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Wikipedia

Europe

Europe is a large peninsula[10] conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. Comprising the westernmost peninsulas of Eurasia,[11] it shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with both Africa and Asia. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south and Asia to the east. Europe is commonly considered to be separated from Asia by the watershed of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Greater Caucasus, the Black Sea and the waterways of the Turkish Straits.[12]

Europe
Area10,180,000 km2 (3,930,000 sq mi)[1] (6th)[a]
Population745,173,774 (2021; 3rd)[2][3]
Population density72.9/km2 (188/sq mi) (2nd)
GDP (PPP)$33.62 trillion (2022 est; 2nd)[4]
GDP (nominal)$24.02 trillion (2022 est; 3rd)[5]
GDP per capita$34,230 (2022 est; 3rd)[c][6]
HDI 0.845[7]
Religions
DemonymEuropean
CountriesSovereign (44–50)
De facto (2–6)
DependenciesExternal (5–6)
Internal (3)
LanguagesMost common first languages:
Time zonesUTC−1 to UTC+5
Internet TLD.eu (European Union)
Largest citiesLargest urban areas:
UN M49 code150 – Europe
001World
  • a. ^ Figures include only European portions of transcontinental countries.[n]
  • b. ^ European side only. Istanbul is a transcontinental city which straddles both Asia and Europe.
  • c. ^ "Europe" as defined by the International Monetary Fund.

Europe covers about 10.18 million km2 (3.93 million sq mi), or 2% of Earth's surface (6.8% of land area), making it the second-smallest continent (using the seven-continent model). Politically, Europe is divided into about fifty sovereign states, of which Russia is the largest and most populous, spanning 39% of the continent and comprising 15% of its population. Europe had a total population of about 745 million (about 10% of the world population) in 2021.[2][3] The European climate is largely affected by warm Atlantic currents that temper winters and summers on much of the continent, even at latitudes along which the climate in Asia and North America is severe. Further from the sea, seasonal differences are more noticeable than close to the coast.

European culture is the root of Western civilisation, which traces its lineage back to ancient Greece and ancient Rome.[13][14] The fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD and the subsequent Migration Period marked the end of Europe's ancient history, and the beginning of the Middle Ages. Renaissance humanism, exploration, art, and science led to the modern era. Since the Age of Discovery, started by Portugal and Spain, Europe played a predominant role in global affairs. Between the 16th and 20th centuries, European powers colonised at various times the Americas, almost all of Africa and Oceania, and the majority of Asia.

The Age of Enlightenment, the subsequent French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars shaped the continent culturally, politically and economically from the end of the 17th century until the first half of the 19th century. The Industrial Revolution, which began in Great Britain at the end of the 18th century, gave rise to radical economic, cultural and social change in Western Europe and eventually the wider world. Both world wars took place for the most part in Europe, contributing to a decline in Western European dominance in world affairs by the mid-20th century as the Soviet Union and the United States took prominence.[15] During the Cold War, Europe was divided along the Iron Curtain between NATO in the West and the Warsaw Pact in the East, until the Revolutions of 1989, Fall of the Berlin Wall and the Dissolution of the Soviet Union.

In 1949, the Council of Europe was founded with the idea of unifying Europe[16] to achieve common goals and prevent future wars. Further European integration by some states led to the formation of the European Union (EU), a separate political entity that lies between a confederation and a federation.[17] The EU originated in Western Europe but has been expanding eastward since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The currency of most countries of the European Union, the euro, is the most commonly used among Europeans; and the EU's Schengen Area abolishes border and immigration controls between most of its member states, and some non-member states. There exists a political movement favouring the evolution of the European Union into a single federation encompassing much of the continent.

Name

 
First map of the world according to Anaximander (6th century BC)

In classical Greek mythology, Europa (Ancient Greek: Εὐρώπη, Eurṓpē) was a Phoenician princess. One view is that her name derives from the Ancient Greek elements εὐρύς (eurús) 'wide, broad', and ὤψ (ōps, gen. ὠπός, ōpós) 'eye, face, countenance', hence their composite Eurṓpē would mean 'wide-gazing' or 'broad of aspect'.[18][19][20][21] Broad has been an epithet of Earth herself in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion and the poetry devoted to it.[18] An alternative view is that of Robert Beekes, who has argued in favour of a Pre-Indo-European origin for the name, explaining that a derivation from eurus would yield a different toponym than Europa. Beekes has located toponyms related to that of Europa in the territory of ancient Greece, and localities such as that of Europos in ancient Macedonia.[22]

There have been attempts to connect Eurṓpē to a Semitic term for west, this being either Akkadian erebu meaning 'to go down, set' (said of the sun) or Phoenician 'ereb 'evening, west',[23] which is at the origin of Arabic maghreb and Hebrew ma'arav. Martin Litchfield West stated that "phonologically, the match between Europa's name and any form of the Semitic word is very poor",[24] while Beekes considers a connection to Semitic languages improbable.[22]

Most major world languages use words derived from Eurṓpē or Europa to refer to the continent. Chinese, for example, uses the word Ōuzhōu (歐洲/欧洲), which is an abbreviation of the transliterated name Ōuluóbā zhōu (歐羅巴洲) (zhōu means "continent"); a similar Chinese-derived term Ōshū (欧州) is also sometimes used in Japanese such as in the Japanese name of the European Union, Ōshū Rengō (欧州連合), despite the katakana Yōroppa (ヨーロッパ) being more commonly used. In some Turkic languages, the originally Persian name Frangistan ('land of the Franks') is used casually in referring to much of Europe, besides official names such as Avrupa or Evropa.[25]

Definition

Contemporary definition

The prevalent definition of Europe as a geographical term has been in use since the mid-19th century. Europe is taken to be bounded by large bodies of water to the north, west and south; Europe's limits to the east and north-east are usually taken to be the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, and the Caspian Sea; to the south-east, the Caucasus Mountains, the Black Sea, and the waterways connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea.[27]

 
A medieval T and O map printed by Günther Zainer in 1472, showing the three continents as domains of the sons of Noah — Asia to Sem (Shem), Europe to Iafeth (Japheth) and Africa to Cham (Ham)

Islands are generally grouped with the nearest continental landmass, hence Iceland is considered to be part of Europe, while the nearby island of Greenland is usually assigned to North America, although politically belonging to Denmark. Nevertheless, there are some exceptions based on sociopolitical and cultural differences. Cyprus is closest to Anatolia (or Asia Minor), but is considered part of Europe politically and it is a member state of the EU. Malta was considered an island of North-western Africa for centuries, but now it is considered to be part of Europe as well.[28] "Europe", as used specifically in British English, may also refer to Continental Europe exclusively.[29]

The term "continent" usually implies the physical geography of a large land mass completely or almost completely surrounded by water at its borders. Prior to the adoption of the current convention that includes mountain divides, the border between Europe and Asia had been redefined several times since its first conception in classical antiquity, but always as a series of rivers, seas and straits that were believed to extend an unknown distance east and north from the Mediterranean Sea without the inclusion of any mountain ranges. Cartographer Herman Moll suggested in 1715 Europe was bounded by a series of partly-joined waterways directed towards the Turkish straits, and the Irtysh River draining into the upper part of the Ob River and the Arctic Ocean. In contrast, the present eastern boundary of Europe partially adheres to the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, which is somewhat arbitrary and inconsistent compared to any clear-cut definition of the term "continent".

The current division of Eurasia into two continents now reflects East-West cultural, linguistic and ethnic differences which vary on a spectrum rather than with a sharp dividing line. The geographic border between Europe and Asia does not follow any state boundaries and now only follows a few bodies of water. Turkey is generally considered a transcontinental country divided entirely by water, while Russia and Kazakhstan are only partly divided by waterways. France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom are also transcontinental (or more properly, intercontinental, when oceans or large seas are involved) in that their main land areas are in Europe while pockets of their territories are located on other continents separated from Europe by large bodies of water. Spain, for example, has territories south of the Mediterranean Sea—namely, Ceuta and Melilla—which are parts of Africa and share a border with Morocco. According to the current convention, Georgia and Azerbaijan are transcontinental countries where waterways have been completely replaced by mountains as the divide between continents.

History of the concept

Early history

 
Depiction of Europa regina ('Queen Europe') in 1582

The first recorded usage of Eurṓpē as a geographic term is in the Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo, in reference to the western shore of the Aegean Sea. As a name for a part of the known world, it is first used in the 6th century BCE by Anaximander and Hecataeus. Anaximander placed the boundary between Asia and Europe along the Phasis River (the modern Rioni River on the territory of Georgia) in the Caucasus, a convention still followed by Herodotus in the 5th century BCE.[30] Herodotus mentioned that the world had been divided by unknown persons into three parts, Europe, Asia and Libya (Africa), with the Nile and the Phasis forming their boundaries—though he also states that some considered the River Don, rather than the Phasis, as the boundary between Europe and Asia.[31] Europe's eastern frontier was defined in the 1st century by geographer Strabo at the River Don.[32] The Book of Jubilees described the continents as the lands given by Noah to his three sons; Europe was defined as stretching from the Pillars of Hercules at the Strait of Gibraltar, separating it from Northwest Africa, to the Don, separating it from Asia.[33]

The convention received by the Middle Ages and surviving into modern usage is that of the Roman era used by Roman-era authors such as Posidonius,[34] Strabo[35] and Ptolemy,[36] who took the Tanais (the modern Don River) as the boundary.

The Roman Empire did not attach a strong identity to the concept of continental divisions. However, following the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the culture that developed in its place, linked to Latin and the Catholic church, began to associate itself with the concept of "Europe".[37] The term "Europe" is first used for a cultural sphere in the Carolingian Renaissance of the 9th century. From that time, the term designated the sphere of influence of the Western Church, as opposed to both the Eastern Orthodox churches and to the Islamic world.

A cultural definition of Europe as the lands of Latin Christendom coalesced in the 8th century, signifying the new cultural condominium created through the confluence of Germanic traditions and Christian-Latin culture, defined partly in contrast with Byzantium and Islam, and limited to northern Iberia, the British Isles, France, Christianised western Germany, the Alpine regions and northern and central Italy.[38] The concept is one of the lasting legacies of the Carolingian Renaissance: Europa often[dubious ] figures in the letters of Charlemagne's court scholar, Alcuin.[39] The transition of Europe to being a cultural term as well as a geographic one led to the borders of Europe being affected by cultural considerations in the East, especially relating to areas under Byzantine, Ottoman, and Russian influence. Such questions were affected by the positive connotations associated with the term Europe by its users. Such cultural considerations were not applied to the Americas, despite their conquest and settlement by European states. Instead, the concept of "Western civilization" emerged as a way of grouping together Europe and these colonies.[40]

Modern definitions

 
A New Map of Europe According to the Newest Observations (1721) by Hermann Moll draws the eastern boundary of Europe along the Don River flowing south-west and the Tobol, Irtysh and Ob rivers flowing north.
 
1916 political map of Europe showing most of Moll's waterways replaced by von Strahlenberg's Ural Mountains and Freshfield's Caucasus Crest, land features of a type that normally defines a subcontinent

The question of defining a precise eastern boundary of Europe arises in the Early Modern period, as the eastern extension of Muscovy began to include North Asia. Throughout the Middle Ages and into the 18th century, the traditional division of the landmass of Eurasia into two continents, Europe and Asia, followed Ptolemy, with the boundary following the Turkish Straits, the Black Sea, the Kerch Strait, the Sea of Azov and the Don (ancient Tanais). But maps produced during the 16th to 18th centuries tended to differ in how to continue the boundary beyond the Don bend at Kalach-na-Donu (where it is closest to the Volga, now joined with it by the Volga–Don Canal), into territory not described in any detail by the ancient geographers.

Around 1715, Herman Moll produced a map showing the northern part of the Ob River and the Irtysh River, a major tributary of the Ob, as components of a series of partly-joined waterways taking the boundary between Europe and Asia from the Turkish Straits, and the Don River all the way to the Arctic Ocean. In 1721, he produced a more up to date map that was easier to read. However, his proposal to adhere to major rivers as the line of demarcation was never taken up by other geographers who were beginning to move away from the idea of water boundaries as the only legitimate divides between Europe and Asia.

Four years later, in 1725, Philip Johan von Strahlenberg was the first to depart from the classical Don boundary. He drew a new line along the Volga, following the Volga north until the Samara Bend, along Obshchy Syrt (the drainage divide between the Volga and Ural Rivers), then north and east along the latter waterway to its source in the Ural Mountains. At this point he proposed that mountain ranges could be included as boundaries between continents as alternatives to nearby waterways. Accordingly, he drew the new boundary north along Ural Mountains rather than the nearby and parallel running Ob and Irtysh rivers.[41] This was endorsed by the Russian Empire and introduced the convention that would eventually become commonly accepted. However, this did not come without criticism. Voltaire, writing in 1760 about Peter the Great's efforts to make Russia more European, ignored the whole boundary question with his claim that neither Russia, Scandinavia, northern Germany, nor Poland were fully part of Europe.[37] Since then, many modern analytical geographers like Halford Mackinder have declared that they see little validity in the Ural Mountains as a boundary between continents.[42]

The mapmakers continued to differ on the boundary between the lower Don and Samara well into the 19th century. The 1745 atlas published by the Russian Academy of Sciences has the boundary follow the Don beyond Kalach as far as Serafimovich before cutting north towards Arkhangelsk, while other 18th- to 19th-century mapmakers such as John Cary followed Strahlenberg's prescription. To the south, the Kuma–Manych Depression was identified circa 1773 by a German naturalist, Peter Simon Pallas, as a valley that once connected the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea,[43][44] and subsequently was proposed as a natural boundary between continents.

By the mid-19th century, there were three main conventions, one following the Don, the Volga–Don Canal and the Volga, the other following the Kuma–Manych Depression to the Caspian and then the Ural River, and the third abandoning the Don altogether, following the Greater Caucasus watershed to the Caspian. The question was still treated as a "controversy" in geographical literature of the 1860s, with Douglas Freshfield advocating the Caucasus crest boundary as the "best possible", citing support from various "modern geographers".[45]

In Russia and the Soviet Union, the boundary along the Kuma–Manych Depression was the most commonly used as early as 1906.[46] In 1958, the Soviet Geographical Society formally recommended that the boundary between the Europe and Asia be drawn in textbooks from Baydaratskaya Bay, on the Kara Sea, along the eastern foot of Ural Mountains, then following the Ural River until the Mugodzhar Hills, and then the Emba River; and Kuma–Manych Depression,[47] thus placing the Caucasus entirely in Asia and the Urals entirely in Europe.[48] However, most geographers in the Soviet Union favoured the boundary along the Caucasus crest,[49] and this became the common convention in the later 20th century, although the Kuma–Manych boundary remained in use in some 20th-century maps.

Some view separation of Eurasia into Asia and Europe as a residue of Eurocentrism: "In physical, cultural and historical diversity, China and India are comparable to the entire European landmass, not to a single European country. [...]."[50]

History

Prehistory

 
Paleolithic cave paintings from Lascaux in France (c. 15,000 BCE)
 
Stonehenge in the United Kingdom (Late Neolithic from 3000 to 2000 BCE)

During the 2.5 million years of the Pleistocene, numerous cold phases called glacials (Quaternary ice age), or significant advances of continental ice sheets, in Europe and North America, occurred at intervals of approximately 40,000 to 100,000 years. The long glacial periods were separated by more temperate and shorter interglacials which lasted about 10,000–15,000 years. The last cold episode of the last glacial period ended about 10,000 years ago.[51] Earth is currently in an interglacial period of the Quaternary, called the Holocene.[52]

Homo erectus georgicus, which lived roughly 1.8 million years ago in Georgia, is the earliest hominin to have been discovered in Europe.[53] Other hominin remains, dating back roughly 1 million years, have been discovered in Atapuerca, Spain.[54] Neanderthal man (named after the Neandertal valley in Germany) appeared in Europe 150,000 years ago (115,000 years ago it is found already in the territory of present-day Poland[55]) and disappeared from the fossil record about 40,000 years ago,[56] with their final refuge being the Iberian Peninsula. The Neanderthals were supplanted by modern humans (Cro-Magnons), who appeared in Europe around 43,000 to 40,000 years ago.[57] Homo sapiens arrived in Europe around 54,000 years ago, some 10,000 years earlier than previously thought.[58] The earliest sites in Europe dated 48,000 years ago are Riparo Mochi (Italy), Geissenklösterle (Germany) and Isturitz (France).[59][60]

The European Neolithic period—marked by the cultivation of crops and the raising of livestock, increased numbers of settlements and the widespread use of pottery—began around 7000 BCE in Greece and the Balkans, probably influenced by earlier farming practices in Anatolia and the Near East.[61] It spread from the Balkans along the valleys of the Danube and the Rhine (Linear Pottery culture), and along the Mediterranean coast (Cardial culture). Between 4500 and 3000 BCE, these central European neolithic cultures developed further to the west and the north, transmitting newly acquired skills in producing copper artifacts. In Western Europe the Neolithic period was characterised not by large agricultural settlements but by field monuments, such as causewayed enclosures, burial mounds and megalithic tombs.[62] The Corded Ware cultural horizon flourished at the transition from the Neolithic to the Chalcolithic. During this period giant megalithic monuments, such as the Megalithic Temples of Malta and Stonehenge, were constructed throughout Western and Southern Europe.[63][64]

The modern native populations of Europe largely descend from three distinct lineages: Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, a derivative of the Cro-Magnon population of Europe, Neolithic farmers who migrated from Anatolia during the Neolithic Revolution, and Yamnaya pastoralists who expanded into Europe in the context of the Indo-European migrations.[65][66][67] The European Bronze Age began c. 3200 BCE in Greece with the Minoan civilisation on Crete, the first advanced civilisation in Europe.[68] The Minoans were followed by the Myceneans, who collapsed suddenly around 1200 BCE, ushering the European Iron Age.[69] Iron Age colonisation by the Greeks and Phoenicians gave rise to early Mediterranean cities. Early Iron Age Italy and Greece from around the 8th century BCE gradually gave rise to historical Classical antiquity, whose beginning is sometimes dated to 776 BCE, the year of the first Olympic Games.[70]

Classical antiquity

 
The Parthenon in Athens (432 BCE)

Ancient Greece was the founding culture of Western civilisation. Western democratic and rationalist culture are often attributed to Ancient Greece.[71] The Greek city-state, the polis, was the fundamental political unit of classical Greece.[71] In 508 BCE, Cleisthenes instituted the world's first democratic system of government in Athens.[72] The Greek political ideals were rediscovered in the late 18th century by European philosophers and idealists. Greece also generated many cultural contributions: in philosophy, humanism and rationalism under Aristotle, Socrates and Plato; in history with Herodotus and Thucydides; in dramatic and narrative verse, starting with the epic poems of Homer;[73] in drama with Sophocles and Euripides, in medicine with Hippocrates and Galen; and in science with Pythagoras, Euclid and Archimedes.[74][75][76] In the course of the 5th century BCE, several of the Greek city states would ultimately check the Achaemenid Persian advance in Europe through the Greco-Persian Wars, considered a pivotal moment in world history,[77] as the 50 years of peace that followed are known as Golden Age of Athens, the seminal period of ancient Greece that laid many of the foundations of Western civilisation.

 
Animation showing the growth and division of the Roman Empire (years CE)

Greece was followed by Rome, which left its mark on law, politics, language, engineering, architecture, government and many more key aspects in western civilisation.[71] By 200 BCE, Rome had conquered Italy and over the following two centuries it conquered Greece and Hispania (Spain and Portugal), the North African coast, much of the Middle East, Gaul (France and Belgium) and Britannia (England and Wales).

