서양 문명의 역사

서양 문명은 유럽과 지중해에서 기원한다.고대 그리스, 로마 제국, 중세 서양 기독교와 연결돼 스콜라즘, 르네상스, 종교개혁, 계몽주의, 산업혁명, 과학혁명, 자유민주주의 발전 등의 변혁을 경험한다.고대 그리스와 고대 로마의 문명은 서양 역사에서 중요한 시기로 여겨진다.주요 문화적 공헌은 프랑크족, 고트족, 부르고뉴족과 같은 기독교화된 게르만족으로부터도 나왔다.샤를마뉴는 카롤링거 제국을 세우고 "^[1]유럽의 아버지"로 일컬어집니다.유대교와 헬레니즘 유대교에서 파생된 중요한 종교적 기여뿐만 아니라 유대교, 갈릴리, 초기 유대교 디아스포라,^[2][3][4] 그리고 일부 다른 중동의 ^[5]영향을 받은 유대교와 같은 기독교 이전 유럽의 이교도들로부터도 기여가 나타났다.서양의 기독교는 서양문명을 형성하는데 중요한 역할을 해왔고, 서양문명은 대부분의 역사를 통해 기독교문화와 거의 동등하다.(중국, 인도, 러시아, 비잔틴, 중동 ^{[6][7][8][9][10]}등 서양 이외의 지역에도 기독교인이 있었다.)서구 문명은 현대 아메리카와 오세아니아의 지배적인 문화를 만들어내기 위해 확산되었고, 여러 면에서 최근 몇 세기 동안 전 세계에 막대한 영향을 끼쳤다.

5세기 로마의 몰락 이후, 유럽은 중세 시대로 접어들었고, 그 기간 동안 가톨릭 교회는 서로마 제국의 몰락으로 서방에 남겨진 권력의 공백을 메운 반면, 동로마 제국(또는 비잔틴 제국)은 라틴 서부와는 대조적으로 수 세기 동안 동방에서 버텨내며 그리스 동양이 되었다.12세기까지 서유럽은 성당의 건설, 중세 대학의 설립, 알안달루스와 시칠리아를 통한 중세 이슬람 세계와의 더 큰 접촉에 의해 예술과 학문의 꽃을 경험했고, 그곳에서 과학과 철학에 대한 아랍어 문헌이 라틴어로 번역되었다.기독교의 통합은 16세기 종교개혁으로 산산조각이 났다.처음에는 이탈리아 반도에서 상인 계급이 생겨났고, 유럽은 14세기부터 17세기까지 르네상스를 경험했고, 기술과 예술적 진보의 시대를 예고했고 포르투갈과 스파와 같은 세계적인 유럽 제국의 부상을 본 발견의 시대를 열었다.인스톨.

산업 혁명은 18세기에 영국에서 시작되었다.계몽주의의 영향으로, 혁명의 시대는 미국과 프랑스에서 서구 사회가 산업화되고 민주화된 현대적 형태로 변모하는 과정에서 나타났다.북미와 남미, 남아프리카, 호주와 뉴질랜드는 유럽 제국의 첫 번째 부분이 되었고 새로운 서구 국가들의 본거지인 반면, 아프리카와 아시아는 주로 서구 강대국들 사이에 분할되었다.서구 민주주의 연구소는 19세기 중반부터 오스트랄라시아의 영국 식민지에 세워졌고, 남미는 주로 새로운 독재국가를 만들어냈다.20세기에는 절대 군주제가 유럽에서 사라졌고, 파시즘과 공산주의의 에피소드에도 불구하고, 세기가 끝날 무렵에는 사실상 모든 유럽이 그들의 지도자들을 민주적으로 선출하고 있었다.대부분의 서구 국가들은 제1차, 제2차 세계대전과 장기 냉전에 깊이 관여했다.제2차 세계 대전은 유럽에서 파시즘이 패배하고 미국과 소련이 경쟁 세계 강대국이자 새로운 "동서" 정치적 대조를 이루는 것을 보았다.

러시아 이외의 유럽 제국은 제2차 세계 대전과 시민권 운동 그리고 광범위한 다민족, 다종교적 유럽으로의 이주 이후 해체되었고, 미주 및 오세아니아는 서구 문화에서 유럽인들의 초기 우세를 낮췄다.유럽 국가들은 유럽 연합을 통해 더 큰 경제적, 정치적 협력으로 나아갔다.냉전은 1990년경 중앙유럽과 동유럽에서 소련이 강요한 공산주의가 붕괴되면서 끝났다.21세기에 서구 세계는 중요한 세계 경제력과 영향력을 보유하고 있다.서양은 현대 국제 문화에 매우 많은 기술적, 정치적, 철학적, 예술적, 종교적 측면을 기여해왔다: 가톨릭, 개신교, 민주주의, 산업화의 도가니였다; 19세기 동안 노예제도를 폐지하려는 최초의 주요 문명, 여성에게 선거권을 부여하기 시작했다.19세기 말 오스트레일리아에서)와 증기, 전기, 원자력 등의 기술을 최초로 사용했다.서양은 영화, 텔레비전, 개인용 컴퓨터와 인터넷을 발명했고, 미켈란젤로, 셰익스피어, 레오나르도 다빈치, 베토벤, 빈센트 반 고흐, 피카소, 바흐, 그리고 모차르트와 같은 예술가들을 배출했으며, 축구, 크리켓, 골프, 테니스, 럭비, 농구와 같은 스포츠를 발전시켰고, 인류들을 천문학적 물체로 이동시켰다.1969년 아폴로 11호 달 착륙과 함께.

고대: 서기 500년 이전

중세 시대

초기 중세 시대: 500~1000

동양의 콘스탄티노플을 중심으로 한 비잔틴 제국에서는 로마 제국과 기독교가 점점 더 헬레니즘화된 형태로 살아남은 반면, 서양 문명은 서기 476년 로마의 몰락 이후 문맹퇴치와 조직 붕괴를 겪었다.그러나 점차적으로 기독교는 서유럽에 대한 영향력을 재강조했다.

로마가 함락된 후 교황은 권위와 연속성의 원천이 되었다.로마에 군부가 살지 않자 군부의 통제권마저 교황에게 넘어갔다.그레고리 대왕 (540–604)은 엄격한 개혁으로 교회를 관리했습니다.숙련된 로마 변호사이자 행정가, 그리고 수도사인 그는 고전적인 시각에서 중세적인 시각으로의 변화를 대표하며 후기 로마 가톨릭 교회의 많은 구조의 아버지였다.가톨릭 백과사전에 따르면, 그는 교회와 국가가 협력하여 하나의 통일체를 형성한다고 여겼는데, 교회와 세속이라는 두 가지 뚜렷한 영역에서 활동했지만, 그가 사망할 무렵에는 교황직이 이탈리아에서 ^[11]가장 큰 권력이었다.

교황 그레고리오 대제는 이탈리아에서 자신을 황제나 총통보다 더 강한 권력으로 만들었고, 수세기 동안 한반도를 지배했던 정치적 영향력을 확립했다.이때부터 이탈리아의 다양한 사람들은 교황에게 조언을 구했고, 교황의 수도였던 로마는 계속해서 기독교 세계의 중심이었다.

전통에 따르면, 5세기경에 아일랜드에 기독교를 소개한 사람은 로마자 영국인인 성 패트릭이었다.로마 군단은 아일랜드를 정복한 적이 없었고, 서로마 제국이 붕괴되면서 기독교는 그곳에서 살아남았다.수도승들은 콘월, 아일랜드, 헤브리데스 등 알려진 세계의 먼 가장자리로 피난처를 찾았다.아일랜드의 스켈리그 마이클과 같은 고립된 전초기지에서 행해지는 규율된 장학금.이곳에서는 문맹 승려들이 서유럽 ^[12]고대 시적이고 철학적인 작품의 마지막 보존자가 되었다.

약 800년 무렵 그들은 켈스의 책과 같은 조명 원고를 제작하고 있었다.성 콜럼바와 같은 수도승들이 이끄는 게일 수도원의 선교는 중세 동안 기독교를 서유럽으로 전파했고, 처음에는 영국 북부에 수도원을 세웠으며, 중세 시대에는 앵글로색슨 잉글랜드와 프랑크 제국을 통해 수도원을 세웠다.토마스 케힐은 1995년 저서 '아일랜드 문명을 어떻게 구했는가'에서 아일랜드 수도승들이 이 기간 동안 ^[13]서구 문명을 "구했다"고 평가했다.미술사학자 케네스 클라크에 따르면, 로마의 멸망 이후 약 5세기 동안, 사실상 모든 지성인들이 교회에 입교했고 수도원 거주지 외에는 서유럽에서 실질적으로 아무도 읽고 ^[12]쓸 능력을 가지고 있지 않았다고 한다.

서기 500년경, 프랑크 왕국의 왕 클로비스 1세는 기독교인이 되었고 그의 통치하에 갈리아를 통합했다.6세기 후반에, 비잔틴 제국은 이탈리아와 스페인의 많은 지역에서 그들의 통치를 회복했다.교황에 의해 아일랜드에서 파견된 선교사들은 6세기에도 영국을 기독교로 개종시키는 데 도움을 주었고, 서유럽의 지배자로서의 믿음을 회복시켰다.

이슬람의 창시자이자 예언자인 무함메드는 서기 570년 메카에서 태어났다.무역업자로 일하면서 그는 비잔틴 제국의 변두리에서 기독교와 유대교의 사상을 접했고, 610년경 새로운 일신교인 이슬람을 설교하기 시작했고, 622년 메디나의 시민적, 정신적 지도자가 되었고, 630년 메카를 정복한 직후에 메디나의 정신적 지도자가 되었다.632년에 죽은 무함메드의 새로운 신조는 먼저 아라비아 부족들을 정복했고, 그 다음 635년에 다마스쿠스와 636년에 예루살렘을 정복했다.다민족 이슬람 제국이 옛 로마 중동과 북아프리카에 걸쳐 세워졌다.8세기 초에 이베리아와 시칠리아는 무슬림에게 넘어갔다.9세기에는 몰타, 키프로스, 크레타가 함락되었고 한동안 ^[14]9월도 마찬가지였다.

732년에야 프랑크의 지도자 샤를 마르텔에 의해 이슬람의 유럽으로의 진출이 중단되어 갈리아와 서구의 나머지 지역이 이슬람에 의한 정복으로부터.이때부터 동양의 기독교가 무슬림 칼리파테스 치하에서 짐미 지위로 떨어지면서 '서방'은 기독교 세력에 의해 지배되는 영토인 기독교의 대명사가 되었다."성지"를 해방시키려는 대의는 중세 역사를 통틀어 주요한 초점으로 남아 있었고, 오직 첫 번째 십자군 원정이 성공적이었다.

샤를마뉴는 프랑크의 왕이 되었다.그는 갈리아, 스페인 북부, 작센, 그리고 이탈리아 북부와 중부를 정복했다.800년, 교황 레오 3세는 샤를마뉴를 신성 로마 황제로 즉위시켰다.그의 통치하에, 독일과 같이 기독교가 아닌 땅에서 그의 신하들은 기독교로 개종했다.

그의 통치 이후, 그가 만든 제국은 프랑스 왕국(프랑스의 땅)과 신성 로마 제국, 그리고 그 사이에 있는 왕국(오늘날의 스위스, 이탈리아 북부, 동프랑스와 저지대 국가 포함)으로 분열되었다.

8세기 후반부터, 바이킹들은 유럽의 마을과 마을에 대한 해상 공격을 시작했다.결국, 그들은 침략에서 정복으로 바뀌었고, 아일랜드, 대부분의 영국, 그리고 북부 프랑스(노르망디)를 정복했다.그러나 이러한 정복은 오래 지속되지 않았다.954년 알프레드 대왕은 바이킹들을 잉글랜드에서 몰아냈고, 바이킹들은 그의 통치하에 연합했고, 아일랜드에서의 바이킹 통치도 끝이 났다.노르망디에서 바이킹들은 프랑스 문화와 언어를 받아들여 기독교인이 되어 원주민들에게 흡수되었다.

11세기 초에 스칸디나비아는 노르웨이, 스웨덴, 덴마크 등 세 왕국으로 나뉘었는데, 이들 왕국은 모두 기독교인이었고 서구 문명의 일부였다.노르웨이 탐험가들은 아이슬란드, 그린란드, 그리고 심지어 북미에 도달했지만, 아이슬란드만이 노르웨이 사람들에 의해 영구적으로 정착되었다.약 1000-1200년의 따뜻한 기온의 기간은 985년에 그린란드에 노르웨이 전초기지를 설립할 수 있게 했고, 이 전초기지는 기독교의 가장 서쪽에 있는 전초기지로 약 400년 동안 존속했다.여기서부터 노르드인은 ^[14]콜럼버스보다 5세기 앞서 북미에서 단명한 유럽 식민지를 시도했다.

10세기에 또 다른 습격 무리는 유럽을 휩쓸었다, 마자르족이다.그들은 결국 오늘날의 헝가리에 정착했고, 기독교로 개종했고 헝가리 사람들의 조상이 되었다.

서슬라브 민족인 폴란드인들은 10세기까지 통일국가를 형성했고 10세기에도^[15][16] 기독교를 채택했지만 11세기에 이교도들이 생겨났다.

서기 2천년이 시작될 무렵, 서양은 언어학적으로 세 개의 주요 그룹으로 나뉘었다.라틴어, 로마인의 언어, 게르만어, 켈트어에 기반을 둔 로망스어족 언어.가장 널리 사용되는 로망스 언어는 프랑스어, 이탈리아어, 포르투갈어, 스페인어였다.널리 사용되는 네 개의 게르만 언어는 영어, 독일어, 네덜란드어, 덴마크어였다.아일랜드어와 스코틀랜드 게일어는 브리튼 제도에서 널리 사용되는 켈트어였다.

고중세: 1000~1300세

미술사학자 케네스 클락은 서유럽의 첫 "대문명 시대"가 1000년경에 시작될 준비가 되었다고 썼다.1100년부터, 그는 다음과 같이 썼다: "삶의 모든 분야 – 행동, 철학, 조직, 기술[경험]은 엄청난 에너지의 분출, 존재의 강화"이 기간 동안 유럽의 많은 후속 업적들의 토대가 마련되었다.클라크의 설명에 따르면, 가톨릭 교회는 매우 강력하고 본질적으로 국제주의적이며 민주적이었으며 일반적으로 성 베네딕토 규칙을 따르는 수도원 조직들에 의해 운영되었다.지적인 사람들은 보통 종교 집단에 가입하고 지적, 행정 또는 외교 기술을 가진 사람들은 사회의 일반적인 제약을 넘어 발전할 수 있었다. 먼 나라에서 온 지도적인 성직자들은 멀리 떨어진 유럽의 사상을 연결하는 지역 주교구에서 받아들여졌다.클루니 수도원과 같은 복합 시설은 유럽 전역에 퍼져있는 의존관계로 활기찬 중심지가 되었다.일반인들도 성지순례에서 신앙심을 표현하고 기도를 드리기 위해 먼 거리를 여행했다.기념비적인 수도원장과 성당들이 건축되고 예술의 가장 위대한 시대 중 하나에 속하는 조각, 교수형, 모자이크, 작품들로 장식되어 평범한 삶의 단조롭고 비좁은 조건과 극명한 대조를 이룬다.세인트 수거 수도원장 데니스는 고딕 건축의 영향력 있는 초기 후원자로 여겨지고 아름다움에 대한 사랑이 사람들을 신에게 더 가까이 오게 한다고 믿었다: "무딘 마음은 물질적인 것을 통해 진실에 도달한다."클라크는 이것을 "다음 세기의 모든 숭고한 예술 작품들의 지적 배경이며 사실 오늘날까지 예술의 가치에 대한 우리의 믿음의 기초로 남아 있다"^[12]고 말한다.

1000년에 이르러 봉건제도는 지배적인 사회, 경제, 정치 체제가 되었다.사회의 최상층에는 군주가 있었는데, 군주는 귀족들에게 충성을 대가로 땅을 주었다.귀족들은 그들의 군주나 귀족을 지키기 위해 기사 역할을 했던 신하들에게 땅을 주었다.봉신 아래에는 농민이나 농노들이 있었다.봉건제도는 농민들이 유럽 안팎의 침략으로부터 귀족들의 보호를 필요로 하는 한 번성했다.그래서 11세기가 진행되면서 ^{[citation needed]}침략의 위협과 함께 봉건제도는 쇠퇴했습니다.

1054년, 수세기 동안의 긴장된 관계 끝에, 기독교 세계를 로마에 중심을 두고 서양에 지배적인 가톨릭 교회와 비잔틴 제국의 수도인 콘스탄티노플에 중심을 둔 정교회 사이에 분열시키면서, 교리의 차이로 인해 대분열이 일어났다.유럽의 마지막 이교도 땅은 중세 전성기에 발트족의 개종과 함께 기독교로 개종하여 ^{[citation needed]}서양 문명으로도 이어졌다.

중세시대가 진행되면서 기사도의 귀족적 이상과 타인에 대한 예의와 봉사를 바탕으로 한 기사 작위제도는 문화적으로 중요해졌다.영국 캔터베리 대성당, 독일 쾰른 대성당, 프랑스 샤르트르 대성당(케네스^[12] 클라크에 의해 "유럽 문명 최초의 위대한 각성의 전형"이라고 불림)을 포함한 유럽 전역에 비범한 예술적, 건축적 복잡성을 지닌 대형 고딕 양식의 대성당이 지어졌다.그 시기는 훨씬 더 사치스러운 예술과 건축을 만들어 냈지만, 또한 성 프란치스코와 단테 알리기에리의 신 희극의 서사시와 같은 도덕적인 단순함을 만들어냈다.교회가 더 강력하고 부유해지면서, 많은 사람들이 개혁을 추구했다.가난과 ^{[citation needed]}영성을 강조하는 도미니카 수도회와 프란치스코 수도회가 설립되었습니다.

여성들은 많은 면에서 정치와 상업 생활에서 제외되었지만, 지도적인 여성 교사는 예외였다.중세 수도원의 수도원장들과 여성 상급자들은 남성 주교들과 수도원장들의 그것과 맞먹을 수 있는 영향력 있는 인물들이었다: "그들은 완벽한 평등의 관점에서 왕, 주교들, 그리고 가장 위대한 영주들과 함께 대접했다;... 그들은 교회의 헌납에, 그리고 심지어 그와 같은 모든 위대한 종교와 국가의 엄숙함에 있었다.e 여왕, 국회 심의에 참여..."^[17]성모 마리아(예수의 어머니)에 대한 헌신의 인기가 높아지면서 가톨릭 유럽의 중심 문화 테마로 모성 덕을 확보했다.케네스 클락은 12세기 초의 '성모 숭배'가 "터프하고 무자비한 야만인들에게 부드러움과 ^[12]연민의 미덕을 가르쳤다"고 썼다.

1095년, 교황 우르바노 2세는 셀주크 투르크가 기독교인들이 그곳의 성지를 방문하는 것을 막았을 때 이슬람 통치로부터 성지를 되찾기 위한 십자군 원정을 요구했습니다.이슬람이 출현하기 전 수세기 동안 소아시아와 중동의 상당 부분은 로마와 이후 비잔틴 제국의 일부였다.십자군 원정은 원래 아나톨리아로 확장되는 터키인들과 싸우기 위해 도움을 청한 비잔틴 황제의 요청에 따라 시작되었다.제1차 십자군 원정은 그 임무에 성공했지만 국내에서는 심각한 대가를 치렀고 십자군은 성지에 대한 통치를 확립했다.그러나 13세기에 이슬람 세력이 이 땅을 재탈환했고 이후 십자군 원정은 그다지 성공적이지 못했다.성지에 대한 기독교의 지배력을 회복하기 위한 특정한 십자군 원정은 1095년과 1291년 사이에 거의 200년 동안 계속되었다.스페인과 포르투갈 (레콘키스타), 그리고 북부 십자군 전쟁은 15세기까지 계속되었다.십자군 원정은 유럽에 중대한 정치적, 경제적, 사회적 영향을 끼쳤다.그들은 또한 동부와 서부 기독교를 서로 멀어지게 하는 역할을 했고 궁극적으로 터키인들이 발칸반도와 ^{[citation needed]}코카서스를 통해 유럽으로 진격하는 것을 막지 못했다.

로마 제국이 멸망한 후, 많은 고전 그리스어 문서들이 아랍어로 번역되어 중세 이슬람 세계에 보존되었고, 그곳에서 아랍 과학과 철학과 함께 그리스어 고전들이 서유럽으로 전해졌고 12세기와 13세기의 ^[18][19][20]르네상스 기간 동안 라틴어로 번역되었다.

