Europe

Europe has several major peninsulas jutting into the sea. They include Scandinavia and the Jutland portion of Denmark in the north and the Iberian Peninsula of Spain and France in the west. In the south are the Italian and Balkan peninsulas. At the continent’s coasts, much of the land is indented by bays, seas, and fjords, or narrow inlets the sea. These indentations give Europe a long and highly irregular coastline. The western part of the continent has a high proportion of coastline with good maritime access. Europe also comprises many islands. Some of the islands—notably the Faroes and Iceland—are located at a distance from the mainland.

More than half of the continent’s land—including much of western and eastern Europe—consists of fairly flat, low plains. The plains stand mostly below 600 feet (180 meters) in elevation. The European Plain is one of the greatest uninterrupted expanses of plain on Earth’s surface. It sweeps from the Pyrenees Mountains on the border between Spain and France across northern Europe to the Ural Mountains in Russia. In western Europe the plain is comparatively narrow, rarely exceeding 200 miles (320 kilometers) in width. As it stretches eastward it broadens steadily. The plain reaches its greatest width in western Russia, where it extends more than 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers). The flatness of this enormous lowland, however, is broken by hills, particularly in the west.

Northwestern Europe has many highland areas, including in parts of Great Britain, Ireland, Iceland, and Scandinavia. Europe also has areas of central uplands and plateaus, with landscapes of rounded summits, steep slopes, valleys, and depressions. Examples of these areas are found in parts of Scotland, France, Spain, and the Czech Republic.

Europe’s tallest mountains are found in the south. The continent’s highest peaks are in the rugged Alps, which dominate south-central Europe. The Pyrenees form a high barrier between Spain and France. The mountains of Scandinavia are lower, as are the Ural Mountains, which form the continent’s eastern boundary.

The continent has many rivers but few large lakes. The major rivers include the Rhine, Seine, and Rhône in the west, the Po in the south, and the Danube, Elbe, Oder, Vistula, Volga, and Don in the center and east.

Europe’s largest countries by area—in order—are Russia, Ukraine, France, Spain, and Sweden. Russia is the largest European country by far, its territory west of the Urals being six times the size of Ukraine and seven times that of France. Russia is also the most populous country in Europe, followed by Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Italy. The smallest European countries are Vatican City, Monaco, San Marino, Liechtenstein, Malta, and Andorra. Moscow, Russia, is the largest city in Europe, followed by London, England, and St. Petersburg, Russia. The next largest (the precise order varying according to how metropolitan areas and city populations are counted) include Berlin, Germany; Paris, France; Madrid, Spain; Rome, Italy; Warsaw, Poland; Kiev, Ukraine; Bucharest, Romania; Budapest, Hungary; Hamburg, Germany; Minsk, Belarus; Belgrade, Serbia; Vienna, Austria; Kharkiv, Ukraine; Barcelona, Spain; and Amsterdam, Netherlands. The large city of Istanbul, Turkey, straddles the boundary between Europe and Asia.

The highest point in Europe is Mont Blanc, rising to 15,771 feet (4,807 meters) in the French Alps. (If the peaks of the Caucasus mountains are included within Europe, the highest point is Russia’s Mount Elbrus, at 18,510 feet, or 5,642 meters.) The high average elevations of the Alps, Pyrenees, and Caucasus mountains make them formidable barriers, in contrast to the Urals.

The lowest terrain in Europe is found in Russia at the head of the Caspian Sea. There the Caspian Depression reaches some 95 feet (29 meters) below sea level. The lowest points in the western part of Europe are each about 23 feet (7 meters) below sea level and close to the sea: Lammefjord, in Denmark, and Prins Alexander Polder, in the Netherlands. (Polders are tracts of seafloor that have been “reclaimed” by the Dutch.)

The longest rivers in Europe are the Volga, Danube, Rhine, Elbe, and Rhône. The famous Thames River in England is only 205 miles (330 kilometers) long. Europe’s southernmost points (not counting colonies and unresolved claims to slices of Antarctica) are Cyprus and the Greek island Gávdos, which lies south of Crete.

Seville, Spain, recorded the highest European temperature at 122 °F (50 °C) in 1881. Northern Russia (near Siberia) and the mountains of Scandinavia have the European continent’s lowest temperatures. The lowest European temperature ever recorded was −67 °F (−55 °C), at Ust’-Shchuger, Russia (but the exact date is unknown). The sunniest place in Europe is the Greek island of Rhodes, which records about 3,480 hours of sunlight annually.

Europe stretches from midlatitudes (about 35° N) to high, polar latitudes (81° N). In longitude, it extends from about 60° E (the Ural Mountains) to 10° W. Europe’s range of climates, as determined by precipitation and temperature averages, changes with latitude, elevation, and distance from the Atlantic Ocean. Prevailing westerly winds blow from the Atlantic across the continent. These winds bring a marine west coast climate, including milder conditions in winter and frequent rains, to Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the western coast of the mainland, especially Norway. The rainiest areas of Europe are the west coast of Norway; the west coasts of Ireland and Scotland; and the high slopes of the central Alps, the Pyrenees, and the Dinaric Alps in the Balkans. The Alps separate humid central and northern Europe from the drier south. Southern Europe has a Mediterranean climate, with hot, dry summers but mild, rainy winters.

Eastern Europe is far enough from the ocean to have a true continental climate, especially in Russia. This climate type brings bitterly cold winters and hot, humid summers. Average precipitation levels also drop off inland, contributing to the grasslands of Ukraine and southwestern Russia. Storms and weather fronts come from shifting high- and low-pressure systems and air masses in conflict between polar and midlatitude zones.

Western Europe is formed by Ireland, the United Kingdom, France, the “Benelux” countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg), and tiny Andorra, in the Pyrenees Mountains between France and Spain. Warm summers and mild winters characterize the climate of western Europe. This climate occurs in large part because of the nearness to the ocean and the warm waters of the North Atlantic Current (an extension of the Gulf Stream).

Ireland is called the Emerald Isle for its green scenery. However, its western fields produce little more than grass for grazing sheep. This is the case especially amid the hills and crags of Counties Galway and Kerry, ending at the westernmost point in Ireland, Dingle (An Daingean) peninsula. More of the people live in Dublin, Cork, and other cities in the east. Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom and has a large Protestant population, whereas the rest of the island is majority Roman Catholic. English is spoken nearly everywhere on the island, despite concerted efforts to revive Irish (Gaelic) in the western counties.

Tourism plays an important role in Ireland’s economy. American Irish from Boston, Chicago, and all over the United States make up much of the tourist traffic to the island. Ireland’s cultural exports have ranged from the touring Riverdance show and rock bands as varied as the Pogues, Keywest, and U2 to such literary greats as James Joyce, William Butler Yeats, and Seamus Heaney. Ireland’s contributions to the international film industry have included actors such as Richard Harris, Peter O’ Toole, Maureen O’Hara, Colm Meaney, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Colin Farrell.

Irish legends and myths abound, with fairies always rewarding or punishing people who interact with them. Fairies are said to be normally social, and thus solitary fairies are especially feared—for example, the selkie (a mysterious seal woman), the pooka (a trickster taking the shape of a horse, pig, or dog), and the leprechaun (a tiny old shoemaker who cleverly guards his treasure). The coastal rock formations in Northern Ireland called the Giant’s Causeway, one of the great geological oddities of Europe, were once believed to have been built by a giant. Similar legends are told in parts of Scotland, Wales, and England, especially around archaeological sites.

The island of Great Britain includes Wales in the west, Scotland in the north, and England in the center and south. Wales and Scotland are known for the fog-shrouded Cambrian and Grampian highlands, respectively. Gently undulating hills cover most of England, which has extensive tracts of farmland and wooded urban landscapes. The vast majority of the population is urban, with the London area leading the way. Picturesque crags meet the sea at several points, including the white chalk cliffs of Dover (on the English Channel) and at Land’s End, the westernmost point of England. (More about Great Britain’s influential history and culture is included in the history and literature sections of this article.)

The low-lying, humid area around Paris, France, is known as the Paris Basin. To the northeast it connects with Belgium and the Netherlands. The Paris Basin is part of the vast European Plain. This lowland plain sweeps from the border between France and Spain across northern Europe to the Ural Mountains in Russia. In western Europe the European Plain is comparatively narrow.

The Paris Basin forms the heartland of France, and it is drained mainly by the Seine River. Parisians congregate on the banks of this river. The Somme, Loire, and Garonne rivers link the rest of northern and western France with the sea. Southern France’s elevations rise into an upland area called the Massif Central, which is gouged out by the Rhône River. The Massif Central joins the Alps in the east. In the southwest, the high ridges of the Pyrenees Mountains divide France from Spain.

The cultural and historical influence of France has been great since the Middle Ages and resonates in “high” art and architecture and popular culture alike—as well as in international politics. French influence goes far beyond France’s long love-hate relationship with Britain. The two lands were often in conflict or uneasy alliance from the time of the Norman Conquest of Britain in 1066. France also had contentious interactions with Germany in the 19th and 20th centuries. In earlier times, France gave the world important democratic ideals in the age of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. Moreover, France once had colonies in every corner of the globe.

France has continued to offer influential viewpoints on world affairs. In more recent times, it has had various governments that promoted the European Union, business interests, and socialist reforms and allowed massive street protests against U.S.-led wars and occupations. Meanwhile, French cultural exports have inspired audiences in North America and the world, with innumerable French musicians, directors, and actors making names for themselves in Hollywood.

Paris is one of the most visited cities in the world, with tens of millions of annual tourists filling its museums, hotels, sidewalk cafés, and even Notre-Dame Cathedral. Alongside the English Channel, cemeteries in the Normandy region are visited by those paying homage to D-Day (June 6, 1944), the launch of an important campaign in World War II. Tourists also flock to the southern coast of France, which is home to the city of Marseille and Mediterranean resorts. Resorts are found where the city of Nice and the French Riviera link up with Monaco and Italy.

To the northeast of France lie the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg, which are known as the Low Countries. They are so named because much of their land along the North Sea coast and for some distance inland is either below sea level or just slightly above it. An extensive network of shipping canals and waterways links the region’s major rivers. These rivers include the Schelde, Meuse (Maas), and branches of the lower Rhine. The population density of the Low Countries is among the highest in Europe and in the world. All three countries are highly urbanized, with the vast majority of the population living in cities or towns.

Central Europe encompasses Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Liechtenstein, Slovakia, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, and Slovenia. The landscape has been altered by millennia of farming and town building. However, hints of the prehistoric forests remain in southwestern Germany’s Black Forest (Schwarzwald), in the Bohemian Forest of the Czech Republic, and even on the pine-shaded ski slopes of Switzerland and Austria.

The Danube River crosses Bavaria, a state in southeastern Germany. The river then runs east through Austria, Slovakia, and Hungary before passing into southeastern and eastern Europe. The Rhine River is the principal watercourse of western Germany, and the Elbe River dominates the northeastern part of Germany. Several other rivers, including the Oder and the Vistula, cross Czech and Polish farmlands. Northern Germany and Poland lie within the European Plain, which was a historic invasion route for horses and, later, for trucks and tanks. Germany has rougher terrain in the central Harz Mountains and in southern Bavaria, the foothills to the Swiss and Austrian Alps.