Expanding from their base in central Italy beginning in the third century BCE, the Romans gradually expanded to eventually rule the entire Mediterranean Basin and Western Europe by the turn of the millennium. The Roman Republic ended in 27 BCE, when Augustus proclaimed the Roman Empire. The two centuries that followed are known as the pax romana, a period of unprecedented peace, prosperity and political stability in most of Europe.[78] The empire continued to expand under emperors such as Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, who spent time on the Empire's northern border fighting Germanic, Pictish and Scottish tribes.[79][80] Christianity was legalised by Constantine I in 313 CE after three centuries of imperial persecution. Constantine also permanently moved the capital of the empire from Rome to the city of Byzantium (modern-day Istanbul) which was renamed Constantinople in his honour in 330 CE. Christianity became the sole official religion of the empire in 380 CE and in 391–392 CE, the emperor Theodosius outlawed pagan religions.[81] This is sometimes considered to mark the end of antiquity; alternatively antiquity is considered to end with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE; the closure of the pagan Platonic Academy of Athens in 529 CE;[82] or the rise of Islam in the early 7th century CE. During most of its existence, the Byzantine Empire was one of the most powerful economic, cultural, and military forces in Europe.[83]

Early Middle Ages

 
Europe c. 650
 
Charlemagne's empire in 814:      Francia,      Tributaries

During the decline of the Roman Empire, Europe entered a long period of change arising from what historians call the "Age of Migrations". There were numerous invasions and migrations amongst the Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Goths, Vandals, Huns, Franks, Angles, Saxons, Slavs, Avars, Bulgars and, later on, the Vikings, Pechenegs, Cumans and Magyars.[78] Renaissance thinkers such as Petrarch would later refer to this as the "Dark Ages".[84]

Isolated monastic communities were the only places to safeguard and compile written knowledge accumulated previously; apart from this very few written records survive and much literature, philosophy, mathematics and other thinking from the classical period disappeared from Western Europe, though they were preserved in the east, in the Byzantine Empire.[85]

While the Roman empire in the west continued to decline, Roman traditions and the Roman state remained strong in the predominantly Greek-speaking Eastern Roman Empire, also known as the Byzantine Empire. During most of its existence, the Byzantine Empire was the most powerful economic, cultural and military force in Europe. Emperor Justinian I presided over Constantinople's first golden age: he established a legal code that forms the basis of many modern legal systems, funded the construction of the Hagia Sophia and brought the Christian church under state control.[86]

From the 7th century onwards, as the Byzantines and neighbouring Sasanid Persians were severely weakened due to the protracted, centuries-lasting and frequent Byzantine–Sasanian wars, the Muslim Arabs began to make inroads into historically Roman territory, taking the Levant and North Africa and making inroads into Asia Minor. In the mid-7th century, following the Muslim conquest of Persia, Islam penetrated into the Caucasus region.[87] Over the next centuries Muslim forces took Cyprus, Malta, Crete, Sicily and parts of southern Italy.[88] Between 711 and 720, most of the lands of the Visigothic Kingdom of Iberia was brought under Muslim rule—save for small areas in the north-west (Asturias) and largely Basque regions in the Pyrenees. This territory, under the Arabic name Al-Andalus, became part of the expanding Umayyad Caliphate. The unsuccessful second siege of Constantinople (717) weakened the Umayyad dynasty and reduced their prestige. The Umayyads were then defeated by the Frankish leader Charles Martel at the Battle of Poitiers in 732, which ended their northward advance. In the remote regions of north-western Iberia and the middle Pyrenees the power of the Muslims in the south was scarcely felt. It was here that the foundations of the Christian kingdoms of Asturias, Leon and Galicia were laid and from where the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula would start. However, no coordinated attempt would be made to drive the Moors out. The Christian kingdoms were mainly focussed on their own internal power struggles. As a result, the Reconquista took the greater part of eight hundred years, in which period a long list of Alfonsos, Sanchos, Ordoños, Ramiros, Fernandos and Bermudos would be fighting their Christian rivals as much as the Muslim invaders.

 
Viking raids and division of the Frankish Empire at the Treaty of Verdun in 843

During the Dark Ages, the Western Roman Empire fell under the control of various tribes. The Germanic and Slav tribes established their domains over Western and Eastern Europe, respectively.[89] Eventually the Frankish tribes were united under Clovis I.[90] Charlemagne, a Frankish king of the Carolingian dynasty who had conquered most of Western Europe, was anointed "Holy Roman Emperor" by the Pope in 800. This led in 962 to the founding of the Holy Roman Empire, which eventually became centred in the German principalities of central Europe.[91]

East Central Europe saw the creation of the first Slavic states and the adoption of Christianity (c. 1000 CE). The powerful West Slavic state of Great Moravia spread its territory all the way south to the Balkans, reaching its largest territorial extent under Svatopluk I and causing a series of armed conflicts with East Francia. Further south, the first South Slavic states emerged in the late 7th and 8th century and adopted Christianity: the First Bulgarian Empire, the Serbian Principality (later Kingdom and Empire) and the Duchy of Croatia (later Kingdom of Croatia). To the East, Kievan Rus' expanded from its capital in Kiev to become the largest state in Europe by the 10th century. In 988, Vladimir the Great adopted Orthodox Christianity as the religion of state.[92][93] Further East, Volga Bulgaria became an Islamic state in the 10th century, but was eventually absorbed into Russia several centuries later.[94]

High and Late Middle Ages

 
The maritime republics of medieval Italy reestablished contacts between Europe, Asia and Africa with extensive trade networks and colonies across the Mediterranean, and had an essential role in the Crusades.[95][96]

The period between the year 1000 and 1250 is known as the High Middle Ages, followed by the Late Middle Ages until c. 1500.

During the High Middle Ages the population of Europe experienced significant growth, culminating in the Renaissance of the 12th century. Economic growth, together with the lack of safety on the mainland trading routes, made possible the development of major commercial routes along the coast of the Mediterranean and Baltic Seas. The growing wealth and independence acquired by some coastal cities gave the Maritime Republics a leading role in the European scene.

The Middle Ages on the mainland were dominated by the two upper echelons of the social structure: the nobility and the clergy. Feudalism developed in France in the Early Middle Ages, and soon spread throughout Europe.[97] A struggle for influence between the nobility and the monarchy in England led to the writing of the Magna Carta and the establishment of a parliament.[98] The primary source of culture in this period came from the Roman Catholic Church. Through monasteries and cathedral schools, the Church was responsible for education in much of Europe.[97]

 

The Papacy reached the height of its power during the High Middle Ages. An East-West Schism in 1054 split the former Roman Empire religiously, with the Eastern Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire and the Roman Catholic Church in the former Western Roman Empire. In 1095 Pope Urban II called for a crusade against Muslims occupying Jerusalem and the Holy Land.[99] In Europe itself, the Church organised the Inquisition against heretics. In the Iberian Peninsula, the Reconquista concluded with the fall of Granada in 1492, ending over seven centuries of Islamic rule in the south-western peninsula.[100]

In the east, a resurgent Byzantine Empire recaptured Crete and Cyprus from the Muslims, and reconquered the Balkans. Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest city in Europe from the 9th to the 12th centuries, with a population of approximately 400,000.[101] The Empire was weakened following the defeat at Manzikert, and was weakened considerably by the sack of Constantinople in 1204, during the Fourth Crusade.[102][103][104][105][106][107][108][109][110] Although it would recover Constantinople in 1261, Byzantium fell in 1453 when Constantinople was taken by the Ottoman Empire.[111][112][113]

 
The sacking of Suzdal by Batu Khan in 1238, during the Mongol invasion of Europe

In the 11th and 12th centuries, constant incursions by nomadic Turkic tribes, such as the Pechenegs and the Cuman-Kipchaks, caused a massive migration of Slavic populations to the safer, heavily forested regions of the north, and temporarily halted the expansion of the Rus' state to the south and east.[114] Like many other parts of Eurasia, these territories were overrun by the Mongols.[115] The invaders, who became known as Tatars, were mostly Turkic-speaking peoples under Mongol suzerainty. They established the state of the Golden Horde with headquarters in Crimea, which later adopted Islam as a religion, and ruled over modern-day southern and central Russia for more than three centuries.[116][117] After the collapse of Mongol dominions, the first Romanian states (principalities) emerged in the 14th century: Moldavia and Walachia. Previously, these territories were under the successive control of Pechenegs and Cumans.[118] From the 12th to the 15th centuries, the Grand Duchy of Moscow grew from a small principality under Mongol rule to the largest state in Europe, overthrowing the Mongols in 1480, and eventually becoming the Tsardom of Russia. The state was consolidated under Ivan III the Great and Ivan the Terrible, steadily expanding to the east and south over the next centuries.

The Great Famine of 1315–1317 was the first crisis that would strike Europe in the late Middle Ages.[119] The period between 1348 and 1420 witnessed the heaviest loss. The population of France was reduced by half.[120][121] Medieval Britain was afflicted by 95 famines,[122] and France suffered the effects of 75 or more in the same period.[123] Europe was devastated in the mid-14th century by the Black Death, one of the most deadly pandemics in human history which killed an estimated 25 million people in Europe alone—a third of the European population at the time.[124]

The plague had a devastating effect on Europe's social structure; it induced people to live for the moment as illustrated by Giovanni Boccaccio in The Decameron (1353). It was a serious blow to the Roman Catholic Church and led to increased persecution of Jews, beggars and lepers.[125] The plague is thought to have returned every generation with varying virulence and mortalities until the 18th century.[126] During this period, more than 100 plague epidemics swept across Europe.[127]

Early modern period

 
The School of Athens by Raphael (1511): Contemporaries, such as Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci (centre), are portrayed as classical scholars of the Renaissance.

The Renaissance was a period of cultural change originating in Florence, and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The rise of a new humanism was accompanied by the recovery of forgotten classical Greek and Arabic knowledge from monastic libraries, often translated from Arabic into Latin.[128][129][130] The Renaissance spread across Europe between the 14th and 16th centuries: it saw the flowering of art, philosophy, music and the sciences, under the joint patronage of royalty, the nobility, the Roman Catholic Church and an emerging merchant class.[131][132][133] Patrons in Italy, including the Medici family of Florentine bankers and the Popes in Rome, funded prolific quattrocento and cinquecento artists such as Raphael, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci.[134][135]

Political intrigue within the Church in the mid-14th century caused the Western Schism. During this forty-year period, two popes—one in Avignon and one in Rome—claimed rulership over the Church. Although the schism was eventually healed in 1417, the papacy's spiritual authority had suffered greatly.[136] In the 15th century, Europe started to extend itself beyond its geographic frontiers. Spain and Portugal, the greatest naval powers of the time, took the lead in exploring the world.[137][138] Exploration reached the Southern Hemisphere in the Atlantic and the Southern tip of Africa. Christopher Columbus reached the New World in 1492, and Vasco da Gama opened the ocean route to the East linking the Atlantic and Indian Oceans in 1498. The Portuguese-born explorer Ferdinand Magellan reached Asia westward across the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans in a Spanish expedition, resulting in the first circumnavigation of the globe, completed by the Spaniard Juan Sebastián Elcano (1519–1522). Soon after, the Spanish and Portuguese began establishing large global empires in the Americas, Asia, Africa and Oceania.[139] France, the Netherlands and England soon followed in building large colonial empires with vast holdings in Africa, the Americas and Asia. In 1588, a Spanish armada failed to invade England. A year later England tried unsuccessfully to invade Spain, allowing Philip II of Spain to maintain his dominant war capacity in Europe. This English disaster also allowed the Spanish fleet to retain its capability to wage war for the next decades. However, two more Spanish armadas failed to invade England (2nd Spanish Armada and 3rd Spanish Armada).[140][141][142][143]

 
Habsburg dominions in the centuries following their partition by Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. The principal military base of Philip II in Europe was the Spanish road stretching from the Netherlands to the Duchy of Milan.[144]

The Church's power was further weakened by the Protestant Reformation in 1517 when German theologian Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses criticising the selling of indulgences to the church door. He was subsequently excommunicated in the papal bull Exsurge Domine in 1520 and his followers were condemned in the 1521 Diet of Worms, which divided German princes between Protestant and Roman Catholic faiths.[145] Religious fighting and warfare spread with Protestantism.[146] The plunder of the empires of the Americas allowed Spain to finance religious persecution in Europe for over a century.[147] The Thirty Years War (1618–1648) crippled the Holy Roman Empire and devastated much of Germany, killing between 25 and 40 percent of its population.[148] In the aftermath of the Peace of Westphalia, France rose to predominance within Europe.[149] The defeat of the Ottoman Turks at the Battle of Vienna in 1683 marked the historic end of Ottoman expansion into Europe.[150]

The 17th century in central and parts of eastern Europe was a period of general decline;[151] the region experienced more than 150 famines in a 200-year period between 1501 and 1700.[152] From the Union of Krewo (1385) east-central Europe was dominated by the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The hegemony of the vast Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth had ended with the devastation brought by the Second Northern War (Deluge) and subsequent conflicts;[153] the state itself was partitioned and ceased to exist at the end of the 18th century.[154]

From the 15th to 18th centuries, when the disintegrating khanates of the Golden Horde were conquered by Russia, Tatars from the Crimean Khanate frequently raided Eastern Slavic lands to capture slaves.[155] Further east, the Nogai Horde and Kazakh Khanate frequently raided the Slavic-speaking areas of contemporary Russia and Ukraine for hundreds of years, until the Russian expansion and conquest of most of northern Eurasia (i.e. Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Siberia).

The Renaissance and the New Monarchs marked the start of an Age of Discovery, a period of exploration, invention and scientific development.[156] Among the great figures of the Western scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries were Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and Isaac Newton.[157] According to Peter Barrett, "It is widely accepted that 'modern science' arose in the Europe of the 17th century (towards the end of the Renaissance), introducing a new understanding of the natural world."[128]

18th and 19th centuries

 
The national boundaries within Europe set by the Congress of Vienna

The Seven Years' War brought to an end the "Old System" of alliances in Europe. Consequently, when the American Revolutionary War turned into a global war between 1778 and 1783, Britain found itself opposed by a strong coalition of European powers, and lacking any substantial ally.[158]

The Age of Enlightenment was a powerful intellectual movement during the 18th century promoting scientific and reason-based thoughts.[159][160][161] Discontent with the aristocracy and clergy's monopoly on political power in France resulted in the French Revolution, and the establishment of the First Republic as a result of which the monarchy and many of the nobility perished during the initial reign of terror.[162] Napoleon Bonaparte rose to power in the aftermath of the French Revolution, and established the First French Empire that, during the Napoleonic Wars, grew to encompass large parts of Europe before collapsing in 1815 with the Battle of Waterloo.[163][164] Napoleonic rule resulted in the further dissemination of the ideals of the French Revolution, including that of the nation state, as well as the widespread adoption of the French models of administration, law and education.[165][166][167] The Congress of Vienna, convened after Napoleon's downfall, established a new balance of power in Europe centred on the five "Great Powers": the UK, France, Prussia, Austria and Russia.[168] This balance would remain in place until the Revolutions of 1848, during which liberal uprisings affected all of Europe except for Russia and the UK. These revolutions were eventually put down by conservative elements and few reforms resulted.[169] The year 1859 saw the unification of Romania, as a nation state, from smaller principalities. In 1867, the Austro-Hungarian empire was formed; 1871 saw the unifications of both Italy and Germany as nation-states from smaller principalities.[170]

In parallel, the Eastern Question grew more complex ever since the Ottoman defeat in the Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774). As the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire seemed imminent, the Great Powers struggled to safeguard their strategic and commercial interests in the Ottoman domains. The Russian Empire stood to benefit from the decline, whereas the Habsburg Empire and Britain perceived the preservation of the Ottoman Empire to be in their best interests. Meanwhile, the Serbian revolution (1804) and Greek War of Independence (1821) marked the beginning of the end of Ottoman rule in the Balkans, which ended with the Balkan Wars in 1912–1913.[171] Formal recognition of the de facto independent principalities of Montenegro, Serbia and Romania ensued at the Congress of Berlin in 1878.

 
Marshall's Temple Works (1840); the Industrial Revolution started in Great Britain.

The Industrial Revolution started in Great Britain in the last part of the 18th century and spread throughout Europe. The invention and implementation of new technologies resulted in rapid urban growth, mass employment and the rise of a new working class.[172] Reforms in social and economic spheres followed, including the first laws on child labour, the legalisation of trade unions,[173] and the abolition of slavery.[174] In Britain, the Public Health Act of 1875 was passed, which significantly improved living conditions in many British cities.[175] Europe's population increased from about 100 million in 1700 to 400 million by 1900.[176] The last major famine recorded in Western Europe, the Great Famine of Ireland, caused death and mass emigration of millions of Irish people.[177] In the 19th century, 70 million people left Europe in migrations to various European colonies abroad and to the United States.[178] Demographic growth meant that, by 1900, Europe's share of the world's population was 25%.[179]

20th century to the present

 
Map of European colonial empires throughout the world in 1914

Two world wars and an economic depression dominated the first half of the 20th century. The First World War was fought between 1914 and 1918. It started when Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated by the Yugoslav nationalist[180] Gavrilo Princip.[181] Most European nations were drawn into the war, which was fought between the Entente Powers (France, Belgium, Serbia, Portugal, Russia, the United Kingdom, and later Italy, Greece, Romania, and the United States) and the Central Powers (Austria-Hungary, Germany, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire). The war left more than 16 million civilians and military dead.[182] Over 60 million European soldiers were mobilised from 1914 to 1918.[183]

 
Map depicting the military alliances of the First World War in 1914–1918

Russia was plunged into the Russian Revolution, which threw down the Tsarist monarchy and replaced it with the communist Soviet Union,[184] leading also to the independence of many former Russian governorates, such as Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, as new European countries.[185] Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire collapsed and broke up into separate nations, and many other nations had their borders redrawn. The Treaty of Versailles, which officially ended the First World War in 1919, was harsh towards Germany, upon whom it placed full responsibility for the war and imposed heavy sanctions.[186] Excess deaths in Russia over the course of the First World War and the Russian Civil War (including the postwar famine) amounted to a combined total of 18 million.[187] In 1932–1933, under Stalin's leadership, confiscations of grain by the Soviet authorities contributed to the second Soviet famine which caused millions of deaths;[188] surviving kulaks were persecuted and many sent to Gulags to do forced labour. Stalin was also responsible for the Great Purge of 1937–38 in which the NKVD executed 681,692 people;[189] millions of people were deported and exiled to remote areas of the Soviet Union.[190]

 
Serbian war efforts (1914–1918) cost the country one quarter of its population.[191][192][193][194][195]
 
Nazi Germany began the devastating Second World War in Europe by its leader, Adolf Hitler. Here Hitler, on the right, with his closest ally, the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, in 1940.

The social revolutions sweeping through Russia also affected other European nations following The Great War: in 1919, with the Weimar Republic in Germany and the First Austrian Republic; in 1922, with Mussolini's one-party fascist government in the Kingdom of Italy and in Atatürk's Turkish Republic, adopting the Western alphabet and state secularism. Economic instability, caused in part by debts incurred in the First World War and 'loans' to Germany played havoc in Europe in the late 1920s and 1930s. This, and the Wall Street Crash of 1929, brought about the worldwide Great Depression. Helped by the economic crisis, social instability and the threat of communism, fascist movements developed throughout Europe placing Adolf Hitler in power of what became Nazi Germany.[196][197]

In 1933, Hitler became the leader of Germany and began to work towards his goal of building Greater Germany. Germany re-expanded and took back the Saarland and Rhineland in 1935 and 1936. In 1938, Austria became a part of Germany following the Anschluss. Later that year, following the Munich Agreement signed by Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Italy, Germany annexed the Sudetenland, which was a part of Czechoslovakia inhabited by ethnic Germans, and in early 1939, the remainder of Czechoslovakia was split into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, controlled by Germany and the Slovak Republic. At the time, the United Kingdom and France preferred a policy of appeasement.

With tensions mounting between Germany and Poland over the future of Danzig, the Germans turned to the Soviets and signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, which allowed the Soviets to invade the Baltic states and parts of Poland and Romania. Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, prompting France and the United Kingdom to declare war on Germany on 3 September, opening the European Theatre of the Second World War.[198][199][200] The Soviet invasion of Poland started on 17 September and Poland fell soon thereafter. On 24 September, the Soviet Union attacked the Baltic countries and, on 30 November, Finland, the latter of which was followed by the devastating Winter War for the Red Army.[201] The British hoped to land at Narvik and send troops to aid Finland, but their primary objective in the landing was to encircle Germany and cut the Germans off from Scandinavian resources. Around the same time, Germany moved troops into Denmark. The Phoney War continued.

