pact.[217] Particular hot spots after the Second World War wereBerlin andTrieste, whereby theFree Territory of Trieste, founded in 1947 with the UN, was dissolved in 1954 and 1975, respectively. TheBerlin blockade in 1948 and 1949 and the construction of theBerlin Wall in 1961 were one of the great international crises of theCold War.[218][219][220]
The two newsuperpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, became locked in a fifty-year-long Cold War, centred onnuclear proliferation. At the same timedecolonisation, which had already started after the First World War, gradually resulted in the independence of most of the European colonies in Asia and Africa.[14]
General topographic map of Europe showing physical, political and population characteristics, as per 2024
Europe makes up the western fifth of theEurasian landmass.[24] It has a higher ratio of coast to landmass than any other continent or subcontinent.[236] Its maritime 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.[237]Land relief in Europe shows great variation within relatively small areas. The southern regions are more mountainous, while moving north the terrain descends from the highAlps,Pyrenees andCarpathians, through hilly uplands, into broad, low northern plains, which are vast in the east. This extended lowland is known as theGreat European Plain and at its heart lies theNorth German Plain. An arc of uplands also exists along the north-western seaboard, 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. Subregions such as theIberian Peninsula and theItalian 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 trend. Sub-regions likeIceland, Britain and Ireland are special cases. The former is a land unto itself in the northern ocean that is counted as part of Europe, while the latter are upland areas that were once joined to the mainland untilrising sea levels cut them off.
Europe lies mainly in thetemperate climate zone of the northern hemisphere, where theprevailing wind direction is from the west. The climate is milder in comparison to other areas of the same latitude around the globe due to the influence of theGulf Stream, an ocean current which carries warm water from theGulf of Mexico across theAtlantic Ocean to Europe.[238] The Gulf Stream is nicknamed "Europe's central heating", because it makes Europe's climate warmer and wetter than it would otherwise be. The Gulf Stream not only carries warm water to Europe's coast but also warms up the prevailing westerly winds that blow across the continent from the Atlantic Ocean.
Therefore, the average temperature throughout the year ofAveiro is 16 °C (61 °F), while it is only 13 °C (55 °F) inNew York City which is almost on the same latitude, bordering the same ocean. Berlin, Germany; Calgary, Canada; and Irkutsk, in far south-eastern Russia, lie on around the same latitude; January temperatures in Berlin average around 8 °C (14 °F) higher than those in Calgary and they are almost 22 °C (40 °F) higher than average temperatures in Irkutsk.[238]
The large water masses of theMediterranean Sea, which equalise the temperatures on an annual and daily average, are also of particular importance. The water of the Mediterranean extends from theSahara desert to the Alpine arc in its northernmost part of theAdriatic Sea nearTrieste.[239]
In general, Europe is not just colder towards the north compared to the south, but it also gets colder from the west towards the east. The climate is more oceanic in the west and less so in the east. This can be illustrated by the following table of average temperatures at locations roughly following the 64th, 60th, 55th, 50th, 45th and 40thlatitudes. None of them is located at high altitude; most of them are close to the sea.
[241]The average temperatures for the coldest month, as well as the annual average temperatures, drop from the west to the east. For instance, Edinburgh is warmer than Belgrade during the coldest month of the year, although Belgrade is around 10° of latitude farther south.
Increase of average yearly temperature (2000–2017) above the 20th century average in selected cities in Europe[242]Climate change has resulted in an increase in temperature of 2.3 °C (4.14 °F) (2022) in Europe compared to pre-industrial levels. Europe is the fastest warming continent in the world.[243]Europe's climate is getting warmer due toanthropogenic activity. According to international climate experts, global temperature rise should not exceed 2°C to prevent the most dangerousconsequences of climate change; without reduction ingreenhouse gas emissions, this could happen before 2050.[244][245]Climate change has implications for all regions of Europe, with the extent and nature of effects varying across the continent.Effects on European countries include warmer weather and increasing frequency and intensity ofextreme weather such asheat waves, bringinghealth risks and effects on ecosystems. European countries are major contributors to global greenhouse gas emissions, although theEuropean Union and governments of several countries have outlined plans to implementclimate change mitigation and anenergy transition in the 21st century, theEuropean Green Deal being one of these.