Much of the region’s population lives in large cities, including Berlin, Hamburg, and Bremen, Germany; Warsaw, Poland; Prague, Czech Republic; Vienna, Austria; and Budapest, Hungary. Their bustling streets and nightlife compete for tourist attention with old cathedrals, museums, art galleries, and palaces. Many of the region’s cities were repaired or rebuilt completely after World War II, just as modern subway and highway systems emerged from the widespread ruin. Small towns and charming villages still dot much of the countryside of central Europe, especially in eastern Germany, Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. These areas were only lightly affected by urban sprawl until the 1990s.

The Alps are the divider between central and southern Europe. They are the continent’s highest and most densely populated mountains. Most rivers in central and western Europe originate in or near the Alps, and modern rail and highway tunnels run through these mountains. The cities and towns cover parts of fertile valleys. Far above, the Alpine ski slopes—accessible via high-strung cable cars—offer the prospects of crisp cold air, sporting fun, and spectacular views.

Southern Europe is usually said to include Spain and Portugal (on the Iberian Peninsula), Italy, two enclaves within Italy—the countries of San Marino and Vatican City—and Malta. Greece is sometimes also included in the region (though in this article it is considered part of the Balkans of southeastern Europe).

Spain’s Meseta Central is a large plateau in the country’s interior. It has been irrigated for millennia. Despite the refrain from the American musical comedy My Fair Lady, “the rain in Spain” does not actually stay “mainly in the plain,” because this is a semiarid plateau, receiving only light rainfall. Yet Spain’s climate varies greatly, from the green hills of Galicia, a region in the northwest, to the Mediterranean sands (beaches) of Barcelona, a city in the northeast. Iberia’s major rivers are the Ebro and Douro in the north, the Guadalquivir and Guadiana in the south, and the Tagus, which rises on the Meseta and pours into the Atlantic Ocean at Lisbon, Portugal. The high, snowcapped peaks of the Sierra Nevada mountain range rise in southeastern Spain. Spain’s southernmost tip leads to the famous Rock of Gibraltar, a longtime British possession. On the peninsula of Gibraltar is a British military base that guards the Strait of Gibraltar—the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean. Off Spain’s Mediterranean coast are the tourist-trammeled Balearic Islands.

Spain’s capital, the historic city of Madrid, is centrally located on the Meseta. It is the largest population center in Spain, followed by Barcelona. Likewise, Portugal’s capital, Lisbon, which lies on the west coast, is that country’s most populous city. Since Iberia escaped the devastation of World War II, many of its cities have districts dating from medieval and Classical times. Particularly stunning are Ávila’s nearly pristine medieval walls and Granada’s Moorish (Spanish Muslim) architecture, both in Spain. The route to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, site of the supposed tomb of the apostle St. James, has drawn large numbers of Christian pilgrims since the Middle Ages.

Italy occupies a peninsula that is shaped like a boot. This elegant “boot” extends far into the Mediterranean Sea from the northern lowland regions of Piedmont, Lombardy, and Veneto, which are washed by the Po River. Lombardy is home to Milan, a major fashion capital. In Veneto, the city of Venice preserves a historic canal system and a thriving modern nightlife. The Apennine Mountains run through most of the boot, including Tuscany and Umbria, regions in central Italy. The hills of these regions are dotted with vineyards and ancient Roman aqueducts. Tuscany’s Florence is famed for its great Renaissance art and architecture. Magnificent Rome rests along the Tiber River in central Italy. So too does Vatican City, home of the pope. Farther south, Naples gazes across its bay to the remnant of Mount Vesuvius. An eruption of this volcano buried and preserved the ancient cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in ad 79.

Irrigated olive groves and vineyards cover some of Italy’s countryside, where the natural plant life includes water-retaining scrub trees. In towns and villages, irrigated gardens support fruits and flowering plants. Millennia of human habitation and the overgrazing of goats, sheep, and other livestock have thinned the Mediterranean soils. Many of Italy’s valleys and hillsides are covered in rich volcanic soils, however, a legacy of past eruptions.

The sections of the Mediterranean Sea facing western Italy are called the Ligurian and Tyrrhenian seas. The Adriatic Sea lies to Italy’s east, and the Ionian Sea is on the country’s southeast. The turquoise bays of a World Heritage site called the Amalfi coast offer some of the more stunning views of the Mediterranean. At this site, located on the southern edge of the Sorrento peninsula near Naples, the road curves alongside whitewashed terraces, bluffs, and pastel-colored homes. Corsica (a French island) and Sardinia (an Italian island) lie west of Italy’s western coast. Sicily, a large triangular island of Italy, rests off the toe of the boot. On Sicily, volcanic Mount Etna rises to roughly 11,000 feet (3,350 meters), its height varying with its eruptions.

The countries of southeastern Europe are nearly synonymous with the Balkan Peninsula. On this peninsula are located Greece, a small part of Turkey (Turkish Thrace, or Trakya), Albania, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and (when not included in central Europe) Slovenia. (Romania and Moldova, which are also on the peninsula, are considered part of eastern Europe.) The Balkans are a zone of many different ethnic and religious groups, often divided by the rough terrain of the Dinaric Alps, the Balkan Mountains, and the Rhodope Mountains. On a world map, southern and eastern Greece seems to have fractured into hundreds of islands in the Aegean Sea. The island of Cyprus, which shares cultural affinities with Greece and Turkey, is often included in southeastern Europe.

Major tourist attractions in southeastern Europe include the cities of Athens, Greece, and Sofia, Bulgaria, and the numerous picturesque islands of the Aegean. The region has a long, rich history. In prehistoric and ancient times, southeastern Europe was a crossroads for populations migrating between Europe, Asia, and Africa. Ancient Phoenicians, Minoans, and Mycenaeans settled Crete and other Aegean islands. Ruins of ancient Greece and Rome are scattered throughout the region, from the temples on Greek hilltops to the palace of the Roman emperor Diocletian in Croatia.

The region once served as a buffer zone between the great powers of Rome and Byzantium. During the 15th and 16th centuries, the Balkans became an area of contention between the Muslim Ottoman Empire and Christian states to the west and north. During the 20th century, many Balkan states had communist dictatorships and secret police forces. Civil wars in the 1990s tore apart the countries that once formed Yugoslavia. Most of the countries of southeastern Europe wish to solidify relationships with the rest of Europe. However, the political, civil, and economic strife of recent decades raises challenges for their current or future membership in the European Union.

During its existence from 1922 to 1991, the Soviet Union was the world’s largest country, with Russia at its core. Eastern Europe consists of several countries that were part of the Soviet Union and one (Romania) that was its ally. The region includes the Baltic states (Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia), Belarus, Moldova, Romania, Ukraine, and the western part of Russia. (Poland is sometimes included in eastern Europe but is often counted instead as being part of central Europe.) No stranger to trouble in the 19th and 20th centuries, eastern Europe since the 1990s has struggled with corruption and with economic instability and the power of entrenched elites as well as with emigration.

The European Plain extends throughout the northern part of the Eastern region. The plain gives way to the Pripet Marshes of Belarus and Ukraine and the hills of the Central Russian Upland. Eastern Europe is watered by the Danube, Don, Volga, and Dnieper rivers. In the Ukrainian and Russian southern plains, drier conditions thin out the trees until steppe (grasslands) dominate the landscape; this is a major grain-growing area. Tundra and taiga (boreal forest) are typical in the north. The region’s continental climate brings major shifts between hot, humid summers and cold, bitter winters.

Eastern Europe still has fairly large rural farming populations. Nevertheless, professionals, blue-collar workers, and tourists alike are attracted to the region’s cities, especially historic centers of power and culture such as Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia; Riga, Latvia; Minsk, Belarus; and Kiev, Ukraine. The Black Sea is a traditional tourist destination for Russians despite the heavy pollution that has flown into it in recent decades, both during the Soviet period and afterward. To supply western and central Europe’s demands for energy, petroleum and natural gas pipelines were planned from the Caspian shores and Caucasus region through Eastern Europe in the early 21st century. Pipelines have long delivered oil and gas from Russia’s Siberia region to eastern Europe and beyond.

The Norse, or Nordic, lands are the countries of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and, far to the west, Iceland. Together, these countries make up the region of northern Europe known as Scandinavia. Norway and Sweden occupy the Scandinavian peninsula. Denmark sits on the Jutland peninsula, separated from Sweden by the Skagerrak waterway linking the Baltic and North seas. Finland is also part of northern Europe; it is not usually called Scandinavian, however, because the Finns have a distinctive language and ethnic heritage.

Much of the Scandinavian peninsula is mountainous. In Norway rugged mountains meet the coast beside steep-walled fjords—glacier-carved valleys “drowned” thousands of years ago by the sea. The inland Kjølen (Kölen) Mountains of northern Norway form the border with Sweden. Northern Europe’s tallest peaks are in the Lang Mountains of Norway, which reach elevations of more than 8,000 feet (2,450 meters) at Galdhø Peak (Galdhøpiggen) and Glitter Mountain (Glittertinden). Flatlands are found in southern and eastern Sweden, in western Finland, and in Denmark, which lies on the European Plain. Northern Europe has large areas of taiga (boreal forest), with many lakes and rivers. Tundra covers the northernmost parts of the region. Tundra soils are frozen in winter but waterlogged in summer. Reindeer in the tundra dig through ice and snow to feed on moss and lichen below, and some reindeer herders still subsist among them. However, most of the population of northern Europe lives in large cities. In Norway, Sweden, and Finland, the large urban centers are concentrated along the southern coasts.

Among the chief tourist draws are the region’s natural beauty and sites in the major cities. Copenhagen, Denmark, for example, attracts visitors to Tivoli Gardens, Amalienborg palace district, and, in Copenhagen’s harbor, the bronze statue of the Little Mermaid of Hans Christian Andersen fame. Despite the secular nature of much of the Scandinavian population today, legends persist about elves (alfar) or “hidden folk” (huldufólk in Iceland), the forest spirits (skogsrå) of Sweden, and the waterfall haunts (fossegrim) of Norway. Old Norse myths involving dwarfs, giants, the trickster god Loki, and the hammer-wielding god Thor, inspired many of the “Middle-earth” characters of England’s J.R.R. Tolkien as well as more recent literary and cinematic works.

Most European languages are in the Romance, Germanic, and Slavic branches of the Indo-European language family. The Romance languages developed from the Latin of ancient Rome. Words from Latin, as well as from the ancient (“dead”) Greek language, are still used in medicine, science, and the arts. Romance languages are spoken predominantly in western and southern Europe. The main languages of this group are Portuguese, Spanish (Castilian), French, Italian, and Romanian. Lesser spoken are the Romance languages and dialects of Walloon, Moldovan, Romansh, Occitan (Provençal), Catalan, and Galician.

Germanic languages were influenced by various ancient peoples in northern Europe. They are now spoken throughout northern, northwestern, and central Europe. Germanic languages include English, German, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, and Icelandic.