In May 1940, Germany attacked France through the Low Countries. France capitulated in June 1940. By August, Germany had begun a bombing offensive against the United Kingdom but failed to convince the Britons to give up.[202] In 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa.[203] On 7 December 1941 Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor drew the United States into the conflict as allies of the British Empire, and other allied forces.[204][205]

 
The "Big Three" at the Yalta Conference in 1945; seated (from the left): Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin

After the staggering Battle of Stalingrad in 1943, the German offensive in the Soviet Union turned into a continual fallback. The Battle of Kursk, which involved the largest tank battle in history, was the last major German offensive on the Eastern Front. In June 1944, British and American forces invaded France in the D-Day landings, opening a new front against Germany. Berlin finally fell in 1945, ending the Second World War in Europe. The war was the largest and most destructive in human history, with 60 million dead across the world.[206] More than 40 million people in Europe had died as a result of the Second World War,[207] including between 11 and 17 million people who perished during the Holocaust.[208] The Soviet Union lost around 27 million people (mostly civilians) during the war, about half of all Second World War casualties.[209] By the end of the Second World War, Europe had more than 40 million refugees.[210][211][212] Several post-war expulsions in Central and Eastern Europe displaced a total of about 20 million people.[213]

 

The First World War, and especially the Second World War, diminished the eminence of Western Europe in world affairs. After the Second World War the map of Europe was redrawn at the Yalta Conference and divided into two blocs, the Western countries and the communist Eastern bloc, separated by what was later called by Winston Churchill an "Iron Curtain". The United States and Western Europe established the NATO alliance and, later, the Soviet Union and Central Europe established the Warsaw Pact.[214] Particular hot spots after the Second World War were Berlin and Trieste, whereby the Free Territory of Trieste, founded in 1947 with the UN, was dissolved in 1954 and 1975, respectively. The Berlin blockade in 1948 and 1949 and the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 were one of the great international crises of the Cold War.[215][216][217]

The two new superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, became locked in a fifty-year-long Cold War, centred on nuclear proliferation. At the same time decolonisation, which had already started after the First World War, gradually resulted in the independence of most of the European colonies in Asia and Africa.[15]

 
Flag of Europe, adopted by the Council of Europe in 1955 as the flag for the whole of Europe[218]

In the 1980s the reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev and the Solidarity movement in Poland weakened the previously rigid communist system. The opening of the Iron Curtain at the Pan-European Picnic then set in motion a peaceful chain reaction, at the end of which the Eastern bloc, the Warsaw Pact and other communist states collapsed, and the Cold War ended.[219][220][221] Germany was reunited, after the symbolic fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the maps of Central and Eastern Europe were redrawn once more.[222] This made old previously interrupted cultural and economic relationships possible, and previously isolated cities such as Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest and Trieste were now again in the centre of Europe.[196][223][224][225]

European integration also grew after the Second World War. In 1949 the Council of Europe was founded, following a speech by Sir Winston Churchill, with the idea of unifying Europe[16] to achieve common goals. It includes all European states except for Belarus, Russia,[226] and Vatican City. The Treaty of Rome in 1957 established the European Economic Community between six Western European states with the goal of a unified economic policy and common market.[227] In 1967 the EEC, European Coal and Steel Community, and Euratom formed the European Community, which in 1993 became the European Union. The EU established a parliament, court and central bank, and introduced the euro as a unified currency.[228] Between 2004 and 2013, more Central European countries began joining, expanding the EU to 28 European countries and once more making Europe a major economical and political centre of power.[229] However, the United Kingdom withdrew from the EU on 31 January 2020, as a result of a June 2016 referendum on EU membership.[230] The Russo-Ukrainian conflict, which has been ongoing since 2014, steeply escalated when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, marking the largest humanitarian and refugee crisis in Europe since the Second World War[231] and the Yugoslav Wars.[232]

Geography

 
Map of populous Europe and surrounding regions showing physical, political and population characteristics, as per 2018

Europe makes up the western fifth of the Eurasian landmass.[27] It has a higher ratio of coast to landmass than any other continent or subcontinent.[233] Its maritime borders consist of the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west and the Mediterranean, Black and Caspian Seas to the south.[234] Land relief in Europe shows great variation within relatively small areas. The southern regions are more mountainous, while moving north the terrain descends from the high Alps, Pyrenees and Carpathians, through hilly uplands, into broad, low northern plains, which are vast in the east. This extended lowland is known as the Great European Plain and at its heart lies the North German Plain. An arc of uplands also exists along the north-western seaboard, which begins in the western parts of the islands of Britain and Ireland, and then continues along the mountainous, fjord-cut spine of Norway.

This description is simplified. Subregions such as the Iberian Peninsula and the Italian Peninsula contain their own complex features, as does mainland Central Europe itself, where the relief contains many plateaus, river valleys and basins that complicate the general trend. Sub-regions like Iceland, Britain and Ireland are special cases. The former is a land unto itself in the northern ocean that is counted as part of Europe, while the latter are upland areas that were once joined to the mainland until rising sea levels cut them off.

Climate

 
Biomes of Europe and surrounding regions:
     tundra      alpine tundra      taiga      montane forest
     temperate broadleaf forest      mediterranean forest      temperate steppe      dry steppe

Europe lies mainly in the temperate climate zones, being subjected to prevailing westerlies. The climate is milder in comparison to other areas of the same latitude around the globe due to the influence of the Gulf Stream.[235] The Gulf Stream is nicknamed "Europe's central heating", because it makes Europe's climate warmer and wetter than it would otherwise be. The Gulf Stream not only carries warm water to Europe's coast but also warms up the prevailing westerly winds that blow across the continent from the Atlantic Ocean.

Therefore, the average temperature throughout the year of Aveiro is 16 °C (61 °F), while it is only 13 °C (55 °F) in New York City which is almost on the same latitude, bordering the same ocean. Berlin, Germany; Calgary, Canada; and Irkutsk, in far south-eastern Russia, lie on around the same latitude; January temperatures in Berlin average around 8 °C (14 °F) higher than those in Calgary and they are almost 22 °C (40 °F) higher than average temperatures in Irkutsk.[235]

The large water masses of the Mediterranean Sea, which equalise the temperatures on an annual and daily average, are also of particular importance. The water of the Mediterranean extends from the Sahara desert to the Alpine arc in its northernmost part of the Adriatic Sea near Trieste.[236]

In general, Europe is not just colder towards the north compared to the south, but it also gets colder from the west towards the east. The climate is more oceanic in the west and less so in the east. This can be illustrated by the following table of average temperatures at locations roughly following the 64th, 60th, 55th, 50th, 45th and 40th latitudes. None of them is located at high altitude; most of them are close to the sea. (location, approximate latitude and longitude, coldest month average, hottest month average and annual average temperatures in degrees C)

Temperatures in °C
Location Latitude Longitude Coldest
month
Hottest
month
Annual
average
Reykjavík 64 N 22 W 0.1 11.2 4.7
Umeå 64 N 20 E −6.2 16.0 3.9
Oulu 65 N 25.5 E −9.6 16.5 2.7
Arkhangelsk 64.5 N 40.5 E −12.7 16.3 1.3
Lerwick 60 N 1 W 3.5 12.4 7.4
Stockholm 59.5 N 19 E −1.7 18.4 7.4
Helsinki 60 N 25 E −4.7 17.8 5.9
Saint Petersburg 60 N 30 E −5.8 18.8 5.8
Edinburgh 55.5 N 3 W 4.2 15.3 9.3
Copenhagen 55.5 N 12 E 1.4 18.1 9.1
Klaipėda 55.5 N 21 E −1.3 17.9 8.0
Moscow 55.5 N 30 E −6.5 19.2 5.8
Isles of Scilly 50 N 6 W 7.9 16.9 11.8
Brussels 50.5 N 4 E 3.3 18.4 10.5
Krakow 50 N 20 E −2.0 19.2 8.7
Kyiv 50.5 N 30 E −3.5 20.5 8.4
Bordeaux 45 N 0 6.6 21.4 13.8
Venice 45.5 N 12 E 3.3 23.0 13.0
Belgrade 45 N 20 E 1.4 23.0 12.5
Astrakhan 46 N 48 E −3.7 25.6 10.5
Coimbra 40 N 8 W 9.9 21.9 16.0
Valencia 39.5 N 0 11.9 26.1 18.3
Naples 40.5 N 14 E 8.7 24.7 15.9
Istanbul 41 N 29 E 6.0 23.8 11.4

[238] It is notable how the average temperatures for the coldest month, as well as the annual average temperatures, drop from the west to the east. For instance, Edinburgh is warmer than Belgrade during the coldest month of the year, although Belgrade is around 10° of latitude farther south.

Geology

 
Surficial geology of Europe

The geological history of Europe traces back to the formation of the Baltic Shield (Fennoscandia) and the Sarmatian craton, both around 2.25 billion years ago, followed by the Volgo–Uralia shield, the three together leading to the East European craton (≈ Baltica) which became a part of the supercontinent Columbia. Around 1.1 billion years ago, Baltica and Arctica (as part of the Laurentia block) became joined to Rodinia, later resplitting around 550 million years ago to reform as Baltica. Around 440 million years ago Euramerica was formed from Baltica and Laurentia; a further joining with Gondwana then leading to the formation of Pangea. Around 190 million years ago, Gondwana and Laurasia split apart due to the widening of the Atlantic Ocean. Finally and very soon afterwards, Laurasia itself split up again, into Laurentia (North America) and the Eurasian continent. The land connection between the two persisted for a considerable time, via Greenland, leading to interchange of animal species. From around 50 million years ago, rising and falling sea levels have determined the actual shape of Europe and its connections with continents such as Asia. Europe's present shape dates to the late Tertiary period about five million years ago.[239]

The geology of Europe is hugely varied and complex and gives rise to the wide variety of landscapes found across the continent, from the Scottish Highlands to the rolling plains of Hungary.[240] Europe's most significant feature is the dichotomy between highland and mountainous Southern Europe and a vast, partially underwater, northern plain ranging from Ireland in the west to the Ural Mountains in the east. These two halves are separated by the mountain chains of the Pyrenees and Alps/Carpathians. The northern plains are delimited in the west by the Scandinavian Mountains and the mountainous parts of the British Isles. Major shallow water bodies submerging parts of the northern plains are the Celtic Sea, the North Sea, the Baltic Sea complex and Barents Sea.

The northern plain contains the old geological continent of Baltica and so may be regarded geologically as the "main continent", while peripheral highlands and mountainous regions in the south and west constitute fragments from various other geological continents. Most of the older geology of western Europe existed as part of the ancient microcontinent Avalonia.

Flora

 
Land use map of Europe with arable farmland (yellow), forest (dark green), pasture (light green) and tundra, or bogs, in the north (dark yellow)

Having lived side by side with agricultural peoples for millennia, Europe's animals and plants have been profoundly affected by the presence and activities of man. With the exception of Fennoscandia and northern Russia, few areas of untouched wilderness are currently found in Europe, except for various national parks.

The main natural vegetation cover in Europe is mixed forest. The conditions for growth are very favourable. In the north, the Gulf Stream and North Atlantic Drift warm the continent. Southern Europe could be described as having a warm, but mild climate. There are frequent summer droughts in this region. Mountain ridges also affect the conditions. Some of these (Alps, Pyrenees) are oriented east–west and allow the wind to carry large masses of water from the ocean in the interior. Others are oriented south–north (Scandinavian Mountains, Dinarides, Carpathians, Apennines) and because the rain falls primarily on the side of mountains that is oriented towards the sea, forests grow well on this side, while on the other side, the conditions are much less favourable. Few corners of mainland Europe have not been grazed by livestock at some point in time, and the cutting down of the preagricultural forest habitat caused disruption to the original plant and animal ecosystems.

 
Floristic regions of Europe and neighbouring areas, according to Wolfgang Frey and Rainer Lösch

Possibly 80 to 90 percent of Europe was once covered by forest.[241] It stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the Arctic Ocean. Although over half of Europe's original forests disappeared through the centuries of deforestation, Europe still has over one quarter of its land area as forest, such as the broadleaf and mixed forests, taiga of Scandinavia and Russia, mixed rainforests of the Caucasus and the Cork oak forests in the western Mediterranean. During recent times, deforestation has been slowed and many trees have been planted. However, in many cases monoculture plantations of conifers have replaced the original mixed natural forest, because these grow quicker. The plantations now cover vast areas of land, but offer poorer habitats for many European forest dwelling species which require a mixture of tree species and diverse forest structure. The amount of natural forest in Western Europe is just 2–3% or less, while in its Western Russia its 5–10%. The European country with the smallest percentage of forested area is Iceland (1%), while the most forested country is Finland (77%).[242]

In temperate Europe, mixed forest with both broadleaf and coniferous trees dominate. The most important species in central and western Europe are beech and oak. In the north, the taiga is a mixed sprucepinebirch forest; further north within Russia and extreme northern Scandinavia, the taiga gives way to tundra as the Arctic is approached. In the Mediterranean, many olive trees have been planted, which are very well adapted to its arid climate; Mediterranean Cypress is also widely planted in southern Europe. The semi-arid Mediterranean region hosts much scrub forest. A narrow east–west tongue of Eurasian grassland (the steppe) extends westwards from Ukraine and southern Russia and ends in Hungary and traverses into taiga to the north.

Fauna

 
Biogeographic regions of Europe and bordering regions

Glaciation during the most recent ice age and the presence of man affected the distribution of European fauna. As for the animals, in many parts of Europe most large animals and top predator species have been hunted to extinction. The woolly mammoth was extinct before the end of the Neolithic period. Today wolves (carnivores) and bears (omnivores) are endangered. Once they were found in most parts of Europe. However, deforestation and hunting caused these animals to withdraw further and further. By the Middle Ages the bears' habitats were limited to more or less inaccessible mountains with sufficient forest cover. Today, the brown bear lives primarily in the Balkan peninsula, Scandinavia and Russia; a small number also persist in other countries across Europe (Austria, Pyrenees etc.), but in these areas brown bear populations are fragmented and marginalised because of the destruction of their habitat. In addition, polar bears may be found on Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago far north of Scandinavia. The wolf, the second largest predator in Europe after the brown bear, can be found primarily in Central and Eastern Europe and in the Balkans, with a handful of packs in pockets of Western Europe (Scandinavia, Spain, etc.).

 
Once roaming the great temperate forests of Eurasia, European bison now live in nature preserves in Białowieża Forest, on the border between Poland and Belarus.[243][244]

European wild cat, foxes (especially the red fox), jackal and different species of martens, hedgehogs, different species of reptiles (like snakes such as vipers and grass snakes) and amphibians, different birds (owls, hawks and other birds of prey).

Important European herbivores are snails, larvae, fish, different birds and mammals, like rodents, deer and roe deer, boars and living in the mountains, marmots, steinbocks, chamois among others. A number of insects, such as the small tortoiseshell butterfly, add to the biodiversity.[245]

The extinction of the dwarf hippos and dwarf elephants has been linked to the earliest arrival of humans on the islands of the Mediterranean.[246]

Sea creatures are also an important part of European flora and fauna. The sea flora is mainly phytoplankton. Important animals that live in European seas are zooplankton, molluscs, echinoderms, different crustaceans, squids and octopuses, fish, dolphins and whales.

Biodiversity is protected in Europe through the Council of Europe's Bern Convention, which has also been signed by the European Community as well as non-European states.

Politics

European Political CommunityCouncil of EuropeSchengen AreaEuropean Free Trade AssociationEuropean Economic AreaEurozoneEuropean UnionEuropean Union Customs UnionInternational status and usage of the euroGUAM Organization for Democracy and Economic DevelopmentCentral European Free Trade AgreementNordic CouncilBaltic AssemblyBeneluxVisegrád GroupCommon Travel AreaOrganization of the Black Sea Economic CooperationUnion StateSwitzerlandIcelandNorwayLiechtensteinSwedenDenmarkFinlandPolandCzech RepublicHungarySlovakiaGreeceEstoniaLatviaLithuaniaBelgiumNetherlandsLuxembourgItalyFranceSpainAustriaGermanyPortugalSloveniaMaltaCyprusRepublic of IrelandUnited KingdomCroatiaRomaniaBulgariaTurkeyMonacoAndorraSan MarinoVatican CityGeorgia (country)UkraineAzerbaijanMoldovaArmeniaRussiaBelarusSerbiaAlbaniaNorth MacedoniaBosnia and HerzegovinaMontenegroUnited Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo 
A clickable Euler diagram[file] showing the relationships between various multinational European organisations and agreements.

The political map of Europe is substantially derived from the re-organisation of Europe following the Napoleonic Wars in 1815. The prevalent form of government in Europe is parliamentary democracy, in most cases in the form of Republic; in 1815, the prevalent form of government was still the Monarchy. Europe's remaining eleven monarchies[247] are constitutional.

European integration is the process of political, legal, economic (and in some cases social and cultural) integration of European states as it has been pursued by the powers sponsoring the Council of Europe since the end of the Second World War The European Union has been the focus of economic integration on the continent since its foundation in 1993. More recently, the Eurasian Economic Union has been established as a counterpart comprising former Soviet states.

27 European states are members of the politico-economic European Union, 26 of the border-free Schengen Area and 19 of the monetary union Eurozone. Among the smaller European organisations are the Nordic Council, the Benelux, the Baltic Assembly and the Visegrád Group.

List of states and territories

The list below includes all internationally recognized sovereign countries falling even partially under any common geographical or political definitions of Europe.

Arms Flag Name Area
(km2)
Population
Population
density

(per km2)
Capital Name(s) in official language(s)
    Albania 28,748 2,876,591 98.5 Tirana Shqipëria
    Andorra 468 77,281 179.8 Andorra la Vella Andorra
    Armenia[j] 29,743 2,924,816 101.5 Yerevan Հայաստան (Hayastan)
    Austria 83,858 8,823,054 104 Vienna Österreich
    Azerbaijan[k] 86,600 9,911,646 113 Baku Azǝrbaycan
    Belarus 207,560 9,504,700 45.8 Minsk Беларусь (Belaruś)
    Belgium 30,528 11,358,357 372.06 Brussels België/Belgique/Belgien
    Bosnia and Herzegovina 51,129 3,531,159 68.97 Sarajevo Bosna i Hercegovina/Боснa и Херцеговина
    Bulgaria 110,910 7,101,859 64.9 Sofia България (Bǎlgariya)
    Croatia 56,594 3,871,833 68.4 Zagreb Hrvatska
    Cyprus[d] 9,251 1,170,125 123.4 Nicosia Κύπρος (Kýpros)/Kıbrıs
    Czech Republic 78,866 10,610,947 134 Prague Česko
    Denmark 43,094 5,748,796 133.9 Copenhagen Danmark
    Estonia 45,226 1,328,439 30.5 Tallinn Eesti
    Finland 338,455 5,509,717 16 Helsinki Suomi/Finland
    France[g] 547,030 67,348,000 116 Paris France
    Georgia[l] 69,700 3,718,200 53.5 Tbilisi საქართველო (Sakartvelo)
    Germany 357,168 82,800,000 232 Berlin Deutschland
    Greece 131,957 10,297,760 82 Athens Ελλάδα (Elláda)
    Hungary 93,030 9,797,561 105.3 Budapest Magyarország
    Iceland 103,000 350,710 3.2 Reykjavík Ísland
    Ireland 70,280 4,761,865 67.7 Dublin Éire/Ireland
    Italy 301,338 60,589,445 201.3 Rome Italia
    Kazakhstan[i] 148,000 17,987,736 6.49 Astana Қазақстан (Qazaqstan)
    Latvia 64,589 1,907,675 29 Riga Latvija
    Liechtenstein 160 38,111 227 Vaduz Liechtenstein
    Lithuania 65,300 2,800,667 45.8 Vilnius Lietuva
    Luxembourg 2,586 602,005 233.7 Luxembourg Lëtzebuerg/Luxemburg/Luxembourg
    Malta 316 445,426 1,410 Valletta Malta
    Moldova[a] 33,846 3,434,547 101.5 Chișinău Moldova
    Monaco 2.020 38,400 18,713 Monaco Monaco
    Montenegro 13,812 642,550 45.0 Podgorica Crna Gora/Црна Гора
    Netherlands[h] 41,543 17,271,990 414.9 Amsterdam Nederland
    North Macedonia 25,713 2,103,721 80.1 Skopje Северна Македонија (Severna Makedonija)
    Norway 385,203 5,295,619 15.8 Oslo Norge/Noreg/Norga
    Poland 312,685 38,422,346 123.5 Warsaw Polska
    Portugal[e] 92,212 10,379,537 115 Lisbon Portugal
    Romania 238,397 18,999,642 84.4 Bucharest România
    Russia[b] 3,969,100 144,526,636 8.4 Moscow Россия (Rossiya)
    San Marino 61.2 33,285 520 San Marino San Marino
    Serbia[f] 88,361 7,040,272 91.1 Belgrade Srbija/Србија
    Slovakia 49,035 5,435,343 111.0 Bratislava Slovensko
    Slovenia 20,273 2,066,880 101.8 Ljubljana Slovenija
    Spain 505,990 46,698,151 92 Madrid España
    Sweden 450,295 10,151,588 22.5 Stockholm Sverige
    Switzerland 41,285 8,401,120 202 Bern Schweiz/Suisse/Svizzera/Svizra
    Turkey[m] 23,764 84,680,273 106.7 Ankara Türkiye
    Ukraine[s] 603,628 42,418,235 73.8 Kyiv Україна (Ukraina)
    United Kingdom 244,820 66,040,229 270.7 London United Kingdom
    Vatican City 0.44 1,000 2,272 Vatican City Città del Vaticano/Civitas Vaticana
Total 50 10,180,000[n] 743,000,000[n] 73

Within the above-mentioned states are several de facto independent countries with limited to no international recognition. None of them are members of the UN:

Symbol Flag Name Area
(km2)
Population
Population density
(per km2)
Capital
    Abkhazia[p] 8,660 243,206 28 Sukhumi
    Artsakh[q] 11,458 150,932 12 Stepanakert
    Kosovo[o] 10,908 1,920,079 159 Pristina
    Northern Cyprus[d] 3,355 313,626 93 Nicosia
    South Ossetia[p] 3,900 53,532 13.7 Tskhinvali
    Transnistria[a] 4,163 475,665 114 Tiraspol

Several dependencies and similar territories with broad autonomy are also found within or close to Europe. This includes Åland (an autonomous county of Finland), two autonomous territories of the Kingdom of Denmark (other than Denmark proper), three Crown Dependencies and two British Overseas Territories. Svalbard is also included due to its unique status within Norway, although it is not autonomous. Not included are the three countries of the United Kingdom with devolved powers and the two Autonomous Regions of Portugal, which despite having a unique degree of autonomy, are not largely self-governing in matters other than international affairs. Areas with little more than a unique tax status, such as the Canary Islands and Heligoland, are also not included for this reason.

