Historical Periods and Key Figures:
– Antiquity (before AD 500) marked by roots in Europe and the Mediterranean, linked to ancient Greece and Rome.
– Charlemagne founded the Carolingian Empire and was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 800.
– Vikings’ seaborne attacks on Europe in the late 8th century.
– Norse explorations leading to the conquest of Ireland, England, and Normandy.
– Charlemagne’s conversion of non-Christian lands to Christianity.
– Early Middle Ages (5th-10th century) characterized by the collapse of literacy after Rome’s fall.
– Notable figures like Gregory the Great, Saint Patrick, and Clovis I in the early Middle Ages.
– Missionaries from Ireland converting England to Christianity in the 6th century.
– Muslim conquests halted in Europe by Charles Martel in 732.
– Charlemagne’s empire dividing after his reign into France, Holy Roman Empire, and other kingdoms.
Cultural and Intellectual Developments:
– Scholasticism’s emergence during the Middle Ages, blending Christian theology with Aristotelian logic.
– Prominent Scholastic philosophers like Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus.
– Influence of Scholasticism on intellectual life in Western Europe.
– Gothic cathedrals like Canterbury, Cologne, and Chartres built in the High Middle Ages.
– Evolution of cathedral schools into medieval universities.
– Notable philosophers including Saint Anselm and Saint Thomas Aquinas.
– Renaissance originating in Italy, fostering scientific and intellectual inquiry.
– Medici family in Florence supporting the Italian Renaissance.
– Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press revolutionizing literature dissemination.
– Cultural movement in the West during the Renaissance.
Religious and Political Dynamics:
– Great Schism dividing the Christian world between the Catholic Church and Orthodox Church.
– Spread of Christianity integrating Baltic peoples into Western civilization.
– Chivalry and knighthood ideals emphasizing courtesy and service.
– Pope Urban II calling for Crusades to re-conquer the Holy Land.
– Church reform through the Dominican and Franciscan Orders.
– Monarchs challenging church power facing condemnation.
– Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV reversing excommunication by Pope Gregory VII.
– Monarchies centralizing power and facing conflicts with nobles.
– Religious wars erupting in Europe during the Reformation.
– Peace of Westphalia in 1648 ending religious conflicts.
Art, Architecture, and Cultural Influences:
– Gothic cathedrals showcasing artistic and architectural intricacy.
– Cult of the Virgin Mary emphasizing maternal virtue in Catholic Europe.
– Aristocratic military ideal of Chivalry becoming culturally significant.
– Virtuous simplicity expressed by figures like St. Francis of Assisi.
– Humanist movement focusing on human nature and worldly topics.
– Prominent artists like Da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael during the Renaissance.
– Literary works flourishing in Northern Europe during the Renaissance.
– Exploration and expansion leading to significant discoveries by figures like Columbus and Da Gama.
– Scientific advancements by Copernicus, Galileo, and van Leeuwenhoek.
Social and Technological Advancements:
– Feudalism becoming the dominant social, economic, and political system by 1000.
– Magna Carta laying foundations for constitutional monarchy.
– Cooling temperatures leading to leaner harvests and famines in Europe.
– Black Plague causing massive population loss in Europe.
– Hundred Years War between England and France ending in 1453.
– Crucial technological advances like the lock and magnetic compass.
– Ottoman Turks’ conquests contributing to the spread of Greek scholars’ knowledge.
– First clock in Europe installed in a Milan church in 1335.
– Middle class growth and decline of the feudal system leading to the Renaissance’s beginnings.
– Colonization shaping North America by Protestant settlers.
Western civilization traces its roots back to Europe and the Mediterranean. It is linked to ancient Greece, the Roman Empire and Medieval Western Christendom which emerged during the Middle Ages and experienced such transformative episodes as the development of Scholasticism, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, the Scientific Revolution, and the development of liberal democracy. The civilizations of Classical Greece and Ancient Rome are considered seminal periods in Western history. Major cultural contributions also came from the Christianized Germanic peoples, such as the Franks, the Goths, and the Burgundians. Charlemagne founded the Carolingian Empire and he is referred to as the "Father of Europe." Contributions also emerged from pagan peoples of pre-Christian Europe, such as the Celts and Germanic pagans as well as some significant religious contributions derived from Judaism and Hellenistic Judaism stemming back to Second Temple Judea, Galilee, and the early Jewish diaspora; and some other Middle Eastern influences. Western Christianity has played a prominent role in the shaping of Western civilization, which throughout most of its history, has been nearly equivalent to Christian culture. (There were Christians outside of the West, such as China, India, Russia, Byzantium and the Middle East). Western civilization has spread to produce the dominant cultures of modern Americas and Oceania, and has had immense global influence in recent centuries in many ways.
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Following the 5th century Fall of Rome, Europe entered the Middle Ages, during which period the Catholic Church filled the power vacuum left in the West by the fall of the Western Roman Empire, while the Eastern Roman Empire (or Byzantine Empire) endured in the East for centuries, becoming a Hellenic Eastern contrast to the Latin West. By the 12th century, Western Europe was experiencing a flowering of art and learning, propelled by the construction of cathedrals, the establishment of medieval universities, and greater contact with the medieval Islamic world via Al-Andalus and Sicily, from where Arabic texts on science and philosophy were translated into Latin. Christian unity was shattered by the Reformation from the 16th century. A merchant class grew out of city states, initially in the Italian peninsula (see Italian city-states), and Europe experienced the Renaissance from the 14th to the 17th century, heralding an age of technological and artistic advance and ushering in the Age of Discovery which saw the rise of such global European empires as those of Portugal and Spain.
The Industrial Revolution began in Britain in the 18th century. Under the influence of the Enlightenment, the Age of Revolution emerged from the United States and France as part of the transformation of the West into its industrialised, democratised modern form. The lands of North and South America, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand became first part of European empires and then home to new Western nations, while Africa and Asia were largely carved up between Western powers. Laboratories of Western democracy were founded in Britain's colonies in Australasia from the mid-19th centuries, while South America largely created new autocracies. In the 20th century, absolute monarchy disappeared from Europe, and despite episodes of Fascism and Communism, by the close of the century, virtually all of Europe was electing its leaders democratically. Most Western nations were heavily involved in the First and Second World Wars and protracted Cold War. World War II saw Fascism defeated in Europe, and the emergence of the United States and Soviet Union as rival global powers and a new "East-West" political contrast.
Other than in Russia, the European empires disintegrated after World War II and civil rights movements and widescale multi-ethnic, multi-faith migrations to Europe, the Americas and Oceania lowered the earlier predominance of ethnic Europeans in Western culture. European nations moved towards greater economic and political co-operation through the European Union. The Cold War ended around 1990 with the collapse of Soviet-imposed Communism in Central and Eastern Europe. In the 21st century, the Western World retains significant global economic power and influence. The West has contributed a great many technological, political, philosophical, artistic and religious aspects to modern international culture: having been a crucible of Catholicism, Protestantism, democracy, industrialisation; the first major civilisation to seek to abolish slavery during the 19th century, the first to enfranchise women (beginning in Australasia at the end of the 19th century) and the first to put to use such technologies as steam, electric and nuclear power. The West invented cinema, television, radio, telephone, the automobile, rocketry, flight, electric light, the personal computer and the Internet; produced artists such as Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Leonardo da Vinci, Beethoven, Vincent van Gogh, Picasso, Bach and Mozart; developed sports such as soccer, cricket, golf, tennis, rugby and basketball; and transported humans to an astronomical object for the first time with the 1969 Apollo 11 Moon Landing.