The Slavic languages are spoken mainly in eastern and southeastern Europe and in Russia. They include Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian, and Macedonian.

Many other languages are spoken in Europe that do not belong to the three main divisions of the Indo-European family. The Baltic languages (Lithuanian and Latvian) are in the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European family. Greek is another language of this family.The Uralic language family’s Finno-Ugric branch includes Finnish, Sami (Lapp), and Estonian, spoken in northern and northeastern Europe. Much farther south are speakers of Hungarian, another Finno-Ugric language. Turkic languages are spoken in parts of the Balkans and in southern Russia as well as in Turkey.

Educated Europeans are expected to speak three or more languages. The most important second language is English, followed by French, German, and Russian. Those languages are learned by minority speakers of, for example, Celtic languages (including Welsh, Breton, Irish, and Scottish Gaelic), Yiddish, Hebrew (which has been revived among Jewish communities in many cities), Ladin, Faroese, Basque, and Upper and Lower Sorbian. Bilingual or trilingual signs are common. However, travelers may be confused by city names displayed in native tongues: Florence is Firenze, Venice—Venezia, Vienna—Wien, Cologne—Köln, and Munich—München.

European spiritual practices cover a wide spectrum. Europeans range from secular atheists (who do not believe in a god) and other nonreligious people to those practicing Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and many other religions. Some Europeans follow local, traditional religions that are practiced by only one ethnic group. Freedom from religious persecution is now the norm in Europe. Unlike in the United States, which strives to maintain “separation of church and state,” European governments tend to support state churches through taxes. Most Europeans belong to one of three divisions of Christianity: Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, and Eastern Orthodoxy. The highest percentages of Roman Catholics are in southern and central Europe. Protestants are more numerous in northern Europe, and Eastern Orthodox Christians are found primarily in eastern Europe and Greece. Many European Muslims live in the Balkans, lands that were once under the rule of the Muslim Ottoman Empire, and in Russia. Large Muslim communities also exist in many western European cities. Most European Jews live in Paris, Moscow, and elsewhere in France and Russia as well as in Ukraine and the United Kingdom.

The largest nonreligious and atheist populations are in Russia and Ukraine. Additional millions of nonreligious people live in Germany, France, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Italy, the United Kingdom, and other European countries.

Pre-Christian mythology persists in some corners despite the prevalence of secular scientific and mainstream Christian worldviews. In Denmark, Norway, and Iceland are told old stories of dangerous mermaids, trolls, ghost-children who died of exposure (útburdir), and water horses (nykur) that steal children. In Ireland and elsewhere, dawn, dusk (twilight), and midnight are considered magical in-between times. Though they call their stories folklore, few Irish will entirely deny the existence of spirits and magical beings, or they may claim that such tales are “true enough.”

Holidays and festivals in Europe are generally associated with Christianity—especially Christmas, Easter, and the Feast of Corpus Christi—though several holidays have pre-Christian roots. Christmas markets bring cheer, hot drinks, tourists, and shoppers to the central squares of many German cities. High-latitude lands such as Scotland, Finland, and Scandinavia suffer short winters’ days but extended daylight in summer. In these lands, Midsummer’s Day festivals are celebrated about the time of the solstice, June 20–26. And in Scotland, the Hogmanay (New Year) midwinter fire festivals hint of pre-Christian history. To celebrate Hogmanay in the Scottish town of Stonehaven, dozens of men and women swing “fireballs” made of burning wood and paraffin (kerosene) around their heads on the main street at midnight.

European towns and villages continue to sponsor annual feast days for Christian saints with street processions and Passion plays (about the capture, death, and resurrection of Jesus). But not all these occasions are solemn. A comical, irreverent spirit accompanies the satirical plays and sermons of the St. Anthony feast in the Catalonia region of Spain. Carnival—the merrymaking before the fasting period called Lent—is a huge celebration throughout Italy. It is celebrated in more traditional style in villages and in “modern” fashion in Viareggio (Tuscany) and Venice—where revelers wear ornate masks to conceal identities. In Cologne, Germany, Carnival season is known as the “Crazy Days” (Tolle Tage). Carnival ends on the day before Ash Wednesday (the start of Lent). Shrove Tuesday, the final day of Carnival, is called Mardi Gras (literally “Fat Tuesday”) in French. The Lenten season in France is so solemn that church bells are not supposed to be rung on Good Friday. Instead, a legend says they “fly to Rome” to be with the pope. When they fly back on Easter Sunday, they drop chocolate coins into gardens.

In Europe pilgrimages remain major events for Roman Catholics in France and Spain, especially the one honoring St. James on the route to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Pilgrims also journey to sites of visions of the Madonna (Virgin Mary) such as at Lourdes (in France) and at Caravaggio, Loreto, and Pompeii (in Italy). In Greece the Orthodox monasteries of Metéora are preserved atop sheer-walled pinnacles as religious sites and tourist attractions.

The daily lives of Europeans vary immensely according to differences in income, age, gender, ethnicity, and family connections. Discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, race, and gender remains a problem in some areas. However, women have more access to education and employment in Europe than in other parts of the world.

The rhythms of European country life are sometimes idyllic or pleasing in natural simplicity—as if taken from the pages of a novel or a travel brochure. In reality, country life can sometimes be loud and difficult, especially for farmers, construction crews, and emergency responders. The pace of city life can be very rapid and may be especially hectic for drivers in some areas. Urban living is improved by open parks, efficient public transportation, and historic architecture.

Traditional food dishes create a culinary geography in Europe. France, for example, is renowned for an elaborate and elegant style of cooking known as haute cuisine. Appetizers called tapas are popular along Spain’s Mediterranean coast. Traditional Scandinavian fare includes open-faced sandwiches (smørrebrød) and a holiday dish of dried cod soaked in lye (lutefisk). Beet soup (borscht) is a common dish in Russia, Ukraine, and Poland. Smoked beef strips (Bündnerfleisch) are often served in Germany and Switzerland, even for breakfast. Fast foods and processed snacks are also widely available. These compete with street foods such as sausages (Wurst) in Germany and grillimakkara (grilled sausage) in Finland. A popular street food in England is fish and chips, fish deep-fried in batter served with deep-fried potato slices. Overall, however, Europeans tend to be more health-conscious consumers of “slow food” than many North Americans.

The customary drinks of many countries, offered hot and cold by street vendors, now compete with soft drinks (sodas), bottled juices, and carbonated and spring-bottled water. European attitudes regarding consumption of alcoholic beverages are varied. In some places these attitudes are relaxed, while in other areas, alcohol sales are strictly limited. Southern Germany is famous for its Hofbräuhaus (a beer hall in Munich). England and Ireland are known for their pubs. However, the world’s heaviest beer consumption per person is in the Czech Republic. France is world famous for wine, especially the sparkling variety from that country’s Champagne province. The biggest coffee consumption, averaging more than four cups per day, is in chilly Finland. Italians may be the most ardent drinkers of the coffee drinks macchiato and cappuccino, as they are prepared for standing room only in many a neighborhood coffee shop. Most Europeans prefer thick coffee; the English, however, traditionally favor tea.

The museums and galleries of Europe display a wide variety of works. Among their treasures are rare prehistoric as well as Classical and medieval sculptures; religious paintings and manuscripts; and Renaissance masterworks. Museums and galleries also exhibit recent creations covering myriad styles. European artists have reached the world while also having been profoundly influenced by art from other cultures. Indeed, the governments of former European colonies and conquests have demanded the return of “appropriated” (some say “stolen”) artwork.

Holidays and weddings allow for the dusting off of traditional songs and dances. These range from the German drinking songs of Oktoberfest to the carols of England’s Christmas holidays. Among the Roma (Gypsies) of the Balkans and Romania, musicians accompany every part of a wedding feast. Music is played from the ritual shaving of the groom to the placing of the veil on the bride, and from the church ceremony to the post-wedding banquet and dancing in the streets.

For many young people in Europe, dancing is less for holiday celebrations than for weekend “clubbing” (going to nightclubs), which can be an all-consuming pastime. London, Moscow, and the other major cities of Europe are known for their club scenes, especially on Friday and Saturday nights. Such elements of pop culture contrast with the “high culture” celebrated in the music of European composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach, Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, and Igor Stravinsky. Yet some forms of folk music, including Spanish flamenco, are seen as a union of popular and classical interests. European contributions in high culture have been immense. In addition to Western classical music, both ballet and traditional Western opera developed in Europe. For coverage of European achievements in the visual arts, see painting; sculpture.

Coverage of the more influential works of literature of Europe, which fill most lists of the “Great Books of the Western World,” cannot be done justice in this limited space. (See also articles on the literature of European countries and languages—for example, English literature, German literature—and biographies of individual writers.)

European literature began with oral traditions, such as the myths and legends of Germanic and Slavic tribes and the peoples of ancient Greece and Rome. Some of the first epics recorded in writing were the Iliad and the Odyssey of the Greek poet Homer. Among the famous works of the Middle Ages are the long poems the Romance of the Rose (from France), the Song of the Nibelungs (Germany), the Song of the Cid (Spain), and Dante’s The Divine Comedy (Italy). The late 1500s and early 1600s were a “Golden Age” for both English and Spanish literature, a time of Miguel de Cervantes, William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Lope de Vega, and Pedro Calderón de la Barca. Their works were followed shortly afterward by John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost and the plays of the French writer Molière.

In recent centuries English literature has given the world writers such as Jonathan Swift, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot, as well as William Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe Shelley, T.S. Eliot, and numerous other poets. The greats of German literature have ranged from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller to the Brothers Grimm, Heinrich Heine, Bertolt Brecht, and Günter Grass. Among the numerous other important writers of European literature are Italy’s C. Collodi (author of Pinocchio), Alessandro Manzoni, and Luigi Pirandello; Spain’s Clarín (Leopoldo Alas), Miguel de Unamuno, and Federico García Lorca; Norway’s Heinrich Ibsen; and France’s Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, and Marcel Proust. Russian literature includes the works of such towering figures as Anton Chekhov, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whose The Gulag Archipelago reveals the horrors of Soviet political prisons.

Threats posed by propaganda, secret police, and totalitarianism have brought the words Orwellian and Kafkaesque into our vocabularies, referring to conditions in society suggestive of the works of George Orwell and Franz Kafka. Orwell’s novels include Animal Farm and—above all others—Nineteen Eighty-Four. Kafka is best known for The Trial, The Metamorphosis, and his insights on thought control—such as “A cage went in search of a bird.”

Among Europe’s bestselling authors since the mid-20th century are J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Arthur C. Clarke, Dorothy Sayers, Václav Havel, Simone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt (who became a U.S. citizen in midlife), Umberto Eco, and J.K. Rowling. (Other authors are noted in this article’s section on European history.)

Europe is one of the world’s more Internet-friendly regions, with high-speed wireless connections in many public places. Hundreds of magazines and newspapers are published, among which are Germany’s Der Spiegel; Britain’s The Guardian, The Times of London, The Telegraph, and Financial Times; France’s Le Monde; and Spain’s El País. The major TV networks, including the government-sponsored British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), produce Web-based news programming and entertainment as well.