The geological history of Europe traces back to the formation of theBaltic Shield (Fennoscandia) and theSarmatian craton, both around 2.25 billion years ago, followed by theVolgo–Uralia shield, the three together leading to theEast European craton (≈Baltica) which became a part of thesupercontinentColumbia. Around 1.1 billion years ago, Baltica and Arctica (as part of theLaurentia block) became joined toRodinia, later resplitting around 550 million years ago to reform as Baltica. Around 440 million years agoEuramerica was formed from Baltica and Laurentia; a further joining withGondwana then leading to the formation ofPangea. Around 190 million years ago, Gondwana andLaurasia split apart due 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 land connection between the two persisted for a considerable time, viaGreenland, leading to interchange 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 shape dates to thelate Tertiary period about five million years ago.[246]
The geology of Europe is hugely varied and complex and gives rise to the wide variety of landscapes found across the continent, from theScottish Highlands to the rollingplains of Hungary.[247] Europe's most significant feature is the dichotomy between highland and mountainousSouthern Europe and a vast, partially underwater, northern plain ranging from Ireland in the west to theUral Mountains in the east. These two halves are separated by the mountain chains of thePyrenees andAlps/Carpathians. The northern plains are delimited in the west by theScandinavian Mountains and the mountainous parts of the British Isles. Major shallow water bodies submerging parts of the northern plains are theCeltic Sea, theNorth Sea, theBaltic Sea complex andBarents Sea.
The northern plain contains the old geological continent ofBaltica and so may be regarded geologically as the "main continent", while peripheral highlands and mountainous regions in the south and west constitute fragments from various other geological continents. Most of the older geology of western Europe existed as part of the ancientmicrocontinentAvalonia.
Flora
Land use map of Europe with arable farmland (yellow), forest (dark green), pasture (light green) and tundra, or bogs, in the north (dark yellow)
Having lived side by side with agricultural peoples for millennia, Europe's animals and plants have been profoundly affected by the presence and activities of humans. With the exception ofFennoscandia and northern Russia, few areas of untouched wilderness are currently found in Europe, except for variousnational parks.
The main natural vegetation cover in Europe is mixedforest. The conditions for growth are very favourable. In the north, theGulf Stream andNorth Atlantic Drift warm the continent. Southern Europe has a warm but mild climate. There are frequent summer droughts in this region. Mountain ridges also affect the conditions. Some of these, such as theAlps and thePyrenees, are oriented east–west and allow the wind to carry large masses of water from the ocean in the interior. 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 favourable. Few corners of mainland Europe have not been grazed bylivestock at some point in time, and the cutting down of the preagricultural forest habitat caused disruption to the original plant and animal ecosystems.
Floristic regions of Europe and neighbouring areas, according to Wolfgang Frey and Rainer Lösch
Possibly 80 to 90 percent of Europe was once covered by forest.[248] It stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the Arctic Ocean. Although over half of Europe's original forests disappeared through the centuries ofdeforestation, Europe still has over one quarter of its land area as forest, such as thebroadleaf and mixed forests,taiga of Scandinavia and Russia, mixedrainforests of the Caucasus and theCork oak forests in the western Mediterranean. During recent times, deforestation has been slowed and many trees have been planted. However, in many cases monocultureplantations ofconifers have replaced the original mixed natural forest, because these grow quicker. The plantations now cover vast areas of land, but offer poorer habitats for many European forest dwelling species which require a mixture of tree species and diverse forest structure. The amount of natural forest in Western Europe is just 2–3% or less, while in its Western Russia its 5–10%. The European country with thesmallest percentage of forested area isIceland (1%), while the most forested country is Finland (77%).[249]
In temperate Europe, mixed forest with bothbroadleaf and coniferous trees dominate. The most important species in central and western Europe arebeech andoak. In the north, the taiga is a mixedspruce–pine–birch forest; further north within Russia and extreme northern Scandinavia, the taiga gives way totundra as the Arctic is approached. In the Mediterranean, manyolive trees have been planted, which are very well adapted to its arid climate;Mediterranean Cypress is also widely planted in southern Europe. The semi-arid Mediterranean region hosts much scrub forest. A narrow east–west tongue of Eurasiangrassland (thesteppe) extends westwards fromUkraine and southern Russia and ends in Hungary and traverses into taiga to the north.
Glaciation during themost recent ice age and the presence of humans affected the distribution ofEuropean fauna. As for the animals, in many parts of Europe most large animals and toppredator species have been hunted to extinction. Thewoolly mammoth was extinct before the end of theNeolithic period. Todaywolves (carnivores) andbears (omnivores) are endangered. Once they were found in most parts of Europe. However, deforestation and hunting 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 cover. Today, thebrown bear lives primarily in theBalkan peninsula, Scandinavia and Russia; a small number also persist in other countries across Europe (Austria, Pyrenees etc.), but in these areas brown bear populations are fragmented and marginalised because of the destruction of their habitat. In addition,polar bears may be found onSvalbard, a Norwegian archipelago far north of Scandinavia. Thewolf, the second-largest predator in Europe after the brown bear, can be found primarily inCentral and Eastern Europe and in the Balkans, with a handful of packs in pockets ofWestern Europe (Scandinavia, Spain, etc.).