성당학교는 중세 초기에 고등교육의 중심지로 시작되었고, 그 중 일부는 궁극적으로 중세 대학으로 발전했다.중세 전성기에 샤르트르 대성당은 유명하고 영향력 있는 샤르트르 대성당 학교를 운영했습니다.서양 기독교의 중세 시대의 대학들 서유럽을 가로질러, well-integrated다 그리고 좋은 학자들과 자연 철학자들의 로버트 그로스 테스트. Robert. 옥스포드 대학의 과학적 실험이 체계적인 법의 조기 expositor,[21]과 세인트 장백의 포함한 다양한 생산 조사의 자유를 격려했다.ert 생물학 분야^[22] 연구의 선구자인 위대한 이탈리아 볼로냐 대학교는 지속적으로 운영되는 가장 ^{[citation needed]}오래된 대학교로 여겨진다.

중세 전성기의 철학은 종교적 주제에 초점을 맞췄다.형태들의 이상적 세계와 그들의 육체적 현상의 불완전한 세계 사이의 분리에 대한 플라톤의 생각을 불완전한 육체와 높은 영혼 사이의 기독교적 분열로 수정한 기독교 플라톤주의는 처음에는 지배적인 사고 학파였다.하지만, 12세기에 아리스토텔레스의 작품들이 서양에 다시 소개되었고, 이것은 과학적 관찰을 강조하는 스콜라리즘으로 알려진 새로운 연구 학파를 낳았다.이 시기의 두 명의 중요한 철학자는 성 안셀름과 성 토마스 아퀴나스였는데, 그들은 둘 다 철학적 수단을 통해 신의 존재를 증명하는 것에 관심이 있었다.Aquinas에 의한 Summa Thologicalica는 중세 철학에서 가장 영향력 있는 문서 중 하나였고 Thomism은 오늘날에도 철학 수업에서 계속 연구되고 있다.신학자 피터 아벨라르는 1122년에 다음과 같이 썼다. "나는 내가 믿을 수 있도록 이해해야만 한다...의심함으로써 우리는 심문을 받게 되고, 심문을 통해 진실을 인식하게 된다."^[12]

노르망디에서, 바이킹들은 프랑스 문화와 언어를 채택했고, 대부분 프랑크 족과 갈로-로마 족의 원주민들과 섞여 노르만 족으로 알려지게 되었다.그들은 중세 유럽과 심지어 근동에서 주요한 정치적, 군사적, 문화적 역할을 했다.그들은 그들의 무신과 기독교 신앙심으로 유명했다.그들은 빠르게 그들이 정착한 나라의 로망스 언어를 채택했고, 그들의 방언은 중요한 문학 언어인 노르만으로 알려지게 되었다.노르망디 공국은 프랑스 왕실과 조약을 맺고 중세 프랑스의 거대한 영지 중 하나였다.노르만족은 그들의 독특한 로마네스크 건축, 음악적 전통, 그리고 그들의 군사적 업적과 혁신으로 유명하다.노르만 탐험가들은 시칠리아와 남부 이탈리아에 정복으로 왕국을 세웠고, 그들의 공작을 대신한 노르만 탐험은 노르만인의 영국 정복으로 이어졌다.노르만의 영향력은 이러한 새로운 중심지에서 근동의 십자군 국가, 영국의 스코틀랜드와 웨일즈, 그리고 아일랜드로 ^{[citation needed]}확산되었다.

서구 사회의 주요 세력들, 즉 귀족, 군주제, 성직자 간의 관계는 때때로 갈등을 야기했다.만약 군주가 교회 권력에 도전하려 한다면, 교회의 비난은 귀족, 농민, 그리고 다른 군주들 사이에서 완전한 지지를 잃는 것을 의미할 수 있다.11세기 가장 영향력 있는 사람 중 한 명인 신성 로마 황제 헨리 4세는 1077년 교황 그레고리오 7세에 의한 파문을 되돌리기 위해 눈 위에 사흘 동안 맨 머리로 서 있었다.중세가 진행되면서 군주국이 권력을 중앙집권화하면서 귀족들은 자신들의 권위를 유지하려고 노력했다.신성로마제국 황제 프레데릭 2세의 정교한 궁정은 노르만, 비잔틴, 이슬람 문명이 뒤섞인 시칠리아에 근거지를 두고 있었다.그의 왕국은 이탈리아 남부를 거쳐 독일을 거쳐 1229년 예루살렘의 왕위에 올랐다.그의 치세는 ^[23]북이탈리아에 대한 지배권을 둘러싼 교황과의 긴장과 경쟁으로 이어졌다.교육의 후원자였던 프레데릭은 ^{[citation needed]}나폴리 대학을 설립했다.

플랜태저넷 왕들은 12세기에 처음으로 영국 왕국을 통치했다.앙리 5세는 아쟁쿠르 전투에서 더 많은 사람들을 물리치고 유명한 승리를 거뒀고, 반면에 제3차 십자군 원정으로 유명했던 사자왕 리처드 1세는 후에 영국 민속의 상징적인 인물로 낭만화 되었다."영시의 아버지"인 제프리 초서의 후원자였던 몇몇 군주들에 의해 고무된 독특한 영국 문화가 플랜타게네츠 시대 하에서 생겨났다.고딕 건축 양식은 웨스트민스터 사원과 같은 건물들이 그 양식으로 개조되면서 그 시기에 인기가 있었다.존 왕의 마그나 카르타 봉인은 관습법과 헌법의 발전에 영향을 미쳤다.1215년 헌장은 왕이 특정한 자유를 선언하고, 그의 의지가 자의적이지 않다는 것을 받아들이도록 요구했습니다. 예를 들어, "자유인"은 토지법을 통해서만 처벌될 수 있다는 것을 명시적으로 받아들임으로써, 오늘날에도 여전히 존재하는 권리입니다.영국 의회와 모범 의회와 같은 정치 기관은 플랜태저넷 시대에서 비롯되었으며, 케임브리지 대학과 ^{[citation needed]}옥스퍼드 대학을 포함한 교육 기관도 마찬가지입니다.

12세기부터 발명성은 북유럽 바이킹과 남유럽 이슬람권 밖에서 다시 강조되었다.대학이 번창하고 석탄 채굴이 시작되었으며, 돛단배가 운하를 통해 벨기에의 번창한 도시 브루게스에 도착할 수 있게 한 자물쇠, 그리고 자기 나침반과 방향타를 통해 안내되는 심해 선박과 같은 중요한 기술적 진보가 ^[14]발명되었다.

중세 후기: 1300~1500

약 1150년 이후 기온의 냉각은 유럽 전역의 수확량을 감소시켰고 결과적으로 의류용 식량과 아마 재료가 부족했다.기근은 증가했고 1316년에 심각한 기근이 이프르를 사로잡았다.1410년, 그린란드 노르드인의 마지막은 그들의 식민지를 얼음에 버렸다.중앙아시아에서 몽골의 침략은 13세기 내내 유럽으로 진행되었고, 그 결과 역사상 가장 큰 제국이 되었고 인구의 거의 절반을 지배했고 ^[14]1300년까지 전 세계로 확장되었다.

교황청은 1305년부터^[24] 1378년까지 아비뇽에 궁정을 두었는데, 이는 교황청과 프랑스 왕관 사이의 갈등에서 비롯되었다.아비뇽에는 총 7명의 교황이 통치했는데, 모두 프랑스인이었고, 점점 더 프랑스 왕실의 영향을 받고 있었다.마침내 1377년 그레고리 11세는 신비주의자인 시에나의 성 캐서린의 간청으로 인해 교황청을 로마로 복원하여 아비뇽의 ^[25]교황직을 공식적으로 종식시켰다.그러나 1378년 추기경들과 그레고리의 후계자인 우르바노 6세 사이의 관계가 깨지면서 서방 분열을 일으켰는데, 이는 아비뇽 교황들의 또 다른 계통이 ^[26]로마와 경쟁하는 것을 보게 되었다.그 기간은 개신교 종교 개혁에 있어 교황의 위신을 약화시키는 데 도움이 되었다.

중세 후기에 흑사병은 1348년에 유럽을 강타했다.유럽은 몽고인들이 유럽에 가져온 것으로 보이는 부보닉 페스트의 발생에 압도되었다.쥐가 주최하는 벼룩이 이 병을 옮겼고 그것은 유럽을 황폐화시켰다.파리, 함부르크, 베네치아, 피렌체와 같은 주요 도시들은 인구의 절반을 잃었다.유럽 인구의 3분의 1에 달하는 약 2천만 명의 사람들이 페스트가 사라지기 전에 사망했습니다.페스트는 다음 세기에 ^[14]걸쳐 주기적으로 재발했다.

중세 마지막 세기에는 영국과 프랑스 사이에 백년전쟁이 일어났다.전쟁은 1337년 프랑스의 왕이 남부 프랑스의 영국 통치하의 가스코니에 대한 권리를 주장하면서 시작되었고, 영국의 왕은 자신이 프랑스의 정당한 왕이라고 주장했다.처음에, 영국은 프랑스의 절반을 정복했고, 나중에 성인이 되는 시골 소녀 잔 다르크에 의해 프랑스인들이 다시 모이기 전까지 전쟁에서 이길 것 같았다.비록 그녀는 영국에 의해 붙잡혀 처형당했지만, 프랑스는 계속 싸웠고 1453년 전쟁에서 승리했다.전쟁이 끝난 후, 프랑스는 1558년에 획득한 칼레를 제외한 노르망디 전역을 얻었다.

중앙아시아에서 온 몽골족에 이어 오스만 투르크가 들어왔습니다.1400년까지 그들은 오늘날의 터키 대부분을 점령했고 그들의 통치를 발칸 반도를 거쳐 다뉴브 강까지 확장했고 심지어 전설의 도시 콘스탄티노플을 에워쌌다.마침내, 1453년에 유럽의 가장 위대한 도시 중 하나가 ^[14]터키에 함락되었다.술탄 메흐메트 2세가 지휘하는 오스만 제국은 동로마 제국의 마지막 황제 콘스탄틴 11세가 지휘하는 수적으로 훨씬 더 많은 방어군과 싸웠고, 무시무시한 대포의 새로운 무기로 고대 성벽을 무너뜨렸다.오스만 정복은 그리스 난민 학자들을 서쪽으로 보내 고전 고대에 대한 서구의 지식 부활에 기여했다.

아마도 유럽 최초의 시계는 1335년 밀라노의 한 교회에 설치되었고, 이는 기계 ^[14]시대의 시작을 암시한다.14세기까지 유럽의 중산층은 봉건 체제가 쇠퇴하면서 영향력과 숫자가 증가하였다.이것은 서부의 도시와 도시의 성장을 촉진했고 유럽의 경제를 향상시켰다.이것은 차례로 이탈리아에서 시작된 르네상스라고 알려진 서양의 문화 운동을 시작하는데 도움을 주었다.이탈리아는 명목상 신성로마제국의 일부인 도시국가들에 의해 지배되었고 메디치 가문이나 경우에 따라서는 교황에 의해 지배되었다.

르네상스 그리고 종교개혁

르네상스: 14세기부터 17세기까지

이탈리아에서 시작된 르네상스는 고대 그리스와 로마 문명에 대한 과학적, 지적 탐구 및 감상의 새로운 시대를 열었다.플로렌스, 제노바, 겐트, 뉘른베르크, 제네바, 취리히, 리스본, 세비야의 상업도시들은 예술과 과학의 후원자들을 제공했고 많은 활동들을 촉발시켰다.

메디치 가문은 피렌체의 주요 가문이 되었고 밀라노의 비스콘티 가문과 스포르차 가문, 페라라의 에스테 가문, 만토바의 곤차가 가문과 함께 이탈리아 르네상스의 탄생을 촉진하고 영감을 주었다.브루넬레스키, 보티첼리, 다빈치, 미켈란젤로, 지오토, 도나텔로, 티티안, 라파엘과 같은 위대한 예술가들은 영감을 받은 작품을 만들었습니다. 그들의 그림들은 중세 예술가들에 의해 만들어진 것보다 더 사실적으로 보였고 그들의 대리석 조각상들은 고전 시대의 것들과 비교되고 때로는 능가하기도 했습니다.미켈란젤로는 1501년과 1504년 사이에 대리석으로 그의 걸작 다윗을 조각했다.

인문주의 역사학자 레오나르도 브루니는 고대, 중세, 그리고 근대의 역사를 나누었다.

교회들은 수세기 만에 처음으로 로마네스크 스타일로 지어지기 시작했다.이탈리아와 네덜란드에서 예술과 건축이 번성하는 동안, 독일과 스위스에서 종교 개혁가들은 꽃을 피웠습니다; 인쇄는 라인랜드에서 자리를 잡았고 항해사들은 포르투갈과 스페인에서 ^[14]발견을 위한 특별한 항해를 시작했습니다.

1450년경, 요하네스 구텐버그는 인쇄기를 개발하여 문학작품이 더 빨리 퍼질 수 있게 하였다.마키아벨리와 같은 세속적인 사상가들은 시민 통치에 대한 교훈을 얻기 위해 로마의 역사를 재점검했다.신학자들이 성 아우구스티누스의 저서를 다시 찾았다.북유럽 르네상스의 중요한 사상가로는 네덜란드 신학자인 가톨릭 인문주의자 데시데리우스 에라스무스와 1516년 유토피아를 쓴 영국의 정치가이자 철학자인 토마스 모어가 있다.휴머니즘은 르네상스에서 나타난 중요한 발전이었다.종교보다는 인간의 본성과 세속적인 주제에 대한 연구를 중시했다.그 시대의 중요한 인본주의자들 중에는 작가 페트라르카와 보카치오가 포함되었는데, 그들은 중세 시대와 마찬가지로 라틴어와 토스카나 이탈리아어로 글을 썼다.

달력이 1500년에 이르렀을 때, 유럽은 꽃을 피웠습니다 – 레오나르도 다빈치가 크리스토퍼 콜럼버스가 아메리카 대륙에 도착한 지 얼마 되지 않아 모나리자 초상화를 그리면서, Amerigo Vespucci는 미국이 인도의 일부가 아니라는 것을 증명했고, 따라서 그의 이름에서 유래한 포르투갈의 항해사 Vasco Da Gama는 아프리카를 항해했습니다.미켈란젤로는 로마 시스티나 성당의 천장에 구약성서 주제의 그림을 완성했다(이러한 예술적 풍요로움은 북유럽의 마르틴 루터 같은 사람들이 ^[14]로마 교회에 항의하는 데 많은 박차를 가했다).

유럽 역사상 처음으로 알프스 북쪽과 대서양 연안의 사건들이 중심에 ^[14]섰다.이 시기의 중요한 예술가들은 보쉬, 뒤러, 브로겔을 포함했다.스페인에서 미겔 데 세르반테스는 소설 돈키호테를 썼고, 이 시기의 다른 중요한 문학 작품들은 제프리 초서의 캔터베리 이야기와 토마스 말로리 경의 르 모르테 다르투르였다.그 시대의 가장 유명한 극작가는 영국인 윌리엄 셰익스피어였는데, 그의 소네트와 극은 영어로 쓰여진 가장 훌륭한 작품들 중 몇 개로 여겨진다.

한편, 북부 이베리아의 기독교 왕국은 이슬람 통치자들로부터 반도를 되찾기 위해 수세기 동안 계속 싸워왔다.1492년 이슬람의 마지막 거점인 그라나다가 함락되었고 이베리아는 기독교 왕국 스페인과 포르투갈로 분할되었다.이베리아의 유대인과 이슬람 소수민족은 가톨릭으로 개종하거나 추방될 수 밖에 없었다.포르투갈인들은 즉시 아프리카 연안을 탐험하고 인도양에서 대부분 무슬림 강대국들과 무역을 하기 위해 해외 파견 탐험을 확대하는 것을 고려했고, 포르투갈을 부유하게 만들었다.1492년, 크리스토퍼 콜럼버스의 스페인 탐험대가 동아시아로 가는 서쪽 항로를 찾는 동안 아메리카 대륙을 발견했다.

그러나 동양에서 슐레이만 대제가 이끄는 오스만 투르크는 1529년 ^[14]빈을 포위하며 기독교 유럽 중심부로 진격했다.

16세기는 서양의 나머지 지역에서 르네상스의 꽃을 피웠다.폴란드 왕국에서 천문학자 니콜라우스 코페르니쿠스는 우주의 지구중심 모델이 틀렸고, 사실 행성들은 태양 주위를 돈다고 추론했다.네덜란드에서 망원경과 현미경의 발명은 우주와 현미경 세계를 조사하는 결과를 낳았다.현대 과학의 아버지 갈릴레오와 크리스티안 호이겐스는 더 진보된 망원경을 개발했고 그들의 과학 연구에 이것을 사용했다.미생물학의 아버지인 Antonie van Leeuwenhoek은 미생물 연구에 현미경을 사용하는 것을 개척했고 미생물학을 과학 분야로 확립했습니다.의학의 진보와 인체 해부학의 이해 또한 이 시기에 증가했다.Gerolamo Cardano는 부분적으로 몇몇 기계를 발명했고 필수적인 수학 이론을 도입했다.영국에서 아이작 뉴턴 경은 물리학의 선구자이다.이러한 사건들은 실험을 강조한 소위 과학 혁명으로 이어졌다.

개혁: 1500~1650

16세기 서구의 또 다른 주요 운동은 종교개혁으로 서방을 크게 변화시키고 종교통합을 종식시켰다.종교개혁은 1517년 가톨릭 수도사 마틴 루터가 교회의 부와 부패뿐만 아니라 교황의 제도와 그리스도에 대한 믿음 외에 "선한 일"도 구원을 위해 필요하다는 믿음을 포함한 많은 가톨릭 신앙을 비난하는 95개의 논문을 쓰면서 시작되었다.루터는 보헤미안 얀 허스와 영국인 존 위클리프와 같은 초기 교회 비평가들의 믿음을 이용했다.루터의 믿음은 결국 카톨릭 교회에서 파문되고 그의 가르침에 기초한 교회의 설립으로 끝이 났다: 루터 교회는 북부 독일의 다수 종교가 되었다.곧 다른 개혁가들이 등장했고, 그들의 추종자들은 개신교로 알려지게 되었다.1525년 프로이센 공작은 최초의 루터교 국가가 되었다.

1540년대 프랑스인 존 칼빈은 제네바에 술과 춤을 금지하고 신이 처음부터 구원받을 운명들을 선택했다고 가르친 교회를 세웠다.그의 칼뱅 교회는 스위스의 약 절반을 차지했고 그의 가르침을 바탕으로 한 교회는 네덜란드와 스코틀랜드에서 지배적이 되었다.영국에서 교황이 헨리 8세에게 이혼을 허락하지 않았을 때, 그는 자신을 영국 교회의 수장으로 선언했다.일부 영국인들은 교회가 여전히 가톨릭 교회와 너무 비슷하다고 느꼈고 더 급진적인 청교도주의를 형성했다.다른 많은 작은 개신교 종파들이 형성되었는데, 여기에는 츠윙글리아교, 아나베타교, 메노교 등이 포함된다.개신교 신자들은 여러 면에서 달랐지만, 일반적으로 그들의 종교 지도자들을 성직자 대신 목사라고 불렀고, 오직 성경만을 믿었고, 전통은 신성한 계시를 제공하지 않았다.

영국과 네덜란드 공화국은 개신교 반대자들이 북미 식민지로 이주하는 것을 허용했다. 따라서 미래 미국은 초기 개신교 정신을 발견하게 되었다. 반면 개신교인들은 스페인 식민지로 이주하는 것이 금지되었다.뉴잉글랜드의 칼빈주의자들처럼 새로운 개신교 운동들 중 일부에서 보다 민주적인 조직 구조가 영국의 ^[14]미국 식민지에서 민주주의 정신을 기르는 데 큰 역할을 했다.

가톨릭 교회에서는 종교 개혁에 대한 반종교 개혁으로 대응했다.몇몇 루터와 칼빈의 비판의 면죄부 판매는 트리엔트 공의회에 의해 1562년에 멈춰 세웠다 주의를 기울였다.하지만 무성한 바로크 건축, 미술은 믿음의 재 확인과 새로운 신학교로 주문에서 임무 이륙 far로 이어지기 위해 설립되었다고 받아들인 것.[14]이 운동에 중요한 지도자는 성 로욜라의 이냐시오와 중국에 세인츠 마테오 리치와 같은 유명한 선교사들을 보냈습니다 많은 개종자를 예수회(예수회 질서), 프란치스코 하비에르는 인도에 피터 Claver이 미국으로의 창시자였다.