Despite a reputation for high quality, European cinema has long struggled against Hollywood film imports. The same is true for television, though American television has often copied European TV series, such as the original BBC version of The Office (starring Ricky Gervais) and the Machiavellian political drama House of Cards (starring Ian Richardson).

The most popular sport in Europe is soccer (football), driven by intense rivalries among different “clubs” and cities. Cricket, basketball, track and field, swimming, gymnastics, boxing, rugby, rowing, skiing, and volleyball also hold great interest. Some sports are mainly followed during the Olympic Games. Top-tier tennis matches are held in France on clay courts and in Britain on the sometimes slick grass courts at Wimbledon in London.

Europe has long seen itself as a world leader in sports. The Olympics began at the ancient Greek site of Olympia in 776 bc. They were intended to train young men for war and to gain the favorable “eye” of the god Zeus. The earliest games were races. Events such as chariot racing were added later. Not all Greeks were fans of the Olympics, however. The philosopher Xenophanes said that wisdom and civic responsibility should trump physical strength. The ancient physician Galen wrote that athletes ate and slept excessively, and Euripides also mocked them in his play Autolycus.

In Roman times gladiators, exotic animals, and prisoners were sent into the bloody arenas of coliseums throughout the empire. Arena means “sand”—which soaked up the blood and gore of the contests. The taste for blood-sport was further satisfied throughout the ages by bearbaiting and public executions. Even today, sports and spectacles raise ethical questions, from “doping” (taking of performance-enhancing drugs by athletes) to sports gambling. Some sports and spectacles involving animals continue to raise ethical concerns. Fox hunting was banned in Britain by 2005, while bullfighting was banned in Spain’s Catalonia region in 2010.

European farmers are great producers of such crops as grains (cereals), sugar beets, olives, oilseeds, and citrus and other fruits. The major grain crops grown include wheat, oats, rye, and barley. The Mediterranean climate in Spain, France, Greece, and Italy favors the production of olives, grapes, and wine. Climate also figures in the growing of potatoes in Ireland and grains and sugar beets in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic states, and other eastern European countries. Eastern Europe has more farmers—and more poor farmers—than western Europe. In addition to growing crops, Europe produces large amounts of milk, meat, eggs, and livestock. In the farm herds of Europe are hundreds of millions of hens, cattle, pigs, goats, and sheep.

The EU opposes genetically modified (GM) foods—a position that has placed it in conflict with U.S.-based agribusiness. At the same time, the EU promotes biodiversity, conservation, and the survival of farms. EU policy argues that farmers provide “public goods” such as care of soils and biodiversity. Thus, the EU provides financial aid to farmers because the “market does not pay for these public goods.” In farming and other pursuits, European policy allows for capitalism and free markets within limits, because the public good may conflict with market forces.

Europeans and Russians, combined, take in nearly one-tenth of the world’s fish catch. Aquaculture (fish farming) has increased Europe’s supply of mollusks, crustaceans, freshwater fish such as trout and eels, and saltwater fish such as salmon. Forestry is most important in northern Europe and Russia, where evergreen forests are largest, but forest conservation has become a priority.

One of the world’s largest energy consumers, the European Union (which excludes Russia and other countries) has few of its own energy resources. The EU must import about half its energy, though it uses energy more efficiently (with less waste) than the United States. Petroleum and natural gas from the North Sea and from Russia are vital. Important supplies of oil also come to the EU via pipelines from Central Asia and via tanker ships from Southwest Asia (the Middle East). Additional natural gas is provided by Norway and Algeria, as well as the Netherlands and Denmark. Poland has large coal mines, but European coal production began to decrease markedly in the late 20th century.

About four-fifths of the EU’s electricity comes from fossil fuels (including petroleum, natural gas, and coal). Burning fossil fuels for electricity accounts for about a third of the EU’s carbon dioxide emissions, with slightly fewer emissions coming from automobiles and other transportation. The use of alternative sources of electricity is growing, though progress has been slower than initially planned. Hydropower (electricity produced by waterpower) is important in Austria, Norway, Russia, Sweden, Finland, Latvia, Portugal, and the Balkans. Geothermal energy—using heat from within Earth, such as at hot springs—is paramount in Iceland. Solar, biomass, and tidal energy generation is expanding. Windmill farms generate power in several countries, including Germany, Spain, and Denmark. Many European countries use nuclear power plants to generate electricity. France relies the most on nuclear power, which accounts for roughly three-fourths of the country’s electricity.

European manufacturing jobs remain important, despite pressure to move factories to low-wage areas such as India or China. In the EU, manufacturing and support services account for about half of nongovernment employment, three-fourths of exports, and more than three-fourths of research and development. Among Europe’s main products are chemicals, plastics, food products, beverages, and machinery. Europe builds about one-tenth of the world’s ships. It also produces a significant portion of the world’s supply of iron ore and steel. Germany, France, and the United Kingdom are world leaders in the production of automobiles, appliances, and pharmaceuticals.

Services are a major economic sector in Europe, with banking, tourism, retail trade, health care, education, and government activities included. Tourism alone employs about five percent of the EU labor force. City streets in town centers are lined with small stores, and there are fewer automobile-serving retail strip malls than in the United States and Canada. Universities, government bureaucracies, and scientific institutions such as CERN provide higher-paying service jobs.

Europe has well-developed highways, mass transit and railway systems, and interconnected rivers and canals. However, many of the railroads of eastern Europe are in poor condition. The Rhine River is the most important inland waterway. A high-speed rail tunnel under the English Channel links London, England, to Paris, France, and Brussels, Belgium; the London-to-Paris trip can be made in about 2.5 hours. City buses, light rail, and subways are used far more than in North America, even in smaller European cities. Automobile traffic and pollution can be a problem in European cities, however.

International air travel relies on hubs such as London’s Heathrow Airport. Among Europe’s other busiest airports are those at Frankfurt am Main, Germany; Paris, France; Madrid, Spain; Amsterdam, Netherlands; Munich, Germany; and Rome, Italy. The European Space Agency (ESA) launches satellites from French Guiana (South America) and collaborates with the Russian and U.S. space agencies.

The ancient Greek and Roman civilizations are at the heart of what is called the Classical Age, though ancient Greece followed in the footsteps of the Phoenicians, Minoans, and other Mediterranean cultures. Rome, in turn, conquered Greece but was profoundly influenced by its culture. (Limited discussion of this period is included below; See also Aegean civilization; ancient Greece; ancient Rome; Byzantine Empire.)

There were many admirable and grand aspects of the Classical Age. Western (often Europe-biased) educations tend to focus on these positive features. However, this was not a utopian time. Ancient Greece may have been the “cradle of democracy,” for instance, but only a small percentage of landowning men—and no women—were voting citizens. The Classical civilizations were slave-owning and often militaristic societies, with Spartans, Athenians, or Romans overrunning their neighbors. One of the founding myths of Rome—immortalized later in Giambologna’s sculpture Rape of the Sabines—glorified horrific violence. The arena of the Roman Colosseum would soak in the blood of gladiators and their victims. Mark Antony and Cleopatra are dramatized as a union of love and beauty. However, when Mark Antony had Cicero killed in 43 bc, he ordered his head and hands cut off and displayed in the Roman Forum to warn those who would speak openly to the people.

Despite its considerable drawbacks, the Classical Age handed down a legacy of learning to the entire Mediterranean region. This occurred partly because Greco-Roman scholars were placed in contact with their counterparts in Persia and North Africa. Greek and Roman contributions included the mathematics of Pythagoras, Euclid, and Archimedes and the astronomy, mathematics, and geography of Ptolemy. Medical learning was advanced by Hippocrates (originator of the Hippocratic oath, an oath still taken by doctors today) and by Greek-born Egyptian-raised Galen. Among the Classical historians were Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon. Also notable were the biographer and moralist Plutarch and that symbol of civic duty and political life Cicero. Western philosophy, science, and ethics owe a debt to Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.

The ancient Greek and Roman religions are remembered as myths that continue to influence European culture, even as simple names and images. Sculptures of Athena (Minerva) grace institutes of science and art, for example, while Mars, the Roman god of war, is recalled in the name of Mars (the red planet), the month of March (when armies marched off), and other “martial” (war-related) terms. Writers and artists may wish for inspiration, or a muse—a notion referring to the nine Muses. The Muses were goddesses of epic poetry, history, love poetry, music, tragedy, sacred music, dance, comedy, and astronomy. Some people still believe in fate, which originated in the Greco-Roman belief in the Three Fates, or the Moirai sisters. The Three Fates were the goddesses Clotho, who spun the thread of life; Lachesis, who measured its length; and Atropos, who cut it and thus determined the time of death.

The footprint of ancient Greece can be seen in a number of ruins, notably the (reconstructed) Parthenon, the chief temple of the goddess Athena, atop a hill in Athens, Greece. Architectural echoes of ancient Greece can be found in the innumerable “copycat” colonnades, murals, and columns of Neoclassical style throughout the world. The grandeur of ancient Roman architecture still stuns visitors to Italy. Even at the fringes of its reach, Roman civilization left its mark. In England, for example, Romans built a showy bathhouse complex at Bath—with hot mineral springs—that is partly preserved. The Roman bulwark against northern barbarians, Hadrian’s Wall, still stretches across northern England beside a string of once-fortified sites including Housesteads, Birdoswald, and Chesters.

About ad 1, when the Roman Empire was at its height, the population of Europe may have reached 35 million. The population remained, by and large, at this level for nearly 1,000 years owing to recurring epidemics and high infant mortality—reason enough to look on Classical times as a “golden age.” During the same period, the world population remained at roughly 250 million. Modern knowledge of daily life in ancient Roman times is aided by surviving literature and hundreds of excavations, especially at Pompeii and Herculaneum. These cities were buried by lava—and thus incredibly preserved—by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in ad 79.

Although it was long considered illegal under ancient Roman law, Christianity spread as far north as Scotland, England, and Wales by the 3rd and 4th centuries ad. In the year ad 313 the Roman emperor Constantine ended the persecution of Christians and legalized the religion. Constantine also converted to Christianity himself. The Roman Empire was divided in two by Diocletian, and Theodosius the Great made the split formal in 395. Rome was the capital of the Western Empire, and Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey) led the Byzantine, or Eastern, Empire. Invaders overran the west, sacking Rome in 410 and 455, but the Eastern Empire carried on for centuries.

Beyond the borders of the Roman Empire were numerous other Europeans, including Celts in the British Isles, Germanic peoples in Scandinavia, and Slavs in the east. When Huns from Central Asia invaded the lower Danube, the Germanic Goths there pushed westward and invaded Gaul (now largely France) in 375. Other parts of Europe were invaded by different Germanic tribes. Spain was invaded by Vandals and Visigoths and Italy by Visigoths, Ostrogoths, and Lombards. After the Romans abandoned Britain in 410, it was raided by Angles and Saxons (Germanic tribes from the mainland), some of whom settled there.