Important European herbivores are snails, larvae, fish, different 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 thesmall tortoiseshell butterfly, add to the biodiversity.[252]
Biodiversity is protected in Europe through the Council of Europe'sBern Convention, which has also been signed by theEuropean Community as well as non-European states.
The political map of Europe is substantially derived from the re-organisation of Europe following theNapoleonic Wars in 1815. The prevalent form of government in Europe isparliamentary democracy, in most cases in the form ofrepublic; in 1815, the prevalent form of government was still themonarchy. Europe's remaining eleven monarchies[253] areconstitutional.
European integration is the process of political, legal, economic (and in some cases social and cultural) integration of European states as it has been pursued by the powers sponsoring theCouncil of Europe since the end of theSecond World War. TheEuropean Union has been the focus of economic integration on the continent since its foundation in 1993. More recently, theEurasian Economic Union has been established as a counterpart comprising former Soviet states.
As a continent, the economy of Europe is currently the largest on Earth and it is the richest region as measured by assets under management with over $32.7 trillion compared to North America's $27.1 trillion in 2008.[257][needs update] In 2009 Europe remained the wealthiest region.[needs update] Its $37.1 trillion in assets under management represented one-third of the world's wealth. It was one of several regions where wealth surpassed its precrisis year-end peak.[258] As with other continents, Europe has a largewealth gap among its countries. The richer states tend to be in theNorthwest andWest in general, followed byCentral Europe, while most economies ofEastern andSoutheastern Europe are still reemerging from thecollapse of the Soviet Union and thebreakup of Yugoslavia.
The model of theBlue Banana was designed as an economic geographic representation of the respective economic power of the regions, which was further developed into theGolden Banana or Blue Star. The trade between East and West, as well as towards Asia, which had been disrupted for a long time by the two world wars, new borders and the Cold War, increased sharply after 1989. In addition, there is new impetus from the ChineseBelt and Road Initiative across theSuez Canal towards Africa and Asia.[259]
The European Union, a political entity composed of 27 European states, comprises thelargest single economic area in the world. Nineteen EUcountries share theeuro as a common currency.Four European countries rank in the top ten of the world's largestnational economies in GDP (PPP). This includes (ranks according to theIMF): Russia (4), Germany (6), France (9) and the United Kingdom (10).
Some European countries are much richer than others. The richest in terms of nominal GDP isMonaco with its US$185,829 per capita (2018) and the poorest isUkraine with its US$3,659 per capita (2019).[260]
As a whole, Europe's GDP per capita is US$21,767 according to a 2016 International Monetary Fund assessment.[261]
Capitalism has been dominant in the Western world since the end of feudalism.[264] From Britain, it gradually spread throughout Europe.[265] TheIndustrial Revolution started in Europe, specifically the United Kingdom in the late 18th century,[266] and the 19th century saw Western Europe industrialise. Economies were disrupted by the First World War, but by the beginning of the Second World War, they had recovered and were having to compete with the growing economic strength of the United States. The Second World War, again, damaged much of Europe's industries.
After the Second World War the economy of the UK was in a state of ruin,[267] and continued to suffer relative economic decline in the following decades.[268] Italy was also in a poor economic condition but regained a high level of growth by the 1950s. West Germanyrecovered quickly and had doubled production from pre-war levels by the 1950s.[269] France also staged a remarkable comeback enjoying rapid growth and modernisation; later on Spain, under the leadership ofFranco, also recovered and the nation recorded huge unprecedented economic growth beginning in the 1960s in what is called theSpanish miracle.[270] The majority ofCentral and Eastern European states came under the control of theSoviet Union and thus were members of theCouncil for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON).[271]
The states which retained afree-market system were given a large amount of aid by the United States under theMarshall Plan.[272] The western states moved to link their economies together, providing the basis for the EU and increasing cross border trade. This helped them to enjoy rapidly improving economies, while those states in COMECON were struggling in a large part due to the cost of theCold War. Until 1990, theEuropean 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.
With the fall of communism in Central and Eastern Europe in 1991, the post-socialist states underwentshock therapy measures to liberalise their economies and implement free market reforms.
By the millennium change, the EU dominated the economy of Europe, comprising the five largest European economies of the time: Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Spain. In 1999, 12 of the 15 members of the EU joined theEurozone, replacing their national currencies by theeuro.