으로서 고관들과 왕과 황제들 종교 논쟁에와 국가적 통합을 추구하는 한편만, 종교적 전쟁 유럽 전역에서 이 신성 로마 제국 특히에서 분출되었다.황제 찰스 V아우크스부르크에서 교전 중인 가톨릭과 개신교 귀족 사이의 평화를 마련할 수 있었다.그러나 1618년에,더라는 개신교와 가톨릭 교도 사이의 제국에, 이것은 결국 프랑스와 같은 이웃 국가들이 개입되기 시작했다.는 엄청나게 충격적인 전쟁은 1648년에 끝났다.평화 베스트팔렌의 전쟁 끝날 무렵에, 루터교, 가톨릭 신앙과 칼뱅 주의 모든 제국에 관용을 승인 받았다.권력의 제국의 전쟁 뒤의 두 중심지 남부의 북쪽과 가톨릭 오스트리아에 프로이센이 있었다.네덜란드는, 스페인 사람들에 의해서 시간에 지배를 당했고, 개신교 국가 설립 독립을 반란을 일으켰다.엘리자베스 여왕 시대는 무엇보다도 영어 드라마, 윌리엄 셰익스피어와 같은 극작가들이 주도하는 번창하고 프란시스 드레이크와 같은 영어 모험가들의 선원력 때문에 유명하다.왕위에 그녀의 44년과 민족 주체 의식을 위조하다 도와 준 안정성을 제공했다.어느 여왕으로 첫번째 움직임의 그녀는 최고 지사 중 어떤 영국의 교회를 제시한 영어에 개신교 교회의 설립을 지원하는 것이었다.

1650년까지 유럽의 종교 지도는 다시 그려졌다: 스칸디나비아, 아이슬란드, 북독일, 스위스의 일부, 네덜란드, 영국은 개신교였고, 반면 나머지 서방은 가톨릭 신자로 남아 있었다.개신교 세력이 더 많은 사람들이 성경을 읽을 수 있도록 교육하는 목표를 추구함에 따라 종교개혁의 부산물은 읽고 쓰는 능력을 증가시켰다.

서양 제국의 부흥: 1500~1800년

새벽부터 현대에 이르기까지, 서양은 아프리카, 아시아, 유럽의 비서부 지역들로부터 침략을 받아왔다.1500년까지 서양인들은 그들의 새로운 기술을 이용하여, 미지의 바다로 항해하고, 그들의 힘을 확장하였고, 포르투갈과 카스티야(나중에 스페인), 그리고 나중에는 네덜란드, 프랑스 그리고 영국에서 온 서양 탐험가들이 "구세계"에서 먼 항로와 원반을 만들기 위해 출발하면서 발견의 시대가 시작되었다."신세계"를 넘어섰습니다.

1492년, 제노베제 태생의 항해사 크리스토퍼 콜럼버스는 카스티야(스페인)의 후원 아래 대서양을 거쳐 동인도 제도로 가는 해외 항로를 찾기 위해 출발했다.콜럼버스는 아시아보다는 카리브해의 바하마에 상륙했다.스페인의 식민화가 뒤따랐고 유럽은 아메리카 대륙에 서구 문명을 세웠다.포르투갈 탐험가 Vasco da Gama는 1497-1499년 유럽에서 대서양과 인도양을 거쳐 직접 인도로 항해하는 첫 번째 탐험대를 이끌었고, 실크로드와 같은 위험한 육로를 통한 무역의 가능성을 열었다.스페인 왕실에서 일하는 포르투갈 탐험가 페르디난드 마젤란은 1519년부터 1522년까지 대서양에서 태평양으로 항해하고 태평양을 건넌 최초의 탐험가가 되었다.스페인 탐험가 후안 세바스티안 엘카노는 첫 번째 지구 일주 항해를 마쳤다.

아메리카 대륙은 정복, 질병, 그리고 새로운 기술과 삶의 방식의 도입으로 인해 유럽의 팽창에 의해 깊은 영향을 받았다.스페인 정복자들은 카리브해의 대부분의 섬을 정복했고 두 개의 거대한 신세계 제국, 즉 멕시코의 아즈텍 제국과 페루의 잉카 제국을 정복했다.그곳에서 스페인은 남아메리카의 절반, 중앙아메리카의 모든 것, 그리고 북아메리카의 많은 부분을 정복했다.포르투갈은 또한 아메리카 대륙에서 확장하여 북미 북부에 (상대적으로 제한된 기간 동안) 일부 어업 식민지를 설립하려고 시도했고 남아메리카의 절반을 정복하고 그들의 식민지를 브라질이라고 불렀다.이들 서구 열강은 화약과 같은 뛰어난 기술뿐만 아니라 그들이 무심코 가져온 구세계 질병과 미국 인구의 많은 부분을 전멸시킨 질병들의 도움을 받았다.콜럼버스에 의해 인디언으로 불린 원주민들은 그가 원래 아시아에 상륙했다고 생각했기 때문에 가톨릭으로 개종했고 스페인어나 포르투갈어 통치자들의 언어를 채택했다.그들은 또한 서양 문화의 많은 부분을 받아들였다.많은 이베리아 정착민들이 도착했고, 그들 중 다수는 아메리카 인디언들과 결혼하여 소위 메스티조라는 인구를 낳았고, 이것이 스페인 아메리카 제국 인구의 대다수가 되었다.

다른 유럽의 식민지 열강들은 그들의 뒤를 따랐는데, 가장 두드러지게는 영국, 네덜란드, 프랑스였다.세 나라 모두 북미와 남미, 서인도 제도를 통해 식민지를 건설했다.영국의 식민지는 바베이도스, 세인트키츠, 안티구아 같은 카리브해의 섬과 메릴랜드, 매사추세츠, 로드아일랜드 같은 지역의 북미 지역(대부분 독점 체제를 통해)에 설립되었다.네덜란드와 프랑스의 식민지화 노력은 카리브해와 북미에 초점을 맞춘 비슷한 패턴을 따랐다.아루바 섬, 퀴라소 섬, 신트마르텐 섬은 점차 네덜란드의 지배하에 들어갔고, 네덜란드인들은 북미에 뉴네덜란드 식민지를 세웠다.프랑스는 17세기와 18세기 동안 루이지애나와 퀘벡을 점차 식민지로 만들었고, 18세기에는 노예에 기반한 플랜테이션 ^[27]경제를 통해 서인도 식민지 생도맹게를 유럽 최고의 해외 소유지로 변모시켰다.

미주에서는 가장 외진 사람들만이 서구와 서구식 정부에 의해 완전히 동화되는 것을 가까스로 피한 것으로 보인다.여기에는 북부 민족(예: 이누이트), 유카탄 민족, 아마존 삼림 거주자 및 다양한 안데스 그룹이 포함됩니다.이들 중 케추아족, 아이마라족, 마야족이 각각 약 1000만~1100만 명, 200만 명, 700만 명으로 가장 많다.볼리비아는 미국 중 유일하게 미국 인구의 대다수를 차지하는 나라이다.

구세계와 신대륙의 접촉으로 콜럼버스의 이름을 딴 콜럼버스 교환이 탄생했다.그것은 한 반구에 고유한 상품을 다른 반구로 이전하는 것을 포함했다.서양인들은 소, 말, 양을 신대륙으로 데려왔고 유럽인들은 담배, 감자, 바나나를 신대륙으로부터 받았다.세계 무역에서 중요해진 다른 품목은 아메리카 대륙의 사탕수수와 면화 작물, 그리고 아메리카 대륙에서 유럽뿐만 아니라 구세계의 다른 곳으로 가져온 금과 은이었다.

유럽 정착민들이 아메리카 대륙을 식민지로 만들기 시작하면서, 유럽의 증가하는 수요를 수용하기 위해 많은 현금 작물 재배지가 생겨났다.처음에, 이러한 농장의 노동력은 유럽의 계약직 하인들에게서 왔다; 그러나 곧, 이 시스템은 대서양 횡단 노예 무역을 통해 아프리카로부터 아메리카로 유럽 노예상들에 의해 수입된 노예 아프리카인들에 의해 보충되었다.약 1천 2백만 명의 노예 아프리카인들이 주로 서인도제도와 남미 대륙으로 강제 이송되었다.일단 그곳에 도착하면, 그들은 주로 설탕, 목화, 담배와 같은 농작물을 재배하면서, 잔인한 환경에서 이러한 농장을 일하도록 강요받았다.유럽의 아프리카 무역과 미국의 유럽 무역과 함께, 이 무역은 "삼각 무역"^[28][29]으로 알려져 있었다.노예제도는 19세기에 노예제 폐지 운동과 노예 ^[30][31]저항으로 이어질 때까지 유럽 식민지들의 경제를 지탱해 왔다.

한동안 아프리카 통치자들과 무역을 한 후, 서양인들은 아프리카에 식민지를 건설하기 시작했다.포르투갈인들은 북아프리카, 서부, 동아프리카의 항구와 오늘날의 앙골라와 모잠비크의 내륙 영토를 정복했다.그들은 또한 이전에 중앙 아프리카에 있는 콩고 왕국과 관계를 맺었고, 결국 콩고 왕국은 가톨릭으로 개종했다.네덜란드인들은 오늘날의 남아프리카에 식민지를 세웠고, 이것은 많은 네덜란드 정착민들을 끌어들였다.서구 열강들은 또한 서아프리카에 식민지를 세웠다.하지만, 대부분의 대륙은 서양인들에게 알려지지 않은 채로 남아 있었고 그들의 식민지는 아프리카의 해안으로 제한되었다.

서양인들도 아시아에 진출했다.포르투갈인들은 동인도, 인도, 페르시아만, 스리랑카, 동남아시아, 중국의 항구 도시들을 지배했다.이 기간 동안, 네덜란드인들은 인도네시아 군도를 식민지로 만들기 시작했고, 인도네시아 군도는 19세기 초에 네덜란드령 동인도 제도가 되었고, 스리랑카, 말레이시아, 인도의 항구 도시를 얻었다.스페인은 필리핀을 정복하고 주민들을 가톨릭으로 개종시켰다.이베리아 출신 선교사(이탈리아와 프랑스 출신 포함)는 일왕에 의해 기독교가 불법화될 때까지 일본에서 많은 개종자를 얻었다.대부분의 중국인들은 기독교인이 아니었지만 일부 중국인들은 기독교인이 되었다.인도는 대부분 영국과 프랑스에 의해 분할되었다.

서구 열강이 확장되면서 그들은 토지와 자원을 놓고 경쟁했다.카리브해에서는 해적들이 배나 도시에서 금과 다른 귀중품을 훔치기를 바라며 서로, 그리고 각국의 해군과 식민지 도시를 공격했다.이것은 때때로 정부에 의해 지원되었다.예를 들어, 영국은 스페인에 대한 습격에서 해적 프랜시스 드레이크 경을 지원했다.1652년과 1678년 사이에 세 번의 영-네덜란드 전쟁이 일어났고, 그 중 마지막 두 번은 네덜란드가 이겼다.나폴레옹 전쟁 말기에 영국은 수리남과 네덜란드령 남아프리카공화국과 교역된 뉴네덜란드를 얻었다.1756년, 7년 전쟁, 즉 프랑스와 인도 전쟁이 시작되었다.그것은 여러 대륙에서 싸우는 여러 강대국들과 관련이 있었다.북미에서는 영국 군인과 식민지 군대가 프랑스군을 물리쳤고 인도에서는 프랑스군도 영국에 패배했다.유럽에서 프로이센은 오스트리아를 이겼다.1763년 전쟁이 끝났을 때, 뉴프랑스와 동부 루이지애나는 영국에, 서부 루이지애나는 스페인에 양도되었다.프랑스의 인도 땅은 영국에 양도되었다.프로이센은 오늘날 독일의 더 많은 영토에 대한 통치를 받았다.

네덜란드의 항해사 빌렘 얀즈룬은 1606년에^[32][33][34] 오스트레일리아에 상륙한 최초의 문서화된 서양인이었다. 또 다른 네덜란드인인 아벨 태즈먼은 나중에 호주 본토에 닿았고 1640년대에 처음으로 태즈메이니아와 뉴질랜드 지도를 만들었다.영국의 항해사 제임스 쿡은 1770년 호주의 동부 해안 지도를 만든 최초의 사람이 되었다.쿡의 비상한 항해술은 먼 해안과 바다에 대한 유럽인들의 인식을 크게 확장시켰습니다: 그의 첫 항해는 호주의 식민지화의 전망에 호의적으로 보고되었습니다; 그의 두 번째 항해는 거의 남극 대륙으로 모험했습니다; 그리고 그의 세 번째 항해는 파시피를 탐험했습니다.북미와 시베리아의 c 해안에서 그를 하와이로 데려갔는데, 그곳에서 그는 오랜 체류 후 부주의하게 돌아와 ^[35]원주민들에게 몽둥이로 맞아 죽었다.

근대 초기 유럽의 팽창기는 세계를 크게 변화시켰다.아메리카에서 온 새로운 농작물들은 유럽의 식단을 개선시켰다.이것은 유럽의 새로운 식민지 네트워크 덕분에 개선된 경제와 결합되어, 서구에서의 인구통계학적 혁명으로 이어졌고, 유아 사망률은 감소했고, 유럽인들은 더 일찍 결혼하여 더 많은 아이를 낳았습니다.서구는 기업이 국유이고 모국의 이익을 위해 식민지가 존재하는 상업주의를 채택하면서 경제적으로 더 정교해졌다.

계몽주의

절대주의와 계몽주의: 1500~1800

근대 초기 서양은 왕정, 귀족, 성직자 간의 전통적인 균형이 바뀌면서 큰 변화를 겪었다.봉건제도가 거의 사라지면서 귀족들은 전통적인 힘의 원천을 잃었다.한편, 개신교 국가에서 교회는 종종 군주에 의해 이끌려진 반면, 가톨릭 국가에서는 군주와 교회 사이의 갈등이 거의 일어나지 않았고 군주는 서양 ^{[citation needed]}역사상 그들이 가졌던 것보다 더 큰 권력을 행사할 수 있었다.왕권 신권론 하에서, 군주들은 신에게만 대답할 수 있다고 믿었고, 따라서 절대주의가 생겨났다.

15세기 초반에는 이슬람과 기독교 사이에 긴장이 여전히 계속되고 있었다.기독교인들이 지배하는 유럽은 여전히 무슬림 오스만 투르크의 위협을 받고 있었다.터키인들은 중앙아시아에서 서아시아로 이주하여 수년 전에 이슬람으로 개종했다.1453년 그들이 콘스탄티노플을 점령하여 동로마 제국을 멸망시킨 것은 새로운 오스만 제국의 가장 큰 업적이었다.그들은 중동, 북아프리카, 발칸반도로 계속 확장되었다.스페인의 지도 아래, 기독교 연합군은 1571년 레판토 전투에서 오스만 해군을 격파했다.하지만, 유럽에 대한 오스만 제국의 위협은 1683년 빈 전투에서 폴란드 ^[36][37]주도의 연합군이 오스만 제국을 물리칠 때까지 끝나지 않았다.비록 아테네가 탈환되어 1829년까지 ^[14]유지되기로 되어 있었지만 터키인들은 부다(부다페스트의 동쪽 지역), 베오그라드, 그리고 아테네에서 쫓겨났다.

16세기는 종종 스페인의 시글로 데 오로라고 불린다.아메리카의 식민지에서 많은 양의 금과 은을 얻었고, 이는 스페인을 세계에서 가장 부유하고 강력한 나라로 만드는 데 도움을 주었다.그 시대의 가장 위대한 스페인 군주 중 한 명은 찰스 1세(1516–1556년, 신성 로마 황제 카를 5세)였다.이 땅들을 통합하려는 그의 시도는 종교개혁으로 인한 분열과 지방 통치자들과 다른 나라 출신의 경쟁 통치자들의 야망에 의해 좌절되었다.또 다른 위대한 군주는 필립 2세 (1556–1598)였는데, 그의 통치 기간은 네덜란드와 스페인 무적함대의 상실과 같은 여러 종교 개혁 분쟁으로 특징지어졌습니다.이러한 사건들과 과도한 지출은 17세기까지 스페인의 힘과 영향력의 큰 감소로 이어질 것이다.

17세기 스페인이 쇠퇴하기 시작한 후, 네덜란드는 범선 덕분에 세계 최강국이 되었고, 17세기를 네덜란드 황금기로 불리게 되었다.네덜란드는 포르투갈과 스페인에 이어 해외 식민지 제국을 설립했습니다.이것은 동인도 및 서인도 회사의 기업 식민주의 모델 하에 이루어진 경우가 많았습니다.영국-네덜란드 전쟁 이후 프랑스와 영국은 18세기에 두 개의 강대국으로 부상했다.

루이 14세는 1643년에 프랑스의 왕이 되었다.그의 통치는 유럽 역사상 가장 부유한 것 중 하나였다.그는 베르사유 마을에 큰 궁전을 지었다.

신성 로마 황제는 30년 전쟁이 끝날 때까지 신성 로마 제국의 영토에 큰 영향력을 행사하지 않았다.제국의 북쪽에서, 프러시아는 강력한 개신교 국가로 부상했다.프레데릭 대왕과 같은 많은 재능 있는 통치자들 아래에서, 프러시아는 세력을 확장했고 전쟁에서 경쟁자인 오스트리아를 여러 번 물리쳤다.합스부르크 왕조에 의해 지배된 오스트리아는 오스만 제국과 헝가리의 희생으로 확장되면서 위대한 제국이 되었다.

절대주의가 자리잡지 못한 한 나라는 혁명가들과 문제가 있었던 영국이었다.헨리 8세의 딸 엘리자베스 1세는 왕위 계승자를 남기지 않았다.정당한 상속인은 실제로 스코틀랜드의 제임스 6세였고, 그는 영국의 제임스 1세로 왕위에 올랐다.제임스의 아들인 찰스 1세는 의회의 권력에 저항했다.찰스가 의회를 폐쇄하려고 했을 때, 국회의원들은 반란을 일으켰고 곧 영국 전역이 내전에 휘말렸다.영국 남북전쟁은 1649년 찰스 1세의 패배와 처형과 함께 끝났다. 의회는 왕 없는 연방을 선포했지만 곧 반독점주의 지도자이자 충실한 청교도 올리버 크롬웰을 보호자로 임명했다.크롬웰은 비록 종교적 다양성이 커졌을지 모르지만, 술과 극장을 불법화하는 것과 같은 많은 인기 없는 청교도 종교법을 제정했다.그가 죽은 후, 왕정은 찰스 2세 왕위에 오른 찰스의 아들 밑에서 회복되었다.그의 아들인 제임스 2세가 그의 뒤를 이었다.제임스와 그의 어린 아들은 가톨릭 신자였다.가톨릭 왕조에 의해 통치되는 것을 원하지 않는 의회는 제임스의 딸 메리와 그녀의 남편 오렌지의 윌리엄을 공동 국왕으로 초대했다.그들은 제임스가 해를 입지 않는다는 조건에 동의했다.자신을 지켜줄 개신교 영국군에 의지할 수 없다는 것을 깨달은 그는 1688년 명예혁명 이후 퇴위했다.그러나 윌리엄 3세와 메리 2세가 왕위에 오르기 전에 의회는 그들에게 모든 영국인에게 기본권을 보장하고, 비(非) 영국 개신교인에게 종교적 자유를 부여하고, 의회의 권리를 확고히 하는 영국 권리 장전에 서명하도록 강요했다.1707년, 1707년 연합법은 스코틀랜드와 영국의 의회에 의해 통과되었고, 스코틀랜드와 잉글랜드는 하나의 의회와 함께 하나의 영국 왕국으로 병합되었다.이 새로운 왕국은 또한 이전에 영국에 의해 정복된 아일랜드를 지배했다.1798년의 아일랜드 반란 이후, 1801년 아일랜드는 공식적으로 영국과 합병되어 영국과 아일랜드 연합 왕국이 되었다.대다수의 인구가 뚜렷한 문화적 종교적 관점을 보존하고 얼스터와 더블린의 일부를 제외하고는 주로 가톨릭 신자로 남아있었지만, 개신교 승천에 의해 지배된 아일랜드는 결국 영어를 사용하는 나라가 되었다.그때까지, 영국의 경험은 이미 미국 혁명에 기여하고 있었다.

폴란드-리투아니아 연방은 현대 사회와 정치 사상의 발전을 위한 유럽의 중요한 중심지였다.에라스무스와 같은 철학자들에 의해 칭송된 희귀한 준민주 정치 체제로 유명했고, 반종교 개혁 기간 동안 가톨릭, 유대인, 동방 정교회, 개신교와 이슬람 공동체가 평화롭게 공존하면서 거의 비길 데 없는 종교적 관용으로 알려졌습니다.정치체제로 영연방은 안제이 프라이츠 모드르제프스키 (1503–1572), 바브르지니크 그지마와 고슬리키 (1530–1607)와 표트르 스카르가 (1536–1612)와 같은 정치철학자들을 낳았다.후에, 스타니스와프 스타지치 (1755–1826)와 휴고 코웬타지 (1750–1812)의 작품은 역사가 노먼 데이비스가 "유럽 최초의 헌법"^[38]이라고 부르는 1791년 5월 3일 헌법을 만드는 데 도움을 주었다.폴란드-리투아니아 연방 헌법은 유럽 대륙에서 처음으로 혁명적인 정치 원칙을 제정했다.1773년 설립된 국가교육위원회 폴란드어 코미샤 에두카치 나로도베즈는 세계 최초의 국가 교육부이자 ^{[citation needed]}폴란드 계몽주의의 중요한 업적이었다.