The medieval era, or Middle Ages, followed the decline of the Roman Empire but without a precise “start” and “end” date. People began calling medieval times “the Dark Ages” later, during the Renaissance, in reference to a supposed lack of learning and abundance of suffering and superstition. Kingdoms, ethnic groups, and religious groups in Europe repeatedly clashed during this time, with much cruelty and bloodletting. However, learning and creative explorations in art and architecture also occurred during the Middle Ages.

Europe emerged from the waves of Germanic invasions only to see the deaths of millions—perhaps half the population—from 541 to the 700s, from an infectious disease called the plague. The epidemic was named the Plague of Justinian after the emperor of Byzantium, where the plague started. The great loss of life during this period may explain, in part, why the Byzantines had trouble subduing neighboring peoples such as the Bulgars. The Bulgars merged with Slavs in the late 600s to form the first Bulgarian state. In succeeding centuries, Bulgaria struggled with the Byzantines in the Balkans. After the plague epidemic was over, Europe’s population grew again, reaching 29–39 million in 1000 and 50–75 million in the 14th century. At that point the Black Death, another plague epidemic, struck Europe.

Meanwhile, in 771 the ruler Charlemagne united two kingdoms in what are now France, Belgium, and western Germany. He then undertook more than 50 military campaigns to expand his empire throughout much of western Europe. Such an attempt to unite Europe had not been tried since ancient Roman times and would not be attempted again for 1,000 years. Charlemagne co-opted many rulers by respecting local customs. He also encouraged scholarship and a new style of architecture—the Carolingian style. This style was later fused with other architectural traditions to create the Romanesque style. The empire that Charlemagne established lasted, in varying extent, for 10 centuries in central and western Europe. This empire later became known as the Holy Roman Empire.

From about 789 through the 800s, Vikings (Danes, Norwegians, and Swedes) began to raid the coasts of Britain, the Netherlands, and France. They came to rule parts of England, and a Viking army threatened Paris itself. Some Vikings reached into eastern and southern Europe. In the 900s a Viking leader named Rollo took Normandy (now northern France). About 150 years later, his great-great-great grandson William the Conqueror crossed the English Channel—in the Norman Conquest of 1066—and became king of England.

In southeastern Europe the Pechenegs and the Bulgars attacked the Magyars, who then migrated over the Carpathian Mountains to the Hungarian Plains. The country now called Ukraine was the center of a Slavic state called Kievan Rus. This state grew to considerable strength and size during the 900s and 1000s. Europe was also invaded by the Mongols (Tatars) under Genghis Khan (who lived 1162–1227) and Timur, or Tamerlane (1336–1405). Meanwhile, England and France engaged in the Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453). During this war French heroine Joan of Arc, the “Maid of Orléans,” was convicted of heresy and was executed by the English.

Religious thought and magical thinking were inseparable from the European worldview. Royal families claimed the “divine right of kings”—asserting that kings derived their authority from God—by referring to Christian and pre-Christian myths. A medieval legend held, for instance, that the French monarchy descended from Melusina (Mélusine), an accursed, winged serpent-mermaid who fled from the ramparts of the castle of Lusignan.

In Europe bloodshed accompanied the spread of Christianity. Some conversions to Christianity occurred peacefully, but others were linked with political and dynastic schemes. For example, in the late 10th century, Prince Vladimir I of Kiev made Christianity his state’s religion to encourage the Byzantines to hire 6,000 of his soldiers. In Sweden a century-long civil war was fought between pagans and Christians. In western Germany and elsewhere in Europe, Christians who believed there were demons burned many people at the stake on suspicion of witchcraft.

European Christians shed even more blood from 1096 to 1270, when European kingdoms launched a series of invasions of the Holy Land in the Middle East (Southwest Asia). The main aims of these Crusades were to halt the spread of Islam and to return the Holy Land from Muslim to Christian control. Although some of the Crusades resulted in long but costly occupations of Jerusalem and other lands, others were disasters. In the early 1200s the Fourth Crusade even turned aside to massacre Christians in Constantinople. Other invasions by the Crusaders were undermined by plagues, storms, drowning, a lack of supplies, military incompetence, and poor discipline. Even today in Muslim countries, the word crusade conjures images of murder and rape. A “holy war” was also fought in Spain, where a Christian army ended 781 years of Muslim residence there in 1492. The Spanish moral attitude—with an insistence on religious uniformity—was akin to that of the Crusaders. The Spanish soon brought that intolerant mentality to the Americas.

The Black Death (bubonic and pneumonic plagues) arrived in Europe in 1347–51 from Asia and returned various times to Europe. It killed at least one-third of Europe’s population, as many as 25 million out of a total of 50 to 75 million people. Rather than seeing these horrific plagues as infections from rat fleas or bacteria (about which people of the time knew nothing), Europeans blamed demons and the “end of the world,” or the apocalypse. On a positive note, after so many European settlements were abandoned, labor shortages that resulted allowed craftspeople and peasants to demand higher wages and better living conditions.

From 1200 to 1450, medieval Christianity helped produce great works of architecture and art. Printing had not yet reached Europe from China, but European monks hand-copied manuscripts “illuminated” with beautiful illustrations in the margins. Bibles, biographies of saints, and other sacred writings received such illustration. In the Middle Ages many narratives of love and chivalry were written (see romance). Geoffrey Chaucer’s entertaining The Canterbury Tales reflected on the religious pilgrimages of the time. Some of the period’s greatest writers, including Petrarch, Giovanni Boccaccio, and Dante, are seen as precursors to the Renaissance.

The architectural style known as Gothic was developed in Europe starting in the 12th century. The Gothic style was grander than the Romanesque style—especially in the French Gothic cathedrals of Paris, Chartres, Reims, Amiens, and Beauvais. Gothic cathedrals in France and elsewhere featured flying buttresses, arches that buttressed (supported) the roof by transferring weight to columns outside the main wall. Additional stonework was placed atop to ensure that the column would not be pushed out—sideways—by the force from the roof. Ceilings had rib vaulting (interlocking stone arches) or weblike fan vaulting. All these innovations allowed architects to build much larger and taller buildings, with very high ceilings, thinner walls, and large windows. Stained-glass rose windows (round decorated windows) awed visitors, especially at the cathedrals of Chartres, Bourges, and Sainte-Chapelle. Massive bell towers were built, as were spires such as that of Salisbury Cathedral (England) and Freiburg Cathedral (Germany), which features open-air stonework. Stonemasons typically worked off and on for centuries to complete a cathedral—for example, the cathedral constructed from 1230 to 1601 in the city of Palma (Majorca, Spain).

The medieval social system known as feudalism was not seen everywhere in Europe and did not develop fully until about 1000. It was a hierarchical system, or one with different social orders or ranks. At the bottom were the serfs, peasants who acted as vassals (or as dependents) to lords (knights and landlords). The vassals were under the protection of their lord and had to serve him in various ways, such as fighting for him in wars. The lords in turn served dukes and kings, and the kings served emperors. Knights sought status through chivalry—honorable and courteous behavior—and the tradition of courtly love.

The period known as the Renaissance followed the Middle Ages in European history, lasting generally from about the mid-14th century into the 16th century. Scholars disagree, however, on the precise dates of this period. Italy transitioned into the Renaissance by the 1300s, but other areas—such as Spain—abandoned the Middle Ages more slowly. Renaissance is a French word meaning “rebirth,” in reference to a rebirth of interest by artists and scholars in ancient Greek and Roman art, architecture, learning, and values. Renaissance scholars promoted humanism, a movement that emphasized the development of human virtues and abilities to their fullest extent. In a demographic sense as well, Europe was slowly being “reborn,” replacing population lost to the Black Death. By 1500 the population of Europe had returned to between 48 and 67 million people (depending on the estimate)—lower or perhaps equal to the population in 1340.

The Renaissance enabled the flourishing of genius in painters such as Titian, Raphael, Giorgione, Tintoretto, El Greco, Botticelli, and others. Leonardo da Vinci is regarded as the ideal “Renaissance man” (one accomplished in many fields) because of his varied talents as a painter, sculptor, architect, and inventor. Under the patronage of the powerful Medici family, Michelangelo created his David statue and other works, including the ceiling paintings of the Sistine Chapel at Vatican City.

Not merely an artistic age, the Renaissance was also a time of political intrigue. Niccolò Machiavelli, for example, wrote The Prince (1513), a guide for rulers. It gave advice such as the following: “It is necessary for a prince to have the people friendly, otherwise he has no security in adversity”; and “A prince ought to inspire fear in such a way that, if he does not win love, he avoids hatred; because he can endure very well being feared whilst he is not hated.”

In the 1400s and 1500s European explorers undertook numerous long-distance sea voyages, initially in search of new trade routes. Their search brought them into contact with peoples and lands that were new to them. The resulting Age of Exploration led to the European conquest and colonization of much of the world. These long-distance voyages were partly products of the Middle Ages and partly causes of the Renaissance. Yet they were also a separate phenomenon—a coming together of events aiding global conquest. Voyages of exploration, or “discovery,” shaped European politics and culture. However, the term “discovery” is placed in quotation marks because indigenous peoples had already explored their own lands. Their knowledge was either co-opted in the service of conquest, ignored, or destroyed by Europeans.

Explorers in southwestern Europe began to seek new trade routes because the known trade routes were dominated by other powers. Access to the eastern Mediterranean Sea was barred by the fleets of Byzantium (the Seljuq Turks) and after 1453 by those of the Ottoman Turks. The other known trade routes from Europe were monopolized by Venice and Genoa (now in Italy). Portugal and Spain thus looked southward and westward for trade connections and riches. Within a relatively short time, the Portuguese rounded the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa (1488) and reached India (1497–99), Brazil (1500), Southeast Asia (1513), and China (1517). The Spanish soon learned to compete in such exploration, followed by the Dutch and the English.

The Spanish kingdoms of Castile, León, and Aragon were united in the 1400s as one kingdom. After defeating the Muslims in Spain (the Moors) at their last stronghold in 1492, the Spanish monarchs allowed Christopher Columbus to sail under the Spanish flag. He accidentally “discovered” the Americas. Soon Spanish conquistadors (conquerors) occupied the Caribbean and crossed Panama (1510). They overran the Aztec (1519) and Mayan (1524) civilizations, took Peru (1529–32), and explored what is now the southeastern United States (1539). The Spanish also occupied the Philippines (1564). In Florida they founded the city of St. Augustine in 1565. The Spanish thus settled in North America decades before the English. The English settled Roanoke Island (Virginia) in 1585, but the settlement was soon mysteriously abandoned. The English then established colonies at Jamestown (Virginia) in 1607 and at Plymouth (Massachusetts), where the Pilgrims disembarked from the Mayflower in 1620. The Dutch also competed economically and militarily in Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia.

Rather than viewing all such “discoveries” as advances for civilization, many modern scholars see in them criminal acts such as kidnapping, murder, and the devastation of populations. Yet the Conquest of the Americas is also called the Great Exchange or Columbian Exchange because it led to the exchange of numerous plants, animals, diseases, products, and ideas across continents. Europeans brought technologies such as steel, firearms, and oceangoing ships to the Americas. They also introduced to the Americas crops such as wheat, oranges, bananas, and coffee and domesticated animals such as horses, donkeys, cattle, goats, pigs, and war dogs. To the great misfortune of the American Indians, the Europeans accidentally brought to the Americas many diseases, including smallpox, measles, malaria, influenza, and leprosy.