Figures released byEurostat in 2009 confirmed that the Eurozone had gone intorecession in 2008.[274] It affected much of the region.[275] In 2010, fears of asovereign debt crisis[276] developed concerning some countries in Europe, especially Greece, Ireland, Spain and Portugal.[277] As a result, measures were taken, especially for Greece, by the leading countries of the Eurozone.[278] TheEU-27 unemployment rate was 10.3% in 2012. For those aged 15–24 it was 22.4%.[279]
The population of Europe was about 742 million in 2023 according to UN estimates.[1][2] This is slightly more than one ninth of the world's population.[v] Thepopulation density of Europe (the number of people per area) is the second highest of any continent, behind Asia. The population of Europe is currently slowly decreasing, by about 0.2% per year,[281] becausethere are fewer births than deaths. This natural decrease in population is reduced by the fact that more peoplemigrate to Europe from other continents than vice versa.
Southern Europe and Western Europe are the regions with the highest average number of elderly people in the world. In 2021, the percentage of people over 65 years old was 21% in Western Europe and Southern Europe, compared to 19% in all of Europe and 10% in the world.[282] Projections suggest that by 2050 Europe will reach 30%.[283] This is caused by the fact that the population has beenhaving children below replacement level since the 1970s. TheUnited Nations predicts that Europe will decline in population between 2022 and 2050 by −7 per cent, without changing immigration movements.[284]
According to a population projection of the UN Population Division, Europe's population may fall to between 680 and 720 million people by 2050, which would be 7% of the world population at that time.[285] Within this context, significant disparities exist between regions in relation tofertility rates. The average number ofchildren per female of child-bearing age is 1.52, far below the replacement rate.[286] The UN predicts a steadypopulation decline inCentral and Eastern Europe as a result of emigration and low birth rates.[287]
Pan and Pfeil (2004) count 87 distinct "peoples of Europe", of which 33 form the majority population in at least one sovereign state, while the remaining 54 constituteethnic minorities.[288]Romani people are the largest ethnic minority in Europe, according toEuropean Commission.[289]
Europe is home to the highest number of migrants of all global regions at nearly 87 million people in 2020, according to theInternational Organisation for Migration.[290] In 2005, the EU had an overall net gain fromimmigration of 1.8 million people. This accounted for almost 85% of Europe's totalpopulation growth.[291] In 2021, 827,000 persons were given citizenship of an EU member state, an increase of about 14% compared with 2020.[292] 2.3 million immigrants from non-EU countries entered the EU in 2021.[292]
Early modernemigration from Europe began with Spanish and Portuguese settlers in the 16th century,[293][294] and French and English settlers in the 17th century.[295] But numbers remained relatively small until waves of mass emigration in the 19th century, when millions of poor families left Europe.[296]
Islam is the second most popular religion in Europe. Over 25 million, or roughly 5% of the population, adhere to it.[308] InAlbania andBosnia and Herzegovina, two countries in theBalkan peninsula in Southeastern Europe, Islam instead of Christianity is the majority religion. This is also the case inTurkey and incertain parts of Russia, as well as inAzerbaijan andKazakhstan, all of which are at the border to Asia.[308] Many countries in Europe are home to a sizeable Muslim minority, andimmigration to Europe has increased the number of Muslim people in Europe in recent years.
TheJewish population in Europe was about 1.4 million people in 2020 (about 0.2% of the population).[309] There is a longhistory of Jewish life in Europe, beginning in antiquity. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Russian Empire had the majority of the world's Jews living within its borders.[310] In 1897, according toRussian census of 1897, the total Jewish population of Russia was 5.1 million people, which was 4.13% of total population. Of this total, the vast majority lived within thePale of Settlement.[311] In 1933, there were about 9.5 million Jewish people in Europe, representing 1.7% of the population,[312] but most were killed, and most of the rest displaced, duringthe Holocaust.[313][309] In the 21st century,France has the largestJewish population in Europe, followed by the United Kingdom,Germany and Russia.[7]
Other religions practiced in Europe includeHinduism andBuddhism, which are minority religions, except in Russia'sRepublic of Kalmykia, where Tibetan Buddhism is the majority religion.