계몽시대라고 불리는 지적 운동이 이 시기에도 시작되었다.그것의 지지자들은 군주의 절대적인 통치에 반대했고 대신 모든 개인의 평등과 정부가 피지배자의 동의로부터 그들의 존재를 이끌어내야 한다는 생각을 강조했다.철학이라고 불리는 계몽주의 사상가들은 유럽의 고전적 유산을 이상화했다.그들은 아테네의 민주주의와 로마 공화국을 이상적인 정부로 보았다.그들은 이성이 이상적인 ^{[citation needed]}사회를 만드는 열쇠라고 믿었다.

영국인 프란시스 베이컨은 감각이 지식의 주요 수단이 되어야 한다는 생각을 지지했고, 프랑스인 르네 데카르트는 감각보다 이성을 사용하는 것을 지지했다.그의 작품에서 데카르트는 자신의 존재와 신을 포함한 외부 세계의 존재를 증명하기 위해 이성을 사용하는 것에 관심을 가졌다.철학자들 사이에서 또 다른 믿음 체계인 이신론은 하나의 신이 창조했지만 세상을 간섭하지는 않았다고 가르쳤다.이 신념 체계는 대중의 지지를 얻지 못했고 19세기 초에 대부분 사라졌다.

토마스 홉스는 오늘날 정치철학에 대한 업적으로 가장 잘 알려진 영국의 철학자였다.그의 1651년 책 리바이어던은 사회 계약 ^[39]이론의 관점에서 대부분의 서구 정치 철학의 기초를 확립했습니다.그 이론은 또한 존 로크와 루소에 의해 검토되었다.사회 계약 논쟁은 정부와 피지배자 사이의 적절한 관계를 조사하고 개인이 공통의 규칙을 준수하고 폭력과 다른 종류의 해악으로부터 자신과 서로를 보호하기 위해 상응하는 의무를 받아들이기로 합의함으로써 상호 동의의 과정을 통해 정치 사회에 통합된다고 가정한다.

1690년 존 로크는 사람들은 생명, 자유, 재산과 같은 특정한 자연적 권리를 가지고 있으며 정부는 이러한 권리를 보호하기 위해 만들어졌다고 썼다.만약 그들이 그렇지 않다면, 사람들은 그들의 정부를 전복시킬 권리가 있다고 로크는 말했다.프랑스 철학자 볼테르는 그가 위선으로 본 것과 다른 신앙의 사람들에 대한 그들의 박해에 대해 군주제와 교회를 비난했다.또 다른 프랑스인인 몽테스키외는 정부를 행정, 입법, 사법부로 분할할 것을 주장했다.프랑스 작가 루소는 그의 작품에서 사회가 개인을 타락시킨다고 말했다.많은 군주들이 이러한 생각에 영향을 받았고, 그들은 역사에 계몽된 폭군으로 알려지게 되었다.그러나 대부분은 자신들의 ^{[citation needed]}힘을 강화한 계몽주의 사상만을 지지했다.

스코틀랜드 계몽운동은 18세기 스코틀랜드에서 지적, 과학적 업적이 쏟아져 나온 것이 특징이다.스코틀랜드는 유럽 최초의 공교육 시스템을 확립하고 1707년 영국과의 연합법과 대영제국의 확장에 따른 무역의 성장을 누렸다.과학과 종교 사이의 관계에 대한 중요한 현대적 태도는 철학자/역사학자 데이비드 흄에 의해 개발되었습니다.애덤 스미스는 현대 경제학의 첫 번째 작품인 "국부론"을 개발하고 출판했다.그는 경쟁과 민간기업이 공공의 이익을 증가시킬 수 있다고 믿었다.유명한 음유시인 로버트 번즈는 여전히 스코틀랜드의 국민 시인으로 널리 여겨진다.

파리, 런던, 비엔나와 같은 유럽 도시들은 근대 초기에 큰 대도시로 성장했다.프랑스는 서구의 문화의 중심이 되었다.중산층은 훨씬 더 영향력 있고 부유해졌다.이 시대의 위대한 예술가들은 엘 그레코, 렘브란트, 카라바조를 포함했다.

이 무렵, 세계의 많은 사람들은 서양이 어떻게 그렇게 발전했는지 궁금해 했다. 예를 들어, 중세 키예프를 정복한 몽골인들을 정복한 후 권력을 잡은 정교회 기독교 러시아인들이었다.비록 러시아가 고유하게 그들만의 문명의 일부로 남아있지만, 그들은 표트르 대제르 치하에서 서구화를 시작했다.러시아인들은 폴란드-리투아니아 연방을 프로이센, 오스트리아와 함께 분할하면서 유럽 정치에 관여하게 되었다.

혁명: 1770–1815

18세기 후반과 19세기 초반 동안, 서양의 많은 부분이 역사의 흐름을 바꿀 일련의 혁명을 경험했고, 결과적으로 새로운 이념과 사회의 변화를 가져왔다.이러한 혁명의 첫 번째는 북미에서 시작되었다.영국령 북아메리카의 13개 식민지는 이 시기까지 가지고 있었다.인구의 대부분은 영국, 스코틀랜드, 웨일스, 아일랜드 혈통이었고, 상당한 소수 민족은 일부 아메리카 원주민뿐만 아니라 프랑스, 네덜란드, 독일, 아프리카 혈통이었다.대부분의 인구는 성공회 신자였고, 다른 사람들은 회중파 또는 청교도 신자였고, 소수 민족은 일부 로마 가톨릭과 유대교뿐만 아니라 친구 협회와 루터교와 같은 다른 개신교 교회들을 포함했다.식민지들은 그들만의 훌륭한 도시와 대학을 가지고 있었고, 주로 영국에서 온 새로운 이민자들을 지속적으로 환영했다.값비싼 7년 전쟁 이후 영국은 수입을 올릴 필요가 있었고 식민지 주민들은 필요하다고 느꼈던 새로운 세금에 대한 정면으로 맞서야 한다고 느꼈다.식민지 주민들은 이러한 세금에 크게 분개했고, 영국으로부터 세금을 부과받을 수 있다는 사실에 항의했지만, 정부에 대한 대표권이 없었다.

영국의 조지 3세가 제1차 대륙회의에서 제기된 식민지 불만에 대해 심각하게 고려하는 것을 거부하자, 일부 식민지 주민들은 무기를 들었다.새로운 독립 운동의 지도자들은 계몽주의 이상에 영향을 받았고 이상적인 국가를 세우기를 희망했다.1776년 7월 4일, 식민지들은 미국 독립 선언서에 서명하면서 독립을 선언했다.주로 토마스 제퍼슨이 초안한 이 문서의 서문은 다음 세기 반 동안 서구 사상을 지배하게 될 통치 원칙을 웅변적으로 요약하고 있다.

우리는 모든 인간은 평등하게 창조되었고, 창조주로부터 어떤 양도할 수 없는 권리를 부여받았으며, 그 중에는 생명, 자유, 행복의 추구가 있다는 사실을 자명하다고 생각합니다.이러한 권리를 확보하기 위해 정부는 피지배자의 동의로부터 그들의 정당한 힘을 얻어 인간들 사이에 설립된다.어떤 형태의 정부든 이러한 목적을 파괴하게 되면 그것을 변경하거나 폐지하고 새로운 정부를 출범시키는 것은 국민의 권리이다.

조지 워싱턴은 이 미국 혁명 초기에 많은 성공을 거둔 영국군에 맞서 새로운 대륙군을 이끌었다.수년간의 전투 후, 식민지 주민들은 프랑스와 동맹을 맺고 1781년 버지니아 요크타운에서 영국군을 물리쳤다.전쟁을 끝낸 조약은 식민지에 독립을 부여했고, 그것은 미국이 되었다.

19세기 전환기에 일어난 또 다른 주요 서구 혁명은 프랑스 혁명이었다.1789년 프랑스는 경제적 위기에 직면했다.왕은 위기에 대처하기 위해 2세기 만에 처음으로 왕국의 각 계급 대표자 모임인 삼부회를 소집했다. 즉, 제1계급(성직), 제2계급(귀족), 제3계급(중산층과 농민)이다.프랑스 사회가 미국 혁명을 이끈 계몽주의 이념에 의해 얻어진 것처럼, 라파예트와 같은 많은 프랑스인들이 참여한; 하급 성직자들의 대표들에 의해 합류된 제3계급의 대표들은 프랑스의 일반 시민들과 달리 국회를 만들었다.그들의 숫자에 비례하는 목소리로요

파리 시민들은 국왕이 국회의 일을 막으려 할 것을 두려워했고 파리는 곧 폭동, 무정부 상태, 그리고 광범위한 약탈로 소비되었다.왕실 지도부가 도시를 포기했기 때문에 폭도들은 곧 무기와 훈련받은 병사들을 포함한 프랑스 근위대의 지원을 받았다.1789년 7월 14일, 폭도들이 감옥 요새인 바스티유를 습격했고, 이로 인해 왕은 변화를 받아들이게 되었다.1789년 8월 4일, 국민 제헌 의회는 제2계급의 영주권과 제1계급이 모은 십일조를 싹쓸이하는 봉건제도를 폐지했다.봉건주의가 수세기 동안 일반적이었던 유럽에서 그런 일이 일어난 것은 처음이었다.몇 시간 동안 귀족들, 성직자들, 마을들, 지방들, 회사들, 그리고 도시들은 그들의 특권을 잃었다.

처음에 혁명은 프랑스를 입헌군주제로 만드는 것처럼 보였지만, 다른 유럽 대륙 국가들은 혁명적 이상이 확산되는 것을 두려워했고 결국 프랑스와 전쟁을 하게 되었다.1792년 루이 16세는 파리에서 도망치다 붙잡혀 투옥되었고 공화국이 선포되었다.제국군과 프러시아군은 프랑스 국민이 그들의 진격이나 왕정복귀에 저항하면 보복하겠다고 위협했다.그 결과, 루이 왕은 프랑스의 적들과 공모한 것으로 보였다.1793년 1월 21일 그의 처형은 다른 유럽 국가들과의 더 많은 전쟁으로 이어졌다.이 기간 동안 프랑스는 급진파 지도자 자코뱅의 의회 쿠데타 이후 사실상 독재 정권이 되었다.그들의 지도자 로베스피에르는 공화국에 불충분하다고 여겨지는 수천 명의 사람들이 처형된 공포정치를 감독했다.마침내 1794년 로베스피에르 자신이 체포되어 처형되었고, 더 많은 온건파 대리인들이 권력을 잡았다.이것은 새로운 정부, 프랑스 디렉토리로 이어졌다.1799년 쿠데타로 대통령직이 전복되고 1804년 나폴레옹 보나파르트 장군이 독재자, 심지어 황제로 권력을 잡았다.

현재 프랑스의 국가 모토인 Liberté, égalité, fraternité (프랑스어로 "자유, 평등, 박애"^[40]의 의미)는 나중에 제도화 되었지만 프랑스 대혁명에 그 기원을 두고 있다.그것은 현대 세계에서 서구 지배의 열망에 대한 또 다른 상징적인 모토로 남아 있다.

몇몇 영향력 있는 지식인들이 혁명 운동의 지나친 행태를 거부하게 되었다.정치이론가 에드먼드 버크는 미국혁명을 지지했지만 프랑스혁명에 맞서 추상적 사상에 기초한 통치에 반대하는 정치이론을 전개하고 유기적 개혁을 선호했다.그는 현대 영국 보수주의의 아버지로 기억되고 있다.이러한 비판에 대응하여, 미국의 혁명가 토마스 페인은 프랑스 혁명의 이상을 옹호하기 위해 1791년에 그의 책 "The Rights of Man"을 출판했다.또한 시대정신은 페미니스트 철학의 초기 작품들, 특히 Mary Wollstonecraft의 1792년 저서:여성의 권리에 대한 옹호.

Napoleonic Wars

The Napoleonic Wars were a series of conflicts involving Napoleon's French Empire and changing sets of European allies by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionized European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to the application of modern mass conscription. French power rose quickly, conquering most of Europe, but collapsed rapidly after France's disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812. Napoleon's empire ultimately suffered complete military defeat resulting in the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in France. The wars resulted in the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire and sowed the seeds of nascent nationalism in Germany and Italy that would lead to the two nations' consolidation later in the century. Meanwhile, the Spanish Empire began to unravel as French occupation of Spain weakened Spain's hold over its colonies, providing an opening for nationalist revolutions in Spanish America. As a direct result of the Napoleonic Wars, the British Empire became the foremost world power for the next century,^[41] thus beginning Pax Britannica.

France had to fight on multiple battlefronts against the other European powers. A nationwide conscription was voted to reinforce the old royal army made of noble officers and professional soldiers. With this new kind of army, Napoleon was able to beat the European allies and dominate Europe. The revolutionary ideals, based no more on feudalism but on the concept of a sovereign nation, spread all over Europe. When Napoleon eventually lost and the monarchy reinstated in France these ideals survived and led to the revolutionary waves of the 19th century that brought democracy to many European countries.^{[citation needed]}

With the success of the American Revolution, the Spanish Empire also began to crumble as their American colonies sought independence as well. In 1808, when Joseph Bonaparte was installed as the Spanish King by the Napoleonic French, the Spanish resistance resorted to governing Juntas. When the Supreme Central Junta of Seville fell to the French in 1810, the Spanish American colonies developed themselves governing Juntas in the name of the deposed King Ferdinand VII (upon the concept known as "Retroversion of the Sovereignty to the People"). As this process led to open conflicts between independentists and loyalists, the Spanish American Independence Wars immediately ensued; resulting, by the 1820s, in the definitive loss for the Spanish Empire of all its American territories, with the exception of Cuba and Puerto Rico.^{[citation needed]}

Rise of the English-speaking world: 1815–1870

The years following Britain's victory in the Napoleonic Wars were a period of expansion for Britain as it rebuilt the British Empire. The new United States grew even more rapidly. This period of expansion would help establish Anglicanism as the dominant religion, English as the dominant language, and English and Anglo-American culture as the dominant culture of two continents and many other lands outside the British Isles.

Industrial Revolution in the English-speaking world

Rapid economic growth following the Napoleonic Wars was the continuing product of the ever-expanding Industrial Revolution. The revolution began in Britain, where Thomas Newcomen developed a steam engine in 1712 to pump seeping water out of mines. This engine at first was powered by water, but soon coal and wood were heavily used. The British first learned to use steam power effectively. In 1804, the first steam powered railroad locomotive was developed in Britain, which allowed goods and people to be transported at faster speeds than ever before in history. Soon, large numbers of goods were being produced in factories. This resulted in great societal changes, and many people settled in the cities where the factories were located. Factory work could often be brutal. With no safety regulations, people became sick from contaminants in the air in textile mills for, example. Many workers were also horribly maimed by dangerous factory machinery. Since workers relied only on their small wages for sustenance, entire families were forced to work, including children. These and other problems caused by industrialism resulted in some reforms by the mid-19th century. The economic model of the West also began to change, with mercantilism being replaced by capitalism, in which companies, and later, large corporations, were run by individual investors.^[42]

New ideological movements began as a result of the Industrial Revolution, including the Luddite movement, which opposed machinery, feeling it did not benefit the common good, and the socialists, whose beliefs usually included the elimination of private property and the sharing of industrial wealth. Unions were founded among industrial workers to help secure better wages and rights. Another result of the revolution was a change in societal hierarchy, especially in Europe, where nobility still occupied a high level on the social ladder. Capitalists emerged as a new powerful group, with educated professionals like doctors and lawyers under them, and the various industrial workers at the bottom. These changes were often slow however, with Western society as a whole remaining primarily agricultural for decades.^[43]

Great Britain : 1815–1870

From 1837 until 1901, Queen Victoria reigned over Great Britain and the ever-expanding British Empire. The Industrial Revolution accelerated, making Britain the most powerful nation. It enjoyed relative peace and stability from 1815 until 1914, this period is often called the Pax Britannica, from the Latin "British Peace". The monarch became more a figurehead and symbol of national identity; actual power was in the hands of the prime minister and the cabinet, and was based on a majority in the House of Commons. Two rival parties were the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party. The Liberal constituency was made up mostly of businessmen, as many Liberals supported the idea of a free market. Conservatives were supported by the aristocracy and gentry landowners. Control of Parliament switched back and forth between the parties. Overall it was a period of reform. In 1832 more representation was granted to new industrial cities, and laws barring Catholics from serving in Parliament were repealed, although discrimination against Catholics, especially Irish Catholics, continued. Other reforms granted near universal manhood suffrage, and state-supported elementary education for all Britons. More rights were granted to workers as well.

Ireland had been ruled from London since the Middle Ages. After the Protestant Reformation the British Establishment began a campaign of discrimination against Roman Catholic and Presbyterian Irish, who lacked many rights under the Penal Laws, and the majority of the agricultural land was owned by the Protestant Ascendancy. Great Britain and Ireland had become a single nation ruled from London without the autonomous Parliament of Ireland after the Act of Union of 1800 was passed, creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In the mid-19th century, Ireland suffered a devastating famine, which killed 10% of the population^[44] and led to massive emigration: see Irish diaspora.

British Empire: 1815–1870

Throughout the 19th century, Britain's power grew enormously and the sun quite literally "never set" on the British Empire, for it had outposts on every occupied continent. It consolidated control over such far flung territories as Canada and Jamaica in the Americas, Australia and New Zealand in Oceania; Malaya, Hong Kong and Singapore in the Far East and a line of colonial possessions from Egypt to the Cape of Good Hope through Africa. All of India was under British rule by 1870.

In 1804, the Shah of the declining Mughal Empire had formally accepted the protection of the British East India Company. Many Britons settled in India, establishing a rich ruling class. They then expanded into neighbouring Burma. Among the British born in India were the immensely influential writers Rudyard Kipling (1865) and George Orwell (1903).

In the Far East, Britain went to war with the declining Qing dynasty of China when it tried to stop British merchants in China from selling the opium to the Chinese public. The First Opium War (1840–1842), ended in a British victory, and China was forced to remove barriers to British trade and cede several ports and the island of Hong Kong to Britain. Soon, other powers sought these same privileges with China and China was forced to agree, ending Chinese isolation from the rest of the world. In 1853 an American expedition opened up Japan to trade with first the U.S., and then the rest of the world.

In 1833 Britain ended slavery by buying out all the owners throughout its empire after a successful campaign by abolitionists. Furthermore Britain had a great deal of success attempting to get other powers to outlaw the practice as well.

As British settlement of southern Africa continued, the descendants of the Dutch in southern Africa, called the Boers or Afrikaners, whom Britain had ruled since the Anglo-Dutch Wars, migrated northward, disliking British rule. Explorers and missionaries like David Livingstone became national heroes. Cecil Rhodes founded Rhodesia and a British army under Lord Kitchener secured control of Sudan in the 1898 Battle of Omdurman.

Canada: 1815–1870

Following the American Revolution, many Loyalists to Britain fled north to what is today Canada (where they were called United Empire Loyalists). Joined by mostly British colonists, they helped establish early colonies like Ontario and New Brunswick. British settlement in North America increased, and soon there were several colonies both north and west of the early ones in the northeast of the continent, these new ones included British Columbia and Prince Edward Island. Rebellions broke out against British rule in 1837, but Britain appeased the rebels' supporters in 1867 by confederating the colonies into Canada, with its own prime minister. Although Canada was still firmly within the British Empire, its people now enjoyed a great degree of self-rule. Canada was unique in the British Empire in that it had a French-speaking province, Quebec, which Britain had gained rule over in the Seven Years' War.

Australia and New Zealand: 1815–1870

The First Fleet of British convicts arrived at New South Wales, Australia in 1788 and established a British outpost and penal colony at Sydney Cove. These convicts were often petty 'criminals', and represented the population spill-over of Britain's Industrial Revolution, as a result of the rapid urbanisation and dire crowding of British cities. Other convicts were political dissidents, particularly from Ireland. The establishment of a wool industry and the enlightened governorship of Lachlan Macquarie were instrumental in transforming New South Wales from a notorious prison outpost into a budding civil society. Further colonies were established around the perimeter of the continent and European explorers ventured deep inland. A free colony was established at South Australia in 1836 with a vision for a province of the British Empire with political and religious freedoms. The colony became a cradle of democratic reform. The Australian gold rushes increased prosperity and cultural diversity and autonomous democratic parliaments began to be established from the 1850s onward.^[45]

The native inhabitants of Australia, called the Aborigines, lived as hunter-gatherers before European arrival. The population, never large, was largely dispossessed without treaty agreements nor compensations through the 19th century by the expansion of European agriculture, and, as had occurred when Europeans arrived in North and South America, faced superior European weaponry and suffered greatly from exposure to Old World diseases such as smallpox, to which they had no biological immunity.

