Thehistory of Europe means all the time since the beginning of written records in theEuropeancontinent up to the present day. It is traditionally divided into ancient (before the fall of theWestern Roman Empire) medieval, and modern (after the fall ofConstantinople).
TheIndustrial Revolution, beginning inGreat Britain, allowed masses of people, not just the rich, to escape for the first time from lives of being always poor and barely able to afford either food or shelter.[4] The earlyBritish Empire split as itscolonies in Americarevolted to establish their own representative government. Political change in continental Europe was spurred by theFrench Revolution, as people cried out forliberté, egalité, fraternité (liberty, equality, brotherhood). The French leader,Napoleon Bonaparte, conquered and reformed the social structure of the continent through war up to 1815, when he met his final defeat at theBattle of Waterloo and was sent away intoexile. As more and more small property holders were granted the vote, especially in France and the UK,socialist andtrade union activity developed andrevolution gripped Europe in 1848. The last vestiges ofserfdom were abolished inAustria-Hungary in 1848.Russian serfdom was abolished in 1861.[5] TheBalkan nations began to regain their independence from theOttoman Empire. After theFranco-Prussian War,Italy andGermany were formed, each from groups of smaller countries which spoke the samelanguages, in 1870 and 1871.
Conflict intensified across the globe, in a chase forempires, where powerful countries turned less powerful ones into colonies, until the outbreak, in 1914, of the biggest war that had ever been fought up to that point in time. It was called the Great War but now most often calledWorld War I or the First World War. In the desperation of war, theRussian Revolution promised the people "peace, bread and land" and led to the end of theRussian Empire and its replacement by the formation of theSoviet Union. The defeat of Germany came at the price of economic destruction, which was formally written into theTreaty of Versailles in 1919 where it was stated that the First World War had been entirely the fault of Germany and its allies and demanded that they pay back the entire amount the war had cost.
TheGreat Depression began in 1929, brought about in part by the economic problems caused by the attempt to force Germany to pay for the war and in part by trade restrictions. Millions of people around the world lost their jobs. Governments changed in many countries, some by elections and some by revolutions. The governments soon fell into two main groups, those who believed in freedom andhuman rights and those who followedfascism. These two deeply different views led to aSecond World War, which most people who write history feel began in Europe when Germany invadedPoland in 1939, but soon spread to most of the countries in the world. It took in wars which were already happening in other places, most notably the war betweenJapan andChina. After this warSocialism spread to Central and Eastern Europe, including the relatively new Eastern European countries ofYugoslavia,Bulgaria,Romania,Albania, and inAsiaNorth Vietnam andNorth Korea, and, slightly later, toCuba in theCaribbean Sea very near toNorth America.
The conflict between the advocates of acapitalist and a socialist economy and political system led to theCold War, a forty-year argument between the United States and the Soviet Union, two of the countries which had worked together to win the Second World War and the two which had come out of it with the most powerful military forces. They led respectively aWestern Bloc and anEastern Bloc, dividing Europe. Each side wanted to promote their type of government. People across the world feared anuclear war because of the tension, and Europe, divided by theIron Curtain, was assumed to be a probable battleground.
Communism became less attractive when it became clear that it could promote economic growth less effectively than the capitalistic Western states and that it was not suited for a reform[6] that allowedfreedom of speech for everyone. Therefore, the Soviet Union forcedHungary to give up its reform in 1956, it favoured the building of theBerlin Wall in 1961 and it stopped reform inCzechoslovakia in 1968. When in 1988/89 the Soviet leaderGorbachev made clear that he would not force the countries of the East block to stick to Communism[7] theBerlin Wall was torn down in 1989 and the Soviet Union collapsed (1991).[8] Then theUnited States was the onlysuperpower left.Europe signed a newtreaty of union, which included 27 European countries in 2007.
↑"The illusion that Communism was reformable, thatStalinism had been a wrong turning, a mistake that could still be corrected [...] that illusion was crushed under the tanks on August 21st 1968 and it never recovered."Judt, Tony (2005).Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945. Penguin Press. pp. 447.ISBN1-59420-065-3.
↑"Gorbachev did more than just let the colonies go. By indicating that he would not intervene he decisively undermined the only real source of political legitimacy available to the rulers of the satellite states [...] It was Mr. Gorbechev's revolution." Judt, p.632/33