A large and increasing number of people in Europe areirreligious,atheist andagnostic. They are estimated to make up about 18.3% of Europe's population currently.[7]
When considering the commuter belts ormetropolitan areas within Europe (for which comparable data is available), Moscow covers the largest population, followed in order by Istanbul, London, Paris, Madrid, Milan, Ruhr Area, Saint Petersburg, Rhein-Süd, Barcelona and Berlin.[316]
Map purportedly displaying the European continent split along cultural and state borders as proposed by the German organisationStändiger Ausschuss für geographische Namen (StAGN)
"Europe" as a cultural concept is substantially derived from the shared heritage ofancient Greece and theRoman Empire and its cultures. The boundaries of Europe were historically understood as those ofChristendom (or more specificallyLatin Christendom), as established or defended throughout the medieval and early modern history of Europe, especiallyagainst Islam, as in theReconquista and theOttoman wars in Europe.[317]
This shared cultural heritage is combined by overlapping indigenous national cultures and folklores, roughly divided intoSlavic,Latin (Romance) and Germanic, but with several components not part of either of these groups (notablyGreek,Basque andCeltic). Historically, special examples with overlapping cultures areStrasbourg with Latin (Romance) and Germanic, orTrieste with Latin, Slavic and Germanic roots.Cultural contacts and mixtures shape a large part of the regional cultures of Europe. Europe is often described as "maximum cultural diversity with minimal geographical distances".
Sport in Europe tends to be highly organised 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 the United Kingdom. However, a paradoxical feature of European sport is the extent to which local, regional and national variations continue to exist, and even in some instances to predominate.[318]
Social dimension
In Europe many people are unable to access basic social conditions, which makes it harder for them to thrive and flourish. Access to basic necessities can be compromised, for example 10% of Europeans spend at least 40% of household income on housing. 75 million Europeans feelsocially isolated. From the 1980s income inequality has been rising and wage shares have been falling. In 2016, the richest 20% of households earned over five times more than the poorest 20%. Many workers experience stagnantreal wages andprecarious work is common even foressential workers.[319]
Transnistria, internationally recognised as being a legal part of theRepublic of Moldova, althoughde facto control is exercised by its internationally unrecognised government which declared independence from Moldova in 1990
Russia is atranscontinental country spanning Eastern Europe andNorth Asia. The vast majority of its population (80%) lives within itsEuropean part.[320] However, only the population figure includes the entire state.
Cyprus can be considered part of Europe orWest Asia; it has strong historical and sociopolitical connections with Europe. The population and area figures refer to the entire state, including thede facto independent partNorthern Cyprus which is not recognised as a sovereign nation by the vast majority of sovereign nations, nor the UN.
Area figure forSerbia includesKosovo, a province that unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia on 17 February 2008, and whose sovereign status is unclear. Population and density figures are from the first results of 2011 census and are given without the disputed territory ofKosovo.
Kazakhstan is physiographically considered a transcontinental country, mostly in Central Asia (UN region), partly in Eastern Europe, with European territory west of theUral Mountains andUral River. However, only the population figure refers to the entire country.
Armenia can be considered part of Eastern Europe orWest Asia; it has strong historical and sociopolitical connections with Europe. The population and area figures include the entire state, respectively.
Azerbaijan is physiographically considered a transcontinental country, mostly in Western Asia. A small portion of its territory is located north ofGreater Caucasus, considered part of Eastern Europe.[321] However the population and area figures are for the entire state. This includes theexclave of theNakhchivan Autonomous Republic and the regionNagorno-Karabakh.
Turkey is physiographically considered a transcontinental country, mostly in West Asia (the Middle East). Turkey has a small part of its territory (3%) in Southeast Europe calledEast Thrace.[323] However, only the population figure includes the entire state.
The total figures for area and population include only European portions of transcontinental countries. The precision of these figures is compromised by the ambiguous geographical extent of Europe and the lack of references for European portions of transcontinental countries.
Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence fromSerbia on 17 February 2008. Its sovereign status isunclear. Its population is July 2009 CIA estimate.
Abkhazia andSouth Ossetia, both of which can be considered part of Eastern Europe orWest Asia[321] unilaterally declared their independence fromGeorgia on 25 August 1990 and 28 November 1991, respectively. Their status as sovereign nations isnot recognised by a vast majority of sovereign nations, nor the UN. Population figures stated as of 2003 census and 2000 estimates, respectively.
Nagorno-Karabakh, which can be considered part of Eastern Europe orWest Asia, unilaterally declared its independence fromAzerbaijan on 6 January 1992. Its status as a sovereign nation is not recognised by any sovereign nation, nor the UN. Population figures stated as of 2003 census and 2000 estimates, respectively.
Greenland, an autonomous constituent country within theDanish Realm, is geographically a part of the continent of North America, but has been politically and culturally associated with Europe.
Europe is normally considered its own continent in the English-speaking world, which uses the seven continent model.[324][325] Other models consider Europe as part of a Eurasian or Afro-Eurasian continent. SeeContinent § Number for more information.
The map shows one of the most commonly accepted delineations of the geographical boundaries of Europe, as used byNational Geographic andEncyclopædia Britannica. Whether countries are considered in Europe or Asia can vary in sources, for example in the classification of theCIA World Factbook or that of theBBC. Certain countries in Europe, such as France, haveterritories lying geographically outside Europe, but which are nevertheless considered integral parts of that country.