Symbol Flag Name Sovereign
state
Area
(km2)
Population Population
density

(per km2)
Capital
    Åland Finland 1,580 29,489 18.36 Mariehamn
    Bailiwick of Guernsey[c] UK 78 65,849 844.0 St. Peter Port
    Bailiwick of Jersey[c] UK 118.2 100,080 819 Saint Helier
    Faroe Islands Denmark 1,399 50,778 35.2 Tórshavn
    Gibraltar UK 6.7 32,194 4,328 Gibraltar
    Greenland Denmark [r] 2,166,086 55,877 0.028 Nuuk
    Isle of Man[c] UK 572 83,314 148 Douglas
  Svalbard Norway 61,022 2,667

Economy

 
GDP (PPP) per capita of European countries in 2021
     >$60,000      $50,000 - $60,000
     $40,000 - $50,000      $30,000 - $40,000
     $20,000 - $30,000      $10,000 - $20,000

As a continent, the economy of Europe is currently the largest on Earth and it is the richest region as measured by assets under management with over $32.7 trillion compared to North America's $27.1 trillion in 2008.[248] In 2009 Europe remained the wealthiest region. Its $37.1 trillion in assets under management represented one-third of the world's wealth. It was one of several regions where wealth surpassed its precrisis year-end peak.[249] As with other continents, Europe has a large variation of wealth among its countries. The richer states tend to be in the West, followed by Central Europeans, while some of the Eastern Europe economies are still emerging from the collapse of the Soviet Union and the breakup of Yugoslavia.

The model of the Blue Banana was designed as an economic geographic representation of the respective economic power of the regions, which was further developed into the Golden Banana or Blue Star. The trade between East and West, as well as towards Asia, which had been disrupted for a long time by the two world wars, new borders and the Cold War, increased sharply after 1989. In addition, there is new impetus from the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative across the Suez Canal towards Africa and Asia.[250]

The European Union, a political entity composed of 27 European states, comprises the largest single economic area in the world. Nineteen EU countries share the euro as a common currency. Five European countries rank in the top ten of the world's largest national economies in GDP (PPP). This includes (ranks according to the CIA): Germany (6), Russia (7), the United Kingdom (10), France (11) and Italy (13).[251]

There is huge disparity between many European countries in terms of their income. The richest in terms of nominal GDP is Monaco with its US$185,829 per capita (2018) and the poorest is Ukraine with its US$3,659 per capita (2019).[252] Monaco is the richest country in terms of GDP per capita in the world according to the World Bank report.

As a whole, Europe's GDP per capita is US$21,767 according to a 2016 International Monetary Fund assessment.[253]

Rank Country GDP (nominal, Peak Year)
millions of USD
Peak Year
  European Union[254] 19,226,235 2008
1   Germany 4,262,767 2021
2   United Kingdom 3,198,470 2022
3   France 2,957,425 2021
4   Italy 2,408,391 2008
5   Russia 2,288,428 2013
6   Spain 1,631,685 2008
7   Netherlands 1,013,520 2021
8   Turkey 957,504 2013
9   Switzerland 807,418 2022
10   Poland 716,305 2022
Rank Country GDP (PPP, Peak Year)
millions of USD
Peak Year
  European Union[255] 24,048,856 2022
1   Germany 5,316,933 2022
2   Russia 4,649,674 2022
3   United Kingdom 3,776,044 2022
4   France 3,688,323 2022
5   Turkey 3,320,994 2022
6   Italy 3,022,162 2022
7   Spain 2,215,992 2022
8   Poland 1,599,020 2022
9   Netherlands 1,226,656 2022
10   Switzerland 737,838 2022

Economic history

Industrial growth (1760–1945)

Capitalism has been dominant in the Western world since the end of feudalism.[256] From Britain, it gradually spread throughout Europe.[257] The Industrial Revolution started in Europe, specifically the United Kingdom in the late 18th century,[258] and the 19th century saw Western Europe industrialise. Economies were disrupted by the First World War, but by the beginning of the Second World War, they had recovered and were having to compete with the growing economic strength of the United States. The Second World War, again, damaged much of Europe's industries.

Cold War (1945–1991)
 
Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989
 
Eurozone (blue colour)

After the Second World War the economy of the UK was in a state of ruin,[259] and continued to suffer relative economic decline in the following decades.[260] Italy was also in a poor economic condition but regained a high level of growth by the 1950s. West Germany recovered quickly and had doubled production from pre-war levels by the 1950s.[261] France also staged a remarkable comeback enjoying rapid growth and modernisation; later on Spain, under the leadership of Franco, also recovered and the nation recorded huge unprecedented economic growth beginning in the 1960s in what is called the Spanish miracle.[262] The majority of Central and Eastern European states came under the control of the Soviet Union and thus were members of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON).[263]

The states which retained a free-market system were given a large amount of aid by the United States under the Marshall Plan.[264] The western states moved to link their economies together, providing the basis for the EU and increasing cross border trade. This helped them to enjoy rapidly improving economies, while those states in COMECON were struggling in a large part due to the cost of the Cold War. Until 1990, the European Community was expanded from 6 founding members to 12. The emphasis placed on resurrecting the West German economy led to it overtaking the UK as Europe's largest economy.

Reunification (1991–present)
 
One of Kosovo's main economical sources is mining, because it has large reserves of lead, zinc, silver, nickel, cobalt, copper, iron and bauxite.[265] Miners at the Trepča Mines in Mitrovica, Kosovo in 2011.

With the fall of communism in Central and Eastern Europe in 1991, the post-socialist states began free market reforms.

After East and West Germany were reunited in 1990, the economy of West Germany struggled as it had to support and largely rebuild the infrastructure of East Germany.

By the millennium change, the EU dominated the economy of Europe, comprising the five largest European economies of the time: Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Spain. In 1999, 12 of the 15 members of the EU joined the Eurozone replacing their former national currencies by the common euro. The three who chose to remain outside the Eurozone were the United Kingdom, Denmark, and Sweden. The European Union is now the largest economy in the world.[266][better source needed]

Figures released by Eurostat in 2009 confirmed that the Eurozone had gone into recession in 2008.[267] It impacted much of the region.[268] In 2010, fears of a sovereign debt crisis[269] developed concerning some countries in Europe, especially Greece, Ireland, Spain and Portugal.[270] As a result, measures were taken, especially for Greece, by the leading countries of the Eurozone.[271] The EU-27 unemployment rate was 10.3% in 2012.[272] For those aged 15–24 it was 22.4%.[272]

Demographics

 
Population growth in and around Europe in 2021[273]

In 2017, the population of Europe was estimated to be 742 million according to the 2022 revision of the World Population Prospects[2][3], which is slightly more than one-ninth of the world's population.[a] A century ago, Europe had nearly a quarter of the world's population.[274] The population of Europe has grown in the past century, but in other areas of the world (in particular Africa and Asia) the population has grown far more quickly.[275] Among the continents, Europe has a relatively high population density, second only to Asia. Most of Europe is in a mode of sub-replacement fertility, which means that each new(-born) generation is being less populous than the older. The most densely populated country in Europe (and in the world) is the microstate of Monaco.

Ethnic groups

Pan and Pfeil (2004) count 87 distinct "peoples of Europe", of which 33 form the majority population in at least one sovereign state, while the remaining 54 constitute ethnic minorities.[276] According to UN population projection, Europe's population may fall to about 7% of world population by 2050, or 653 million people (medium variant, 556 to 777 million in low and high variants, respectively).[275] Within this context, significant disparities exist between regions in relation to fertility rates. The average number of children per female of child-bearing age is 1.52.[277] According to some sources,[278] this rate is higher among Muslims in Europe. The UN predicts a steady population decline in Central and Eastern Europe as a result of emigration and low birth rates.[279]

Migration

 
Map showing areas of European settlement (people who claim full European descent)

Europe is home to the highest number of migrants of all global regions at 70.6 million people, the IOM's report said.[280] In 2005, the EU had an overall net gain from immigration of 1.8 million people. This accounted for almost 85% of Europe's total population growth.[281] In 2008, 696,000 persons were given citizenship of an EU27 member state, a decrease from 707,000 the previous year.[282] In 2017, approximately 825,000 persons acquired citizenship of an EU28 member state.[283] 2.4 million immigrants from non-EU countries entered the EU in 2017.[284]

Early modern emigration from Europe began with Spanish and Portuguese settlers in the 16th century,[285][286] and French and English settlers in the 17th century.[287] But numbers remained relatively small until waves of mass emigration in the 19th century, when millions of poor families left Europe.[288]

Today, large populations of European descent are found on every continent. European ancestry predominates in North America and to a lesser degree in South America (particularly in Uruguay, Argentina, Chile and Brazil, while most of the other Latin American countries also have a considerable population of European origins). Australia and New Zealand have large European-derived populations. Africa has no countries with European-derived majorities (or with the exception of Cape Verde and probably São Tomé and Príncipe, depending on context), but there are significant minorities, such as the White South Africans in South Africa. In Asia, European-derived populations, (specifically Russians), predominate in North Asia and some parts of Northern Kazakhstan.[289]

Languages

 
Distribution of major languages of Europe

Europe has about 225 indigenous languages,[290] mostly falling within three Indo-European language groups: the Romance languages, derived from the Latin of the Roman Empire; the Germanic languages, whose ancestor language came from southern Scandinavia; and the Slavic languages.[239] Slavic languages are mostly spoken in Southern, Central and Eastern Europe. Romance languages are spoken primarily in Western and Southern Europe, as well as in Switzerland in Central Europe and Romania and Moldova in Eastern Europe. Germanic languages are spoken in Western, Northern and Central Europe as well as in Gibraltar and Malta in Southern Europe.[239] Languages in adjacent areas show significant overlaps (such as in English, for example). Other Indo-European languages outside the three main groups include the Baltic group (Latvian and Lithuanian), the Celtic group (Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx, Welsh, Cornish and Breton[239]), Greek, Armenian and Albanian.

A distinct non-Indo-European family of Uralic languages (Estonian, Finnish, Hungarian, Erzya, Komi, Mari, Moksha and Udmurt) is spoken mainly in Estonia, Finland, Hungary and parts of Russia. Turkic languages include Azerbaijani, Kazakh and Turkish, in addition to smaller languages in Eastern and Southeast Europe (Balkan Gagauz Turkish, Bashkir, Chuvash, Crimean Tatar, Karachay-Balkar, Kumyk, Nogai and Tatar). Kartvelian languages (Georgian, Mingrelian and Svan) are spoken primarily in Georgia. Two other language families reside in the North Caucasus (termed Northeast Caucasian, most notably including Chechen, Avar and Lezgin; and Northwest Caucasian, most notably including Adyghe). Maltese is the only Semitic language that is official within the EU, while Basque is the only European language isolate.

Multilingualism and the protection of regional and minority languages are recognised political goals in Europe today. The Council of Europe Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and the Council of Europe's European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages set up a legal framework for language rights in Europe.

Religion

Religion in Europe according to the Global Religious Landscape survey by the Pew Forum, 2016[8]

  Christianity (76.2%)
  No religion (18.3%)
  Islam (4.9%)
  Buddhism (0.2%)
  Hinduism (0.2%)
  Folk religion (0.1%)
  Other religions (0.1%)

Historically, religion in Europe has been a major influence on European art, culture, philosophy and law. There are six patron saints of Europe venerated in Roman Catholicism, five of them so declared by Pope John Paul II between 1980 and 1999: Saints Cyril and Methodius, Bridget of Sweden, Catherine of Siena and Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein).[291][292] Benedict of Nursia had already been declared "Patron Saint of all Europe" by Pope Paul VI in 1964.[291] The largest religion in Europe is Christianity, with 76.2% of Europeans considering themselves Christians,[293] including Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and various Protestant denominations. Among Protestants, the most popular are historically state-supported European denominations such as Lutheranism, Anglicanism and the Reformed faith. Other Protestant denominations such as historically significant ones like Anabaptists were never supported by any state and thus are not so widespread, as well as these newly arriving from the United States such as Pentecostalism, Adventism, Methodism, Baptists and various Evangelical Protestants; although Methodism and Baptists both have European origins. The notion of "Europe" and the "Western World" has been intimately connected with the concept of "Christianity and Christendom"; many even attribute Christianity for being the link that created a unified European identity.[294]

Historically, Europe has been the centre and "cradle of Christian civilization".[295][296][297][298] Christianity, including the Roman Catholic Church,[299][300] has played a prominent role in the shaping of Western civilization since at least the 4th century,[301][302][303][304] and for at least a millennium and a half, Europe has been nearly equivalent to Christian culture, even though the religion was inherited from the Middle East. Christian culture was the predominant force in western civilization, guiding the course of philosophy, art and science.[305][306] In 2012 Europe had the world's largest Christian population.[8]

The second most popular religion is Islam (4.9%) concentrated mainly in the Balkans (Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina) and transcontinental countries located at the boundary of Europe and Asia (Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkey.[307] Other religions, including Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism are minority religions (though Tibetan Buddhism is the majority religion of Russia's Republic of Kalmykia). The 20th century saw the revival of Neopaganism through movements such as Wicca and Druidry.

Europe has become a relatively secular continent, with an increasing number and proportion of irreligious, atheist and agnostic people, who make up about 18.3% of Europe's population,[307] currently the largest secular population in the Western world. There are a particularly high number of self-described non-religious people in the Czech Republic, Estonia, Sweden, former East Germany and France.[308]

Major cities and urban areas

The three largest urban areas of Europe are Moscow, London and Paris. All have over 10 million residents,[309] and as such have been described as megacities.[310] While Istanbul has the highest total city population, it lies partly in Asia. 64.9% of the residents live on the European side and 35.1% on the Asian side. The next largest cities in order of population are Madrid, Saint Petersburg, Milan, Barcelona, Berlin, and Rome each having over 3 million residents.[309]

When considering the commuter belts or metropolitan areas, within Europe (for which comparable data is available) Moscow covers the largest population, followed in order by Istanbul, London, Paris, Madrid, Milan, Ruhr Area, Saint Petersburg, Rhein-Süd, Barcelona and Berlin.[311]

Culture

 
Map purportedly displaying the European continent split along cultural and state borders as proposed by the German organization Ständiger Ausschuss für geographische Namen [de] (StAGN)

"Europe" as a cultural concept is substantially derived from the shared heritage of ancient Greece and the Roman Empire and its cultures. The boundaries of Europe were historically understood as those of Christendom (or more specifically Latin Christendom), as established or defended throughout the medieval and early modern history of Europe, especially against Islam, as in the Reconquista and the Ottoman wars in Europe.[312]

This shared cultural heritage is combined by overlapping indigenous national cultures and folklores, roughly divided into Slavic, Latin (Romance) and Germanic, but with several components not part of either of these group (notably Greek, Basque and Celtic). Historically, special examples with overlapping cultures are Strasbourg with Latin (Romance) and Germanic or Trieste with Latin, Slavic and Germanic roots. Cultural contacts and mixtures shape a large part of the regional cultures of Europe. Europe is often described as "maximum cultural diversity with minimal geographical distances".

Different cultural events are organized in Europe, with the aim of bringing different cultures closer together and raising awareness of their importance, such as the European Capital of Culture, the European Region of Gastronomy, the European Youth Capital and the European Capital of Sport.

Sport

 
Football is one of the most popular sports in Europe. Camp Nou stadium in Barcelona, the largest in Europe.

Sport in Europe tends to be highly organized with many sports having professional leagues.

The origins of many of the world's most popular sports today lie in the codification of many traditional games, especially in Great Britain. However, a paradoxical feature of European sport is the remarkable extent to which local, regional and national variations continue to exist, and even in some instances to predominate.[313]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ This number includes Siberia, (about 38 million people) but excludes European Turkey (about 12 million).
  1. ^ a b
    Transnistria, internationally recognised as being a legal part of the Republic of Moldova, although de facto control is exercised by its internationally unrecognised government which declared independence from Moldova in 1990.
  2. ^
    Russia is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. The vast majority of its population (80%) lives within its European part.[314] However, only the population figure includes the entire state.
  3. ^ a b c
  4. ^ a b
    Cyprus can be considered part of Europe or Western Asia; it has strong historical and sociopolitical connections with Europe. The population and area figures refer to the entire state, including the de facto independent part Northern Cyprus which is not recognised as a sovereign nation by the vast majority of sovereign nations, nor the UN.
  5. ^
    Figures for Portugal include the Azores and Madeira archipelagos, both in Northern Atlantic.
  6. ^
    Area figure for Serbia includes Kosovo, a province that unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia on 17 February 2008, and whose sovereign status is unclear. Population and density figures are from the first results of 2011 census and are given without the disputed territory of Kosovo.
  7. ^
    Figures for France include only metropolitan France: some politically integral parts of France are geographically located outside Europe.
  8. ^
    Netherlands population for November 2014. Population and area details include European portion only: Netherlands and three entities outside Europe (Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten, in the Caribbean) constitute the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Amsterdam is the official capital, while The Hague is the administrative seat.
  9. ^
    Kazakhstan is physiographically considered a transcontinental country, mostly in Central Asia (UN region), partly in Eastern Europe, with European territory west of the Ural Mountains and Ural River. However, only the population figure refers to the entire country.
  10. ^
    Armenia can be considered part of Eastern Europe or Western Asia; it has strong historical and sociopolitical connections with Europe. The population and area figures include the entire state, respectively.
  11. ^
    Azerbaijan can be considered part of Europe or Western Asia.[315] However the population and area figures are for the entire state. This includes the exclave of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic and the region Nagorno-Karabakh that has declared, and de facto achieved, independence. Nevertheless, it is not recognised de jure by sovereign states.
  12. ^
    Georgia can be considered part of Eastern Europe or West Asia; it has strong historical and sociopolitical connections with Europe.[316] The population and area figures include Georgian estimates for Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two regions that have declared and de facto achieved independence. International recognition, however, is limited.
  13. ^
    Turkey is physiographically considered a transcontinental country, mostly in Western Asia (the Middle East) and Southeast Europe. Turkey has a small part of its territory (3%) in Southeast Europe called Turkish Thrace.[317] However, only the population figure includes the entire state.
  14. ^ a b c d
    The total figures for area and population include only European portions of transcontinental countries. The precision of these figures is compromised by the ambiguous geographical extent of Europe and the lack of references for European portions of transcontinental countries.
  15. ^
    Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia on 17 February 2008. Its sovereign status is unclear. Its population is July 2009 CIA estimate.
  16. ^ a b
    Abkhazia and South Ossetia, both of which can be considered part of Eastern Europe or West Asia[318] unilaterally declared their independence from Georgia on 25 August 1990 and 28 November 1991, respectively. Their status as sovereign nations is not recognised by a vast majority of sovereign nations, nor the UN. Population figures stated as of 2003 census and 2000 estimates, respectively.
  17. ^
    Nagorno-Karabakh, which can be considered part of Eastern Europe or West Asia, unilaterally declared its independence from Azerbaijan on 6 January 1992. Its status as a sovereign nation is not recognised by any sovereign nation, nor the UN. Population figures stated as of 2003 census and 2000 estimates, respectively.
  18. ^
    Greenland, an autonomous constituent country within the Danish Realm, is geographically a part of the continent of North America, but has been politically and culturally associated with Europe.
  19. ^ a b
    The Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic are internationally recognised as being a legal part of Ukraine, although de facto control is exercised by governments which declared independence from Ukraine in 2014.