From the early 19th century, New Zealand was being visited by European explorers, sailors, missionaries, traders and adventurers (known as Pākehā) and was administered by Britain from the nearby colony of New South Wales. In 1840 Britain signed the Treaty of Waitangi with the natives of New Zealand, the Māori, in which Britain gained sovereignty over the archipelago. As more Pākehā settlers arrived, clashes resulted and the New Zealand colonial government fought several wars before defeating the Māori. By 1870, New Zealand had a population made up mostly of European descent.^[46]

United States: 1815–1870

Following independence from Britain, the United States began expanding westward, and soon a number of new states had joined the union. In 1803, the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from France, whose emperor, Napoleon I, had regained it from Spain. Soon, America's growing population was settling the Louisiana Territory, which geographically doubled the size of the country. At the same time, a series of revolutions and independence movements in Spain and Portugal's American empires resulted in the liberation of nearly all of Latin America, as the region composed of South America, most of the Caribbean, and North America from Mexico south became known. At first Spain and its allies seemed ready to try to reconquer the colonies, but the U.S. and Britain opposed this, and the reconquest never took place. From 1821 on, the U.S. bordered the newly independent nation of Mexico. An early problem faced by the Mexican republic was what to do with its sparsely populated northern territories, which today make up a large part of the American West. The government decided to try to attract Americans looking for land. Americans arrived in such large numbers that both the provinces of Texas and California had majority white, English-speaking populations. This led to a culture clash between these provinces and the rest of Mexico. When Mexico became a dictatorship under General Antonio López de Santa Anna, the Texans declared independence. After several battles, Texas gained independence from Mexico, although Mexico later claimed it still had a right to Texas. After existing as a republic modeled after the U.S. for several years, Texas joined the United States in 1845. This led to border disputes between the U.S. and Mexico, resulting in the Mexican–American War. The war ended with an American victory, and Mexico had to cede all its northern territories to the United States, and recognize the independence of California, which had revolted against Mexico during the war. In 1850, California joined the United States. In 1848, the U.S. and Britain resolved a border dispute over territory on the Pacific coast, called the Oregon Country by giving Britain the northern part and the U.S. the southern part. In 1867, the U.S. expanded again, purchasing the Russian colony of Alaska, in northwestern North America.

Politically, the U.S. became more democratic with the abolishment of property requirements in voting, although voting remained restricted to white males. By the mid-19th century, the most important issue was slavery. The Northern states generally had outlawed the practice, while the Southern states not only had kept it legal but came to feel it was essential to their way of life. As new states joined the union, lawmakers clashed over whether they should be slave states or free states. In 1860, the anti-slavery candidate Abraham Lincoln was elected president. Fearing he would try to outlaw slavery in the whole country, several southern states seceded, forming the Confederate States of America, electing their own president and raising their own army. Lincoln countered that secession was illegal and raised an army to crush the rebel government, thus the advent of the American Civil War (1861–65). The Confederates had a skilled military that even succeeded in invading the northern state of Pennsylvania. However, the war began to turn around, with the defeat of Confederates at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and at Vicksburg, which gave the Union control of the important Mississippi River. Union forces invaded deep into the South, and the Confederacy's greatest general, Robert E. Lee, surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant of the Union in 1865. After that, the south came under Union occupation, ending the American Civil War. Lincoln was tragically assassinated in 1865, but his dream of ending slavery, exhibited in the wartime Emancipation Proclamation, was carried out by his Republican Party, which outlawed slavery, granted blacks equality and black males voting rights via constitutional amendments. However, although the abolishment of slavery would not be challenged,^{[citation needed]} equal treatment for blacks would be.

The Gettysburg Address, Lincoln's most famous speech and one of the most quoted political speeches in United States history, was delivered at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on 19 November 1863, during the Civil War, four and a half months after the Battle of Gettysburg. Describing America as a "nation conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal", Lincoln famously called on those gathered:

[We here] highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain;that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Continental Europe: 1815–1870

The years following the Napoleonic Wars were a time of change in Europe. The Industrial Revolution, nationalism, and several political revolutions transformed the continent.

Industrial technology was imported from Britain. The first lands affected by this were France, the Low Countries, and western Germany. Eventually the Industrial Revolution spread to other parts of Europe. Many people in the countryside migrated to major cities like Paris, Berlin, and Amsterdam, which were connected like never before by railroads. Europe soon had its own class of wealthy industrialists, and large numbers of industrial workers. New ideologies emerged as a reaction against perceived abuses of industrial society. Among these ideologies were socialism and the more radical communism, created by the German Karl Marx. According to communism, history was a series of class struggles, and at the time industrial workers were pitted against their employers. Inevitably the workers would rise up in a worldwide revolution and abolish private property, according to Marx. Communism was also atheistic, since, according to Marx, religion was simply a tool used by the dominant class to keep the oppressed class docile.

Several revolutions occurred in Europe following the Napoleonic Wars. The goal of most of these revolutions was to establish some form of democracy in a particular nation. Many were successful for a time, but their effects were often eventually reversed. Examples of this occurred in Spain, Italy, and Austria. Several European nations stood steadfastly against revolution and democracy, including Austria and Russia. Two successful revolts of the era were the Greek and Serbian wars of independence, which freed those nations from Ottoman rule. Another successful revolution occurred in the Low Countries. After the Napoleonic Wars, the Netherlands was given control of modern-day Belgium, which had been part of the Holy Roman Empire. The Dutch found it hard to rule the Belgians, due to their Catholic religion and French language. In the 1830s, the Belgians successfully overthrew Dutch rule, establishing the Kingdom of Belgium. In 1848 a series of revolutions occurred in Prussia, Austria, and France. In France, the king, Louis-Philippe, was overthrown and a republic was declared. Louis Napoleon, nephew of Napoleon I was elected the republic's first president. Extremely popular, Napoleon was made Napoleon III (since Napoleon I's son had been crowned Napoleon II during his reign), Emperor of the French, by a vote of the French people, ending France's Second Republic. Revolutionaries in Prussia and Italy focused more on nationalism, and most advocated the establishment of unified German and Italian states, respectively.

In the city-states of Italy, many argued for a unification of all the Italian kingdoms into a single nation. Obstacles to this included the many Italian dialects spoken by the people of Italy, and the Austrian presence in the north of the peninsula. Unification of the peninsula began in 1859. The powerful Kingdom of Sardinia (also called Savoy or Piedmont) formed an alliance with France and went to war with Austria in that year. The war ended with a Sardinian victory, and Austrian forces left Italy. Plebiscites were held in several cities, and the majority of people voted for union with Sardinia, creating the Kingdom of Italy under Victor Emmanuel II. In 1860, the Italian nationalist Garibaldi led revolutionaries in an overthrow of the government of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. A plebiscite held there resulted in a unification of that kingdom with Italy. Italian forces seized the eastern Papal States in 1861. In 1866 Venetia became part of Italy after Italy's ally, Prussia, defeated that kingdom's rulers, the Austrians, in the Austro-Prussian War. In 1870, Italian troops conquered the Papal States, completing unification. Pope Pius IX refused to recognize the Italian government or negotiate settlement for the loss of Church land.

Prussia in the middle and late parts of the 19th century was ruled by its king, Wilhelm I, and its skilled chancellor, Otto von Bismarck. In 1864, Prussia went to war with Denmark and gained several German-speaking lands as a result. In 1866, Prussia went to war with the Austrian Empire and won, and created a confederation of it and several German states, called the North German Confederation, setting the stage for the 1871 formation of the German Empire.

After years of dealing with Hungarian revolutionaries, whose kingdom Austria had conquered centuries earlier, the Austrian emperor, Franz Joseph agreed to divide the empire into two parts: Austria and Hungary, and rule as both Emperor of Austria and king of Hungary. The new Austro-Hungarian Empire was created in 1867. The two peoples were united in loyalty to the monarch and Catholicism.

There were changes throughout the West in science, religion and culture between 1815 and 1870. Europe in 1870 differed greatly from its state in 1815. Most Western European nations had some degree of democracy, and two new national states had been created, Italy and Germany. Political parties were formed throughout the continent and with the spread of industrialism, Europe's economy was transformed, although it remained very agricultural.

Culture, arts and sciences 1815–1914

The 19th and early 20th centuries saw important contributions to the process of modernisation of Western art and Literature and the continuing evolution in the role of religion in Western societies.

Napoleon re-established the Catholic Church in France through the Concordat of 1801.^[47] The end of the Napoleonic wars, signaled by the Congress of Vienna, brought Catholic revival and the return of the Papal States.^[48] In 1801, a new political entity was formed, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, which merged the kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland, thus increasing the number of Catholics in the new state. Pressure for abolition of anti-Catholic laws grew and in 1829 Parliament passed the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829, giving Catholics almost equal civil rights, including the right to vote and to hold most public offices. While remaining a minority religion in the British Empire, a steady stream of new Catholics would continue to convert from the Church of England and Ireland, notably John Henry Newman and the poets Gerard Manley Hopkins and Oscar Wilde. The Anglo-Catholic movement began, emphasizing the Catholic traditions of the Anglican Church. New churches like the Methodist, Unitarian, and LDS Churches were founded. Many Westerners became less religious in this period, although a majority of people still held traditional Christian beliefs.

The 1859 publication of On the Origin of Species, by the English naturalist Charles Darwin, provided an alternative hypothesis for the development, diversification, and design of human life to the traditional poetic scriptural explanation known as Creationism. According to Darwin, only the organisms most able to adapt to their environment survived while others became extinct. Adaptations resulted in changes in certain populations of organisms which could eventually cause the creation of new species. Modern genetics started with Gregor Johann Mendel, a German-Czech Augustinian monk who studied the nature of inheritance in plants. In his 1865 paper "Versuche über Pflanzenhybriden" ("Experiments on Plant Hybridization"), Mendel traced the inheritance patterns of certain traits in pea plants and described them mathematically.^[49] Louis Pasteur and Joseph Lister made discoveries about bacteria and its effects on humans. Geologists at the time made discoveries indicating the world was far older than most believed it to be. Early batteries were invented and a telegraph system was also invented, allowing global communication. In 1869 Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev published his Periodic table. The success of Mendeleev's table came from two decisions he made: The first was to leave gaps in the table when it seemed that the corresponding element had not yet been discovered. The second decision was to occasionally ignore the order suggested by the atomic weights and switch adjacent elements, such as cobalt and nickel, to better classify them into chemical families. At the end of the 19th century, a number of discoveries were made in physics which paved the way for the development of modern physics – including Maria Skłodowska-Curie's work on radioactivity.

In Europe by the 19th century, fashion had shifted away from such artistic styles as Mannerism, Baroque and Rococo and sought to revert to the earlier, simpler art of the Renaissance by creating Neoclassicism. Neoclassicism complemented the intellectual movement known as the Enlightenment, which was similarly idealistic. Ingres, Canova, and Jacques-Louis David are among the best-known neoclassicists.^[50]

Just as Mannerism rejected Classicism, so did Romanticism reject the ideas of the Enlightenment and the aesthetic of the Neoclassicists. Romanticism emphasized emotion and nature, and idealized the Middle Ages. Important musicians were Franz Schubert, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Richard Wagner, Fryderyk Chopin, and John Constable. Romantic art focused on the use of color and motion in order to portray emotion, but like classicism used Greek and Roman mythology and tradition as an important source of symbolism. Another important aspect of Romanticism was its emphasis on nature and portraying the power and beauty of the natural world. Romanticism was also a large literary movement, especially in poetry. Among the greatest Romantic artists were Eugène Delacroix, Francisco Goya, Karl Bryullov, J. M. W. Turner, John Constable, Caspar David Friedrich, Ivan Aivazovsky, Thomas Cole, and William Blake.^[50] Romantic poetry emerged as a significant genre, particularly during the Victorian Era with leading exponents including William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Burns, Edgar Allan Poe and John Keats. Other Romantic writers included Sir Walter Scott, Lord Byron, Alexander Pushkin, Victor Hugo, and Goethe.

Some of the best regarded poets of the era were women. Mary Wollstonecraft had written one of the first works of feminist philosophy, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman which called for equal education for women in 1792 and her daughter, Mary Shelley became an accomplished author best known for her 1818 novel Frankenstein, which examined some of the frightening potential of the rapid advances of science.

In early 19th-century Europe, in response to industrialization, the movement of Realism emerged. Realism sought to accurately portray the conditions and hardships of the poor in the hopes of changing society. In contrast with Romanticism, which was essentially optimistic about mankind, Realism offered a stark vision of poverty and despair. Similarly, while Romanticism glorified nature, Realism portrayed life in the depths of an urban wasteland. Like Romanticism, Realism was a literary as well as an artistic movement. The great Realist painters include Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, Gustave Courbet, Jean-François Millet, Camille Corot, Honoré Daumier, Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas (both considered as Impressionists), Ilya Repin, and Thomas Eakins, among others.

Writers also sought to come to terms with the new industrial age. The works of the Englishman Charles Dickens (including his novels Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol) and the Frenchman Victor Hugo (including Les Misérables) remain among the best known and widely influential. The first great Russian novelist was Nikolai Gogol (Dead Souls). Then came Ivan Goncharov, Nikolai Leskov and Ivan Turgenev. Leo Tolstoy (War and Peace, Anna Karenina) and Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov) soon became internationally renowned to the point that many scholars such as F. R. Leavis have described one or the other as the greatest novelist ever. In the second half of the century Anton Chekhov excelled in writing short stories and became perhaps the leading dramatist internationally of his period. American literature also progressed with the development of a distinct voice: Mark Twain produced his masterpieces Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In Irish literature, the Anglo-Irish tradition produced Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde writing in English and a Gaelic Revival had emerged by the end of the 19th century. The poetry of William Butler Yeats prefigured the emergence of the 20th-century Irish literary giants James Joyce, Samuel Beckett and Patrick Kavanagh. In Britain's Australian colonies, bush balladeers such as Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson brought the character of a new continent to the pages of world literature.

The response of architecture to industrialisation, in stark contrast to the other arts, was to veer towards historicism. The railway stations built during this period are often called "the cathedrals of the age". Architecture during the Industrial Age witnessed revivals of styles from the distant past, such as the Gothic Revival—in which style the iconic Palace of Westminster in London was re-built to house the mother parliament of the British Empire. Notre Dame de Paris Cathedral in Paris was also restored in the Gothic style, following its desecration during the French Revolution.

Out of the naturalist ethic of Realism grew a major artistic movement, Impressionism. The Impressionists pioneered the use of light in painting as they attempted to capture light as seen from the human eye. Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, were all involved in the Impressionist movement. As a direct outgrowth of Impressionism came the development of Post-Impressionism. Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat are the best known Post-Impressionists. In Australia the Heidelberg School was expressing the light and colour of Australian landscape with a new insight and vigour.

The Industrial Revolution which began in Britain in the 18th century brought increased leisure time, leading to more time for citizens to attend and follow spectator sports, greater participation in athletic activities, and increased accessibility. The bat and ball sport of cricket was first played in England during the 16th century and was exported around the globe via the British Empire. A number of popular modern sports were devised or codified in Britain during the 19th century and obtained global prominence – these include Ping Pong,^{[51][citation needed][52]} modern tennis,^[53] Association football, netball and rugby. The United States also developed popular international sports during this period. English migrants took antecedents of baseball to America during the colonial period. American football resulted from several major divergences from rugby, most notably the rule changes instituted by Walter Camp. Basketball was invented in 1891 by James Naismith, a Canadian physical education instructor working in Springfield, Massachusetts in the United States. Baron Pierre de Coubertin, a Frenchman, instigated the modern revival of the Olympic Games, with the first modern Olympics being held in Athens in 1896.

New imperialism: 1870–1914

The years between 1870 and 1914 saw the expansion of Western power. By 1914, the Western and some Asian and Eurasian empires like the Empire of Japan, Russian Empire, Ottoman Empire, and Qing China dominated the entire planet. The major Western players in this New Imperialism were Britain, Russia, France, Germany, Italy, and the United States. The Empire of Japan was the only non-Western power involved in this new era of imperialism.

Although the West had had a presence in Africa for centuries, its colonies were limited mostly to Africa's coast. Europeans, including the Britons Mungo Park and David Livingstone, the German Johannes Rebmann, and the Frenchman René Caillié, explored the interior of the continent, allowing greater European expansion in the later 19th century. The period between 1870 and 1914 is often called the Scramble for Africa, due to the competition between European nations for control of Africa. In 1830, France occupied Algeria in North Africa. Many Frenchman settled on Algeria's Mediterranean coast. In 1882 Britain annexed Egypt. France eventually conquered most of Morocco and Tunisia as well. Libya was conquered by the Italians. Spain gained a small part of Morocco and modern-day Western Sahara. West Africa was dominated by France, although Britain ruled several smaller West African colonies. Germany also established two colonies in West Africa, and Portugal had one as well. Central Africa was dominated by the Belgian Congo. At first the colony was ruled by Belgium's king, Leopold II, however his regime was so brutal the Belgian government took over the colony. The Germans and French also established colonies in Central Africa. The British and Italians were the two dominant powers in East Africa, although France also had a colony there. Southern Africa was dominated by Britain. Tensions between the British Empire and the Boer Republics led to the Boer Wars, fought on and off between the 1880s and 1902, ending in a British victory. In 1910 Britain united its South African colonies with the former Boer republics and established the Union of South Africa, a dominion of the British Empire. The British established several other colonies in Southern Africa. The Portuguese and Germans also established a presence in Southern Africa. The French conquered the island of Madagascar. By 1914, Africa had only two independent nations, Liberia, a nation founded in West Africa by free black Americans earlier in the 19th century, and the ancient kingdom of Ethiopia in East Africa. Many Africans, like the Zulus, resisted European rule, but in the end Europe succeeded in conquering and transforming the continent. Missionaries arrived and established schools, while industrialists helped establish rubber, diamond and gold industries on the continent. Perhaps the most ambitious change by Europeans was the construction of the Suez Canal in Egypt, allowing ships to travel from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean without having to go all the way around Africa.

In Asia, China was defeated by Britain in the First Opium War and later Britain and France in the Arrow War, forcing it to open up to trade with the West. Soon every major Western power as well as Russia and Japan had spheres of influence in China, although the country remained independent. Southeast Asia was divided between French Indochina and British Burma. One of the few independent nations in this region at the time was Siam. The Dutch continued to rule their colony of the Dutch East Indies, while Britain and Germany also established colonies in Oceania. India remained an integral part of the British Empire, with Queen Victoria being crowned Empress of India. The British even built a new capital in India, New Delhi. The Middle East remained largely under the rule of the Ottoman Empire and Persia. Britain, however, established a sphere of influence in Persia and a few small colonies in Arabia and coastal Mesopotamia.

The Pacific islands were conquered by Germany, the U.S., Britain, France, and Belgium. In 1893, the ruling class of colonists in Hawaii overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy of Queen Liliuokalani and established a republic. Since most of the leaders of the overthrow were Americans or descendants of Americans, they asked to be annexed by the United States, which agreed to the annexation in 1898.

Latin America was largely free from foreign rule throughout this period, although the United States and Britain had a great deal of influence over the region. Britain had two colonies on the Latin American mainland, while the United States, following 1898, had several in the Caribbean. The U.S. supported the independence of Cuba and Panama, but gained a small territory in central Panama and intervened in Cuba several times. Other countries also faced American interventions from time to time, mostly in the Caribbean and southern North America.

Competition over control of overseas colonies sometimes led to war between Western powers, and between Western powers and non-Westerners. At the turn of the 20th century, Britain fought several wars with Afghanistan to prevent it from falling under the influence of Russia, which ruled all of Central Asia excluding Afghanistan. Britain and France nearly went to war over control of Africa. In 1898, the United States and Spain went to war after an American naval ship was sunk in the Caribbean. Although today it is generally held that the sinking was an accident, at the time the U.S. held Spain responsible and soon American and Spanish forces clashed everywhere from Cuba to the Philippines. The U.S. won the war and gained several Caribbean colonies including Puerto Rico and several Pacific islands, including Guam and the Philippines. Important resistance movements to Western Imperialism included the Boxer Rebellion, fought against the colonial powers in China, and the Philippine–American War, fought against the United States, both of which failed.