^National Geographic Atlas of the World (7th ed.). Washington, DC:National Geographic. 1999.ISBN978-0-7922-7528-2. "Europe" (pp. 68–69); "Asia" (pp. 90–91): "A commonly accepted division between Asia and Europe ... is formed by the Ural Mountains, Ural River, Caspian Sea, Caucasus Mountains, and the Black Sea with its outlets, the Bosporus and Dardanelles."
^Covert, Kim (2011).Ancient Greece: Birthplace of Democracy. Capstone. p. 5.ISBN978-1-4296-6831-6.Archived from the original on 27 July 2022. Retrieved30 July 2022.Ancient Greece is often called the cradle of western civilization. ... Ideas from literature and science also have their roots in ancient Greece.
^Franxman, Thomas W. (1979).Genesis and the Jewish antiquities of Flavius Josephus. Pontificium Institutum Biblicum. pp. 101–102.ISBN978-88-7653-335-8.
^W. Theiler,Posidonios. Die Fragmente, vol. 1. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1982, fragm. 47a.
^Geographia 7.5.6 (ed. Nobbe 1845,vol. 2Archived 24 May 2020 at theWayback Machine, p. 178)Καὶ τῇ Εὐρώπῃ δὲ συνάπτει διὰ τοῦ μεταξὺ αὐχένος τῆς τε Μαιώτιδος λίμνης καὶ τοῦ Σαρματικοῦ Ὠκεανοῦ ἐπὶ τῆς διαβάσεως τοῦ Τανάϊδος ποταμοῦ. "And [Asia] is connected to Europe by the land-strait between Lake Maiotis and the Sarmatian Ocean where the river Tanais crosses through."
^Tutin, Thomas Gaskell (1993).Flora Europaea, Volume 1: Psilotaceae to Platanaceae (2nd ed.). Cambridge, New York, Melbourne [etc.]: Cambridge University Press.ISBN978-0-521-41007-6.
^E. M. Moores, R. W. Fairbridge, 1997Encyclopedia of European and Asian Regional Geology, Springer,ISBN978-0-412-74040-4, p. 34: "most Soviet geographers took the watershed of the Main Range of the Greater Caucasus as the boundary between Europe and Asia."
^Hunter, Shireen; et al. (2004).Islam in Russia: The Politics of Identity and Security. M.E. Sharpe. p. 3.(..) It is difficult to establish exactly when Islam first appeared in Russia because the lands that Islam penetrated early in its expansion were not part of Russia at the time, but were later incorporated into the expanding Russian Empire. Islam reached the Caucasus region in the middle of the seventh century as part of the Arabconquest of the Iranian Sassanian Empire.
^Kennedy, Hugh (1995). "The Muslims in Europe". In McKitterick, Rosamund,The New Cambridge Medieval History: c. 500 – c. 700, pp. 249–272. Cambridge University Press. 052136292X.
^Duiker, William J.; Spielvogel, Jackson J. (2010).The Essential World History. Cengage Learning. p. 330.ISBN978-0-495-90227-0.Archived from the original on 11 May 2013. Retrieved20 January 2013.The Byzantine Empire also interacted with the world of Islam to its east and the new European civilization of the west. Both interactions proved costly and ultimately fatal.
^Findlay, Ronald (2006).Eli Heckscher, International Trade, And Economic History. MIT Press. pp. 178–179.ISBN978-0-262-06251-0.Archived from the original on 11 May 2013. Retrieved20 January 2013.These Christian allies did not accept the authority of Byzantium, and the Fourth Crusade that sacked Constantinople and established the so-called Latin Empire that lasted until 1261 was a fatal wound from which the empire never recovered until its fall at the hands of the Ottoman Turks in 1453 (Queller and Madden 1997).
^Browning, Robert (1992).The Byzantine Empire (Revised ed.). CUA Press. p. 253.ISBN978-0-8132-0754-4. Retrieved20 January 2013.And though the final blow was struck by the Ottoman Turks, it can plausibly be argued that the fatal injury was inflicted by the Latin crusaders in 1204.
^Golna, Cornelia (2004).City of Man's Desire: A Novel of Constantinople. Go-Bos Press. p. 424.ISBN978-90-804114-4-9.Archived from the original on 11 May 2013. Retrieved20 January 2013.1204 The Fourth Crusade sacks Constantinople, destroying and pillaging many of its treasures, fatally weakening the empire both economically and militarily
^Powell, John (2001).Magill's Guide to Military History: A-Cor. Salem Press.ISBN978-0-89356-015-7.Archived from the original on 11 May 2013. Retrieved20 January 2013.However, the fifty-seven years of plunder that followed made the Byzantine Empire, even when it retook the capital in 1261, genuinely weak. Beginning in 1222, the empire was further weakened by a civil war that lasted until 1355. ... When the Ottomans overran their lands and besieged Constantinople in 1453, sheer poverty and weakness were the causes of the capital city's final fall.
