History and Government Chapter 12, Section 2

The Rise of Europe Physical geography in part has shaped Europe’s history. – Closeness to the sea enabled Europeans to move beyond their own borders to other parts of the world. – European mountain ranges contained passes and so did not severely hinder contacts within the region as did mountain ranges in other parts of the world. – Europe’s river-crossed fertile plains encouraged peaceful settlement as well as invasion and conflicts.

Early Peoples Fossils found by archeologists suggest that early humans lived in Europe more than a million years ago. Prehistoric Europeans moved from place to place in search of food. By about 6000 BCE, farming spread from Southwest Asia to southeastern Europe and then to all but the densely forested areas in the northern part of the continent. – With the introduction of farming, early Europeans settled in agricultural villages, some of which later developed into Europe’s first cities.

Ancient Greece and Rome Two civilizations in the Mediterranean world laid the foundations of European – and Western – civilization. – Greece, which reached its peak during the 400s and 300s BCE. – Rome, ruled a vast empire that reached its height of power between 27 BCE and 180 CE.

Greece Greece’s mountainous landscape and its closeness to the sea influenced the ancient Greeks to form separate communities called city-states. – Each city-state was independent, but was linked to other city-states by Greek language and culture. – Fleeing overpopulated areas and desiring new wealth, Greek merchants and sailors eventually colonized many parts of the Mediterranean coast. – The ancient Greeks laid the foundations of European government and culture. – The city-state of Athens introduced the Western idea of democracy. Although women and enslaved persons could not vote, more people had a voice in Athens’ government than any other earlier civilization. – Greek art, literature, drama, and philosophy as well as mathematics and medicine also left a lasting impression on the Western world.

Rome In Italy around 500 BCE, another Mediterranean people, the Romans, founded a republic. From the city of Rome, Roman armies went forth to conquer an empire that spanned much of Europe, some of Southwest Asia, and North Africa. The Romans imitated the Greek art and literature, and borrowed from Greek science and architecture. Roman developments in government, law, and engineering influenced other cultures. – Throughout the Roman Empire engineers built a vast network of roads, bridges, and aqueducts – artificial channels for carrying water.

A Christian Empire In the late 300s CE, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire and one of the world’s major religions. Although united in name, the empire came to be ruled by two emperors, one in the eastern half and the other in the western half. – Eventually the two parts developed into eastern and western Europe, each with its own political, cultural, and religious traditions. During the 400s, Germanic groups from the north overthrew Roman rule in the western half and founded separate kingdoms. – They also accepted the western form of Christianity, which became known as Roman Catholicism. The eastern half eventually was called the Byzantine Empire, with its capital at Constantinople, formerly Byzantium. – The Byzantines developed their own Christian civilization that lasted until the late 1400s, – The eastern form of Christianity became known as Eastern Orthodoxy. During the 500s Slavic peoples migrated from Ukraine into eastern and central Europe. – Some of them later accepted western European ways and Roman Catholicism, and others adopted Byzantine traditions and Eastern Orthodoxy.

The Middle Ages After the fall of the Rome, western Europe entered the Middle Ages, the period between ancient and modern times. During this era, from about 500 to 1500 CE, feudalism – a system in which monarchs or lords gave land to nobles in return for pledges of loyalty – replaced centralized government. The Roman Catholic Church brought Roman culture and principles of government and law to the region’s Germanic peoples. – During the Middle Ages, religious centers, such as cathedrals and monasteries, were major centers of learning. In eastern Europe, the Byzantine Empire preserved ancient Greek and Roman cultures, and Byzantine missionaries spread Eastern Orthodoxy among many of the Slavic people.

Cont’d Although generally Christian, Europe was influenced by other religious groups during the Middle Ages. – Cities and towns in western Europe were home to Jewish communities that made contributions to European society. Many Christians saw the Jews as outsiders and persecuted them or discriminated against them. Expelled from much of western Europe, many Jews settled in eastern Europe, where they developed new communities based on their religious traditions. – Islam, a religion based on belief in one God and the preachings of Muhammad, a prophet who lived in Southwest Asia during the 600s. Within a century of Muhammad’s death, Islam had spread from Southwest Asia through North Africa and into Spain. Muslims, the followers of Islam, developed a culture in Spain that passed on to Europeans many achievements in science, mathematics, and medicine.

Expansion of Europe Beginning in the 1000s, western European armies fought the Crusades – a series of brutal religious wars – to win Palestine, the birthplace of Christianity, from Muslim rule. – Europeans failed to win permanent control of the area but did extend trade routes to the eastern Mediterranean world. – Spices and other products that came with increased trade sparked the interest of the small number of educated Europeans in other parts of the worlds. Beginning in the 1300s, the Renaissance – a 300-year period of discovery and learning – brought about great advances in European civilization.

The Renaissance During the Renaissance, educated Europeans developed a new interest in the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome. – They stressed the importance of people and their place in the world. – Writers described human feelings, and artists created lifelike paintings and sculptures, architects designed buildings, such as palaces and villas, for private use. – The Renaissance led to scientific advances. Ex: the invention of movable type in printing spread new ideas more quickly and easily. The increased production of books and pamphlets aided a religious movement called the Reformation, which lessoned the power of the Roman Catholic Church and led to the beginnings of Protestantism. – By the mid-1500s, Protestant churches were dominant in northern Europe, but Roman Catholicism kept its hold on the southern, central and northeastern parts of the region. – Religious wars soon engulfed Europe, and European monarchs were able to strengthen their power over nobles and church leaders.