The Russo-Turkish War (1877–78) left the Ottoman Empire little more than an empty shell, but the failing empire was able to hang on into the 20th century, until its final partition, which left the British and French colonial empires in control of much of the former Ottoman ruled Arab countries of the Middle East (British Mandate of Palestine, British Mandate of Mesopotamia, French Mandate of Syria, French Mandate of Lebanon, in addition to the British occupation of Egypt from 1882). Even though this happened centuries after the West had given up its futile attempts to conquer the "Holy Land" under religious pretexts, this fueled resentment against the "Crusaders" in the Islamic world, which along with the nationalisms hatched under Ottoman rule, contributed to the development of Islamism.

The expanding Western powers greatly changed the societies they conquered. Many connected their empires via railroad and telegraph and constructed churches, schools, and factories.

Great powers and the First World War: 1870–1918

By the late 19th century, the world was dominated by a few great powers, including Great Britain, the United States, and Germany. France, Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Italy were also great powers.

Western inventors and industrialists transformed the West in the late 19th century and early 20th century. The American Thomas Edison pioneered electricity and motion picture technology. Other American inventors, the Wright brothers, completed the first successful airplane flight in 1903. The first automobiles were also invented in this period. Petroleum became an important commodity after the discovery it could be used to power machines. Steel was developed in Britain by Henry Bessemer. This very strong metal, combined with the invention of elevators, allowed people to construct very tall buildings, called skyscrapers. In the late 19th century, the Italian Guglielmo Marconi was able to communicate across distances using radio. In 1876, the first telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell, a British expatriate living in America. Many became very wealthy from this Second Industrial Revolution, including the American entrepreneurs Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller. Unions continued to fight for the rights of workers, and by 1914 laws limiting working hours and outlawing child labor had been passed in many Western countries.

Culturally, the English-speaking nations were in the midst of the Victorian era, named for Britain's queen. In France, this period is called the Belle Époque, a period of many artistic and cultural achievements. The suffragette movement began in this period, which sought to gain voting rights for women, with New Zealand and Australian parliaments granting women's suffrage in the 1890s. However, by 1914, only a dozen U.S. states had given women this right, although women were treated more and more as equals of men before the law in many countries.

Cities grew as never before between 1870 and 1914. This led at first to unsanitary and crowded living conditions, especially for the poor. However, by 1914, municipal governments were providing police and fire departments and garbage removal services to their citizens, leading to a drop in death rates. Unfortunately, pollution from burning coal and wastes left by thousands of horses that crowded the streets worsened the quality of life in many urban areas. Paris, lit up by gas and electric light, and containing the tallest structure in the world at the time, the Eiffel Tower, was often looked to as an ideal modern city, and served as a model for city planners around the world.

United States: 1870–1914

Following the American Civil War, great changes occurred in the United States. After the war, the former Confederate States were put under federal occupation and federal lawmakers attempted to gain equality for blacks by outlawing slavery and giving them citizenship. After several years, however, Southern states began rejoining the Union as their populations pledged loyalty to the United States government, and in 1877 Reconstruction as this period was called, came to an end. After being re-admitted to the Union, Southern lawmakers passed segregation laws and laws preventing blacks from voting, resulting in blacks being regarded as second-class citizens for decades to come.

Another great change beginning in the 1870s was the settlement of the western territories by Americans. The population growth in the American West led to the creation of many new western states, and by 1912 all the land of the contiguous U.S. was part of a state, bringing the total to 48. As whites settled the West, however, conflicts occurred with the Amerindians. After several Indian Wars, the Amerindians were forcibly relocated to small reservations throughout the West and by 1914 whites were the dominant ethnic group in the American West. As the farming and cattle industries of the American West matured and new technology allowed goods to be refrigerated and brought to other parts of the country and overseas, people's diets greatly improved and contributed to increased population growth throughout the West.

America's population greatly increased between 1870 and 1914, due largely to immigration. The U.S. had been receiving immigrants for decades but at the turn of the 20th century, the numbers greatly increased due partly to large population growth in Europe. Immigrants often faced discrimination, because many differed from most Americans in religion and culture. Despite this, most immigrants found work and enjoyed a greater degree of freedom than in their home countries. Major immigrant groups included the Irish, Italians, Russians, Scandinavians, Germans, Poles and Diaspora Jews. The vast majority, at least by the second generation, learned English, and adopted American culture, while at the same time contributing to that culture by, for example, introducing the celebration of ethnic holidays and foreign cuisine to America. These new groups also changed America's religious landscape. Although it remained mostly Protestant, Catholics especially, as well as Jews and Orthodox Christians, increased in number.

The U.S. became a major military and industrial power during this time, gaining a colonial empire from Spain and surpassing Britain and Germany to become the world's major industrial power by 1900. Despite this, most Americans were reluctant to get involved in world affairs, and American presidents generally tried to keep the U.S. out of foreign entanglement.

Europe: 1870–1914

The years between 1870 and 1914 saw the rise of Germany as the dominant power in Europe. By the late 19th century, Germany had surpassed Britain to become the world's greatest industrial power. It also had the mightiest army in Europe.^{[citation needed]} From 1870 to 1871, Prussia was at war with France. Prussia won the war and gained two border territories, Alsace and Lorraine, from France. After the war, Wilhelm took the title kaiser from the Roman title caesar, proclaimed the German Empire, and all the German states other than Austria united with this new nation, under the leadership of Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck.

After the Franco-Prussian War, Napoleon III was dethroned and France was proclaimed a republic. During this time, France was increasingly divided between Catholics and monarchists and anticlerical and republican forces. In 1900, church and state were officially separated in France, although the majority of the population remained Catholic. France also found itself weakened industrially following its war with Prussia due to its loss of iron and coal mines following the war. In addition, France's population was smaller than Germany's and was hardly growing. Despite all this, France's strong sense of nationhood, among other things, kept the country together.

Between 1870 and 1914, Britain continued to peacefully switch between Liberal and Conservative governments, and maintained its vast empire, the largest in world history. Two problems faced by Britain in this period were the resentment of British rule in Ireland and Britain's falling behind Germany and the United States in industrial production.

British dominions: 1870–1914

The European populations of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa all continued to grow and thrive in this period and evolved democratic Westminster system parliaments.

Canada united as a dominion of the British Empire under the Constitution Act, 1867 (British North America Acts). The colony of New Zealand gained its own parliament (called a "general assembly") and home rule in 1852.^[54] and in 1907 was proclaimed the Dominion of New Zealand.^[55] Britain began to grant its Australian colonies autonomy beginning in the 1850s and during the 1890s, the colonies of Australia voted to unite. In 1901 they were federated as an independent nation under the British Crown, known as the Commonwealth of Australia, with a wholly elected bicameral parliament. The Constitution of Australia had been drafted in Australia and approved by popular consent. Thus Australia is one of the few countries established by a popular vote.^[56] The Second Boer War (1899–1902) ended with the conversion of the Boer republics of South Africa into British colonies and these colonies later formed part of the Union of South Africa in 1910 with equal rights for the Boers, who dominated elections.

From the 1850s, Canada, Australia and New Zealand had become laboratories of democracy. By the 1870s, they had already granted voting rights to their citizens in advance of most other Western nations. In 1893, New Zealand became the first self-governing nation to extend the right to vote to women and, in 1895, the women of South Australia also became the first to obtain the right to stand for Parliament.

During the 1890s Australia also saw such milestones as the invention of the secret ballot, the introduction of a minimum wage and the election of the world's first Labor Party government, prefiguring the emergence of Social Democratic governments in Europe. The old age pension was established in Australia and New Zealand by 1900.^[14]

From the 1880s, the Heidelberg School of art adapted Western painting techniques to Australian conditions, while writers like Banjo Paterson and Henry Lawson introduced the character of a new continent into English literature and antipodean artists such as the opera singer Dame Nellie Melba began to influence the European arts.

Rival alliances

The late 19th century saw the creation of two rival alliances in Europe. Germany, Italy, and Austria-Hungary formed the Triple Alliance. France and Russia also developed strong relations with one another, due to the financing of Russia's Industrial Revolution by French capitalists. Although it did not have a formal alliance, Russia supported the Slavic Orthodox nations of the Balkans and the Caucasus, which had been created in the 19th century after several wars and revolutions against the Ottoman Empire, which by now was in decline and ruled only parts of the southern Balkan Peninsula. This Russian policy, called Pan-Slavism, led to conflicts with the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires, which had many Slavic subjects. Franco-German relations were also tense in this period due to France's defeat and loss of land at the hands of Prussia in the Franco-Prussian War. Also in this period, Britain ended its policy of isolation from the European continent and formed an alliance with France, called the Entente Cordiale. Rather than achieve greater security for the nations of Europe, however, these alliances increased the chances of a general European war breaking out. Other factors that would eventually lead to World War I were the competition for overseas colonies, the military buildups of the period, most notably Germany's, and the feeling of intense nationalism throughout the continent.

World War I

When the war broke out, much of the fighting was between Western powers, and the immediate casus belli was an assassination. The victim was the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Franz Ferdinand, and he was assassinated on 28 June 1914 by a Yugoslav nationalist named Gavrilo Princip in the city of Sarajevo, at the time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Although Serbia agreed to all but one point of the Austrian ultimatum (it did not take responsibility in planning the assassination but was ready to hand over any subject involved on its territory), Austria-Hungary was more than eager to declare war, attacked Serbia and effectively began World War I. Fearing the conquest of a fellow Slavic Orthodox nation, Russia declared war on Austria-Hungary. Germany responded by declaring war on Russia as well as France, which it feared would ally with Russia. To reach France, Germany invaded neutral Belgium in August, leading Britain to declare war on Germany. The war quickly stalemated, with trenches being dug from the North Sea to Switzerland. The war also made use of new and relatively new technology and weapons, including machine guns, airplanes, tanks, battleships, and submarines. Even chemical weapons were used at one point. The war also involved other nations, with Romania and Greece joining the British Empire and France and Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire joining Germany. The war spread throughout the globe with colonial armies clashing in Africa and Pacific nations such as Japan and Australia, allied with Britain, attacking German colonies in the Pacific. In the Middle East, the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps landed at Gallipoli in 1915 in a failed bid to support an Anglo-French capture of the Ottoman capital of Istanbul. Unable to secure an early victory in 1915, British Empire forces later attacked from further south after the beginning of the Arab revolt and conquered Mesopotamia and Palestine from the Ottomans with the support of local Arab rebels. The British Empire also supported an Arab revolt against the Ottomans that was centered in the Arabian Peninsula.

1916 saw some of the most ferocious fighting in human history with the Somme Offensive on the Western Front alone resulting in 500,000 German casualties, 420,000 British and Dominion casualties, and 200,000 French casualties.^[57]

1917 was a crucial year in the war. The United States had followed a policy of neutrality in the war, feeling it was a European conflict. However, during the course of the war many Americans had died on board British ocean liners sunk by the Germans, leading to anti-German feelings in the U.S. There had also been incidents of sabotage on American soil, including the Black Tom explosion. What finally led to American involvement in the war, however, was the discovery of the Zimmermann Telegram, in which Germany offered to help Mexico conquer part of the United States if it formed an alliance with Germany. In April, the U.S. declared war on Germany. The same year the U.S. entered the war, Russia withdrew. After the deaths of many Russian soldiers and hunger in Russia, a revolution occurred against the Czar, Nicholas II. Nicholas abdicated and a Liberal provisional government was set up. In October, Russian communists, led by Vladimir Lenin rose up against the government, resulting in a civil war. Eventually, the communists won and Lenin became premier. Feeling World War I was a capitalist conflict, Lenin signed a peace treaty with Germany in which it gave up a great deal of its Central and Eastern European lands.

Although Germany and its allies no longer had to focus on Russia, the large numbers of American troops and weapons reaching Europe turned the tide against Germany, and after more than a year of fighting, Germany surrendered.

The treaties which ended the war, including the famous Versailles Treaty dealt harshly with Germany and its former allies. The Austro-Hungarian Empire were completely abolished and Germany was greatly reduced in size. Many nations regained their independence, including Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. The last Austro-Hungarian emperor abdicated, and two new republics, Austria and Hungary, were created. The last Ottoman sultan was overthrown by the Turkish nationalist revolutionary named Atatürk and the Ottoman homeland of Turkey was declared a republic. Germany's kaiser also abdicated and Germany was declared a republic. Germany was also forced to give up the lands it had gained in the Franco-Prussian War to France, accept responsibility for the war, reduce its military and pay reparations to Britain and France.

In the Middle East, Britain gained Palestine, Transjordan (modern-day Jordan), and Mesopotamia as colonies. France gained Syria and Lebanon. An independent kingdom consisting of most of the Arabian peninsula, Saudi Arabia, was also established. Germany's colonies in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific were divided between the British and French Empires.

The war had cost millions of lives and led many in the West to develop a strong distaste for war. Few were satisfied with, and many despised the agreements made at the end of the war. Japanese and Italians were angry that they had not been given any new colonies after the war, and many Americans felt the war had been a mistake. Germans were outraged at the state of their country following the war. Also, unlike many in the United States had hoped for, democracy did not flourish in the world in the post-war period. The League of Nations, an international organization proposed by American president Woodrow Wilson to prevent another great war from breaking out, proved ineffective, especially because the isolationist United States ended up not joining.

Inter-war years: 1918–1939

United States in the inter-war years

After World War I, most Americans regretted getting involved in world affairs and desired a "return to normalcy". The 1920s were a period of economic prosperity in the United States. Many Americans bought cars, radios, and other appliances with the help of installment payments. Also, many Americans invested in the stock market as a source of income. Movie theaters sprang up throughout the country, although at first they did not have sound. Alcoholic beverages were outlawed in the United States and women were granted the right to vote. Although the United States was arguably the most powerful nation in the post-war period, Americans remained isolationist and elected several conservative presidents during this period.

In October 1929 the New York stock market crashed, leading to the Great Depression. Many lost their life's savings and the resulting decline in consumer spending led millions to lose their jobs as banks and businesses closed. In the Midwestern United States, a severe drought destroyed many farmers' livelihoods. In 1932, Americans elected Franklin D. Roosevelt president. Roosevelt followed a series of policies which regulated the stock market and banks, and created many public works programs aimed at providing the unemployed with work. Roosevelt's policies helped alleviate the worst effects of the Depression, although by 1941 the Great Depression was still ongoing. Roosevelt also instituted pensions for the elderly and provided money to those who were unemployed. Roosevelt was also one of the most popular presidents in U.S. history, earning re-election in 1936, and also in 1940 and 1944, becoming the only U.S. president to serve more than two terms.

Europe in the inter-war years

Europe was relatively unstable following World War I. Although many prospered in the 1920s, Germany was in a deep financial and economic crisis. Also, France and Britain owed the U.S. a great deal of money. When the United States went into Depression, so did Europe. There were perhaps 30 million people around the world unemployed following the Depression. Many governments helped to alleviate the suffering of their citizens and by 1937 the economy had improved although the lingering effects of the Depression remained. Also, the Depression led to the spread of radical left-wing and right-wing ideologies, like Communism and Fascism.

In 1919-1921 Polish–Soviet War took place. After the Russian Revolution of 1917 Russia sought to spread communism to the rest of Europe. This is evidenced by the well-known daily order by marshal Tukhachevsky to his troops: "Over the corpse of Poland leads the road to the world's fire. Towards Wilno, Minsk, Warsaw go!". Poland, whose statehood had just been re-established by the Treaty of Versailles following the Partitions of Poland in the late 18th century achieved an unexpected and decisive victory at the Battle of Warsaw. In the wake of the Polish advance eastward, the Soviets sued for peace and the war ended with a ceasefire in October 1920. A formal peace treaty, the Peace of Riga, was signed on 18 March 1921. According to the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, the Polish–Soviet War "largely determined the course of European history for the next twenty years or more. [...] Unavowedly and almost unconsciously, Soviet leaders abandoned the cause of international revolution." It would be twenty years before the Bolsheviks would send their armies abroad to 'make revolution'. According to American sociologist Alexander Gella "the Polish victory had gained twenty years of independence not only for Poland, but at least for an entire central part of Europe.

In 1916, militant Irish republicans staged a rising and proclaimed a republic. The rising was suppressed after six days with leaders of the rising being executed. This was followed by the Irish War of Independence in 1919–1921 and the Irish Civil War (1922–1923). After the civil war, the island was divided. Northern Ireland remained part of the United Kingdom, while the rest of the island became the Irish Free State. In 1927, the United Kingdom renamed itself the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

In the 1920s, the UK granted the right to vote to women.

British dominions in the inter-war years

The relationship between Britain and its Empire evolved significantly over the period. In 1919, the British Empire was represented at the all-important Versailles Peace Conference by delegates from its dominions who had each suffered large casualties during the War.^[58] The Balfour Declaration at the 1926 Imperial Conference, stated that Britain and its dominions were "equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs, though united by common allegiance to the Crown, and freely associated as members of the British Commonwealth of Nations". These aspects to the relationship were eventually formalised by the Statute of Westminster in 1931 – a British law which, at the request and with the consent of the dominion parliaments clarified the independent powers of the dominion parliaments, and granted the former colonies full legal freedom except areas where they chose to remain subordinate. Previously the British Parliament had had residual ill-defined powers, and overriding authority, over dominion legislation.^[59] It applied to the six dominions which existed in 1931: Canada, Australia, the Irish Free State, the Dominion of Newfoundland, New Zealand, and the Union of South Africa. Each of the dominions remained within the British Commonwealth and retained close political and cultural ties with Britain and continued to recognize the British monarch as head of their own independent nations. Australia, New Zealand, and Newfoundland had to ratify the statute for it to take effect. Australia and New Zealand did so in 1942 and 1947 respectively. Newfoundland united with Canada in 1949 and the Irish Free State came to an end in 1937, when the citizens voted by referendum to replace its 1922 constitution. It was succeeded by the entirely sovereign modern state of Ireland.

Rise of totalitarianism

The Inter-war years saw the establishment of the first totalitarian regimes in world history. The first was established in Russia following the revolution of 1917. The Russian Empire was renamed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or Soviet Union. The government controlled every aspect of its citizens' lives, from maintaining loyalty to the Communist Party to persecuting religion. Lenin helped to establish this state but it was brought to a new level of brutality under his successor, Joseph Stalin.

The first totalitarian state in the West was established in Italy. Unlike the Soviet Union however, this would be a Fascist rather than a Communist state. Fascism is a less organized ideology than Communism, but generally it is characterized by a total rejection of humanism and liberal democracy, as well as very intense nationalism, with a government headed by a single all-powerful dictator. The Italian politician Benito Mussolini established the Fascist Party (from which Fascism derives its name) following World War I. Fascists won the support of many disillusioned Italians, who were angry over Italy's treatment following World War I. They also employed violence and intimidation against their political enemies. In 1922, Mussolini seized power by threatening to lead his followers on a march on Rome if he was not named prime minister. Although he had to share some power with the monarchy, Mussolini ruled as a dictator. Under his rule, Italy's military was built up and democracy became a thing of the past. One important diplomatic achievement of his reign, however, was the Lateran Treaty, between Italy and the Pope, in which a small part of Rome where St. Peter's Basilica and other Church property was located was given independence as Vatican City and the Pope was reimbursed for lost Church property. In exchange, the Pope recognized the Italian government.

Another Fascist party, the Nazis, would take power in Germany. The Nazis were similar to Mussolini's Fascists but held many views of their own. Nazis were obsessed with racial theory, believing Germans to be part of a master race, destined to dominate the inferior races of the world. The Nazis were especially hateful of Jews. Another unique aspect of Nazism was its connection with a small movement that supported a return to ancient Germanic paganism. Adolf Hitler, a World War I veteran, became leader of the party in 1921. Gaining support from many disillusioned Germans, and by using intimidation against its enemies, the Nazi party had gained a great deal of power by the early 1930s. In 1933, Hitler was named Chancellor, and seized dictatorial power. Hitler built up Germany's military in violation of the Versailles Treaty and stripped Jews of all rights in Germany. Eventually, the regime Hitler created would lead to the Second World War.

In Spain, a republic had been set up following the abdication of the king. After a series of elections, a coalition of republicans, socialists, Marxists, and anticlericals were brought to power. The army, joined by Spanish Conservatives rose up against the republic. In 1939 the Spanish Civil War ended, and General Francisco Franco became dictator. Franco supported the governments of Italy and Germany, although he was not as strongly committed to Fascism as they were and instead focused more on restoring traditionalism and Catholicism to dominance in Spain.

