EUROPE 



2098 



EUROPE 



History of Europe 



To give a detailed history of a great con- 

 tinent in a few brief paragraphs would be 

 impossible, and it is, moreover, unnecessary, 

 for the history of each country is given in a 

 separate article in these volumes. But there 

 are certain movements which have affected 

 the continent as a whole, or a large part of 

 it, which are worth noting here. 



Ancient Times. Though the earliest civiliza- 

 tion of Europe undoubtedly came from Asia, 

 crossing from Phoenicia by way of the islands 

 of the Aegean, the Greeks developed it to a 

 point which it had never before reached. In- 

 deed, in many respects it has never been sur- 

 passed in all the centuries that have followed. 

 From the very first, civilization showed that 

 trend which Bishop Berkeley described so 

 long afterward in his famous epigram: 



Westward the course of empire takes its way : 

 and the lands along the Mediterranean were 

 the first in which it developed. After Greece, 

 with its ideal of beauty a well-rounded beauty 

 which demanded that body, mind and the 

 aesthetic sense be trained came Rome, with 

 its emphasis on strength, or power. The Ro- 

 mans invented no new forms of government 

 the Greeks had anticipated every form which 

 Europe has since known and they made no 

 advance in art and little in literature ; but they 

 did excel the Greeks in their genius for organ- 

 ization and for the formulation of law. "Of 

 all European history, Rome is the center," says 

 the historian Gibbon, and it is true that a 

 comprehension of the institutions and the 

 political history of the later nations is impos- 

 sible without a knowledge of the great work 

 of Rome. In its most flourishing period the 

 Roman Empire included not only Italy but 

 Greece, Spain, Portugal, France, Switzerland. 

 Albania, Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey, the British 

 Isles, Belgium, Holland, Hungary, and much 

 of Germany, Austria and Rumania, and the 

 unity thus established made possible that 

 spread of Christianity which has had so great 

 an influence on the development of Europe. 



With the decline of the Roman Empire there 

 began a troubled time a period of migration 

 among the northern tribes. The Saxons and 

 Angles established themselves in Britain, the 

 Franks in Gaul (France), the Ostrogoths and 

 Lombards in Italy and the Visigoths in Spain. 



The Medieval Period. The establishment by 

 Charlemagne* (771-814) of a great Germanic em- 

 pire (see CHARLEMAGNE; HOLY ROMAN EM- 



PIRE) which included present-day France, Switz- 

 erland, Belgium and Holland, and much of 

 Austria, Italy and Germany, was an event of 

 great significance, but the state which he had 

 created did not endure beyond his time, and 

 its breaking up was really the foundation of 

 the kingdoms of France and Germany. 



Meanwhile, the Christians of Europe had 

 come into contact with the Saracens, enthu- 

 siasts of another faith who were attempting 

 to sweep over Europe. Held back from West- 

 ern Europe, these latter still had a weapon 

 against the Christians in their possession of 

 the Holy Land, and to wrest this from them 

 the nations of Europe organized successive 

 crusades (see CRUSADES) ; these failed in their 

 primary purpose, but were of the utmost im- 

 portance in acquainting Europeans with the 

 civilization and the science of the East. In 

 Eastern Europe the Ottoman Turks had gained 

 foothold by capture of Adrianople in 1356, and 

 this, together with the unsettled conditions at 

 Constantinople, which was finally taken by the 

 Turks in 1453, gave a strong impulse to learn- 

 ing in Western Europe, because it drove into 

 exile the learned Greeks, with their store of 

 precious manuscripts from the past. 



Modern Europe. The transition from the 

 medieval to the modern world did not occur 

 in any definite year, but gradually, during a 

 period extending roughly from the thirteenth 

 to the sixteenth century. In these centuries 

 the ideas and habits of men, their relation to 

 the world about them and to one another, 

 underwent a radical change. There was an 

 awakening in almost every department of life. 

 A great revival of art and letters occurred. 

 The printing press was invented; America was 

 discovered in 1492; the Reformation made 

 men's minds alive to religion and laid the 

 foundation for a new type of intellectual free- 

 dom. First one nation, then another, held 

 first rank in Europe; Spain, then France, then 

 England became prominent, and in the mean- 

 time two new states, Prussia and Russia, were 

 increasing their strength and territory. Noth- 

 ing in all history is more interesting than the 

 accounts of the beginnings of all these modern 

 states the struggles through which they found 

 themselves. 



By the end of the eighteenth century most 

 of them were fairly well established, but the 

 struggles continued. There was the French 

 Revolution (which see), which involved all 