^Irvin, Dale T. (2002).History of the World Christian Movement: Volume 1: Earliest Christianity To 1453. Continuum International Publishing Group. p. 405.ISBN978-0-567-08866-6.Archived from the original on 11 May 2013. Retrieved20 January 2013.Not only did the fourth crusade further harden the resentments Greek-speaking Christians felt toward the Latin West, but it further weakened the empire of Constantinople, many say fatally so. After the restoration of Greek imperial rule the city survived as the capital of Byzantium for another two centuries, but it never fully recovered.
^Duiker, William J.; Spielvogel, Jackson J. (2010).The Essential World History. Cengage Learning. p. 386.ISBN978-0-495-90227-0.Archived from the original on 11 May 2013. Retrieved20 January 2013.Later they established themselves in the Anatolian peninsula at the expense of the Byzantine Empire. ... The Byzantines, however, had been severely weakened by the sack of Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade (in 1204) and the Western occupation of much of the empire for the next half century.
^Chronicles. Rockford Institute. 2005.Archived from the original on 11 May 2013. Retrieved20 January 2013.two-and-a-half centuries to recover from the Fourth Crusade before the Ottomans finally took Constantinople in 1453, ... They fatally wounded Byzantium, which was the main cause of its weakened condition when the Muslim onslaught came. Even on the eve of its final collapse, the precondition for any Western help was submission in Florence.
^Spinei, Victor. The Romanians and the Turkic Nomads North of the Danube Delta from the Tenth to the Mid-Thirteenth Century, Brill, 2009,ISBN978-90-04-17536-5
^Morris, Terence Alan (1998).Europe and England in the sixteenth century. Routledge, p. 335.ISBN0-415-15041-8
^Rowse, A. L. (1969).Tudor Cornwall: portrait of a society. C. Scribner, p. 400
^"One decisive action might have forced Philip II to the negotiating table and avoided fourteen years of continuing warfare. Instead the King was able to use the brief respite to rebuild his naval forces and by the end of 1589 Spain once again had an Atlantic fleet strong enough to escort the American treasure ships home."The Mariner's Mirror, Volumes 76–77. Society for Nautical Research., 1990
^Kamen, Henry.Spain's Road to Empire: The Making of a World Power, 1492–1763. p. 221.
^W. G. Clarence-Smith (2006). "Islam And The Abolition Of SlaveryArchived 2016-04-29 at theWayback Machine". Oxford University Press. p. 13.ISBN0-19-522151-6 – "Lands to the north of the Black Sea probably yielded the most slaves to the Ottomans from 1450. A compilation of estimates indicates that Crimean Tartars seized about 1,750,000 Ukrainians, Poles, and Russians from 1468 to 1694."
^Gipson, Lawrence Henry (1950). "The American Revolution as an Aftermath of the Great War for the Empire, 1754–1763".Political Science Quarterly.65 (1):86–104.doi:10.2307/2144276.JSTOR2144276.
^Goldie, Mark;Wokler, Robert (2006).The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought. Cambridge University Press.ISBN978-0-521-37422-4.
^Heinrich August Winkler (2015). "The Struggle for Independence: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Finland".The Age of Catastrophe. Yale University Press. p. 110.ISBN978-0300204896.
^Jessica Caus "Am Checkpoint Charlie lebt der Kalte Krieg" In: Die Welt 4 August 2015.
^Karlo Ruzicic-Kessler "Togliatti, Tito and the Shadow of Moscow 1944/45–1948: Post-War Territorial Disputes and the Communist World", In: Journal of European Integration History, (2/2014).
^Christian Jennings "Flashpoint Trieste: The First Battle of the Cold War", (2017), pp 244.
^Thomas Roser: DDR-Massenflucht: Ein Picknick hebt die Welt aus den Angeln (German – Mass exodus of the GDR: A picnic clears the world) In: Die Presse 16 August 2018.
^Der 19. August 1989 war ein Test für Gorbatschows" (German – August 19, 1989 was a test for Gorbachev), In: FAZ 19 August 2009.
^Michael Frank: Paneuropäisches Picknick – Mit dem Picknickkorb in die Freiheit (German: Pan-European picnic – With the picnic basket to freedom), in: Süddeutsche Zeitung 17 May 2010.
^Andreas Rödder, Deutschland einig Vaterland – Die Geschichte der Wiedervereinigung (2009).