Meanwhile, the Americas provided Europe with domesticated corn (maize), cacao (the source of chocolate), avocados, and tomatoes, all from Mexico; potatoes from Bolivia and Peru; tobacco; and shiploads of treasure. American crops expanded Europeans’ access to a vitamin-rich diet, helping give them a rising population and strength to dominate future colonies. European plantations of sugarcane, tobacco, bananas, and cotton in the Americas and Africa also generated immense wealth.

Between 1503 and 1660 a flood of American gold and silver arrived in Seville, Spain, but at a terrible cost. Millions of native Americans (in Latin America and North America) were dying from epidemics brought by the Europeans as well as from forced labor and other abuses. The riches flowing into Europe arguably did more harm than good to Europe as well. The Spanish king spent his gold and silver, plus loans that eventually bankrupted him, on equipment and supplies to wage war in Europe and elsewhere. The pinnacle of waste was the Spanish Armada, a naval invasion fleet sent to the ocean floor by a cyclone and English naval tactics in 1588. Other Spanish nobles spent treasure from the Americas on imported luxury goods, hurting local manufacturers as inflation brought suffering to the poor.

Russia, meanwhile, expanded to the Black Sea. It invaded Constantinople in 1453 and defeated the Tatars in 1480. The last male in the Russian (Rurik) ruling dynasty died in 1598. Russia then experienced a political crisis and period of foreign invasions known as the Time of Troubles. This period ended in 1613 with the crowning of Tsar Michael Romanov, whose dynasty would not end until 1917. While western and southern Europe focused efforts on conquering “new worlds,” Russia established an inland empire in Eurasia. Russia expanded across Siberia, and Tsar Peter I (Peter the Great) extended his reach to the Baltic Sea in the late 1600s and early 1700s. He imported aspects of European culture and technology to Russia. So too did Catherine the Great, who was born in Germany and ruled Russia in the late 1700s. Although the elites of Moscow and St. Petersburg increased their contact with “the West,” they cared little for improving the lives of peasants—the vast majority of the Russian population.

A religious revolution known as the Reformation took place in Europe in the 16th century. The Reformation began through protests against corruption and excess in the Roman Catholic Church as well as objections to the humanistic focus of the Renaissance. In 1517 Martin Luther, a Roman Catholic priest, called for reforms in the church by posting a document called the Ninety-five Theses at the Schlosskirche (Castle Church) in Wittenberg, Germany. Charles V, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, summoned Luther to the Diet of Worms, an assembly at the town of Worms, Germany, in 1521. However, Luther refused to apologize. Intending to reform the Roman Catholic Church, Luther found himself instead at the head of a new denomination called Protestantism or Lutheranism. Various other Protestant denominations were soon founded by more radical reformers. From Germany, the Reformation spread to other European countries.

The Reformation was aided by new technology: the movable-type printing press. This invention was developed by Johannes Gutenberg in Germany. It allowed for the widespread distribution and reading of the Bible—which Gutenberg printed about 1455—as well as the eloquent writings of Luther himself.

Luther could not foresee the wars that were to come between 1517 and 1648. These religious and political wars were fought between various Roman Catholic and Protestant powers and factions in Europe. They were fueled by religious fanaticism, dynastic and political ambitions, and cruelty on all sides.

As revolts against Roman Catholicism spread, in 1529 Charles V attempted to ban Lutheranism in the Holy Roman Empire. Warfare intensified. The pope’s Council of Trent, a meeting of Roman Catholic bishops to rule on questions of church doctrine and reform, first met in 1545. It debated for 15 years before finally accepting the reforms that Protestants had once demanded. The Peace of Augsburg (1555) temporarily ended warfare in Germany. However, the years of bloodshed, terror, political intrigue, and theological differences made it too late to pacify Europe.

In England, meanwhile, King Henry VIII supported Protestantism for personal and political reasons. He was motivated largely by the pope’s refusal to grant him a divorce. England broke away from the Roman Catholic Church, and in 1534 Henry made himself head of the Church of England. His Tudor family line ruled until 1603.

Beginning in 1618, the Thirty Years’ War killed nearly six million people, including one-third of the German population. It was fought throughout much of Europe between various European powers. In 1648 the war ended when nearly 200 rulers signed the Peace of Westphalia. This peace settlement declared that religious minorities in each area would be tolerated, be they Protestant or Roman Catholic. Yet the Peace of Westphalia was undermined by opportunists and extremists, and the pope called it “null, void, invalid, unjust, damnable, reprobate, inane, empty of meaning and effect for all time.”

Elsewhere in Europe during the 17th century, the English Civil Wars killed perhaps nearly 200,000 people (though some estimates put the loss at as many as 500,000 people). Given the small British population of the time, this was proportionately greater than British deaths in World War I. Struggles based on class, politics, and religion were tearing England apart, and war with Scotland and Ireland followed. Eventually, the English Parliament arrayed forces commanded by Oliver Cromwell against King Charles I, who was executed in 1649. In 1653 Cromwell was named lord protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland. However, in the 1660 “Restoration” of the monarchy, England crowned Charles II as king. A generation later the landowning elites undertook the Glorious Revolution (1688–89), in which King James II was deposed, or forced to give up the throne. An English Bill of Rights was written, and William and Mary were then made the new monarchs of England.

Not all the religious violence of this period was Protestant versus Roman Catholic. Catholics also attacked one another. To punish heretics, the pope in 1542 created the Inquisition, a tribunal that became synonymous with terror and torture. Portugal and Spain increased the climate of fear with Inquisitions under their control. Across Europe, Protestants and Catholics alike accused tens of thousands of people of witchcraft. Following torture, many of the accused were burned, drowned, or hanged. In 1627, for example, a shaman of the Sami community was sentenced to death for allegedly having called up a storm that killed a sailing crew—an incident of irrational scapegoating by a village reeling from disaster. Older women were especially vulnerable to accusations of witchcraft. This was partly because the European society of the time left these women with little financial support, and some turned to selling herbs and traditional remedies for income.

Scientific thought underwent a revolution in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries, bringing great advances in many fields. This Scientific Revolution began during the Renaissance with the astronomical studies of Nicolaus Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, and Johannes Kepler. In the early 1600s Galileo observed sunspots and Jupiter’s major moons through a telescope. He was arrested for heresy, however, by the Inquisition in Rome for supporting Copernicus’s theory that Earth revolves around the Sun. Further scientific advances of the period included William Harvey’s theory of blood circulation and René Descartes and Isaac Newton’s research on mathematics. Newton also established the basic laws of motion and gravity in physics and laid the foundation for modern optics. Christiaan Huygens invented the pendulum clock in 1654. John Harrison’s timepiece, or chronometer, developed in the 1700s, allowed navigators to determine longitude (east-west position) at sea.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, a European intellectual movement known as the Enlightenment celebrated the use of reason, or logical thought. The movement was inspired by faith in the possibility of a better world and in the capacity of reason to achieve it. Enlightenment thinkers objected to the absolute power of rulers and the Roman Catholic Church. Montesquieu is credited as a “father of Enlightenment” because his book Persian Letters (1721) made veiled criticisms of French nobles and their despotic rule. Many other writers, scientists, philosophers, and encyclopedists—for example, Voltaire, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Jeremy Bentham, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Denis Diderot—also made major contributions during the 1700s.

Meanwhile, the traditional agricultural system of Britain was being transformed. This agricultural revolution in Britain had many causes. Communications improved with the building of new roadways, ports, and canals. Selective breeding (animal husbandry) became widespread in Britain following the examples of the Netherlands and Germany. Gentlemen-farmers such as Thomas Coke and Jethro Tull invented agricultural machinery. Tragically, the agricultural revolution was also linked to landlessness. Villagers had once shared lands called “commons” for animal grazing, but greedy British landlords fenced off these lands. This so-called enclosure movement yielded larger harvests for the landlords but impoverished Britain’s rural populations by the late 1700s. One critic (the English farmer and poet John Clare) wrote “Inclosure came and trampled on the grave/ Of labours rights and left the poor a slave.”

Workers became desperate for any wages that factories might offer. Of the total British labor force, only one-fourth worked in agriculture by 1850, and one-tenth by 1900. Similar changes occurred on mainland Europe, though with more resistance to the practice of enclosures than in Britain. Greater percentages of French and Russian farmers remained on their land.

As agricultural and scientific changes heralded the Industrial Revolution, populations increased because of high birth rates and immigration. Between 1750 and 1789, France’s population grew from about 22 million to 26 million; perhaps one million people lived in Paris. Great Britain had about 6.5 million people in 1760. The British population grew to 9 million in 1801 and 14 million in 1831, of which London, England, housed a large share. Berlin (Germany) and Rome (Italy) were also growing apace. Smallpox vaccinations helped tens of millions of children survive into adulthood after 1800. This was roughly the year in which the world population first surpassed one billion.

However, European emigration to the Americas increased by the millions because Europe offered little economic support, and almost no social “safety net,” for its growing population. This lack was often the result of deliberate government decisions, based on extreme laissez-faire (free market) policies. Such policies dictate that government involvement in economic affairs should be avoided as much as possible. Such government decisions were also based on a distortion of the scientific theory of evolution (Darwin’s theory) to justify modern inequalities—that is, “social Darwinism,” which Darwin never proposed. Social Darwinism held that inequality was natural and beneficial in society, as it would result in the survival of the strong rather than the weak. Government inaction based on such policies could have tragic consequences, as when the British refused to send food to Ireland during the Irish Potato Famine of 1845–49.

The Industrial Revolution began in England in the late 1700s and then spread to the United States and continental Europe. It radically changed the economy. The traditional economy was based on agriculture and handicrafts. It was replaced by an economy dominated by manufacturing and the mass production of goods by machine. The Industrial Revolution involved many new developments in technology. Among these were the use of iron and steel, new energy sources, and the invention of machines that increased the production of goods. Animals, wind, and streams had turned grain mills for centuries, and waterpower factories were common for years before the wide acceptance of wood- and coal-fired steam engines. England had few native forests to burn, so coal was desirable. However, before the invention of water pumps, most of England’s mines were often flooded. One advance led to another; for example, weaving machines were built to keep pace with new spinning machines. Important developments in transportation and communications included the railroad and the telegraph.

Among the drawbacks of the Industrial Revolution were poor urban living conditions and the aggressive tactics used by factory owners against small competitors. The fast output of British textile factories increased demand for cotton from slave plantations overseas. By 1807 more than 60 percent of the cotton bales arriving in London and Liverpool, England, and Glasgow, Scotland, originated in the American South. Britain maintained demand for Southern cotton through the American Civil War (1861–65), decades after having ended slavery in the British crown colonies. Thus, the “free-market liberalism” of English capitalists was steeped in the blood of slaves. In other words, these capitalists made themselves wealthy through the poverty of others, especially landless peasants and slaves.