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europe, this, article, about, continent, other, uses, disambiguation, large, peninsula, conventionally, considered, continent, right, because, great, physical, size, weight, history, traditions, also, considered, subcontinent, eurasia, located, entirely, north. This article is about the continent For other uses see Europe disambiguation Europe is a large peninsula 10 conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere Comprising the westernmost peninsulas of Eurasia 11 it shares the continental landmass of Afro Eurasia with both Africa and Asia It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north the Atlantic Ocean to the west the Mediterranean Sea to the south and Asia to the east Europe is commonly considered to be separated from Asia by the watershed of the Ural Mountains the Ural River the Caspian Sea the Greater Caucasus the Black Sea and the waterways of the Turkish Straits 12 EuropeShow national bordersHide national bordersArea10 180 000 km2 3 930 000 sq mi 1 6th a Population745 173 774 2021 3rd 2 3 Population density72 9 km2 188 sq mi 2nd GDP PPP 33 62 trillion 2022 est 2nd 4 GDP nominal 24 02 trillion 2022 est 3rd 5 GDP per capita 34 230 2022 est 3rd c 6 HDI0 845 7 ReligionsChristianity 76 2 8 No religion 18 3 8 Islam 4 9 8 Other 0 6 8 DemonymEuropeanCountriesSovereign 44 50 De facto 2 6 DependenciesExternal 5 6 Internal 3 LanguagesMost common first languages RussianGermanFrenchItalianEnglishSpanishPolishUkrainianRomanianDutchSerbo CroatianTurkishTime zonesUTC 1 to UTC 5Internet TLD eu European Union Largest citiesLargest urban areas MoscowParisLondonIstanbul b MadridSaint PetersburgMilanBarcelonaBerlinRome 9 UN M49 code150 Europe001 Worlda Figures include only European portions of transcontinental countries n b European side only Istanbul is a transcontinental city which straddles both Asia and Europe c Europe as defined by the International Monetary Fund Europe covers about 10 18 million km2 3 93 million sq mi or 2 of Earth s surface 6 8 of land area making it the second smallest continent using the seven continent model Politically Europe is divided into about fifty sovereign states of which Russia is the largest and most populous spanning 39 of the continent and comprising 15 of its population Europe had a total population of about 745 million about 10 of the world population in 2021 2 3 The European climate is largely affected by warm Atlantic currents that temper winters and summers on much of the continent even at latitudes along which the climate in Asia and North America is severe Further from the sea seasonal differences are more noticeable than close to the coast European culture is the root of Western civilisation which traces its lineage back to ancient Greece and ancient Rome 13 14 The fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD and the subsequent Migration Period marked the end of Europe s ancient history and the beginning of the Middle Ages Renaissance humanism exploration art and science led to the modern era Since the Age of Discovery started by Portugal and Spain Europe played a predominant role in global affairs Between the 16th and 20th centuries European powers colonised at various times the Americas almost all of Africa and Oceania and the majority of Asia The Age of Enlightenment the subsequent French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars shaped the continent culturally politically and economically from the end of the 17th century until the first half of the 19th century The Industrial Revolution which began in Great Britain at the end of the 18th century gave rise to radical economic cultural and social change in Western Europe and eventually the wider world Both world wars took place for the most part in Europe contributing to a decline in Western European dominance in world affairs by the mid 20th century as the Soviet Union and the United States took prominence 15 During the Cold War Europe was divided along the Iron Curtain between NATO in the West and the Warsaw Pact in the East until the Revolutions of 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall and the Dissolution of the Soviet Union In 1949 the Council of Europe was founded with the idea of unifying Europe 16 to achieve common goals and prevent future wars Further European integration by some states led to the formation of the European Union EU a separate political entity that lies between a confederation and a federation 17 The EU originated in Western Europe but has been expanding eastward since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 The currency of most countries of the European Union the euro is the most commonly used among Europeans and the EU s Schengen Area abolishes border and immigration controls between most of its member states and some non member states There exists a political movement favouring the evolution of the European Union into a single federation encompassing much of the continent Contents 1 Name 2 Definition 2 1 Contemporary definition 2 2 History of the concept 2 2 1 Early history 2 2 2 Modern definitions 3 History 3 1 Prehistory 3 2 Classical antiquity 3 3 Early Middle Ages 3 4 High and Late Middle Ages 3 5 Early modern period 3 6 18th and 19th centuries 3 7 20th century to the present 4 Geography 4 1 Climate 4 2 Geology 4 3 Flora 4 4 Fauna 5 Politics 6 List of states and territories 7 Economy 7 1 Economic history 8 Demographics 8 1 Ethnic groups 8 2 Migration 8 3 Languages 8 4 Religion 8 5 Major cities and urban areas 9 Culture 9 1 Sport 10 See also 11 Notes 12 References 13 Sources 14 External linksNameFurther information Europa consort of Zeus First map of the world according to Anaximander 6th century BC In classical Greek mythology Europa Ancient Greek Eὐrwph Eurṓpe was a Phoenician princess One view is that her name derives from the Ancient Greek elements eὐrys eurus wide broad and ὤps ōps gen ὠpos ōpos eye face countenance hence their composite Eurṓpe would mean wide gazing or broad of aspect 18 19 20 21 Broad has been an epithet of Earth herself in the reconstructed Proto Indo European religion and the poetry devoted to it 18 An alternative view is that of Robert Beekes who has argued in favour of a Pre Indo European origin for the name explaining that a derivation from eurus would yield a different toponym than Europa Beekes has located toponyms related to that of Europa in the territory of ancient Greece and localities such as that of Europos in ancient Macedonia 22 There have been attempts to connect Eurṓpe to a Semitic term for west this being either Akkadian erebu meaning to go down set said of the sun or Phoenician ereb evening west 23 which is at the origin of Arabic maghreb and Hebrew ma arav Martin Litchfield West stated that phonologically the match between Europa s name and any form of the Semitic word is very poor 24 while Beekes considers a connection to Semitic languages improbable 22 Most major world languages use words derived from Eurṓpe or Europa to refer to the continent Chinese for example uses the word Ōuzhōu 歐洲 欧洲 which is an abbreviation of the transliterated name Ōuluoba zhōu 歐羅巴洲 zhōu code zho promoted to code zh means continent a similar Chinese derived term Ōshu 欧州 is also sometimes used in Japanese such as in the Japanese name of the European Union Ōshu Rengō 欧州連合 despite the katakana Yōroppa ヨーロッパ being more commonly used In some Turkic languages the originally Persian name Frangistan land of the Franks is used casually in referring to much of Europe besides official names such as Avrupa or Evropa 25 DefinitionFurther information Boundaries between the continents of Earth Asia and Europe See also List of transcontinental countries Contemporary definition Clickable map of Europe showing one of the most commonly used continental boundaries 26 Key blue states which straddle the border between Europe and Asia green countries not geographically in Europe but closely associated with the continent Alb Andorra Austria Azer Belarus Belg Bosnia Bulgaria ChannelIs Croatia CzechRep Denmark Estonia Finland France Gib UK Germany Georgia Greece Hungary Iceland Ireland Italy IoM S Mar Kazakhstan Kos Latvia Liech Lithuania Lux Malta Moldova Mon Mont Nether N Mac Norway Svalbard Nor Poland Portugal Romania Russia Serbia Slovakia Slo Spain Sweden Switz erland Turkey Ukraine UnitedKingdom Far Dk Vat Armenia Cyprus Greenland Dk Adr iatic Sea Arctic Ocean BalticSea Aegean Sea Barents Sea Bay ofBiscay BlackSea CaspianSea CelticSea Greenland Sea Baffin Bay Gulf ofCadiz LigurianSea Mediterranean Sea NorthAtlanticOcean NorthSea NorwegianSea Strait of Gibraltar The prevalent definition of Europe as a geographical term has been in use since the mid 19th century Europe is taken to be bounded by large bodies of water to the north west and south Europe s limits to the east and north east are usually taken to be the Ural Mountains the Ural River and the Caspian Sea to the south east the Caucasus Mountains the Black Sea and the waterways connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea 27 A medieval T and O map printed by Gunther Zainer in 1472 showing the three continents as domains of the sons of Noah Asia to Sem Shem Europe to Iafeth Japheth and Africa to Cham Ham Islands are generally grouped with the nearest continental landmass hence Iceland is considered to be part of Europe while the nearby island of Greenland is usually assigned to North America although politically belonging to Denmark Nevertheless there are some exceptions based on sociopolitical and cultural differences Cyprus is closest to Anatolia or Asia Minor but is considered part of Europe politically and it is a member state of the EU Malta was considered an island of North western Africa for centuries but now it is considered to be part of Europe as well 28 Europe as used specifically in British English may also refer to Continental Europe exclusively 29 The term continent usually implies the physical geography of a large land mass completely or almost completely surrounded by water at its borders Prior to the adoption of the current convention that includes mountain divides the border between Europe and Asia had been redefined several times since its first conception in classical antiquity but always as a series of rivers seas and straits that were believed to extend an unknown distance east and north from the Mediterranean Sea without the inclusion of any mountain ranges Cartographer Herman Moll suggested in 1715 Europe was bounded by a series of partly joined waterways directed towards the Turkish straits and the Irtysh River draining into the upper part of the Ob River and the Arctic Ocean In contrast the present eastern boundary of Europe partially adheres to the Ural and Caucasus Mountains which is somewhat arbitrary and inconsistent compared to any clear cut definition of the term continent The current division of Eurasia into two continents now reflects East West cultural linguistic and ethnic differences which vary on a spectrum rather than with a sharp dividing line The geographic border between Europe and Asia does not follow any state boundaries and now only follows a few bodies of water Turkey is generally considered a transcontinental country divided entirely by water while Russia and Kazakhstan are only partly divided by waterways France the Netherlands Portugal Spain and the United Kingdom are also transcontinental or more properly intercontinental when oceans or large seas are involved in that their main land areas are in Europe while pockets of their territories are located on other continents separated from Europe by large bodies of water Spain for example has territories south of the Mediterranean Sea namely Ceuta and Melilla which are parts of Africa and share a border with Morocco According to the current convention Georgia and Azerbaijan are transcontinental countries where waterways have been completely replaced by mountains as the divide between continents History of the concept See also Boundary between Europe and Asia Early history Depiction of Europa regina Queen Europe in 1582 The first recorded usage of Eurṓpe as a geographic term is in the Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo in reference to the western shore of the Aegean Sea As a name for a part of the known world it is first used in the 6th century BCE by Anaximander and Hecataeus Anaximander placed the boundary between Asia and Europe along the Phasis River the modern Rioni River on the territory of Georgia in the Caucasus a convention still followed by Herodotus in the 5th century BCE 30 Herodotus mentioned that the world had been divided by unknown persons into three parts Europe Asia and Libya Africa with the Nile and the Phasis forming their boundaries though he also states that some considered the River Don rather than the Phasis as the boundary between Europe and Asia 31 Europe s eastern frontier was defined in the 1st century by geographer Strabo at the River Don 32 The Book of Jubilees described the continents as the lands given by Noah to his three sons Europe was defined as stretching from the Pillars of Hercules at the Strait of Gibraltar separating it from Northwest Africa to the Don separating it from Asia 33 The convention received by the Middle Ages and surviving into modern usage is that of the Roman era used by Roman era authors such as Posidonius 34 Strabo 35 and Ptolemy 36 who took the Tanais the modern Don River as the boundary The Roman Empire did not attach a strong identity to the concept of continental divisions However following the fall of the Western Roman Empire the culture that developed in its place linked to Latin and the Catholic church began to associate itself with the concept of Europe 37 The term Europe is first used for a cultural sphere in the Carolingian Renaissance of the 9th century From that time the term designated the sphere of influence of the Western Church as opposed to both the Eastern Orthodox churches and to the Islamic world A cultural definition of Europe as the lands of Latin Christendom coalesced in the 8th century signifying the new cultural condominium created through the confluence of Germanic traditions and Christian Latin culture defined partly in contrast with Byzantium and Islam and limited to northern Iberia the British Isles France Christianised western Germany the Alpine regions and northern and central Italy 38 The concept is one of the lasting legacies of the Carolingian Renaissance Europa often dubious discuss figures in the letters of Charlemagne s court scholar Alcuin 39 The transition of Europe to being a cultural term as well as a geographic one led to the borders of Europe being affected by cultural considerations in the East especially relating to areas under Byzantine Ottoman and Russian influence Such questions were affected by the positive connotations associated with the term Europe by its users Such cultural considerations were not applied to the Americas despite their conquest and settlement by European states Instead the concept of Western civilization emerged as a way of grouping together Europe and these colonies 40 Modern definitions Further information Regions of Europe and Continental Europe A New Map of Europe According to the Newest Observations 1721 by Hermann Moll draws the eastern boundary of Europe along the Don River flowing south west and the Tobol Irtysh and Ob rivers flowing north 1916 political map of Europe showing most of Moll s waterways replaced by von Strahlenberg s Ural Mountains and Freshfield s Caucasus Crest land features of a type that normally defines a subcontinent The question of defining a precise eastern boundary of Europe arises in the Early Modern period as the eastern extension of Muscovy began to include North Asia Throughout the Middle Ages and into the 18th century the traditional division of the landmass of Eurasia into two continents Europe and Asia followed Ptolemy with the boundary following the Turkish Straits the Black Sea the Kerch Strait the Sea of Azov and the Don ancient Tanais But maps produced during the 16th to 18th centuries tended to differ in how to continue the boundary beyond the Don bend at Kalach na Donu where it is closest to the Volga now joined with it by the Volga Don Canal into territory not described in any detail by the ancient geographers Around 1715 Herman Moll produced a map showing the northern part of the Ob River and the Irtysh River a major tributary of the Ob as components of a series of partly joined waterways taking the boundary between Europe and Asia from the Turkish Straits and the Don River all the way to the Arctic Ocean In 1721 he produced a more up to date map that was easier to read However his proposal to adhere to major rivers as the line of demarcation was never taken up by other geographers who were beginning to move away from the idea of water boundaries as the only legitimate divides between Europe and Asia Four years later in 1725 Philip Johan von Strahlenberg was the first to depart from the classical Don boundary He drew a new line along the Volga following the Volga north until the Samara Bend along Obshchy Syrt the drainage divide between the Volga and Ural Rivers then north and east along the latter waterway to its source in the Ural Mountains At this point he proposed that mountain ranges could be included as boundaries between continents as alternatives to nearby waterways Accordingly he drew the new boundary north along Ural Mountains rather than the nearby and parallel running Ob and Irtysh rivers 41 This was endorsed by the Russian Empire and introduced the convention that would eventually become commonly accepted However this did not come without criticism Voltaire writing in 1760 about Peter the Great s efforts to make Russia more European ignored the whole boundary question with his claim that neither Russia Scandinavia northern Germany nor Poland were fully part of Europe 37 Since then many modern analytical geographers like Halford Mackinder have declared that they see little validity in the Ural Mountains as a boundary between continents 42 The mapmakers continued to differ on the boundary between the lower Don and Samara well into the 19th century The 1745 atlas published by the Russian Academy of Sciences has the boundary follow the Don beyond Kalach as far as Serafimovich before cutting north towards Arkhangelsk while other 18th to 19th century mapmakers such as John Cary followed Strahlenberg s prescription To the south the Kuma Manych Depression was identified circa 1773 by a German naturalist Peter Simon Pallas as a valley that once connected the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea 43 44 and subsequently was proposed as a natural boundary between continents By the mid 19th century there were three main conventions one following the Don the Volga Don Canal and the Volga the other following the Kuma Manych Depression to the Caspian and then the Ural River and the third abandoning the Don altogether following the Greater Caucasus watershed to the Caspian The question was still treated as a controversy in geographical literature of the 1860s with Douglas Freshfield advocating the Caucasus crest boundary as the best possible citing support from various modern geographers 45 In Russia and the Soviet Union the boundary along the Kuma Manych Depression was the most commonly used as early as 1906 46 In 1958 the Soviet Geographical Society formally recommended that the boundary between the Europe and Asia be drawn in textbooks from Baydaratskaya Bay on the Kara Sea along the eastern foot of Ural Mountains then following the Ural River until the Mugodzhar Hills and then the Emba River and Kuma Manych Depression 47 thus placing the Caucasus entirely in Asia and the Urals entirely in Europe 48 However most geographers in the Soviet Union favoured the boundary along the Caucasus crest 49 and this became the common convention in the later 20th century although the Kuma Manych boundary remained in use in some 20th century maps Some view separation of Eurasia into Asia and Europe as a residue of Eurocentrism In physical cultural and historical diversity China and India are comparable to the entire European landmass not to a single European country 50 HistoryMain article History of Europe Prehistory Main article Prehistoric Europe Paleolithic cave paintings from Lascaux in France c 15 000 BCE Stonehenge in the United Kingdom Late Neolithic from 3000 to 2000 BCE During the 2 5 million years of the Pleistocene numerous cold phases called glacials Quaternary ice age or significant advances of continental ice sheets in Europe and North America occurred at intervals of approximately 40 000 to 100 000 years The long glacial periods were separated by more temperate and shorter interglacials which lasted about 10 000 15 000 years The last cold episode of the last glacial period ended about 10 000 years ago 51 Earth is currently in an interglacial period of the Quaternary called the Holocene 52 Homo erectus georgicus which lived roughly 1 8 million years ago in Georgia is the earliest hominin to have been discovered in Europe 53 Other hominin remains dating back roughly 1 million years have been discovered in Atapuerca Spain 54 Neanderthal man named after the Neandertal valley in Germany appeared in Europe 150 000 years ago 115 000 years ago it is found already in the territory of present day Poland 55 and disappeared from the fossil record about 40 000 years ago 56 with their final refuge being the Iberian Peninsula The Neanderthals were supplanted by modern humans Cro Magnons who appeared in Europe around 43 000 to 40 000 years ago 57 Homo sapiens arrived in Europe around 54 000 years ago some 10 000 years earlier than previously thought 58 The earliest sites in Europe dated 48 000 years ago are Riparo Mochi Italy Geissenklosterle Germany and Isturitz France 59 60 The European Neolithic period marked by the cultivation of crops and the raising of livestock increased numbers of settlements and the widespread use of pottery began around 7000 BCE in Greece and the Balkans probably influenced by earlier farming practices in Anatolia and the Near East 61 It spread from the Balkans along the valleys of the Danube and the Rhine Linear Pottery culture and along the Mediterranean coast Cardial culture Between 4500 and 3000 BCE these central European neolithic cultures developed further to the west and the north transmitting newly acquired skills in producing copper artifacts In Western Europe the Neolithic period was characterised not by large agricultural settlements but by field monuments such as causewayed enclosures burial mounds and megalithic tombs 62 The Corded Ware cultural horizon flourished at the transition from the Neolithic to the Chalcolithic During this period giant megalithic monuments such as the Megalithic Temples of Malta and Stonehenge were constructed throughout Western and Southern Europe 63 64 The modern native populations of Europe largely descend from three distinct lineages Mesolithic hunter gatherers a derivative of the Cro Magnon population of Europe Neolithic farmers who migrated from Anatolia during the Neolithic Revolution and Yamnaya pastoralists who expanded into Europe in the context of the Indo European migrations 65 66 67 The European Bronze Age began c 3200 BCE in Greece with the Minoan civilisation on Crete the first advanced civilisation in Europe 68 The Minoans were followed by the Myceneans who collapsed suddenly around 1200 BCE ushering the European Iron Age 69 Iron Age colonisation by the Greeks and Phoenicians gave rise to early Mediterranean cities Early Iron Age Italy and Greece from around the 8th century BCE gradually gave rise to historical Classical antiquity whose beginning is sometimes dated to 776 BCE the year of the first Olympic Games 70 Classical antiquity Main article Classical antiquity See also Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome The Parthenon in Athens 432 BCE Ancient Greece was the founding culture of Western civilisation Western democratic and rationalist culture are often attributed to Ancient Greece 71 The Greek city state the polis was the fundamental political unit of classical Greece 71 In 508 BCE Cleisthenes instituted the world s first democratic system of government in Athens 72 The Greek political ideals were rediscovered in the late 18th century by European philosophers and idealists Greece also generated many cultural contributions in philosophy humanism and rationalism under Aristotle Socrates and Plato in history with Herodotus and Thucydides in dramatic and narrative verse starting with the epic poems of Homer 73 in drama with Sophocles and Euripides in medicine with Hippocrates and Galen and in science with Pythagoras Euclid and Archimedes 74 75 76 In the course of the 5th century BCE several of the Greek city states would ultimately check the Achaemenid Persian advance in Europe through the Greco Persian Wars considered a pivotal moment in world history 77 as the 50 years of peace that followed are known as Golden Age of Athens the seminal period of ancient Greece that laid many of the foundations of Western civilisation Animation showing the growth and division of the Roman Empire years CE Greece was followed by Rome which left