^Padraic Kenney "A Carnival of Revolution: Central Europe 1989" (2002) pp 109.
^Michael Gehler "Der alte und der neue Kalte Krieg in Europa" In: Die Presse 19.11.2015.
^Robert Stradling "Teaching 20th-century European history" (2003), pp 61.
^Global shipping and logistic chain reshaped as China's Belt and Road dreams take off in Hellenic Shipping News, 4. December 2018; Wolf D. Hartmann, Wolfgang Maennig, Run Wang: Chinas neue Seidenstraße. (2017), p 59; Jacob Franks "The Blu Banana – the True Heart of Europe" In: Big Think Edge, 31 December 2014; Zacharias Zacharakis: Chinas Anker in Europa in: Die Zeit 8. May 2018; Harry de Wilt: Is One Belt, One Road a China crisis for North Sea main ports? in World Cargo News, 17 December 2019; Hospers, Gert-Jan "Beyond the blue banana? Structural change in Europe's geo-economy." 2002
^Christoph Pan, Beate Sibylle Pfeil,Minderheitenrechte in Europa. Handbuch der europäischen Volksgruppen (2002).Living-Diversity.eu, English translation 2004.
^Go MC, Jones AR, Algee-Hewitt B, Dudzik B, Hughes C (2019)."Classification Trends among Contemporary Filipino Crania Using Fordisc 3.1".Human Biology.2 (4). University of Florida Press:293–303.doi:10.5744/fa.2019.1005.S2CID159266278.Archived from the original on 7 January 2021. Retrieved13 September 2020.[Page 1] ABSTRACT: Filipinos represent a significant contemporary demographic group globally, yet they are underrepresented in the forensic anthropological literature. Given the complex population history of the Philippines, it is important to ensure that traditional methods for assessing the biological profile are appropriate when applied to these peoples. Here we analyze the classification trends of a modern Filipino sample (n = 110) when using the Fordisc 3.1 (FD3) software. We hypothesize that Filipinos represent an admixed population drawn largely from Asian and marginally from European parental gene pools, such that FD3 will classify these individuals morphometrically into reference samples that reflect a range of European admixture, in quantities from small to large. Our results show the greatest classification into Asian reference groups (72.7%), followed by Hispanic (12.7%), Indigenous American (7.3%), African (4.5%), and European (2.7%) groups included in FD3. This general pattern did not change between males and females. Moreover, replacing the raw craniometric values with their shape variables did not significantly alter the trends already observed. These classification trends for Filipino crania provide useful information for casework interpretation in forensic laboratory practice. Our findings can help biological anthropologists to better understand the evolutionary, population historical, and statistical reasons for FD3-generated classifications. The results of our studyindicate that ancestry estimation in forensic anthropology would benefit from population-focused research that gives consideration to histories of colonialism and periods of admixture.
^Byrnes, Timothy A.; Katzenstein, Peter J. (2006).Religion in an Expanding Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 110.ISBN978-0521676519.
^Hewitson, Mark; D'Auria, Matthew (2012).Europe in Crisis: Intellectuals and the European Idea, 1917–1957. New York; Oxford: Berghahn Books. p. 243.ISBN9780857457271.
^Nikodemos Anagnostopoulos, Archimandrite (2017).Orthodoxy and Islam. Taylor & Francis. p. 16.ISBN9781315297927.Christianity has undoubtedly shaped European identity, culture, destiny, and history.
^Grosfeld, Irena; Rodnyansky, Alexander; Zhuravskaya, Ekaterina (August 2013). "Persistent Antimarket Culture: A Legacy of the Pale of Settlement after the Holocaust".American Economic Journal: Economic Policy.5 (3).American Economic Association:189–226.doi:10.1257/pol.5.3.189.JSTOR43189345.
^Vishnevsky, Anatoly (15 August 2000)."Replacement Migration: Is it a solution for Russia?"(PDF).Expert Group Meeting on Policy Responses to Population Ageing and Population Decline /UN/POP/PRA/2000/14. United Nations Population Division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs. pp. 6, 10.Archived(PDF) from the original on 29 August 2017. Retrieved14 January 2008.
^abcTheUN Statistics Department[2]Archived 12 December 2024 at theWayback Machine places Azerbaijan and Georgia inWest Asia for statistical convenience ("The assignment of countries or areas to specific groupings is for statistical convenience and does not imply any assumption regarding political or other affiliation of countries or territories"). TheCIA World Factbook places Azerbaijan and Georgia in Southwestern Asia, with a small portion north of the Caucasus range in Europe. ([3]Archived 27 January 2021 at theWayback Machine and[4]Archived 4 February 2021 at theWayback Machine).
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