Second World War and its aftermath: 1939–1950

The late 1930s saw a series of violations of the Versailles Treaty by Germany, however, France and Britain refused to act. In 1938, Hitler annexed Austria in an attempt to unite all German-speakers under his rule. Next, he annexed a German-speaking area of Czechoslovakia. Britain and France agreed to recognize his rule over that land and in exchange Hitler agreed not to expand his empire further. In a matter of months, however, Hitler broke the pledge and annexed the rest of Czechoslovakia. Despite this, the British and French chose to do nothing, wanting to avoid war at any cost. Hitler then formed a secret non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union, despite the fact that the Soviet Union was Communist and Germany was Nazi. Also in the 1930s, Italy conquered Ethiopia. The Soviets too began annexing neighboring countries. Japan began taking aggressive actions towards China. After Japan opened itself to trade with the West in the mid-19th century, its leaders learned to take advantage of Western technology and industrialized their country by the end of the century. By the 1930s, Japan's government was under the control of militarists who wanted to establish an empire in the Asia-Pacific region. In 1937, Japan invaded China.

In 1939, German forces invaded Poland, and soon the country was divided between the Soviet Union and Germany. France and Britain declared war on Germany, World War II had begun. The war featured the use of new technologies and improvements on existing ones. Airplanes called bombers were capable of travelling great distances and dropping bombs on targets. Submarine, tank and battleship technology also improved. Most soldiers were equipped with hand-held machine guns and armies were more mobile than ever before. Also, the British invention of radar would revolutionize tactics. German forces invaded and conquered the Low Countries and by June had even conquered France. In 1940 Germany, Italy and Japan formed an alliance and became known as the Axis Powers. Germany next turned its attention to Britain. Hitler attempted to defeat the British using only air power. In the Battle of Britain, German bombers destroyed much of the British air force and many British cities. Led by their prime minister, the defiant Winston Churchill, the British refused to give up and launched air attacks on Germany. Eventually, Hitler turned his attention from Britain to the Soviet Union. In June 1941, German forces invaded the Soviet Union and soon reached deep into Russia, surrounding Moscow, Leningrad, and Stalingrad. Hitler's invasion came as a total surprise to Stalin; however, Hitler had always believed sooner or later Soviet Communism and what he believed were the "inferior" Slavic peoples had to be wiped out.

The United States attempted to remain neutral early in the war. However, a growing number feared the consequences of a Fascist victory. President Roosevelt began sending weapons and support to the British, Chinese, and Soviets. Also, the U.S. placed an embargo against the Japanese, as they continued their war with China and conquered many colonies formerly ruled by the French and Dutch, who were now under German rule. In 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, an American naval base in Hawaii. The U.S. responded by declaring war on Japan. The next day, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. The United States, the British Commonwealth, and the Soviet Union now constituted the Allies, dedicated to destroying the Axis Powers. Other allied nations included Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and China.

In the Pacific War, British, Indian and Australian troops made a disorganised last stand at Singapore, before surrendering on 15 February 1942. The defeat was the worst in British military history. Around 15,000 Australian soldiers alone became prisoners of war. Allied prisoners died in their thousands interned at Changi Prison or working as slave labourers on such projects as the infamous Burma Railway and the Sandakan Death Marches. Australian cities and bases – notably Darwin suffered air raids and Sydney suffered naval attack. U.S. General Douglas MacArthur, based in Melbourne, Australia became "Supreme Allied Commander of the South West Pacific" and the foundations of the post war Australia-New Zealand-United States Alliance were laid. In May 1942, the Royal Australian Navy and U.S. Navy engaged the Japanese in the Battle of the Coral Sea and halted the Japanese fleet headed for Australian waters. The Battle of Midway in June effectively defeated the Japanese navy. In August 1942, Australian forces inflicted the first land defeat on advancing Japanese forces at the Battle of Milne Bay in the Australian Territory of New Guinea.^[60]

By 1942, German and Italian armies ruled Norway, the Low Countries, France, the Balkans, Central Europe, part of Russia, and most of North Africa. Japan by this year ruled much of China, Southeast Asia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and many Pacific Islands. Life in these empires was cruel – especially in Germany, where the Holocaust was perpetrated. Eleven million people – six million of them Jews – were systematically murdered by the German Nazis by 1945.

From 1943 on, the Allies gained the upper hand. American and British troops first liberated North Africa from the Germans and Italians. Next they invaded Italy, where Mussolini was deposed by the king and later was killed by Italian partisans. Italy surrendered and came under Allied occupation. After the liberation of Italy, American, British, and Canadian troops crossed the English Channel and liberated Normandy, France, from German rule after great loss of life. The Western Allies were then able to liberate the rest of France and move towards Germany. During these campaigns in Africa and Western Europe, the Soviets fought off the Germans, pushing them out of the Soviet Union altogether and driving them out of Eastern and East-Central Europe. In 1945 the Western Allies and Soviets invaded Germany itself. The Soviets captured Berlin and Hitler committed suicide. Germany surrendered unconditionally and came under Allied occupation. The war against Japan continued however. American forces from 1943 on had worked their way across the Pacific, liberating territory from the Japanese. The British also fought the Japanese in such places as Burma. By 1945, the U.S. had surrounded Japan, however the Japanese refused to surrender. Fearing a land invasion would cost one million American lives, the U.S. used a new weapon against Japan, the atomic bomb, developed after years of work by an international team including Germans, in the United States. These atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined with a Soviet invasion of many of Japan's occupied territories in the east, led Japan to surrender.

After the war the U.S., Britain and the Soviet Union attempted to cooperate. German and Japanese military leaders responsible for atrocities in their regimes were put on trial and many were executed. The international organization the United Nations was created. Its goal was to prevent wars from breaking out as well as provide the people of the world with security, justice and rights. The period of post-war cooperation ended, however, when the Soviet Union rigged elections in the occupied nations of Central and Eastern Europe to allow for Communist victories. Soon, all of Eastern and much of Central Europe had become a series of Communist dictatorships, all staunchly allied with the Soviet Union. Germany following the war had been occupied by British, American, French, and Soviet forces. Unable to agree on a new government, the country was divided into a democratic west and Communist east. Berlin itself was also divided, with West Berlin becoming part of West Germany and East Berlin becoming part of East Germany. Meanwhile, the former Axis nations soon had their sovereignty restored, with Italy and Japan regaining independence following the war.

World War II had cost millions of lives and devastated many others. Entire cities lay in ruins and economies were in shambles. However, in the Allied countries, the people were filled with pride at having stopped Fascism from dominating the globe, and after the war, Fascism was all but extinct as an ideology. The world's balance of power also shifted, with the United States and Soviet Union being the world's two superpowers.

Fall of the western empires: 1945–1999

Following World War II, the great colonial empires established by the Western powers beginning in early modern times began to collapse. There were several reasons for this. Firstly, World War II had devastated European economies and had forced governments to spend great deals of money, making the price of colonial administration increasingly hard to manage. Secondly, the two new superpowers following the war, the United States and Soviet Union were both opposed to imperialism, so the now weakened European Empires could generally not look to the outside for help.^{[citation needed]} Thirdly, Westerners increasingly were not interested in maintaining and even opposed the existence of empires.^{[citation needed]} The fourth reason was the rise of independence movements following the war. The future leaders of these movements had often been educated at colonial schools run by Westerners where they adopted Western ideas like freedom, equality, self-determination and nationalism, and which turned them against their colonial rulers.^{[citation needed]}

The first colonies to gain independence were in Asia. In 1946, the U.S. granted independence to the Philippines, its only large overseas colony. In British India, Mahatma Gandhi led his followers in non-violent resistance to British rule. By the late 1940s Britain found itself unable to work with Indians in ruling the colony, this, combined with sympathy around the world for Gandhi's non-violent movement, led Britain to grant independence to India, dividing it into the largely Hindu country of India and the smaller, largely Muslim nation of Pakistan in 1947. In 1948 Burma gained independence from Britain, and in 1945 Indonesian nationalists declared Indonesian independence, which the Netherlands recognised in 1949 after a four-year armed and diplomatic struggle. Independence for French Indochina came only after a great conflict. After the withdrawal of Japanese forces from the colony following World War II, France regained control but found it had to contend with an independence movement that had fought against the Japanese. The movement was led by the Vietnamese Ho Chi Minh, leader of the Vietnamese Communists. Because of this, the U.S. supplied France with arms and support, fearing Communists would dominate South-east Asia.^{[citation needed]} In the end though, France gave in and granted independence, creating Laos, Cambodia, Communist North Vietnam, and South Vietnam.

In the Middle East, following World War II, Britain had granted independence to the formerly Ottoman territories of Mesopotamia, which became Iraq, Kuwait, and Transjordan, which became Jordan. France also granted independence to Syria and Lebanon. British Palestine, however, presented a unique challenge. Following World War I, when Britain gained the colony, Jewish and Arab national aspirations conflicted, followed by a proposal of the UN to divided Mandatory Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Arabs objected, Britain withdrew and the Zionists declared the state of Israel on 14 May 1948.

The other major center of colonial power, Africa, was freed from colonial rule following World War II as well. Egypt gained independence from Britain and this was soon followed by Ghana and Tunisia. One violent independence movement of the time was fought in Algeria, in which Algerian rebels went so far as to kill innocent Frenchmen. In 1962, however, Algeria gained independence from France. By the 1970s the entire continent had become independent of European rule, although a few southern countries remained under the rule of white colonial minorities.

By the close of the 20th century, the European colonial Empires had ceased to exist as significant global entities. Sunset for the British Empire came when Britain's lease on the great trading port of Hong Kong was brought to end, and political control was transferred to the People's Republic of China in 1997. Soon after, in 1999 Transfer of sovereignty over Macau was concluded between Portugal and China, bringing to a close six centuries of Portuguese colonialism. Britain remained culturally linked to its former empire through the voluntary association of the Commonwealth of Nations, and 14 British Overseas Territories remained (formerly known as Crown colonies), consisting mainly of scattered island outposts. Currently, 15 independent Commonwealth realms retain the British monarch as their head of state. Canada, Australia and New Zealand emerged as vibrant and prosperous migrant nations. The once vast French colonial empire had lost its major possessions though a scattered territories remained as Overseas departments and territories of France. The shrunken Dutch Empire retained a few Caribbean islands as constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Spain had lost its overseas possessions, but its legacy was vast – with Latin culture remaining throughout South and Central America. Along with Portugal and France, Spain had made Catholicism a global religion.

Of Europe's empires, only the Russian Empire remained a significant geo-political force into the late 20th century, having morphed into the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact, which, drawing on the writings of the German Karl Marx, established a socialist economic model under Communist dictatorship, which ultimately collapsed in the early 1990s. Adaptations of Marxism continued as the stated inspiration for Governments in Central America and Asia into the 21st century – though only a handful survived the end of the Cold War.

The end of the Western Empires greatly changed the world. Although many newly independent nations attempted to become democracies, many slipped into military and autocratic rule. Amid power vacuums and newly determined national borders, civil war also became a problem, especially in Africa, where the introduction of firearms to ancient tribal rivalries exacerbated problems.

The loss of overseas colonies partly also led many Western nations, particularly in continental Europe, to focus more on European, rather than global, politics as the European Union rose as an important entity. Though gone, the colonial empires left a formidable cultural and political legacy, with English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian and Dutch being spoken by peoples across far flung corners of the globe. European technologies were now global technologies – religions like Catholicism and Anglicanism, founded in the West, were booming in post colonial Africa and Asia. Parliamentary (or presidential) democracies, as well as rival Communist style one party states invented in the West had replaced traditional monarchies and tribal government models across the globe. Modernity, for many, was equated with Westernisation.

Cold War: 1945–1991

From the end of World War II almost until the start of the 21st century, Western and world politics were dominated by the state of tensions and conflict between the world's two Superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. In the years following World War II, the Soviets established satellite states throughout Central and Eastern Europe, including historically and culturally Western nations like Poland and Hungary. Following the division of Germany, the East Germans constructed the Berlin Wall, to prevent East Berliners from escaping to the "freedom" of West Berlin. The Berlin Wall would come to represent the Cold War around the world.

Rather than revert to isolationism, the United States took an active role in global politics following World War II to halt Communist expansion. After the war, Communist parties in Western Europe increased in prestige and number, especially in Italy and France, leading many to fear the whole of Europe would become Communist. The U.S. responded to this with the Marshall Plan, in which the U.S. financed the rebuilding of Western Europe and poured money into its economy. The Plan was a huge success and soon Europe was prosperous again, with many Europeans enjoying a standard of living close that in the U.S (following World War II, the U.S. became very prosperous and Americans enjoyed the highest standard of living in the world). National rivalries ended in Europe and most Germans and Italians, for example, were happy to be living under democratic rule, regretting their Fascist pasts. In 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty was signed, creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO. The treaty was signed by the United States, Canada, the Low Countries, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Portugal, Italy, France, and Britain. NATO members agreed that if any one of them were attacked, they would all consider themselves attacked and retaliate. NATO would expand as the years went on, other nations joined, including Greece, Turkey, and West Germany. The Soviets responded with the Warsaw Pact, an alliance which bound Central and Eastern Europe to fight with the United States and its allies in the event of war.

One of the first actual conflicts of the Cold War took place in China. Following the withdrawal of Japanese troops after World War II, China was plunged into civil war, pitting Chinese Communists against Nationalists, who opposed Communism. The Soviets supported the Communists while the Americans supported the Nationalists. In 1949, the Communists were victorious, proclaiming the People's Republic of China. However, the Nationalists continued to rule the island of Taiwan off the coast. With American guarantees of protection for Taiwan, China did not make an attempt to take over the island. A major political change in East Asia in this period was Japan's becoming a tolerant, democratic society and an ally of the United States. In 1950, another conflict broke out in Asia, this time in Korea. The peninsula had been divided between a Communist North and non-Communist South in 1948 following the withdrawal of American and Soviet troops. In 1950, the North Koreans invaded South Korea, wanting to united the land under Communism. The UN condemned the action, and, because the Soviets were boycotting the organization at the time and therefore had no influence on it, the UN sent forces to liberate South Korea. Many nations sent troops, but most were from America. UN forces were able to liberate the South and even attempted to conquer the North. However, fearing the loss of North Korea, Communist China sent troops to the North. The U.S. did not retaliate against China, fearing war with the Soviet Union, so the war stalemated. In 1953 the two sides agreed to a return to the pre-war borders and a de-militarization of the border area.

The world lived in the constant fear of World War III in the Cold War. Seemingly any conflict involving Communism might lead to a conflict between the Warsaw pact countries and the NATO countries. The prospect of a third world war was made even more frightening by the fact that it would almost certainly be a nuclear war. In 1949 the Soviets developed their first atomic bomb, and soon both the United States and Soviet Union had enough to destroy the world several times over. With the development of missile technology, the stakes were raised as either country could launch weapons from great distances across the globe to their targets. Eventually, Britain, France, and China would also develop nuclear weapons. It is believed that Israel developed nuclear weapons as well.

One major event that nearly brought the world to the brink of war was the Cuban Missile Crisis. In the 1950s a revolution in Cuba had brought the only Communist regime in the Western Hemisphere to power. In 1962, the Soviets began constructing missile sites in Cuba and sending nuclear missiles. Because of its close proximity to the U.S., the U.S. demanded the Soviets withdraw missiles from Cuba. The U.S. and Soviet Union came very close to attacking one another, but in the end came to a secret agreement in which the NATO withdrew missiles in exchange for a Soviet withdrawal of missiles from Cuba.

The next great Cold War conflict occurred in Southeast Asia. In the 1960s, North Vietnam invaded South Vietnam, hoping to unite all of Vietnam under Communist rule. The U.S. responded by supporting the South Vietnamese. In 1964, American troops were sent to "save" South Vietnam from conquest, which many Americans feared would lead to Communist dominance in the entire region. The Vietnam War lasted many years, but most Americans felt the North Vietnamese would be defeated in time. Despite American technological and military superiority, by 1968, the war showed no signs of ending and most Americans wanted U.S. forces to end their involvement. The U.S. undercut support for the North by getting the Soviets and Chinese to stop supporting North Vietnam, in exchange for recognition of the legitimacy of mainland China's Communist government, and began withdrawing troops from Vietnam. In 1972, the last American troops left Vietnam and in 1975 South Vietnam fell to the North. In the following years Communism took power in neighboring Laos and Cambodia.

By the 1970s global politics were becoming more complex. For example, France's president proclaimed France was a great power in and of itself. However, France did not seriously threaten the U.S. for supremacy in the world or even Western Europe. In the Communist world, there was also division, with the Soviets and Chinese differing over how Communist societies should be run. Soviet and Chinese troops even engaged in border skirmishes, although full-scale war never occurred.

The last great armed conflict of the Cold War took place in Afghanistan. In 1979, Soviet forces invaded that country, hoping to establish Communism. Muslims from throughout the Islamic World travelled to Afghanistan to defend that Muslim nation from conquest, calling it a Jihad, or Holy War. The U.S. supported the Jihadists and Afghan resisters, despite the fact that the Jihadists were vehemently anti-Western. By 1989 Soviet forces were forced to withdraw and Afghanistan fell into civil war, with an Islamic fundamentalist government, the Taliban taking over much of the country.

The late 1970s had seen a lessening of tensions between the U.S. and Soviet Union, called Détente. However, by the 1980s Détente had ended with the invasion of Afghanistan. In 1981, Ronald Reagan became President of the United States and sought to defeat the USSR by leveraging the United States capitalist economic system to outproduce the communist Russians. The United States military was in a state of low moral after its loss in the Vietnam War, and President Reagan began a huge effort to out-produce the Soviets in military production and technology. In 1985, a new Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev took power. Gorbachev, knowing that the Soviet Union could no longer compete economically with the United States, implemented a number of reforms granting his citizens freedom of speech and introducing some capitalist reforms. Gorbachev and America's staunch anti-Communist president Ronald Reagan were even able to negotiate treaties limiting each side's nuclear weapons. Gorbachev also ended the policy of imposing Communism in Central and Eastern Europe. In the past Soviet troops had crushed attempts at reform in places like Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Now, however, Eastern Europe was freed from Soviet domination. In Poland the Round Table Talks between the government and the Solidarity-led opposition led to semi-free elections in 1989 elections in Poland where anti-communist candidates won a striking victory sparked off a succession of peaceful anti-communist revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe known as the Revolutions of 1989. Soon, Communist regimes throughout Europe collapsed. In Germany, after calls from Reagan to Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, the people of East and West Berlin tore down the wall and East Germany's Communist government was voted out. East and West Germany unified to create the country of Germany, with its capital in the reunified Berlin. The changes in Central and Eastern Europe led to calls for reform in the Soviet Union itself. A failed coup by hard-liners led to greater instability in the Soviet Union, and the Soviet legislature, long subservient to the Communist Party, voted to abolish the Soviet Union in 1991. What had been the Soviet Union was divided into many republics. Although many slipped into authoritarianism, most became democracies. These new republics included Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan. By the early 1990s, the West and Europe as a whole was finally free from Communism.

Following the end of the Cold War, Communism largely died out as a major political movement. After the fall of USSR, the United States became the world's only superpower.

Western countries: 1945–1980

United States: 1945–1980

Following World War II, there was an unprecedented period of prosperity in the United States. The majority of Americans entered the middle class and moved from the cities into surrounding suburbs, buying homes of their own. Most American households owned at least one car, as well as the relatively new invention, the television. Also, the American population greatly increased as part of the so-called "baby boom" following the war. For the first time following the war, large of numbers of non-wealthy Americans were able to attend college.

Following the war, black Americans started what has become known as the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. After roughly a century of second-class citizenship following the abolition of slavery, blacks began seeking full equality. This was helped by the 1954 decision by the Supreme Court, outlawing segregation in schools, which was common in the South. Martin Luther King Jr., a black minister from the South led many blacks and whites who supported their cause in non-violent protests against discrimination. Eventually, the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act were passed in 1964, banning measures that had prevented blacks from voting and outlawing segregation and discrimination in the U.S.

In politics, the Democratic and Republican parties remained dominant. In 1945, the Democratic party relied on Southerners, whose support went back to the days when Democrats defended a state's right to own slaves, and Northeasterners and industrial Mid-Westerners, who supported the pro-labor and pro-immigrant policies of the Democrats. Republicans tended to rely on middle-class Protestants from elsewhere in the country. As the Democrats began championing civil rights, however, Southern Democrats felt betrayed, began voting Republican. Presidents from this period were Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter. The years 1945–1980 saw the expansion of federal power and the establishment of programs to help the elderly and poor pay for medical expenses.

By 1980, many Americans had become pessimistic about their country. Despite its status as one of only two superpowers, the Vietnam War as well as the social upheavals of the 1960s and an economic downturn in the 1970s led America to become a much-less confident nation.