its mark on law politics language engineering architecture government and many more key aspects in western civilisation 71 By 200 BCE Rome had conquered Italy and over the following two centuries it conquered Greece and Hispania Spain and Portugal the North African coast much of the Middle East Gaul France and Belgium and Britannia England and Wales Expanding from their base in central Italy beginning in the third century BCE the Romans gradually expanded to eventually rule the entire Mediterranean Basin and Western Europe by the turn of the millennium The Roman Republic ended in 27 BCE when Augustus proclaimed the Roman Empire The two centuries that followed are known as the pax romana a period of unprecedented peace prosperity and political stability in most of Europe 78 The empire continued to expand under emperors such as Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius who spent time on the Empire s northern border fighting Germanic Pictish and Scottish tribes 79 80 Christianity was legalised by Constantine I in 313 CE after three centuries of imperial persecution Constantine also permanently moved the capital of the empire from Rome to the city of Byzantium modern day Istanbul which was renamed Constantinople in his honour in 330 CE Christianity became the sole official religion of the empire in 380 CE and in 391 392 CE the emperor Theodosius outlawed pagan religions 81 This is sometimes considered to mark the end of antiquity alternatively antiquity is considered to end with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE the closure of the pagan Platonic Academy of Athens in 529 CE 82 or the rise of Islam in the early 7th century CE During most of its existence the Byzantine Empire was one of the most powerful economic cultural and military forces in Europe 83 Early Middle Ages Main articles Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages See also Dark Ages and Age of Migrations Europe c 650 Charlemagne s empire in 814 Francia Tributaries During the decline of the Roman Empire Europe entered a long period of change arising from what historians call the Age of Migrations There were numerous invasions and migrations amongst the Ostrogoths Visigoths Goths Vandals Huns Franks Angles Saxons Slavs Avars Bulgars and later on the Vikings Pechenegs Cumans and Magyars 78 Renaissance thinkers such as Petrarch would later refer to this as the Dark Ages 84 Isolated monastic communities were the only places to safeguard and compile written knowledge accumulated previously apart from this very few written records survive and much literature philosophy mathematics and other thinking from the classical period disappeared from Western Europe though they were preserved in the east in the Byzantine Empire 85 While the Roman empire in the west continued to decline Roman traditions and the Roman state remained strong in the predominantly Greek speaking Eastern Roman Empire also known as the Byzantine Empire During most of its existence the Byzantine Empire was the most powerful economic cultural and military force in Europe Emperor Justinian I presided over Constantinople s first golden age he established a legal code that forms the basis of many modern legal systems funded the construction of the Hagia Sophia and brought the Christian church under state control 86 From the 7th century onwards as the Byzantines and neighbouring Sasanid Persians were severely weakened due to the protracted centuries lasting and frequent Byzantine Sasanian wars the Muslim Arabs began to make inroads into historically Roman territory taking the Levant and North Africa and making inroads into Asia Minor In the mid 7th century following the Muslim conquest of Persia Islam penetrated into the Caucasus region 87 Over the next centuries Muslim forces took Cyprus Malta Crete Sicily and parts of southern Italy 88 Between 711 and 720 most of the lands of the Visigothic Kingdom of Iberia was brought under Muslim rule save for small areas in the north west Asturias and largely Basque regions in the Pyrenees This territory under the Arabic name Al Andalus became part of the expanding Umayyad Caliphate The unsuccessful second siege of Constantinople 717 weakened the Umayyad dynasty and reduced their prestige The Umayyads were then defeated by the Frankish leader Charles Martel at the Battle of Poitiers in 732 which ended their northward advance In the remote regions of north western Iberia and the middle Pyrenees the power of the Muslims in the south was scarcely felt It was here that the foundations of the Christian kingdoms of Asturias Leon and Galicia were laid and from where the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula would start However no coordinated attempt would be made to drive the Moors out The Christian kingdoms were mainly focussed on their own internal power struggles As a result the Reconquista took the greater part of eight hundred years in which period a long list of Alfonsos Sanchos Ordonos Ramiros Fernandos and Bermudos would be fighting their Christian rivals as much as the Muslim invaders Viking raids and division of the Frankish Empire at the Treaty of Verdun in 843 During the Dark Ages the Western Roman Empire fell under the control of various tribes The Germanic and Slav tribes established their domains over Western and Eastern Europe respectively 89 Eventually the Frankish tribes were united under Clovis I 90 Charlemagne a Frankish king of the Carolingian dynasty who had conquered most of Western Europe was anointed Holy Roman Emperor by the Pope in 800 This led in 962 to the founding of the Holy Roman Empire which eventually became centred in the German principalities of central Europe 91 East Central Europe saw the creation of the first Slavic states and the adoption of Christianity c 1000 CE The powerful West Slavic state of Great Moravia spread its territory all the way south to the Balkans reaching its largest territorial extent under Svatopluk I and causing a series of armed conflicts with East Francia Further south the first South Slavic states emerged in the late 7th and 8th century and adopted Christianity the First Bulgarian Empire the Serbian Principality later Kingdom and Empire and the Duchy of Croatia later Kingdom of Croatia To the East Kievan Rus expanded from its capital in Kiev to become the largest state in Europe by the 10th century In 988 Vladimir the Great adopted Orthodox Christianity as the religion of state 92 93 Further East Volga Bulgaria became an Islamic state in the 10th century but was eventually absorbed into Russia several centuries later 94 High and Late Middle Ages Main articles High Middle Ages Late Middle Ages and Middle Ages See also Medieval demography The maritime republics of medieval Italy reestablished contacts between Europe Asia and Africa with extensive trade networks and colonies across the Mediterranean and had an essential role in the Crusades 95 96 The period between the year 1000 and 1250 is known as the High Middle Ages followed by the Late Middle Ages until c 1500 During the High Middle Ages the population of Europe experienced significant growth culminating in the Renaissance of the 12th century Economic growth together with the lack of safety on the mainland trading routes made possible the development of major commercial routes along the coast of the Mediterranean and Baltic Seas The growing wealth and independence acquired by some coastal cities gave the Maritime Republics a leading role in the European scene The Middle Ages on the mainland were dominated by the two upper echelons of the social structure the nobility and the clergy Feudalism developed in France in the Early Middle Ages and soon spread throughout Europe 97 A struggle for influence between the nobility and the monarchy in England led to the writing of the Magna Carta and the establishment of a parliament 98 The primary source of culture in this period came from the Roman Catholic Church Through monasteries and cathedral schools the Church was responsible for education in much of Europe 97 Tancred of Sicily and Philip II of France during the Third Crusade 1189 1192 The Papacy reached the height of its power during the High Middle Ages An East West Schism in 1054 split the former Roman Empire religiously with the Eastern Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire and the Roman Catholic Church in the former Western Roman Empire In 1095 Pope Urban II called for a crusade against Muslims occupying Jerusalem and the Holy Land 99 In Europe itself the Church organised the Inquisition against heretics In the Iberian Peninsula the Reconquista concluded with the fall of Granada in 1492 ending over seven centuries of Islamic rule in the south western peninsula 100 In the east a resurgent Byzantine Empire recaptured Crete and Cyprus from the Muslims and reconquered the Balkans Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest city in Europe from the 9th to the 12th centuries with a population of approximately 400 000 101 The Empire was weakened following the defeat at Manzikert and was weakened considerably by the sack of Constantinople in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 Although it would recover Constantinople in 1261 Byzantium fell in 1453 when Constantinople was taken by the Ottoman Empire 111 112 113 The sacking of Suzdal by Batu Khan in 1238 during the Mongol invasion of Europe In the 11th and 12th centuries constant incursions by nomadic Turkic tribes such as the Pechenegs and the Cuman Kipchaks caused a massive migration of Slavic populations to the safer heavily forested regions of the north and temporarily halted the expansion of the Rus state to the south and east 114 Like many other parts of Eurasia these territories were overrun by the Mongols 115 The invaders who became known as Tatars were mostly Turkic speaking peoples under Mongol suzerainty They established the state of the Golden Horde with headquarters in Crimea which later adopted Islam as a religion and ruled over modern day southern and central Russia for more than three centuries 116 117 After the collapse of Mongol dominions the first Romanian states principalities emerged in the 14th century Moldavia and Walachia Previously these territories were under the successive control of Pechenegs and Cumans 118 From the 12th to the 15th centuries the Grand Duchy of Moscow grew from a small principality under Mongol rule to the largest state in Europe overthrowing the Mongols in 1480 and eventually becoming the Tsardom of Russia The state was consolidated under Ivan III the Great and Ivan the Terrible steadily expanding to the east and south over the next centuries The Great Famine of 1315 1317 was the first crisis that would strike Europe in the late Middle Ages 119 The period between 1348 and 1420 witnessed the heaviest loss The population of France was reduced by half 120 121 Medieval Britain was afflicted by 95 famines 122 and France suffered the effects of 75 or more in the same period 123 Europe was devastated in the mid 14th century by the Black Death one of the most deadly pandemics in human history which killed an estimated 25 million people in Europe alone a third of the European population at the time 124 The plague had a devastating effect on Europe s social structure it induced people to live for the moment as illustrated by Giovanni Boccaccio in The Decameron 1353 It was a serious blow to the Roman Catholic Church and led to increased persecution of Jews beggars and lepers 125 The plague is thought to have returned every generation with varying virulence and mortalities until the 18th century 126 During this period more than 100 plague epidemics swept across Europe 127 Early modern period Main article Early modern period See also Renaissance Protestant Reformation Scientific Revolution and Age of Discovery The School of Athens by Raphael 1511 Contemporaries such as Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci centre are portrayed as classical scholars of the Renaissance The Renaissance was a period of cultural change originating in Florence and later spreading to the rest of Europe The rise of a new humanism was accompanied by the recovery of forgotten classical Greek and Arabic knowledge from monastic libraries often translated from Arabic into Latin 128 129 130 The Renaissance spread across Europe between the 14th and 16th centuries it saw the flowering of art philosophy music and the sciences under the joint patronage of royalty the nobility the Roman Catholic Church and an emerging merchant class 131 132 133 Patrons in Italy including the Medici family of Florentine bankers and the Popes in Rome funded prolific quattrocento and cinquecento artists such as Raphael Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci 134 135 Political intrigue within the Church in the mid 14th century caused the Western Schism During this forty year period two popes one in Avignon and one in Rome claimed rulership over the Church Although the schism was eventually healed in 1417 the papacy s spiritual authority had suffered greatly 136 In the 15th century Europe started to extend itself beyond its geographic frontiers Spain and Portugal the greatest naval powers of the time took the lead in exploring the world 137 138 Exploration reached the Southern Hemisphere in the Atlantic and the Southern tip of Africa Christopher Columbus reached the New World in 1492 and Vasco da Gama opened the ocean route to the East linking the Atlantic and Indian Oceans in 1498 The Portuguese born explorer Ferdinand Magellan reached Asia westward across the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans in a Spanish expedition resulting in the first circumnavigation of the globe completed by the Spaniard Juan Sebastian Elcano 1519 1522 Soon after the Spanish and Portuguese began establishing large global empires in the Americas Asia Africa and Oceania 139 France the Netherlands and England soon followed in building large colonial empires with vast holdings in Africa the Americas and Asia In 1588 a Spanish armada failed to invade England A year later England tried unsuccessfully to invade Spain allowing Philip II of Spain to maintain his dominant war capacity in Europe This English disaster also allowed the Spanish fleet to retain its capability to wage war for the next decades However two more Spanish armadas failed to invade England 2nd Spanish Armada and 3rd Spanish Armada 140 141 142 143 Habsburg dominions in the centuries following their partition by Charles V Holy Roman Emperor The principal military base of Philip II in Europe was the Spanish road stretching from the Netherlands to the Duchy of Milan 144 The Church s power was further weakened by the Protestant Reformation in 1517 when German theologian Martin Luther nailed his Ninety five Theses criticising the selling of indulgences to the church door He was subsequently excommunicated in the papal bull Exsurge Domine in 1520 and his followers were condemned in the 1521 Diet of Worms which divided German princes between Protestant and Roman Catholic faiths 145 Religious fighting and warfare spread with Protestantism 146 The plunder of the empires of the Americas allowed Spain to finance religious persecution in Europe for over a century 147 The Thirty Years War 1618 1648 crippled the Holy Roman Empire and devastated much of Germany killing between 25 and 40 percent of its population 148 In the aftermath of the Peace of Westphalia France rose to predominance within Europe 149 The defeat of the Ottoman Turks at the Battle of Vienna in 1683 marked the historic end of Ottoman expansion into Europe 150 The 17th century in central and parts of eastern Europe was a period of general decline 151 the region experienced more than 150 famines in a 200 year period between 1501 and 1700 152 From the Union of Krewo 1385 east central Europe was dominated by the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania The hegemony of the vast Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth had ended with the devastation brought by the Second Northern War Deluge and subsequent conflicts 153 the state itself was partitioned and ceased to exist at the end of the 18th century 154 From the 15th to 18th centuries when the disintegrating khanates of the Golden Horde were conquered by Russia Tatars from the Crimean Khanate frequently raided Eastern Slavic lands to capture slaves 155 Further east the Nogai Horde and Kazakh Khanate frequently raided the Slavic speaking areas of contemporary Russia and Ukraine for hundreds of years until the Russian expansion and conquest of most of northern Eurasia i e Eastern Europe Central Asia and Siberia The Renaissance and the New Monarchs marked the start of an Age of Discovery a period of exploration invention and scientific development 156 Among the great figures of the Western scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries were Copernicus Kepler Galileo and Isaac Newton 157 According to Peter Barrett It is widely accepted that modern science arose in the Europe of the 17th century towards the end of the Renaissance introducing a new understanding of the natural world 128 18th and 19th centuries Main article Modern history See also Industrial Revolution French Revolution and Age of Enlightenment The national boundaries within Europe set by the Congress of Vienna The Seven Years War brought to an end the Old System of alliances in Europe Consequently when the American Revolutionary War turned into a global war between 1778 and 1783 Britain found itself opposed by a strong coalition of European powers and lacking any substantial ally 158 The Age of Enlightenment was a powerful intellectual movement during the 18th century promoting scientific and reason based thoughts 159 160 161 Discontent with the aristocracy and clergy s monopoly on political power in France resulted in the French Revolution and the establishment of the First Republic as a result of which the monarchy and many of the nobility perished during the initial reign of terror 162 Napoleon Bonaparte rose to power in the aftermath of the French Revolution and established the First French Empire that during the Napoleonic Wars grew to encompass large parts of Europe before collapsing in 1815 with the Battle of Waterloo 163 164 Napoleonic rule resulted in the further dissemination of the ideals of the French Revolution including that of the nation state as well as the widespread adoption of the French models of administration law and education 165 166 167 The Congress of Vienna convened after Napoleon s downfall established a new balance of power in Europe centred on the five Great Powers the UK France Prussia Austria and Russia 168 This balance would remain in place until the Revolutions of 1848 during which liberal uprisings affected all of Europe except for Russia and the UK These revolutions were eventually put down by conservative elements and few reforms resulted 169 The year 1859 saw the unification of Romania as a nation state from smaller principalities In 1867 the Austro Hungarian empire was formed 1871 saw the unifications of both Italy and Germany as nation states from smaller principalities 170 In parallel the Eastern Question grew more complex ever since the Ottoman defeat in the Russo Turkish War 1768 1774 As the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire seemed imminent the Great Powers struggled to safeguard their strategic and commercial interests in the Ottoman domains The Russian Empire stood to benefit from the decline whereas the Habsburg Empire and Britain perceived the preservation of the Ottoman Empire to be in their best interests Meanwhile the Serbian revolution 1804 and Greek War of Independence 1821 marked the beginning of the end of Ottoman rule in the Balkans which ended with the Balkan Wars in 1912 1913 171 Formal recognition of the de facto independent principalities of Montenegro Serbia and Romania ensued at the Congress of Berlin in 1878 Marshall s Temple Works 1840 the Industrial Revolution started in Great Britain The Industrial Revolution started in Great Britain in the last part of the 18th century and spread throughout Europe The invention and implementation of new technologies resulted in rapid urban growth mass employment and the rise of a new working class 172 Reforms in social and economic spheres followed including the first laws on child labour the legalisation of trade unions 173 and the abolition of slavery 174 In Britain the Public Health Act of 1875 was passed which significantly improved living conditions in many British cities 175 Europe s population increased from about 100 million in 1700 to 400 million by 1900 176 The last major famine recorded in Western Europe the Great Famine of Ireland caused death and mass emigration of millions of Irish people 177 In the 19th century 70 million people left Europe in migrations to various European colonies abroad and to the United States 178 Demographic growth meant that by 1900 Europe s share of the world s population was 25 179 20th century to the present Main articles Modern era and History of Europe See also World War I Great Depression Interwar period Second World War Cold War and History of the European Union Map of European colonial empires throughout the world in 1914 Two world wars and an economic depression dominated the first half of the 20th century The First World War was fought between 1914 and 1918 It started when Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated by the Yugoslav nationalist 180 Gavrilo Princip 181 Most European nations were drawn into the war which was fought between the Entente Powers France Belgium Serbia Portugal Russia the United Kingdom and later Italy Greece Romania and the United States and the Central Powers Austria Hungary Germany Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire The war left more than 16 million civilians and military dead 182 Over 60 million European soldiers were mobilised from 1914 to 1918 183 Map depicting the military alliances of the First World War in 1914 1918 Russia was plunged into the Russian Revolution which threw down the Tsarist monarchy and replaced it with the communist Soviet Union 184 leading also to the independence of many former Russian governorates such as Finland Estonia Latvia and Lithuania as new European countries 185 Austria Hungary and the Ottoman Empire collapsed and broke up into separate nations and many other nations had their borders redrawn The Treaty of Versailles which officially ended the First World War in 1919 was harsh towards Germany upon whom it placed full responsibility for the war and imposed heavy sanctions 186 Excess deaths in Russia over the course of the First World War and the Russian Civil War including the postwar famine amounted to a combined total of 18 million 187 In 1932 1933 under Stalin s leadership confiscations of grain by the Soviet authorities contributed to the second Soviet famine which caused millions of deaths 188 surviving kulaks were persecuted and many sent to Gulags to do forced labour Stalin was also responsible for the Great Purge of 1937 38 in which the NKVD executed 681 692 people 189 millions of people were deported and exiled to remote areas of the Soviet Union 190 Serbian war efforts 1914 1918 cost the country one quarter of its population 191 192 193 194 195 Nazi Germany began the devastating Second World War in Europe by its leader Adolf Hitler Here Hitler on the right with his closest ally the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in 1940 The social revolutions sweeping through Russia also affected other European nations following The Great War in 1919 with the Weimar Republic in Germany and the First Austrian Republic in 1922 with Mussolini s one party fascist government in the Kingdom of Italy and in Ataturk s Turkish Republic adopting the Western alphabet and state secularism Economic instability caused in part by debts incurred in the First World War and loans to Germany played havoc in Europe in the late 1920s and 1930s This and the Wall Street Crash of 1929 brought about the worldwide Great Depression Helped by the economic crisis social instability and the threat of communism fascist movements developed throughout Europe placing Adolf Hitler in power of what became Nazi Germany 196 197 In 1933 Hitler became the leader of Germany and began to work towards his goal of building Greater Germany Germany re expanded and took back the Saarland and Rhineland in 1935 and 1936 In 1938 Austria became a part of Germany following the Anschluss Later that year following the Munich Agreement signed by Germany France the United Kingdom and Italy Germany annexed the Sudetenland which was a part of Czechoslovakia inhabited by ethnic Germans and in early 1939 the remainder of Czechoslovakia was split into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia controlled by Germany and the Slovak Republic At the time the United Kingdom and France preferred a policy of appeasement With tensions mounting between Germany and Poland over the future of Danzig the Germans turned to the Soviets and signed the Molotov Ribbentrop Pact which allowed the Soviets to invade the Baltic states and parts of Poland and Romania Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939 prompting France and the United