European Explorations During the Middle Ages, Europe lagged behind the Chinese and Muslim empires in economic development. In the 1400s, western Europe began to emerge as a significant force in world affairs. – At that time seafarers from Portugal developed new trade routes around Africa to Asia. – Spanish rulers financed the Italian-born explorer Christopher Columbus, who reached the Americas in the late 1400s. – England, France and the Netherlands also sent out expeditions of explorers. – These voyages resulted in conquests of foreign lands, often destroying the cultures already thriving there. Trade with colonies in the Americas, Asia, and Africa brought great wealth and power to western Europe.

A Changing Europe During the late 1600s and early 1700s, many educated Europeans emphasized the importance of reason and began to question long-standing traditions and values. – This movement, known as the Enlightenment, was followed by political and economic revolutions that swept the entire region.

Revolutions At this time Europeans wanting a voice in government began political revolutions. In the late 1600s, the English Parliament, or lawmaking body, passed a Bill of Rights that limited the power of the monarch. The French Revolution in the late 1700s overthrew France’s monarchy and spread the ideals of democracy. The 1800s saw many uprisings throughout the rest of Europe that challenged the power of monarchs and nobles. By 1900 most European countries had constitutions that limited ruler’s powers and guaranteed at least some political rights to citizens.

Cont’d During this time of political change, the Industrial Revolution began in England and rapidly spread to other countries. – Power-driven machinery and new methods of production transformed life in Europe. – Industrial cities and improved transportation and communication developed. – These sweeping changes led to industrial capitalism, an economic system in which business leaders used profits to expand their companies. Under this system, new social groups emerged: a middle class of merchants and factory owners, and a working class of factory laborers. Although the middle class prospered, factory workers at first were poorly paid and lived in crowded, unhealthy conditions. These social problems led in the mid-1800s to the birth of communism – a philosophy that called for a society based on economic equality in which the workers would control the factories and industrial production. – By the end of the 1800s, various European governments began passing laws to improve conditions for workers in the workplace and to expand education, housing, and health care.

Conflict and Division In the first half of the 1900s, two world wars resulted in major changes in Europe. Rivalries among European powers for colonies and economic power led to World War I, which lasted from 1914 to – As a result of WWI, monarchies collapsed in Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia, and several central and eastern European countries won independence. A large number of unresolved political problems from WWI and a worldwide economic depression enabled dictators Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler to gain control of Italy and Germany. – Following aggressive territorial expansion by these two countries, WWII broke out in – By the time this conflict ended in 1945, most of Europe and much of the rest of the world were involved. – A major horror of WWII in Europe was the Holocaust, the mass killing of more than 6 million European Jews and others by Germany’s Nazi leaders.

Cont’d WWII left Europe ruined and divided. – Most of eastern Europe came under communist control of the Soviet Union (Russia), and most of western Europe backed democracy and received economic and military support from the U.S. – The division of Europe brought about the Cold War, a power struggle between the communist world, led by the Soviet Union, and the noncommunist world, led by the U.S. – A divided Germany – communist East Germany and democratic West Germany – became the “hot point” of the Cold War in Europe.

The Cold War in Europe At the end of WWII, the victorious Allies, including the U.S., the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and France, divided Germany into four zones. – By 1949 the three western zones of Germany were combined into West Germany, with Bonn as its capital. – The eastern zone, occupied by the Soviets, became East Germany with East Berlin as its capital. – Throughout the decade following the division, many East Germans fled to the West to escape communism. – In the 1960s, East Germany built the Berlin Wall and other barriers to stop this movement of people. During the Cold War era, most western European democracies became more productive and economically secure than they had been before WWII. – In contrast, communist governments in eastern Europe allowed people little voice in government or the economy. – Although eastern European communist countries pushed for industrial growth, their economies and standards of living lagged behind those of western Europe.

A New Era for Europe From the 1950s to the 1980s, revolts against communist rule periodically swept eastern Europe. – In Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Romania, and Bulgaria, citizens demanded freedom and a better way of life. In the early1980s, Polish workers founded Solidarity, the first free labor union in the communist world. In 1989, public demonstrations – and the refusal of reform-minded Soviet leaders to intervene – swiftly led to the fall of eastern Europe’s communist governments. – The Berlin Wall came down, and in 1990, the two parts of Germany reunited. – Three years later, Czechoslovakia split into separate countries: the Czech Republic and Slovakia. – Throughout much of eastern Europe during the 1990s, free elections installed democratic leaders, who encouraged the rise of market economies.

European Union Changes also occurred in western Europe. During the 1950s, Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany banded together economically and politically. By the 1990s this growing movement toward unity had led to the European Union (EU), an organization whose goal was a united Europe in which goods, services, and workers could move freely among member countries. The Maastricht Treaty, signed in 1992, set goals for a central bank and a common currency. – Launched in 1999, that currency, the euro, replaced national currencies, such as the Italian lira and the German mark, in Currently comprising 27 member countries, the EU plans to expand its membership to include eastern European countries.

1951 Founding Members Belgium France Germany Italy Luxembourg Netherlands

1973 Denmark Ireland United Kingdom

1981 Greece

1986 Portugal Spain

November 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall sets the stage for unifying Europe and EU enlargement

1995 Austria Finland Sweden

2004 Cyprus Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia Lithuania Malta Poland Slovakia Slovenia

2007 Bulgaria Romania

Candidate Countries Croatia Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia Turkey Potential Candidate Countries Albania Bosnia & Herzegovina Montenegro Serbia including Kosovo under UN Security Council Resolution 1244