During the Industrial Revolution, more and more people moved to the rapidly growing cities, where factory jobs were available. Daily life in the British cities involved sweating under a pall of coal-generated smoke, not only from factories but from the hearths of cottages, apartments, and mansions. Cities developed some advantages over rural conditions, even for the poor—such as housing of brick and slate rather than vermin-infested thatch and wood. However, the cities were filled with rats, filth, and disease. Sewage gushing from factories and apartments into alleys, rivers, and wells contributed to outbreaks of the diseases cholera and typhoid. Smoke, dust, and crowding made the disease tuberculosis rampant.

The artist John Martin said he “could not imagine anything more terrible” than the industrial Midlands of England that inspired his end-of-the-world painting The Great Day of His Wrath (1851–53). Manchester, England, as viewed by Alexis de Tocqueville in 1835, was a “dark, dank maze” and “stinking drain” awash in smoke and noise: “The steps of scurrying crowds, the cranking of wheels grinding…the scream of steam…the heavy roll of wagons” without “shouts of joy or sounds of pleasure, nor the music of instruments which announce a holiday anywhere.” At the same time, a kind of internal “colonization” saw Irish working in the dirtiest, most disgusting jobs, risking life and limb for low wages. Working families kept streaming into Manchester, England, however, swelling the city to more than 300,000 people by 1851.

Women, men, and children in the middle and working classes participated in social changes affecting their homes and earnings. Some factories specifically recruited young women out of the belief that they were more docile and easier to control in the workplace. Other women had to raise families while also working as street cleaners or maids or in low-pay “sweating” industries making clothing.

Frustrated at the lack of civil rights for women in Europe, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792. In this work, she argued that giving women equal access to education, political power, and socioeconomic opportunities would bring “rational fellowship instead of slavish obedience,” so women would become “more observant daughters, more affectionate sisters, more faithful wives, and more reasonable mothers—in a word, better citizens.” Women could then show “true affection,” because they would learn to respect themselves rather than being limited by superficial concerns, “idle vanity,” and irrational ignorance. Wollstonecraft inspired later feminists to gain access for women to universities (starting in the late 1800s) and to win for women the right to vote (in the 1900s). She also inspired women to advocate for full respect and economic equality—goals not fully realized even in the early 21st century, more than 200 years later.

The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars (1789–1815)

The aristocracy of France enjoyed a golden age in the 1600s and 1700s. This age yielded the excesses and foolishness satirized in Voltaire’s novel Candide (1759). The poor in France were entirely lacking in power. Amid mass starvation a myth spread that France’s queen, Marie-Antoinette, had said for those without bread “Let them eat cake.” The French Revolution fed on the people’s suffering and on the idealism of French soldiers who had witnessed the American Revolution. After a French mob stormed the infamous Bastille prison in Paris in 1789, revolutionaries captured the French monarchs. A few years later the monarchs were beheaded at the guillotine, as were countless others during the period of the French Revolution known as the Reign of Terror. The Terror revealed that the revolution was spinning out of control.

Eventually a dictator emerged: Napoleon Bonaparte, who stretched his empire from Portugal to eastern Europe. However, he miscalculated horribly by invading Russia. His troops entered a burnt-out Moscow only to suffer an unrelenting Russian winter. After retreat from Moscow and costly battles elsewhere, Napoleon’s army was finally defeated by the British general Wellington at Waterloo, in Belgium.

These political events influenced art and literature. The Romantic movement followed the Enlightenment, partly in reaction against that “cold” Age of Reason. Romanticism emphasized individual aspirations, feelings, and intuition, as shown in the paintings of Francisco de Goya and J.M.W. Turner and in the poetry of William Wordsworth and Lord Byron. Examples of Romantic novels include Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s tragic The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), and Madame de Staël’s Corinne (1807). But Romanticism did not require the discarding of science or reason. For example, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s novel Frankenstein (1818) is an exemplary Romantic and Gothic work, yet it is also arguably the modern world’s first science-fiction novel.

The Victorian Age and Colonial Militarism

During the 1800s European colonies and other dependencies filled world maps. Portugal, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and France controlled large parts of South and Southeast Asia. Their access to Asia was facilitated by the opening of the Suez Canal in Egypt in 1869. This canal linked the Mediterranean and Red seas, greatly reducing the travel time between Europe and Asia. Many other places, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and much of Africa, were also under European control. During the reign of Britain’s Queen Victoria (1837–1901), it was said that “the sun never sets on the British Empire,” because British colonies stretched around the world (and it was thus always daytime somewhere in the empire). Victoria also reconnected the bloodlines of Europe: She married her German cousin Prince Albert, and their four sons and five daughters married into other European royal families.

Much is written about the riches that empire building brought back to Europe. The conquests of other lands granted economic boons to Europe at the expense of the conquered. Much is also said (whether unjustly or not) of the “advances of civilization” that Europe brought to the rest of the world—such as horses, beef and dairy cattle, wheat, and technologies. It is also known that many Europeans, especially the British, were proud to be “masters” of the world—responsible for leading and teaching others. However, one reads less often of the enormous costs of European empires—the lives, livelihoods, and treasures sacrificed. In addition, great psychological damage resulted from “cultures of domination”—that is, a dominant culture engaging in acts of cultural or actual genocide, slavery, and other forms of dominance. The United Kingdom and France even used drug addiction as an imperial weapon, the importing of opium being forced on China during the Opium Wars of the mid 1800s.

A series of revolts against monarchies spread across Europe in the 1800s. They included Russia’s Decembrist uprising of 1825 and numerous revolutions in 1848. Though most were unsuccessful, they were stoked by growing interest in economic liberalism, nationalism, and hatred of absolute monarchs. It seems, however, that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’s The Communist Manifesto (1848) had few readers at the time.

Borders and alliances shifted rapidly, as Italy, Germany, and other modern nations began moving toward unification. This unification was achieved partly through violence, such as in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71), which gave Germany control over valuable resources. Romania gained independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1878.

The character of daily life in the 1800s depended greatly on one’s social status, income, and gender. Members of the aristocracy kept up their lavish lifestyles despite the scorn heaped on them by reformers and writers. The British elites occupied themselves with hobbies, balls, and traditional English teatime—with imported tea leaves from India and sugar from the Caribbean colonies. Meanwhile, the poor ate bread soaked in tea for want of milk, meat, or honey. The downtrodden of England were seldom championed except in the novels of Charles Dickens and the poems of William Blake. Blake’s poem “London” testifies to the conditions of the day: “How the chimney-sweeper’s cry/ Every blackening church appals,/ And the hapless soldier’s sigh/ Runs in blood down palace-walls.”

Transportation in European cities left much to be desired. By the late 1800s the traffic jams of London kicked up a reek of horse urine and droppings. In addition, the coal-fired pollution of the 1800s continued well into the 1900s. The “pea-soup” London fog of Sherlock Holmes fame was not a natural phenomenon but the product of coal smoke. Even the subway in London was originally designed for steam locomotives. As the stench of animal excretions diminished, so the fumes of coal and petroleum increased.

The soldier’s life, if it lasted long, yielded less pay than pain, as expressed in a poem by W.E. Henley: “What if the best of our wages be/ An empty sleeve, a stiff-set knee,/ A crutch for the rest of life…/Let but the bugles of England play/ Over the hills and far away!” Large standing armies became the norm in many European countries. British soldiers were sent around the world, whether to a quiet post or to die in Afghanistan or southern Africa, where entire armies were lost. From 1779 to 1879 the Dutch and the British undertook a series of conflicts in southern Africa known as the Cape Frontier Wars. When Europeans engaged in the notorious “Scramble for Africa”—a series of colonial occupations from the 1880s—the death toll was even greater, as illustrated in Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness, set in the Belgian Congo (now Democratic Republic of the Congo). Africans did not accept the European invaders lightly, particularly when Ethiopia shocked the world by decisively defeating an Italian army.

Capitalism brought disturbing boom-and-bust economic cycles. These included the downturn of 1826–47 and the grinding 1873 “great depression” (a term used long before the more famous Great Depression of the 1930s). During the 19th century millions of Irish, Italians, Germans, English, Scots, Poles, and others left Europe for the United States and Latin America. Others were exiled. For example, the British government sentenced many Irish dissidents (political dissenters) and English union organizers to “transportation”—that being exile to prison settlements in Australia.

As the European population increased from 270 million in 1850 to 460 million in 1910, many new technologies and philosophies emerged. Cities saw improved sanitation, and new medicines saved lives. Mental problems were treatable through Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis. But dreams of human progress in Europe gave way to disillusionment. Abuses of workers in factories and mines led to clashes between soldiers and strikers. International disputes intensified. Maintaining colonies in Africa and South Asia cost lives. The Russians were humiliated in war with Japan in 1904–05 (see Russo-Japanese War). Northern Bulgaria gained autonomy from the Ottoman Empire in 1878, followed by independence for all of Bulgaria in 1908. However, the Balkans fell into a series of wars.

World War I (1914–18)

In 1912 the Balkan states went to war with the Turkish Ottoman Empire (see Balkan Wars). Later, Serbia desired to take Bosnia and Herzegovina, a part of Austria-Hungary that was closely related to Serbia ethnically, and make it part of Serbia. Serbian propaganda encouraged a Serbian man to assassinate Austria’s crown prince Francis Ferdinand in 1914. Russia defended Serbia because the Russian and Serbian peoples shared Slavic ethnic ties. An alliance of France, Russia, and Great Britain then faced Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire in World War I. Trench warfare, killing machines, and chemical weapons ended the lives of millions and caused widespread despair. The daily horrors experienced by soldiers in the trenches were memorably recounted in Erich Maria Remarque’s novel All Quiet on the Western Front (1929).

The Russian Revolution of 1917 caused Russia to withdraw from the war. The tsar and his family were murdered, and after a tumultuous period the communist Vladimir Lenin seized power in Russia. With the end of World War I in 1918, the maps of Europe, Africa, and Asia shifted. Germany lost its colonial possessions. The defeated Ottoman Empire fell apart, and Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) used his war-hero status to help him become president of the new Republic of Turkey.

Between the World Wars

The influenza (flu) pandemic of 1918–19 swept across the globe immediately after World War I, killing perhaps 20 million people. Meanwhile, several countries formed the League of Nations, an international organization that helped arbitrate international disputes and promoted disarmament (the reduction of weapons). Yet it failed to stop the next world war.

The vast Soviet Union was formed from Russia and its neighbors. This fledgling country saw democratic ideals twisted under a communist dictatorship. Soviet authorities killed more than 8 million people in the Soviet Union’s grain-growing areas, particularly Ukraine, by taking so much of the grain harvests that they caused two famines (1921–22 and 1932–33). The second of these famines occurred under the brutal dictator Joseph Stalin, who ruled the Soviet Union from 1928 to 1953. His centralization of power cost tens of millions of lives.