Kingdom to declare war on Germany on 3 September opening the European Theatre of the Second World War 198 199 200 The Soviet invasion of Poland started on 17 September and Poland fell soon thereafter On 24 September the Soviet Union attacked the Baltic countries and on 30 November Finland the latter of which was followed by the devastating Winter War for the Red Army 201 The British hoped to land at Narvik and send troops to aid Finland but their primary objective in the landing was to encircle Germany and cut the Germans off from Scandinavian resources Around the same time Germany moved troops into Denmark The Phoney War continued In May 1940 Germany attacked France through the Low Countries France capitulated in June 1940 By August Germany had begun a bombing offensive against the United Kingdom but failed to convince the Britons to give up 202 In 1941 Germany invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa 203 On 7 December 1941 Japan s attack on Pearl Harbor drew the United States into the conflict as allies of the British Empire and other allied forces 204 205 The Big Three at the Yalta Conference in 1945 seated from the left Winston Churchill Franklin D Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin After the staggering Battle of Stalingrad in 1943 the German offensive in the Soviet Union turned into a continual fallback The Battle of Kursk which involved the largest tank battle in history was the last major German offensive on the Eastern Front In June 1944 British and American forces invaded France in the D Day landings opening a new front against Germany Berlin finally fell in 1945 ending the Second World War in Europe The war was the largest and most destructive in human history with 60 million dead across the world 206 More than 40 million people in Europe had died as a result of the Second World War 207 including between 11 and 17 million people who perished during the Holocaust 208 The Soviet Union lost around 27 million people mostly civilians during the war about half of all Second World War casualties 209 By the end of the Second World War Europe had more than 40 million refugees 210 211 212 Several post war expulsions in Central and Eastern Europe displaced a total of about 20 million people 213 The Schuman Declaration led to the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community It began the integration process of the European Union 9 May 1950 at the French Foreign Ministry The First World War and especially the Second World War diminished the eminence of Western Europe in world affairs After the Second World War the map of Europe was redrawn at the Yalta Conference and divided into two blocs the Western countries and the communist Eastern bloc separated by what was later called by Winston Churchill an Iron Curtain The United States and Western Europe established the NATO alliance and later the Soviet Union and Central Europe established the Warsaw Pact 214 Particular hot spots after the Second World War were Berlin and Trieste whereby the Free Territory of Trieste founded in 1947 with the UN was dissolved in 1954 and 1975 respectively The Berlin blockade in 1948 and 1949 and the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 were one of the great international crises of the Cold War 215 216 217 The two new superpowers the United States and the Soviet Union became locked in a fifty year long Cold War centred on nuclear proliferation At the same time decolonisation which had already started after the First World War gradually resulted in the independence of most of the European colonies in Asia and Africa 15 Flag of Europe adopted by the Council of Europe in 1955 as the flag for the whole of Europe 218 In the 1980s the reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev and the Solidarity movement in Poland weakened the previously rigid communist system The opening of the Iron Curtain at the Pan European Picnic then set in motion a peaceful chain reaction at the end of which the Eastern bloc the Warsaw Pact and other communist states collapsed and the Cold War ended 219 220 221 Germany was reunited after the symbolic fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the maps of Central and Eastern Europe were redrawn once more 222 This made old previously interrupted cultural and economic relationships possible and previously isolated cities such as Berlin Prague Vienna Budapest and Trieste were now again in the centre of Europe 196 223 224 225 European integration also grew after the Second World War In 1949 the Council of Europe was founded following a speech by Sir Winston Churchill with the idea of unifying Europe 16 to achieve common goals It includes all European states except for Belarus Russia 226 and Vatican City The Treaty of Rome in 1957 established the European Economic Community between six Western European states with the goal of a unified economic policy and common market 227 In 1967 the EEC European Coal and Steel Community and Euratom formed the European Community which in 1993 became the European Union The EU established a parliament court and central bank and introduced the euro as a unified currency 228 Between 2004 and 2013 more Central European countries began joining expanding the EU to 28 European countries and once more making Europe a major economical and political centre of power 229 However the United Kingdom withdrew from the EU on 31 January 2020 as a result of a June 2016 referendum on EU membership 230 The Russo Ukrainian conflict which has been ongoing since 2014 steeply escalated when Russia launched a full scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 marking the largest humanitarian and refugee crisis in Europe since the Second World War 231 and the Yugoslav Wars 232 GeographyMain article Geography of Europe Map of populous Europe and surrounding regions showing physical political and population characteristics as per 2018 Europe makes up the western fifth of the Eurasian landmass 27 It has a higher ratio of coast to landmass than any other continent or subcontinent 233 Its maritime borders consist of the Arctic Ocean to the north the Atlantic Ocean to the west and the Mediterranean Black and Caspian Seas to the south 234 Land relief in Europe shows great variation within relatively small areas The southern regions are more mountainous while moving north the terrain descends from the high Alps Pyrenees and Carpathians through hilly uplands into broad low northern plains which are vast in the east This extended lowland is known as the Great European Plain and at its heart lies the North German Plain An arc of uplands also exists along the north western seaboard which begins in the western parts of the islands of Britain and Ireland and then continues along the mountainous fjord cut spine of Norway This description is simplified Subregions such as the Iberian Peninsula and the Italian Peninsula contain their own complex features as does mainland Central Europe itself where the relief contains many plateaus river valleys and basins that complicate the general trend Sub regions like Iceland Britain and Ireland are special cases The former is a land unto itself in the northern ocean that is counted as part of Europe while the latter are upland areas that were once joined to the mainland until rising sea levels cut them off Climate Main article Climate of Europe Biomes of Europe and surrounding regions tundra alpine tundra taiga montane forest temperate broadleaf forest mediterranean forest temperate steppe dry steppe Europe lies mainly in the temperate climate zones being subjected to prevailing westerlies The climate is milder in comparison to other areas of the same latitude around the globe due to the influence of the Gulf Stream 235 The Gulf Stream is nicknamed Europe s central heating because it makes Europe s climate warmer and wetter than it would otherwise be The Gulf Stream not only carries warm water to Europe s coast but also warms up the prevailing westerly winds that blow across the continent from the Atlantic Ocean Therefore the average temperature throughout the year of Aveiro is 16 C 61 F while it is only 13 C 55 F in New York City which is almost on the same latitude bordering the same ocean Berlin Germany Calgary Canada and Irkutsk in far south eastern Russia lie on around the same latitude January temperatures in Berlin average around 8 C 14 F higher than those in Calgary and they are almost 22 C 40 F higher than average temperatures in Irkutsk 235 The large water masses of the Mediterranean Sea which equalise the temperatures on an annual and daily average are also of particular importance The water of the Mediterranean extends from the Sahara desert to the Alpine arc in its northernmost part of the Adriatic Sea near Trieste 236 In general Europe is not just colder towards the north compared to the south but it also gets colder from the west towards the east The climate is more oceanic in the west and less so in the east This can be illustrated by the following table of average temperatures at locations roughly following the 64th 60th 55th 50th 45th and 40th latitudes None of them is located at high altitude most of them are close to the sea location approximate latitude and longitude coldest month average hottest month average and annual average temperatures in degrees C Koppen Geiger climate classification map for Europe 237 Temperatures in C Location Latitude Longitude Coldestmonth Hottestmonth AnnualaverageReykjavik 64 N 22 W 0 1 11 2 4 7Umea 64 N 20 E 6 2 16 0 3 9Oulu 65 N 25 5 E 9 6 16 5 2 7Arkhangelsk 64 5 N 40 5 E 12 7 16 3 1 3Lerwick 60 N 1 W 3 5 12 4 7 4Stockholm 59 5 N 19 E 1 7 18 4 7 4Helsinki 60 N 25 E 4 7 17 8 5 9Saint Petersburg 60 N 30 E 5 8 18 8 5 8Edinburgh 55 5 N 3 W 4 2 15 3 9 3Copenhagen 55 5 N 12 E 1 4 18 1 9 1Klaipeda 55 5 N 21 E 1 3 17 9 8 0Moscow 55 5 N 30 E 6 5 19 2 5 8Isles of Scilly 50 N 6 W 7 9 16 9 11 8Brussels 50 5 N 4 E 3 3 18 4 10 5Krakow 50 N 20 E 2 0 19 2 8 7Kyiv 50 5 N 30 E 3 5 20 5 8 4Bordeaux 45 N 0 6 6 21 4 13 8Venice 45 5 N 12 E 3 3 23 0 13 0Belgrade 45 N 20 E 1 4 23 0 12 5Astrakhan 46 N 48 E 3 7 25 6 10 5Coimbra 40 N 8 W 9 9 21 9 16 0Valencia 39 5 N 0 11 9 26 1 18 3Naples 40 5 N 14 E 8 7 24 7 15 9Istanbul 41 N 29 E 6 0 23 8 11 4 238 It is notable how the average temperatures for the coldest month as well as the annual average temperatures drop from the west to the east For instance Edinburgh is warmer than Belgrade during the coldest month of the year although Belgrade is around 10 of latitude farther south Geology Main articles Geology of Europe and Geological history of Europe Surficial geology of Europe The geological history of Europe traces back to the formation of the Baltic Shield Fennoscandia and the Sarmatian craton both around 2 25 billion years ago followed by the Volgo Uralia shield the three together leading to the East European craton Baltica which became a part of the supercontinent Columbia Around 1 1 billion years ago Baltica and Arctica as part of the Laurentia block became joined to Rodinia later resplitting around 550 million years ago to reform as Baltica Around 440 million years ago Euramerica was formed from Baltica and Laurentia a further joining with Gondwana then leading to the formation of Pangea Around 190 million years ago Gondwana and Laurasia split apart due to the widening of the Atlantic Ocean Finally and very soon afterwards Laurasia itself split up again into Laurentia North America and the Eurasian continent The land connection between the two persisted for a considerable time via Greenland leading to interchange of animal species From around 50 million years ago rising and falling sea levels have determined the actual shape of Europe and its connections with continents such as Asia Europe s present shape dates to the late Tertiary period about five million years ago 239 The geology of Europe is hugely varied and complex and gives rise to the wide variety of landscapes found across the continent from the Scottish Highlands to the rolling plains of Hungary 240 Europe s most significant feature is the dichotomy between highland and mountainous Southern Europe and a vast partially underwater northern plain ranging from Ireland in the west to the Ural Mountains in the east These two halves are separated by the mountain chains of the Pyrenees and Alps Carpathians The northern plains are delimited in the west by the Scandinavian Mountains and the mountainous parts of the British Isles Major shallow water bodies submerging parts of the northern plains are the Celtic Sea the North Sea the Baltic Sea complex and Barents Sea The northern plain contains the old geological continent of Baltica and so may be regarded geologically as the main continent while peripheral highlands and mountainous regions in the south and west constitute fragments from various other geological continents Most of the older geology of western Europe existed as part of the ancient microcontinent Avalonia Flora Land use map of Europe with arable farmland yellow forest dark green pasture light green and tundra or bogs in the north dark yellow Having lived side by side with agricultural peoples for millennia Europe s animals and plants have been profoundly affected by the presence and activities of man With the exception of Fennoscandia and northern Russia few areas of untouched wilderness are currently found in Europe except for various national parks The main natural vegetation cover in Europe is mixed forest The conditions for growth are very favourable In the north the Gulf Stream and North Atlantic Drift warm the continent Southern Europe could be described as having a warm but mild climate There are frequent summer droughts in this region Mountain ridges also affect the conditions Some of these Alps Pyrenees are oriented east west and allow the wind to carry large masses of water from the ocean in the interior Others are oriented south north Scandinavian Mountains Dinarides Carpathians Apennines and because the rain falls primarily on the side of mountains that is oriented towards the sea forests grow well on this side while on the other side the conditions are much less favourable Few corners of mainland Europe have not been grazed by livestock at some point in time and the cutting down of the preagricultural forest habitat caused disruption to the original plant and animal ecosystems Floristic regions of Europe and neighbouring areas according to Wolfgang Frey and Rainer Losch Possibly 80 to 90 percent of Europe was once covered by forest 241 It stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the Arctic Ocean Although over half of Europe s original forests disappeared through the centuries of deforestation Europe still has over one quarter of its land area as forest such as the broadleaf and mixed forests taiga of Scandinavia and Russia mixed rainforests of the Caucasus and the Cork oak forests in the western Mediterranean During recent times deforestation has been slowed and many trees have been planted However in many cases monoculture plantations of conifers have replaced the original mixed natural forest because these grow quicker The plantations now cover vast areas of land but offer poorer habitats for many European forest dwelling species which require a mixture of tree species and diverse forest structure The amount of natural forest in Western Europe is just 2 3 or less while in its Western Russia its 5 10 The European country with the smallest percentage of forested area is Iceland 1 while the most forested country is Finland 77 242 In temperate Europe mixed forest with both broadleaf and coniferous trees dominate The most important species in central and western Europe are beech and oak In the north the taiga is a mixed spruce pine birch forest further north within Russia and extreme northern Scandinavia the taiga gives way to tundra as the Arctic is approached In the Mediterranean many olive trees have been planted which are very well adapted to its arid climate Mediterranean Cypress is also widely planted in southern Europe The semi arid Mediterranean region hosts much scrub forest A narrow east west tongue of Eurasian grassland the steppe extends westwards from Ukraine and southern Russia and ends in Hungary and traverses into taiga to the north Fauna Main article Fauna of Europe Biogeographic regions of Europe and bordering regions Glaciation during the most recent ice age and the presence of man affected the distribution of European fauna As for the animals in many parts of Europe most large animals and top predator species have been hunted to extinction The woolly mammoth was extinct before the end of the Neolithic period Today wolves carnivores and bears omnivores are endangered Once they were found in most parts of Europe However deforestation and hunting caused these animals to withdraw further and further By the Middle Ages the bears habitats were limited to more or less inaccessible mountains with sufficient forest cover Today the brown bear lives primarily in the Balkan peninsula Scandinavia and Russia a small number also persist in other countries across Europe Austria Pyrenees etc but in these areas brown bear populations are fragmented and marginalised because of the destruction of their habitat In addition polar bears may be found on Svalbard a Norwegian archipelago far north of Scandinavia The wolf the second largest predator in Europe after the brown bear can be found primarily in Central and Eastern Europe and in the Balkans with a handful of packs in pockets of Western Europe Scandinavia Spain etc Once roaming the great temperate forests of Eurasia European bison now live in nature preserves in Bialowieza Forest on the border between Poland and Belarus 243 244 European wild cat foxes especially the red fox jackal and different species of martens hedgehogs different species of reptiles like snakes such as vipers and grass snakes and amphibians different birds owls hawks and other birds of prey Important European herbivores are snails larvae fish different birds and mammals like rodents deer and roe deer boars and living in the mountains marmots steinbocks chamois among others A number of insects such as the small tortoiseshell butterfly add to the biodiversity 245 The extinction of the dwarf hippos and dwarf elephants has been linked to the earliest arrival of humans on the islands of the Mediterranean 246 Sea creatures are also an important part of European flora and fauna The sea flora is mainly phytoplankton Important animals that live in European seas are zooplankton molluscs echinoderms different crustaceans squids and octopuses fish dolphins and whales Biodiversity is protected in Europe through the Council of Europe s Bern Convention which has also been signed by the European Community as well as non European states PoliticsMain article Politics of Europe See also List of sovereign states and dependent territories in Europe International organisations in Europe Regions of Europe and European integration A clickable Euler diagram file showing the relationships between various multinational European organisations and agreements vte The political map of Europe is substantially derived from the re organisation of Europe following the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 The prevalent form of government in Europe is parliamentary democracy in most cases in the form of Republic in 1815 the prevalent form of government was still the Monarchy Europe s remaining eleven monarchies 247 are constitutional European integration is the process of political legal economic and in some cases social and cultural integration of European states as it has been pursued by the powers sponsoring the Council of Europe since the end of the Second World War The European Union has been the focus of economic integration on the continent since its foundation in 1993 More recently the Eurasian Economic Union has been established as a counterpart comprising former Soviet states 27 European states are members of the politico economic European Union 26 of the border free Schengen Area and 19 of the monetary union Eurozone Among the smaller European organisations are the Nordic Council the Benelux the Baltic Assembly and the Visegrad Group List of states and territoriesMain articles List of sovereign states and dependent territories in Europe and Area and population of European countries The list below includes all internationally recognized sovereign countries falling even partially under any common geographical or political definitions of Europe Arms Flag Name Area km2 Population Populationdensity per km2 Capital Name s in official language s Albania 28 748 2 876 591 98 5 Tirana Shqiperia Andorra 468 77 281 179 8 Andorra la Vella Andorra Armenia j 29 743 2 924 816 101 5 Yerevan Հայաստան Hayastan Austria 83 858 8 823 054 104 Vienna Osterreich Azerbaijan k 86 600 9 911 646 113 Baku Azǝrbaycan Belarus 207 560 9 504 700 45 8 Minsk Belarus Belarus Belgium 30 528 11 358 357 372 06 Brussels Belgie Belgique Belgien Bosnia and Herzegovina 51 129 3 531 159 68 97 Sarajevo Bosna i Hercegovina Bosna i Hercegovina Bulgaria 110 910 7 101 859 64 9 Sofia Blgariya Bǎlgariya Croatia 56 594 3 871 833 68 4 Zagreb Hrvatska Cyprus d 9 251 1 170 125 123 4 Nicosia Kypros Kypros Kibris Czech Republic 78 866 10 610 947 134 Prague Cesko Denmark 43 094 5 748 796 133 9 Copenhagen Danmark Estonia 45 226 1 328 439 30 5 Tallinn Eesti Finland 338 455 5 509 717 16 Helsinki Suomi Finland France g 547 030 67 348 000 116 Paris France Georgia l 69 700 3 718 200 53 5 Tbilisi საქართველო Sakartvelo Germany 357 168 82 800 000 232 Berlin Deutschland Greece 131 957 10 297 760 82 Athens Ellada Ellada Hungary 93 030 9 797 561 105 3 Budapest Magyarorszag Iceland 103 000 350 710 3 2 Reykjavik Island Ireland 70 280 4 761 865 67 7 Dublin Eire Ireland Italy 301 338 60 589 445 201 3 Rome Italia Kazakhstan i 148 000 17 987 736 6 49 Astana Қazakstan Qazaqstan Latvia 64 589 1 907 675 29 Riga Latvija Liechtenstein 160 38 111 227 Vaduz Liechtenstein Lithuania 65 300 2 800 667 45 8 Vilnius Lietuva Luxembourg 2 586 602 005 233 7 Luxembourg Letzebuerg Luxemburg Luxembourg Malta 316 445 426 1 410 Valletta Malta Moldova a 33 846 3 434 547 101 5 Chișinău Moldova Monaco 2 020 38 400 18 713 Monaco Monaco Montenegro 13 812 642 550 45 0 Podgorica Crna Gora Crna Gora Netherlands h 41 543 17 271 990 414 9 Amsterdam Nederland North Macedonia 25 713 2 103 721 80 1 Skopje Severna Makedoniјa Severna Makedonija Norway 385 203 5 295 619 15 8 Oslo Norge Noreg Norga Poland 312 685 38 422 346 123 5 Warsaw Polska Portugal e 92 212 10 379 537 115 Lisbon Portugal Romania 238 397 18 999 642 84 4 Bucharest Romania Russia b 3 969 100 144 526 636 8 4 Moscow Rossiya Rossiya San Marino 61 2 33 285 520 San Marino San Marino Serbia f 88 361 7 040 272 91 1 Belgrade Srbija Srbiјa Slovakia 49 035 5 435 343 111 0 Bratislava Slovensko Slovenia 20 273 2 066 880 101 8 Ljubljana Slovenija Spain 505 990 46 698 151 92 Madrid Espana Sweden 450 295 10 151 588 22 5 Stockholm Sverige Switzerland 41 285 8 401 120 202 Bern Schweiz Suisse Svizzera Svizra Turkey m 23 764 84 680 273 106 7 Ankara Turkiye Ukraine s 603 628 42 418 235 73 8 Kyiv Ukrayina Ukraina United Kingdom 244 820 66 040 229 270 7 London United Kingdom Vatican City 0 44 1 000 2 272 Vatican City Citta del Vaticano Civitas VaticanaTotal 50 10 180 000 n 743 000 000 n 73Within the above mentioned states are several de facto independent countries with limited to no international recognition None of them are members of the UN Symbol Flag Name Area km2 Population Population density per km2 Capital Abkhazia p 8 660 243 206 28 Sukhumi Artsakh q 11 458 150 932 12 Stepanakert Kosovo o 10 908 1 920 079 159 Pristina Northern Cyprus d 3 355 313 626 93 Nicosia South Ossetia p 3 900 53 532 13 7 Tskhinvali Transnistria a 4 163 475 665 114 TiraspolSeveral dependencies and similar territories with broad autonomy are also found within or close to Europe This includes Aland an autonomous county of Finland two autonomous territories of the Kingdom of Denmark other than Denmark proper three Crown Dependencies and two British Overseas Territories Svalbard is also included due to its unique status within Norway although it is not autonomous Not included are the three countries of the United Kingdom with devolved powers and the two Autonomous Regions of Portugal which despite having a unique degree of autonomy are not largely self governing in matters other than international affairs Areas with little more than a unique tax status such as the Canary Islands and Heligoland are also not included for this reason Symbol Flag Name Sovereignstate Area km2 Population Populationdensity per km2 Capital Aland Finland 1 580 29 489 18 36 Mariehamn Bailiwick of Guernsey c UK 78 65 849 844 0 St Peter Port Bailiwick of Jersey c UK 118 2 100 080 819 Saint Helier Faroe Islands Denmark 1 399 50 778 35 2 Torshavn Gibraltar UK 6 7 32 194 4 328 Gibraltar Greenland Denmark r 2 166 086 55 877 0 028 Nuuk Isle of Man c UK 572 83 314 148 Douglas Svalbard Norway 61 022 2 667EconomyMain articles Economy of Europe List of sovereign states in Europe by GDP nominal and List of sovereign states in Europe by GDP PPP GDP PPP per capita of European countries in 2021 gt 60 000 50 000 60 000 40 000 50 000 30 000 40 000 20 000 30 000 