Europe

At the close of the war, much of Europe lay in ruins with millions of homeless refugees. A souring of relations between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union then saw Europe split by an Iron Curtain, dividing the continent between West and East. In Western Europe, democracy had survived the challenge of Fascism and began a period of intense rivalry with Eastern Communism, which was to continue into the 1980s. France and Britain secured themselves permanent positions on the newly formed United Nations Security Council, but Western European Empires did not long survive the war, and no one Western European nation would ever again be the paramount power in world affairs.^[61]

Despite these immense challenges however, Western Europe again rose as an economic and cultural powerhouse. Assisted first by the Marshall Plan of financial aid from the United States, and later through closer economic integration through the European Common Market, Western Europe quickly re-emerged as a global economic power house. The vanquished nations of Italy and West Germany became leading economies and allies of the United States. So marked was their recovery that historians refer to an Italian economic miracle and in the case of West Germany and Austria the Wirtschaftswunder (German for economic miracle).

Facing a new power balance between the Soviet East and American West, Western European nations moved closer together. In 1957, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, West Germany, Italy and Luxembourg signed the landmark Treaty of Rome, creating the European Economic Community, free of customs duties and tariffs, and allowing the rise of a new European geo-political force.^[61] Eventually, this organization was renamed the European Union or (EU), and many other nations joined, including Britain, Ireland, and Denmark. The EU worked toward economic and political cooperation among European nations.

Between 1945 and 1980, Europe became increasingly socialist.^{[citation needed]} Most European countries became welfare states, in which governments provided a large number of services to their people through taxation. By 1980, most of Europe had universal healthcare and pensions for the elderly. The unemployed were also guaranteed income from the government, and European workers were guaranteed long vacation time. Many other entitlements were established, leading many Europeans to enjoy a very high standard of living. By the 1980s, however, the economic problems of the welfare state were beginning to emerge.

Europe had many important political leaders during this time. Charles de Gaulle, leader of the French government in exile during World War II, served as France's president for many years. He sought to carve out for France a great power status in the world.

Although Europe as a whole was relatively peaceful in this period, both Britain and Spain suffered from acts of terrorism. In Britain, The Troubles saw Irish republicans battle Unionists loyal to Britain. In Spain, ETA, a Basque separatist group, began committing acts of terror against Spaniards, hoping to gain independence for the Basques, an ethnic minority in north-eastern Spain. Both these terrorist campaigns failed, however.

For Greece, Spain and Portugal, ideological battles between left and right continued and the emergence of parliamentary democracy was troubled. Greece experienced Civil War, coup and counter-coup into the 1970s. Portugal, since the 1930s under a quasi-Fascist regime and among the poorest nations in Europe, fought a rearguard action against independence movements in its empire, until a 1974 coup. The last authoritarian dictatorship in Western Europe fell in 1975, when Francisco Franco, dictator of Spain, died. Franco had helped to modernize the country and improve the economy. His successor, King Juan Carlos, transformed the country into a constitutional monarchy. By 1980, all Western European nations were democracies.

British Empire and Commonwealth 1945–1980

Between 1945 and 1980, the British Empire was transformed from its centuries old position as a global colonial power, to a voluntary association known as the Commonwealth of Nations – only some of which retained any formal political links to Britain or its monarchy. Some former British colonies or protectorates disassociated themselves entirely from Britain.

Britain

The popular war time leader Winston Churchill was swept from office at the 1945 election and the Labour Government of Clement Attlee introduced a program of nationalisation of industry and introduced wide-ranging social welfare. Britain's finances had been ravaged by the war and John Maynard Keynes was sent to Washington to negotiate the massive Anglo-American loan on which Britain relied to fund its post-war reconstruction.^[62]

India was granted Independence in 1947 and Britain's global influence rapidly declined as decolonisation proceeded. Though the USSR and United States now stood as the post war super powers, Britain and France launched the ill-fated Suez intervention in the 1950s, and Britain committed to the Korean War.

From the 1960s The Troubles afflicted Northern Ireland, as British Unionist and Irish Republican paramilitaries conducted campaigns of violence in support of their political goals. The conflict at times spilled into Ireland and England and continental Europe. Paramilitaries such as the IRA (Irish Republican Army) wanted union with the Republic of Ireland while the UDA (Ulster Defence Association) were supporters of Northern Ireland remaining within the United Kingdom.

In 1973, Britain entered the European Common Market, stepping away from imperial and commonwealth trade ties. Inflation and unemployment contributed to a growing sense of economic decline – partly offset by the exploitation of North Sea Oil from 1974. In 1979, the electorate turned to Conservative Party leader Margaret Thatcher, who became Britain's first female prime minister. Thatcher launched a radical program of economic reform and remained in power for over a decade. In 1982, Thatcher dispatched a British fleet to the Falkland Islands which successfully repelled an Argentine invasion of the British Territory, demonstrating that Britain could still project power across the globe.^[61]

Canada

Canada continued to evolve its own national identity in the post-war period. Although it was an independent nation, it remained part of the British Commonwealth and recognized the British monarch as the Canadian monarch as well. Following the war, French and English were recognized as co-equal official languages in Canada, and French became the only official language in the French-speaking province of Quebec. Referenda were held in both 1980 and 1995 in which Quebecers, however, voted not to secede from the union. Other cultural changes Canada faced were similar to those in the United States. Racism and discrimination largely disappeared in the post-war years, and dual-income families became the norm. Also, there was a rejection of traditional Western values by many in Canada. The government also established universal health care for its citizens following the war.

Australia and New Zealand: 1945–1980

Following World War II, Australia and New Zealand enjoyed a great deal of prosperity along with the rest of the West. Both countries remained constitutional monarchies within the evolving Commonwealth of Nations and continued to recognise British monarchs as head of their own independent Parliaments. However, following British defeats by the Japanese in World War II, the post-war decline of the British Empire, and entry of Britain into the European Economic Community in 1973, the two nations re-calibrated defence and trade relations with the rest of the world. Following the Fall of Singapore in 1941, Australia turned to the United States for military aid against the Japanese Empire and Australia and New Zealand joined the United States in the ANZUS military alliance in the early 1950s and contributed troops to anti-communist conflicts in South-East Asia in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. The two nations also established multicultural immigration programs with waves of economic and refugee migrants establishing bases for large Southern European, East Asian, Middle Eastern, and South Pacific islander communities. Trade integration with Asia expanded, particularly through good post-war relations with Japan. The Maori and Australian Aborigines had been largely dispossessed and disenfranchised during the 19th and early 20th centuries, but relations between the descendants of European settlers and the Indigenous peoples of Australia and New Zealand began to improve through legislative and social reform over the post-war period corresponding with the civil rights movement in North America. The Fraser Government became a vocal critic of white-minority rule in Apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia, concluding the Gleaeagles Agreement in 1977.^[63]

The arts also diversified and flourished over the period – with Australian cinema, literature and musical artists expanding their nation's profile internationally. The iconic Sydney Opera House opened in 1973 and Australian Aboriginal Art began to find international recognition and influence.

Western culture: 1945–1980

The West went through a series of great cultural and social changes between 1945 and 1980. Mass media created a global culture that could ignore national frontiers. Literacy became almost universal, encouraging the growth of books, magazines and newspapers. The influence of cinema and radio remained, while televisions became near essentials in every home. A new pop culture also emerged with rock n roll and pop stars at its heart.

Religious observance declined in most of the West. Protestant churches began focusing more on social gospel rather than doctrine, and the ecumenist movement, which supported co-operation among Christian Churches. The Catholic Church changed many of its practices in the Second Vatican Council, including allowing masses to be said in the vernacular rather than Latin. The counterculture of the 1960s (and early 1970s)^[64] began in the United States as a reaction against the conservative government, social norms of the 1950s, the political conservatism (and perceived social repression) of the Cold War period, and the US government's extensive military intervention in Vietnam.^[65][66]

With the abolition of laws treating most non-whites as second-class citizens, overt institutional racism largely disappeared from the West. Although the United States failed to secure the legal equality of women with men (by the failure of Congress to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment), women continued working outside the home, and by 1980 the double-income family became commonplace in Western society. Beginning in the 1960s, many began rejecting traditional Western values and there was a decline in emphasis on church and the family.

Rock and roll music and the spread of technological innovations such as television dramatically altered the cultural landscape of western civilisation. The influential artists of the 20th century often belonged to the new technology artforms.

Rock and roll emerged from the United States from the 1950s to become a quintessential 20th-century art form. Artists such as Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison and Johnny Cash and, later, The Beach Boys developed the new genre in the Southern United States. Cash became an icon of the also newly emerging popular genre of country music. British rock and roll emerged later, with bands like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones rising to unparalleled success during the 1960s. From Australia emerged the mega pop band The Bee Gees and hard rock band AC/DC, who carried the genre in new directions through the 1970s. These musical artists were icons of radical social changes which saw many traditional notions of western culture alter dramatically.

Hollywood, California became synonymous with film during the 20th century and American Cinema continued a period of immense global influence in the West after World War II. American cinema played a role in adjusting community attitudes through the 1940s to 1980 with seminal works like John Ford's 1956 Western The Searchers, starring John Wayne, providing a sympathetic view of the Native American experience; and 1962's To Kill a Mockingbird, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee and starring Gregory Peck, challenging racial prejudice. The advent of television challenged the status of cinema and the artform evolved dramatically from the 1940s through the age of glamorous icons like Marilyn Monroe and directors like Alfred Hitchcock to the emergence of such directors as Stanley Kubrick, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, whose body of work reflected the emerging Space Age and immense technological and social change.

Western nations: 1980–present

The 1980s were a period of economic growth in the West, though the 1987 Stock Market Crash saw much of the West enter the 1990s in a downturn. The 1990s and turn of the century in turn saw a period of prosperity throughout the West. The World Trade Organization was formed to assist in the organisation of world trade. Following the collapse of Soviet Communism, Central and Eastern Europe began a difficult readjustment towards market economies and parliamentary democracy. In the post Cold War environment, new co-operation emerged between the West and former rivals like Russia and China, but Islamism declared itself a mortal enemy of the West, and wars were launched in Afghanistan and the mid-East in response. The economic cycle turned again with the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, but amidst a new economic paradigm, the effect on the West was uneven, with Europe and United States suffering deep recession, but Pacific economies like Australia and Canada, largely avoiding the downturn – benefitting from a combination of rising trade with Asia, good fiscal management and banking regulation.^[67][68] In the early 21st century, Brasil, Russia, India and China (the BRIC nations) were re-emerging as drivers of economic growth from outside North America and Western Europe.

In the early stages after the Cold War, Russian president Boris Yeltsin stared down an attempted restoration of Sovietism in Russia, and pursued closer relations with the West. Amid economic turmoil a class of oligarchs emerged at the summit of the Russian economy. Yeltsin's chosen successor, the former spy, Vladimir Putin, tightened the reins on political opposition, opposed separatist movements within the Russian Federation, and battled pro-Western neighbour states like Georgia, contributing to a challenging climate of relations with Europe and America. Former Soviet satellites joined NATO and the European Union, leaving Russia again isolated in the East.^[69] Under Putin's long reign, the Russian economy profited from a resource boom in the global economy, and the political and economic instability of the Yeltsin era was brought to an end.^[70]

Elsewhere, both within and without the West, democracy and capitalism were in the ascendant – even Communist holdouts like mainland China and (to a lesser extent) Cuba and Vietnam, while retaining one party government, experimented with market liberalisation, a process which accelerated after the fall of European Communism, enabling the re-emergence of China as an alternative centre of economic and political power standing outside the West.

Free trade agreements were signed by many countries. The European nations broke down trade barriers with one another in the EU, and the United States, Canada, and Mexico signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Although free trade has helped businesses and consumers, it has had the unintended consequence of leading companies to outsource jobs to areas where labor is cheapest. Today, the West's economy is largely service and information-based, with most of the factories closing and relocating to China and India.^{[citation needed]}

European countries have had very good relations with each other since 1980. The European Union has become increasingly powerful, taking on roles traditionally reserved for the nation-state. Although real power still exists in the individual member states, one major achievement of the Union was the introduction of the Euro, a currency adopted by most EU countries.

Australia and New Zealand continued their large multi-ethnic immigration programs and became more integrated in the Asia Pacific region. While remaining constitutional monarchies within the Commonwealth, distance has grown between them and Britain, spurred on by Britain's entry into the European Common Market. Australia and New Zealand have integrated their own economies via a free trade agreement. While political and cultural ties with North America and Europe remain strong, economic reform and commodities trade with the booming economies of Asia have set the South Pacific nations on a new economic trajectory with Australia largely avoiding a downturn in the Financial crisis of 2007–2008 which unleashed severe economic loss through North America and Western Europe.^[71]

Today Canada remains part of the Commonwealth, and relations between French and English Canada have continued to present problems. A referendum was held in Quebec, however, in 1980, in which Quebecers voted to remain part of Canada.

In 1990, the white-minority government of the Republic of South Africa, led by F. W. de Klerk, began negotiations to dismantle the system of apartheid. South Africa held its first universal elections in 1994, which the African National Congress (ANC), led by Nelson Mandela, won by an overwhelming majority.^[72][73] The country has since rejoined the Commonwealth of Nations.

Since 1991, the United States has been regarded as the world's only superpower.^[74] Politically, the United States is dominated by the Republican and Democratic parties. Presidents of the United States between 1980 and 2006 have been Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. Since 1980, Americans have become far more optimistic about their country than they were in the 1970s.^{[citation needed]} Since the 1960s, a large number of immigrants have been coming into the U.S., mostly from Asia and Latin America, with the largest single group being Mexicans. Large numbers from those areas have also been coming illegally, and the solution to this problem has produced much debate in the U.S.

On 11 September 2001, the United States suffered the worst terrorist attack in its history. Four planes were hijacked by Islamic extremists and crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania.

The late-2000s financial crisis, considered by many economists to be the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, was triggered by a liquidity shortfall in the United States banking system,^[75] and has resulted in the collapse of large financial institutions, the bailout of banks by national governments, and downturns in stock markets throughout much of the West. The United States and Britain faced serious downturn, while Portugal, Greece, Ireland and Iceland faced major debt crises.^[76] Almost uniquely among Western nations, Australia avoided recession off the back of strong Asian trade and 25 years of economic reform and low levels of government debt.

Evidence of the major demographic and social shifts which have taken place within Western society since World War II can be found with the elections of national level leaders: United States (Barack Obama was elected president in 2009, becoming the first African-American to hold that office), France (Nicolas Sarkozy, a president of France of Hungarian descent), Germany (Angela Merkel, the first female leader of that nation), and Australia (Julia Gillard, also the first female leader of that nation).^{[citation needed]}

Western nations and the world

Following 1991, Western nations provided troops and aid to many war-torn areas of the world. Some of these missions were unsuccessful, like the attempt by the United States to provide relief in Somalia in the early 1990s. A very successful peace-making operation was conducted in the Balkans in the late 1990s, however. After the Cold War, Yugoslavia broke up into several countries along ethnic lines, and soon countries and ethnic groups within countries of the former Yugoslavia began fighting one another. Eventually, NATO troops arrived in 1999 and ended the conflict. Australian led a United Nations mission into East Timor in 1999 (INTERFET) to restore order during that nation's transition to democracy and independence from Indonesia.

The greatest war fought by the West in the 1990s, however, was the Persian Gulf War. In 1990, the Middle Eastern nation of Iraq, under its brutal dictator Saddam Hussein, invaded the much smaller neighbouring country of Kuwait. After refusing to withdraw troops, the United Nations condemned Iraq and sent troops to liberate Kuwait. American, British, French, Egyptian and Syrian troops all took part in the liberation. The war ended in 1991, with the withdrawal of Iraqi troops from Kuwait and Iraq's agreement to allow United Nations inspectors to search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

The West had become increasingly unpopular in the Middle East following World War II. The Arab states greatly disliked the West's support for Israel. Many soon had a special hatred towards the United States, Israel's greatest ally. Also, partly to ensure stability on the region and a steady supply of the oil the world economy needed, the United States supported many corrupt dictatorships in the Middle East.^{[citation needed]} In 1979, an Islamic revolution in Iran overthrew the pro-Western Shah and established an anti-Western Shiite Islamic theocracy. Following the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, most of the country came under the rule of a Sunni Islamic theocracy, the Taliban. The Taliban offered shelter to the Islamic terrorist group Al-Qaeda, founded by the extremist Saudi Arabian exile Osama Bin Laden. Al-Qaeda launched a series of attacks on United States overseas interests in the 1990s and 2000. Following the September 11 attacks, however, the United States overthrew the Taliban government and captured or killed many Al Qaeda leaders, including Bin Laden. In 2003, the United States led a controversial war in Iraq, because Saddam had never accounted for all his weapons of mass destruction. By May of that year, American, British, Polish and troops from other countries had defeated and occupied Iraq. Weapons of mass destruction however, were never found afterwards. In both Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States and its allies established democratic governments. Following the Iraq war, however, an insurgency made up of a number of domestic and foreign factions has cost many lives and made establishing a government very hard.

In March 2011, a multi-state coalition led by NATO began a military intervention in Libya to implement United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973, which was taken in response to threat made by the government of Muammar Gaddafi against the civilian population of Libya during the 2011 Libyan civil war.^[77]

Western society and culture (since 1980)

In general, Western culture has become increasingly secular in Northern Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand. Nevertheless, in a sign of the continuing status of the ancient Western institution of the Papacy in the early 21st century, the Funeral of Pope John Paul II brought together the single largest gathering in history of heads of state outside the United Nations.^[78] It is likely to have been the largest single gathering of Christianity in history, with numbers estimated in excess of four million mourners gathering in Rome.^[79][80][81] He was followed by another non-Italian Benedict XVI, whose near-unprecedented resignation from the papacy in 2013 ushered in the election of the Argentine Pope Francis – the first pope from the Americas, the new demographic heartland of Catholicism.^[82]

Personal computers emerged from the West as a new society changing phenomenon during this period. In the 1960s, experiment began on networks linking computers and from these experiments grew the World Wide Web.^[83] The internet revolutionised global communications through the late 1990s and into the early 21st century and permitted the rise of new social media with profound consequences, linking the world as never before. In the West, the internet allowed free access to vast amounts of information, while outside the democratic West, as in China and in Middle Eastern nations, a range of censorship and monitoring measures were instigated, providing a new socio-political contrast between east and west.^{[citation needed]}

Historiography

Chicago historian William H. McNeill wrote The Rise of the West (1965) to show how the separate civilizations of Eurasia interacted from the very beginning of their history, borrowing critical skills from one another, and thus precipitating still further change as adjustment between traditional old and borrowed new knowledge and practice became necessary. He then discusses the dramatic effect of Western civilization on others in the past 500 years of history. McNeill took a broad approach organized around the interactions of peoples across the globe. Such interactions have become both more numerous and more continual and substantial in recent times. Before about 1500, the network of communication between cultures was that of Eurasia. The term for these areas of interaction differ from one world historian to another and include world-system and ecumene. His emphasis on cultural fusions influenced historical theory significantly.^[84]

See also

• Outline of the history of Western civilization
• Role of Christianity in civilization
• Great Divergence, about the era of dominance of Western Civilization
• Colonial empire
• Western culture
• Western world
• History of Europe
• Eurocentrism
• World history

Media

• Civilisation: A Personal View by Kenneth Clark (TV series), BBC TV, 1969
• The Ascent of Man (TV series), BBC TV, 1973

References

Further reading

• Cole, Joshua and Carol Symes. Western Civilizations (Brief Fifth Edition) (2 vol 2020)
• Kishlansky, Mark A. et al. A brief history of western civilization : the unfinished legacy (2 vol 2007) vol 1 online; also vol 2 online
• Perry, Marvin Myrna Chase, et al. Western Civilization: Ideas, Politics, and Society (2015)
• Rand McNally. Atlas of western civilization (2006) online
• Spielvogel, Jackson J. Western Civilization (10th ed. 2017_
• Bruce Thornton Greek Ways: How the Greeks Created Western Civilization Encounter Books, 2002

Historiography

• Allardyce, Gilbert. "The rise and fall of the western civilization course." American Historical Review 87.3 (1982): 695-725. online
• Bavaj, Riccardo: "The West": A Conceptual Exploration , European History Online, Mainz: Institute of European History, 2011, retrieved: 28 November 2011.
• Bentley, Jerry H. "Cross-cultural interaction and periodization in world history." American Historical Review 101.3 (1996): 749-770.
• Douthit, Nathan. “The Dialectical Commons of Western Civilization and Global/World History.” History Teacher 24#3 (1991), pp. 293–305, online.
• McNeill, William H. (1995). "The Changing Shape of World History". History and Theory. 34 (2): 8–26. doi:10.2307/2505432. JSTOR 2505432.
• Manning, Patrick. "The problem of interactions in world history." American Historical Review 101.3 (1996): 771-782. online
• Pincince, John. "Jerry Bentley World History, and the Decline of the 'West'" Journal of World History 25#4 (2014), pp. 631–43, online.

External links

• textbooks--online free to read