In 1922 Benito Mussolini began his march toward fascism in Italy. Fascism is a form of government in which the strength and glory of the nation is considered more important than the well-being of its individual people. Under such a system, the people are expected to be wholly obedient to an all-powerful leader. Fascism also found adherents in Germany who resented the reparations payments required after World War I. Their anger increased during the Great Depression of the 1930s, and they supported Adolf Hitler as leader of the fascist Nazi Party. In 1933 Hitler became dictator of Germany. Germany withdrew from the League of Nations, and Mussolini and Hitler rapidly built up their military power. Soon Mussolini’s troops invaded Ethiopia (as revenge for the Italian defeat there in the 1800s). In 1936 Hitler sent troops into the Rhineland on Germany’s border with France.

The Great Depression of the 1930s strained the resources of most governments around the world and encouraged violence and political intrigue in Europe. In the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), Francisco Franco led fascist rebels to overthrow the democratically elected government of the Spanish republic. The rebels were called Nationalists, while supporters of the Spanish republic’s elected government were called Republicans. Fascist Germany and Italy supplied the Nationalists with airplanes and advanced weaponry. Despite the arrival of volunteer brigades from other countries to fight for the Republicans, Nationalist forces defeated the Republicans. The Nationalist bombing of one Spanish city is recalled in Pablo Picasso’s famous antiwar painting Guernica. The tragic fate of Republican fighters in Spain was depicted in Ernest Hemingway’s novel For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Meanwhile, Germany occupied Austria. Hitler also coerced Great Britain and France into allowing Germany to take the Sudetenland region from Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic and Slovakia). In 1939, however, Hitler took more of Czechoslovakia while Hungary and Poland seized the rest. Italy then invaded Albania.

World War II (1939–45)

World War II began when Hitler ordered the German army to invade Poland on September 1, 1939. Two days later Britain and France declared war on Germany. Stalin’s Soviet Union, meanwhile, invaded the eastern half of Poland, honoring a secret pact with Germany. Decried as treachery, Stalin’s move caused fissures among communist sympathizers throughout the world.

In the spring of 1940, German planes and armored units used the military tactic blitzkrieg (“lightning war”) to sweep through Belgium into France. Hundreds of thousands of British and French troops barely escaped at the beaches of Dunkirk, France. Soon afterward, Hitler ordered massive air attacks of Great Britain, now remembered as the Battle of Britain. However, his bombers faced a fierce defense aided by a new technology: radar.

Through a plan called the “Final Solution,” the Nazis used machine-guns, poison gas, and concentration camps to massacre two-thirds of the Jews in Europe, along with large numbers of political dissenters, Roma (Gypsies), and homosexuals. (See Holocaust.) In addition to genocide, Germany’s greatest military mistake was its June 1941 invasion (aided by Italy, Bulgaria, Romania, and others) of the Soviet Union. The invaders fell victim to the brutal Russian winter. Thus, Hitler repeated Napoleon’s strategic mistake of 1812. After Germany’s invasion, the Soviet Union joined Britain, France, and other “Allied” powers against the “Axis” countries of Germany, Italy, and Japan.

The United States sent supplies to British and Soviet forces. However, the United States did not declare war until Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941. The United States then fought with the Allies. A U.S.-led invasion of Italy in 1943 defeated Mussolini’s troops. After losing pivotal battles and millions of lives, in May 1945 Germany surrendered to the Allied onslaught. After U.S. atomic bombs devastated the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered in August 1945.

Much of Europe was left shattered after the war. In addition to the scores of people who had been killed or wounded, tens of millions of people had been left homeless. Buildings, roads, bridges, railroads, ports, canals, farms, and utilities had been wrecked, and European economies were at a standstill.

The United Nations (UN) was formed near the end of the war, but the Soviet Union vetoed dozens of proposed UN actions. Independent of the UN, the United States offered Europe the Marshall Plan to provide economic aid to the devastated continent. The Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) was formed in 1948 to collaborate in the program. The Soviet Union forbade its communist allies from joining.

At the end of World War II, the armies of the Soviet Union liberated the countries of central and eastern Europe from Nazi rule. Determined to maintain control of the region, the Soviet Union installed communist governments in those countries. The Cold War was a long conflict between the United States and its democratic allies in Western Europe and the Soviet Union and the communist countries it dominated in Eastern Europe. Western Europe included the regions of western, northern, and southern Europe, while Eastern Europe included eastern, central, and southeastern Europe. Each side tried to prevent the other from gaining too much power. This conflict was called the Cold War because the hostility did not erupt into actual direct warfare (a “hot” war) between the United States and the Soviet Union. Motivated by Cold War rivalry, however, the two sides did fight and support wars in other countries.

Some historians say the Cold War began in 1945 as World War II was ending. Many scholars, however, trace it from 1949 when the Soviet Union tested its first atomic weapon. The United States, Canada, and their Western European allies then formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a military alliance for mutual defense. In 1955 the Soviet Union formed a similar alliance, known as the Warsaw Pact, with its Eastern European allies. Refusing to join either NATO or the Warsaw Pact, Switzerland declared neutrality, as did Sweden, Finland, Austria, Ireland, and Spain. The heavily guarded border between the Soviet-controlled communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the countries of Western Europe was nicknamed the Iron Curtain. Germany was divided into two countries—democratic West Germany and communist East Germany—with the city of Berlin split between them. Berlin was ultimately divided by a wall.

The Cold War often became a “hot” war, with conflicts fought in developing countries and in buffer countries between Soviet and NATO zones of control. In 1950–53 several European countries sent troops into the Korean War. France, meanwhile, became embroiled in the Indochinese War (the precursor to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War). In 1956 the Soviet Union brutally crushed a revolt in Hungary, and in 1968 it invaded Czechoslovakia. For decades, the opposing sides in the Cold War backed opposing factions in “proxy wars” in Latin America, Africa, and Southwest Asia, supporting coups, revolts, and civil wars. With the United States, the Soviet Union, and other countries possessing nuclear weapons, Europeans lived under the awful threat of nuclear war. Germany was seen as a potential central battleground.

Secret police forces were established in the countries of Eastern Europe, notably the Soviet Union and East Germany, to suppress dissent. The Stasi, the secret police of East Germany, turned much of the population into informants who spied on their friends, colleagues, and neighbors. The informants denounced those who were not loyal to the government.

Violence linked to a number of terrorist groups occurred in Europe during this period. In Spain, the Basque separatist group ETA (“Basque Homeland and Liberty”) used terrorism in its campaign to achieve an independent country for the Basque people. A left-wing militant group known as the Red Brigades carried out terrorist campaigns in Italy. The Irish Republican Army (IRA), which sought to end British rule in Northern Ireland, planted several bombs in England. Periodic violent clashes erupted in Northern Ireland, inspired by religious (Protestant–Roman Catholic) and political differences.

Several forces converged to end the Cold War, including the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, which cost the Soviets too many lives and resources. In 1986 an accident at a nuclear power plant at Chernobyl, Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Union), showed the incompetence of the Soviet bureaucracy. The growth of the Solidarity labor union in Poland also contributed to the end of the Cold War. The labor union was allowed to run against Poland’s official communist party in free elections in 1989, and Solidarity won nearly all the contested seats. Moreover, the Soviet Union was strained by the huge costs of maintaining a military capable of facing NATO. The Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev attempted to modernize the Soviet Union by initiating reforms called glasnost (“openness”) and perestroika (“restructuring”). Instead, however, these changes hastened the Soviet Union’s demise.

A wave of democratization spread through Eastern Europe. At midnight on November 9, 1989, the East German government suddenly allowed the gates along the Berlin Wall to be opened. Civilians joyfully climbed to the top of the Berlin Wall and started to break chunks away, and the process of Germany’s reunification began. Also in 1989, revolution deposed Nicolae Ceausescu, who had ruled Romania as dictator since 1965, and the Soviet-dominated peoples of Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria moved toward reforms or revolt. In 1991 the Soviet Union splintered into more than a dozen independent countries.

After 1991 the whole of Eastern Europe contemplated adopting market economies and democratic reforms, attempting to follow the changes occurring in eastern Germany. However, corruption and boom-and-bust economic cycles made the transitions difficult. The sudden dissolution of dictatorships and secret police forces encouraged nationalist movements. In Yugoslavia, a Serbian-led country in the Balkans, nationalism was stoked by decades of simmering ethnic, religious, and socioeconomic tensions.

In 1992–95 warfare devastated Yugoslavia, shocking observers who had assumed such carnage was no longer possible in Europe. A series of bloody civil wars resulted in the breaking-up of Yugoslavia into several independent countries—Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia (now North Macedonia), Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia and Montenegro. The new countries emerged only after repeated massacres, “ethnic cleansing” (forcible removal of entire populations), and other horrible human-rights abuses. As war-crimes tribunals were started and mass graves uncovered, Serbians witnessed more unrest, plus confrontations with NATO. Serbia and Montenegro broke apart further: Serbia lost Montenegro in 2006 and Kosovo in 2008.

The rest of Europe was spared such a fate. In 1993 Czechoslovakia split peacefully into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. A relative peace was also established in Northern Ireland in 1998. However, ETA remained an active terrorist group in Spain. Terrorist attacks in Europe were also linked to Chechen rebels (from southern Russia) and the militant Islamist organization al-Qaeda and its affiliates. Additional violence was carried out by repressive military and paramilitary units sometimes acting on behalf of European national governments.

The European Union (EU) started as a series of economic agreements in the late 20th century. The dream of a truly unified Europe grew as the Cold War ended. EU membership expanded quickly in the early 2000s as a European Parliament and other elements of shared government were established. The EU government adopts common economic, social, and security policies, but each member country continues to maintain its own national government. EU expansions in eastern and southeastern Europe often occurred despite Russian objections.

At the same time this pan-European effort was underway, however, local and regional movements gained strength within individual European countries. For example, Scotland established a separate parliament, and people in the Basque region (northern Spain and southern France) sought cultural and political recognition. Minorities elsewhere also sought EU funding or legal protection. The United Kingdom, which had been a founding member of the EU, left the organization in 2020.

Stresses between poorer and wealthier countries have made the EU’s problems more severe, as have gaps between the rich and poor within each country. When also considering the rising costs of climate change and energy supplies in the future, the EU faces difficult social and economic decisions. This is true whether or not immigration keeps Europe’s population from slowly declining in the coming decades.

For centuries Europeans tended to see the world through racist and “ethnocentric” lenses, feeling that they were innately superior to people of other races and ethnicities. Most educated individuals disavowed racism and discrimination after World War II. Some people, however, had difficulty abandoning the notion that their own European culture was better than other cultures. Some far-right-wing groups continue to combine this view with racism, scapegoating minority groups rather than seeking meaningful political and economic changes. While some people worry that religious extremists might instigate terrorist attacks, others see more cause to watch out for right-wing gangs who hate foreigners. Such a gang roamed streets in Greece in 2012, for example, attacking immigrants and defenseless passersby.

The quality of daily life in Europe in the early 21st century was affected by economic booms and busts, shifting demographics, climate change, and politics. Immigration became a contentious issue as tens of millions of migrants moved to Europe, coming especially from former European colonies in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. In 2005 between 10 and 25 percent of the populations of Spain, France, Ireland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Ukraine, and Belarus were born abroad. About a fifth of Greater Paris’s people were born outside France, and about a third of London residents were nonwhite—changes that were viewed positively by many, despite the tensions to be resolved.