10 000 20 000 As a continent the economy of Europe is currently the largest on Earth and it is the richest region as measured by assets under management with over 32 7 trillion compared to North America s 27 1 trillion in 2008 248 In 2009 Europe remained the wealthiest region Its 37 1 trillion in assets under management represented one third of the world s wealth It was one of several regions where wealth surpassed its precrisis year end peak 249 As with other continents Europe has a large variation of wealth among its countries The richer states tend to be in the West followed by Central Europeans while some of the Eastern Europe economies are still emerging from the collapse of the Soviet Union and the breakup of Yugoslavia The model of the Blue Banana was designed as an economic geographic representation of the respective economic power of the regions which was further developed into the Golden Banana or Blue Star The trade between East and West as well as towards Asia which had been disrupted for a long time by the two world wars new borders and the Cold War increased sharply after 1989 In addition there is new impetus from the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative across the Suez Canal towards Africa and Asia 250 The European Union a political entity composed of 27 European states comprises the largest single economic area in the world Nineteen EU countries share the euro as a common currency Five European countries rank in the top ten of the world s largest national economies in GDP PPP This includes ranks according to the CIA Germany 6 Russia 7 the United Kingdom 10 France 11 and Italy 13 251 There is huge disparity between many European countries in terms of their income The richest in terms of nominal GDP is Monaco with its US 185 829 per capita 2018 and the poorest is Ukraine with its US 3 659 per capita 2019 252 Monaco is the richest country in terms of GDP per capita in the world according to the World Bank report As a whole Europe s GDP per capita is US 21 767 according to a 2016 International Monetary Fund assessment 253 Rank Country GDP nominal Peak Year millions of USD Peak Year European Union 254 19 226 235 20081 Germany 4 262 767 20212 United Kingdom 3 198 470 20223 France 2 957 425 20214 Italy 2 408 391 20085 Russia 2 288 428 20136 Spain 1 631 685 20087 Netherlands 1 013 520 20218 Turkey 957 504 20139 Switzerland 807 418 202210 Poland 716 305 2022Rank Country GDP PPP Peak Year millions of USD Peak Year European Union 255 24 048 856 20221 Germany 5 316 933 20222 Russia 4 649 674 20223 United Kingdom 3 776 044 20224 France 3 688 323 20225 Turkey 3 320 994 20226 Italy 3 022 162 20227 Spain 2 215 992 20228 Poland 1 599 020 20229 Netherlands 1 226 656 202210 Switzerland 737 838 2022 Economic history Industrial growth 1760 1945 Capitalism has been dominant in the Western world since the end of feudalism 256 From Britain it gradually spread throughout Europe 257 The Industrial Revolution started in Europe specifically the United Kingdom in the late 18th century 258 and the 19th century saw Western Europe industrialise Economies were disrupted by the First World War but by the beginning of the Second World War they had recovered and were having to compete with the growing economic strength of the United States The Second World War again damaged much of Europe s industries Cold War 1945 1991 Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 Eurozone blue colour After the Second World War the economy of the UK was in a state of ruin 259 and continued to suffer relative economic decline in the following decades 260 Italy was also in a poor economic condition but regained a high level of growth by the 1950s West Germany recovered quickly and had doubled production from pre war levels by the 1950s 261 France also staged a remarkable comeback enjoying rapid growth and modernisation later on Spain under the leadership of Franco also recovered and the nation recorded huge unprecedented economic growth beginning in the 1960s in what is called the Spanish miracle 262 The majority of Central and Eastern European states came under the control of the Soviet Union and thus were members of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance COMECON 263 The states which retained a free market system were given a large amount of aid by the United States under the Marshall Plan 264 The western states moved to link their economies together providing the basis for the EU and increasing cross border trade This helped them to enjoy rapidly improving economies while those states in COMECON were struggling in a large part due to the cost of the Cold War Until 1990 the European Community was expanded from 6 founding members to 12 The emphasis placed on resurrecting the West German economy led to it overtaking the UK as Europe s largest economy Reunification 1991 present One of Kosovo s main economical sources is mining because it has large reserves of lead zinc silver nickel cobalt copper iron and bauxite 265 Miners at the Trepca Mines in Mitrovica Kosovo in 2011 With the fall of communism in Central and Eastern Europe in 1991 the post socialist states began free market reforms After East and West Germany were reunited in 1990 the economy of West Germany struggled as it had to support and largely rebuild the infrastructure of East Germany By the millennium change the EU dominated the economy of Europe comprising the five largest European economies of the time Germany the United Kingdom France Italy and Spain In 1999 12 of the 15 members of the EU joined the Eurozone replacing their former national currencies by the common euro The three who chose to remain outside the Eurozone were the United Kingdom Denmark and Sweden The European Union is now the largest economy in the world 266 better source needed Figures released by Eurostat in 2009 confirmed that the Eurozone had gone into recession in 2008 267 It impacted much of the region 268 In 2010 fears of a sovereign debt crisis 269 developed concerning some countries in Europe especially Greece Ireland Spain and Portugal 270 As a result measures were taken especially for Greece by the leading countries of the Eurozone 271 The EU 27 unemployment rate was 10 3 in 2012 272 For those aged 15 24 it was 22 4 272 DemographicsMain article Demographics of Europe See also List of European countries by population and Ageing of Europe Population growth in and around Europe in 2021 273 In 2017 the population of Europe was estimated to be 742 million according to the 2022 revision of the World Population Prospects 2 3 which is slightly more than one ninth of the world s population a A century ago Europe had nearly a quarter of the world s population 274 The population of Europe has grown in the past century but in other areas of the world in particular Africa and Asia the population has grown far more quickly 275 Among the continents Europe has a relatively high population density second only to Asia Most of Europe is in a mode of sub replacement fertility which means that each new born generation is being less populous than the older The most densely populated country in Europe and in the world is the microstate of Monaco Ethnic groups Main article Ethnic groups in Europe Further information Genetic history of Europe Pan and Pfeil 2004 count 87 distinct peoples of Europe of which 33 form the majority population in at least one sovereign state while the remaining 54 constitute ethnic minorities 276 According to UN population projection Europe s population may fall to about 7 of world population by 2050 or 653 million people medium variant 556 to 777 million in low and high variants respectively 275 Within this context significant disparities exist between regions in relation to fertility rates The average number of children per female of child bearing age is 1 52 277 According to some sources 278 this rate is higher among Muslims in Europe The UN predicts a steady population decline in Central and Eastern Europe as a result of emigration and low birth rates 279 Migration Main articles Immigration to Europe and European diaspora Map showing areas of European settlement people who claim full European descent Europe is home to the highest number of migrants of all global regions at 70 6 million people the IOM s report said 280 In 2005 the EU had an overall net gain from immigration of 1 8 million people This accounted for almost 85 of Europe s total population growth 281 In 2008 696 000 persons were given citizenship of an EU27 member state a decrease from 707 000 the previous year 282 In 2017 approximately 825 000 persons acquired citizenship of an EU28 member state 283 2 4 million immigrants from non EU countries entered the EU in 2017 284 Early modern emigration from Europe began with Spanish and Portuguese settlers in the 16th century 285 286 and French and English settlers in the 17th century 287 But numbers remained relatively small until waves of mass emigration in the 19th century when millions of poor families left Europe 288 Today large populations of European descent are found on every continent European ancestry predominates in North America and to a lesser degree in South America particularly in Uruguay Argentina Chile and Brazil while most of the other Latin American countries also have a considerable population of European origins Australia and New Zealand have large European derived populations Africa has no countries with European derived majorities or with the exception of Cape Verde and probably Sao Tome and Principe depending on context but there are significant minorities such as the White South Africans in South Africa In Asia European derived populations specifically Russians predominate in North Asia and some parts of Northern Kazakhstan 289 Languages Main article Languages of Europe Distribution of major languages of Europe Europe has about 225 indigenous languages 290 mostly falling within three Indo European language groups the Romance languages derived from the Latin of the Roman Empire the Germanic languages whose ancestor language came from southern Scandinavia and the Slavic languages 239 Slavic languages are mostly spoken in Southern Central and Eastern Europe Romance languages are spoken primarily in Western and Southern Europe as well as in Switzerland in Central Europe and Romania and Moldova in Eastern Europe Germanic languages are spoken in Western Northern and Central Europe as well as in Gibraltar and Malta in Southern Europe 239 Languages in adjacent areas show significant overlaps such as in English for example Other Indo European languages outside the three main groups include the Baltic group Latvian and Lithuanian the Celtic group Irish Scottish Gaelic Manx Welsh Cornish and Breton 239 Greek Armenian and Albanian A distinct non Indo European family of Uralic languages Estonian Finnish Hungarian Erzya Komi Mari Moksha and Udmurt is spoken mainly in Estonia Finland Hungary and parts of Russia Turkic languages include Azerbaijani Kazakh and Turkish in addition to smaller languages in Eastern and Southeast Europe Balkan Gagauz Turkish Bashkir Chuvash Crimean Tatar Karachay Balkar Kumyk Nogai and Tatar Kartvelian languages Georgian Mingrelian and Svan are spoken primarily in Georgia Two other language families reside in the North Caucasus termed Northeast Caucasian most notably including Chechen Avar and Lezgin and Northwest Caucasian most notably including Adyghe Maltese is the only Semitic language that is official within the EU while Basque is the only European language isolate Multilingualism and the protection of regional and minority languages are recognised political goals in Europe today The Council of Europe Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and the Council of Europe s European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages set up a legal framework for language rights in Europe Religion Main article Religion in Europe Religion in Europe according to the Global Religious Landscape survey by the Pew Forum 2016 8 Christianity 76 2 No religion 18 3 Islam 4 9 Buddhism 0 2 Hinduism 0 2 Folk religion 0 1 Other religions 0 1 Historically religion in Europe has been a major influence on European art culture philosophy and law There are six patron saints of Europe venerated in Roman Catholicism five of them so declared by Pope John Paul II between 1980 and 1999 Saints Cyril and Methodius Bridget of Sweden Catherine of Siena and Teresa Benedicta of the Cross Edith Stein 291 292 Benedict of Nursia had already been declared Patron Saint of all Europe by Pope Paul VI in 1964 291 The largest religion in Europe is Christianity with 76 2 of Europeans considering themselves Christians 293 including Catholic Eastern Orthodox and various Protestant denominations Among Protestants the most popular are historically state supported European denominations such as Lutheranism Anglicanism and the Reformed faith Other Protestant denominations such as historically significant ones like Anabaptists were never supported by any state and thus are not so widespread as well as these newly arriving from the United States such as Pentecostalism Adventism Methodism Baptists and various Evangelical Protestants although Methodism and Baptists both have European origins The notion of Europe and the Western World has been intimately connected with the concept of Christianity and Christendom many even attribute Christianity for being the link that created a unified European identity 294 Historically Europe has been the centre and cradle of Christian civilization 295 296 297 298 Christianity including the Roman Catholic Church 299 300 has played a prominent role in the shaping of Western civilization since at least the 4th century 301 302 303 304 and for at least a millennium and a half Europe has been nearly equivalent to Christian culture even though the religion was inherited from the Middle East Christian culture was the predominant force in western civilization guiding the course of philosophy art and science 305 306 In 2012 Europe had the world s largest Christian population 8 The second most popular religion is Islam 4 9 concentrated mainly in the Balkans Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina and transcontinental countries located at the boundary of Europe and Asia Azerbaijan Kazakhstan and Turkey 307 Other religions including Judaism Hinduism and Buddhism are minority religions though Tibetan Buddhism is the majority religion of Russia s Republic of Kalmykia The 20th century saw the revival of Neopaganism through movements such as Wicca and Druidry Europe has become a relatively secular continent with an increasing number and proportion of irreligious atheist and agnostic people who make up about 18 3 of Europe s population 307 currently the largest secular population in the Western world There are a particularly high number of self described non religious people in the Czech Republic Estonia Sweden former East Germany and France 308 Major cities and urban areas Further information List of European cities by population within city limits The three largest urban areas of Europe are Moscow London and Paris All have over 10 million residents 309 and as such have been described as megacities 310 While Istanbul has the highest total city population it lies partly in Asia 64 9 of the residents live on the European side and 35 1 on the Asian side The next largest cities in order of population are Madrid Saint Petersburg Milan Barcelona Berlin and Rome each having over 3 million residents 309 When considering the commuter belts or metropolitan areas within Europe for which comparable data is available Moscow covers the largest population followed in order by Istanbul London Paris Madrid Milan Ruhr Area Saint Petersburg Rhein Sud Barcelona and Berlin 311 European megacities Moscow London Paris Istanbul b CultureMain article Culture of Europe Further information European folklore and European art Map purportedly displaying the European continent split along cultural and state borders as proposed by the German organization Standiger Ausschuss fur geographische Namen de StAGN Europe as a cultural concept is substantially derived from the shared heritage of ancient Greece and the Roman Empire and its cultures The boundaries of Europe were historically understood as those of Christendom or more specifically Latin Christendom as established or defended throughout the medieval and early modern history of Europe especially against Islam as in the Reconquista and the Ottoman wars in Europe 312 This shared cultural heritage is combined by overlapping indigenous national cultures and folklores roughly divided into Slavic Latin Romance and Germanic but with several components not part of either of these group notably Greek Basque and Celtic Historically special examples with overlapping cultures are Strasbourg with Latin Romance and Germanic or Trieste with Latin Slavic and Germanic roots Cultural contacts and mixtures shape a large part of the regional cultures of Europe Europe is often described as maximum cultural diversity with minimal geographical distances Different cultural events are organized in Europe with the aim of bringing different cultures closer together and raising awareness of their importance such as the European Capital of Culture the European Region of Gastronomy the European Youth Capital and the European Capital of Sport Sport This section is an excerpt from Sport in Europe edit Football is one of the most popular sports in Europe Camp Nou stadium in Barcelona the largest in Europe Sport in Europe tends to be highly organized with many sports having professional leagues The origins of many of the world s most popular sports today lie in the codification of many traditional games especially in Great Britain However a paradoxical feature of European sport is the remarkable extent to which local regional and national variations continue to exist and even in some instances to predominate 313 See also Europe portalMain articles List of Europe related articles and Outline of Europe HistoryBaltica Genetic history of Europe Prehistoric Europe Classical antiquity Middle Ages Early modern Europe Modernity History of EuropePoliticsEurodistrict Euroregion Flags of Europe List of sovereign states by date of formation Names of European cities in different languages OSCE countries statistics European Union as a potential superpowerDemographicsArea and population of European countries European Union statistics List of European cities by population within city limits Largest cities of the EU List of urban areas in the European Union List of cities in Europe List of metropolitan areas in Europe List of villages in Europe Pan European identityEconomicsEconomy of the European Union Financial and social rankings of European countries Healthcare in Europe Telecommunications in Europe List of European television stations List of European countries by GDP nominal CultureEuropean Capital of Culture European Region of Gastronomy European Youth CapitalSportsEuropean GamesNotes This number includes Siberia about 38 million people but excludes European Turkey about 12 million a b Transnistria internationally recognised as being a legal part of the Republic of Moldova although de facto control is exercised by its internationally unrecognised government which declared independence from Moldova in 1990 Russia is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia The vast majority of its population 80 lives within its European part 314 However only the population figure includes the entire state a b c Guernsey the Isle of Man and Jersey are Crown Dependencies of the United Kingdom Other Channel Islands legislated by the Bailiwick of Guernsey include Alderney and Sark a b Cyprus can be considered part of Europe or Western Asia it has strong historical and sociopolitical connections with Europe The population and area figures refer to the entire state including the de facto independent part Northern Cyprus which is not recognised as a sovereign nation by the vast majority of sovereign nations nor the UN Figures for Portugal include the Azores and Madeira archipelagos both in Northern Atlantic Area figure for Serbia includes Kosovo a province that unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia on 17 February 2008 and whose sovereign status is unclear Population and density figures are from the first results of 2011 census and are given without the disputed territory of Kosovo Figures for France include only metropolitan France some politically integral parts of France are geographically located outside Europe Netherlands population for November 2014 Population and area details include European portion only Netherlands and three entities outside Europe Aruba Curacao and Sint Maarten in the Caribbean constitute the Kingdom of the Netherlands Amsterdam is the official capital while The Hague is the administrative seat Kazakhstan is physiographically considered a transcontinental country mostly in Central Asia UN region partly in Eastern Europe with European territory west of the Ural Mountains and Ural River However only the population figure refers to the entire country Armenia can be considered part of Eastern Europe or Western Asia it has strong historical and sociopolitical connections with Europe The population and area figures include the entire state respectively Azerbaijan can be considered part of Europe or Western Asia 315 However the population and area figures are for the entire state This includes the exclave of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic and the region Nagorno Karabakh that has declared and de facto achieved independence Nevertheless it is not recognised de jure by sovereign states Georgia can be considered part of Eastern Europe or West Asia it has strong historical and sociopolitical connections with Europe 316 The population and area figures include Georgian estimates for Abkhazia and South Ossetia two regions that have declared and de facto achieved independence International recognition however is limited Turkey is physiographically considered a transcontinental country mostly in Western Asia the Middle East and Southeast Europe Turkey has a small part of its territory 3 in Southeast Europe called Turkish Thrace 317 However only the population figure includes the entire state a b c d The total figures for area and population include only European portions of transcontinental countries The precision of these figures is compromised by the ambiguous geographical extent of Europe and the lack of references for European portions of transcontinental countries Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia on 17 February 2008 Its sovereign status is unclear Its population is July 2009 CIA estimate a b Abkhazia and South Ossetia both of which can be considered part of Eastern Europe or West Asia 318 unilaterally declared their independence from Georgia on 25 August 1990 and 28 November 1991 respectively Their status as sovereign nations is not recognised by a vast majority of sovereign nations nor the UN Population figures stated as of 2003 census and 2000 estimates respectively Nagorno Karabakh which can be considered part of Eastern Europe or West Asia unilaterally declared its independence from Azerbaijan on 6 January 1992 Its status as a sovereign nation is not recognised by any sovereign nation nor the UN Population figures stated as of 2003 census and 2000 estimates respectively Greenland an autonomous constituent country within the Danish Realm is geographically a part of the continent of North America but has been politically and culturally associated with Europe a b The Donetsk People s Republic and Luhansk People s Republic are internationally recognised as being a legal part of Ukraine although de facto control is exercised by governments which declared independence from Ukraine in 2014 References Largest Countries In Europe 2020 worldpopulationreview com Archived from the original on 8 July 2022 Retrieved 30 July 2022 a b c World Population Prospects 2022 population un org United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division Retrieved 17 July 2022 a b c World Population Prospects 2022 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Britannica Archived from the original on 30 March 2019 Retrieved 30 July 2022 National Geographic Atlas of the World 7th ed Washington DC National Geographic 1999 ISBN 978 0 7922 7528 2 Europe pp 68 69 Asia pp 90 91 A commonly accepted division between Asia and Europe is formed by the Ural Mountains Ural River Caspian Sea Caucasus Mountains and the Black Sea with its outlets the Bosporus and Dardanelles Lewis amp Wigen 1997 p 226harvnb error no target CITEREFLewisWigen1997 help Covert Kim 2011 Ancient Greece Birthplace of Democracy Capstone p 5 ISBN 978 1 4296 6831 6 Archived from the original on 27 July 2022 Retrieved 30 July 2022 Ancient Greece is often called the cradle of western civilization Ideas from literature and science also have their roots in ancient Greece a b National Geographic 534 a b History of the European Union 1945 59 european union europa eu Archived from the original on 23 April 2022 Retrieved 16 April 2022 The European union a federation or a confederation PDF 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