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132-666: Under the treaty, which was signed on 6 April 1948, the Soviets sought to deter Western or Allied Powers from attacking the Soviet Union through Finnish territory, and the Finns sought to increase Finland's political independence from the Soviet Union. It thus ensured Finland's survival as a liberal democracy in close proximity to strategic Soviet regions, such as the Kola Peninsula and

264-494: A Hegelian "end of history". Huntington believed that while the age of ideology had ended, the world had reverted only to a normal state of affairs characterized by cultural conflict. In his thesis, he argued that the primary axis of conflict in the future will be along cultural and religious lines. Postnationalism is the process or trend by which nation states and national identities lose their importance relative to supranational and global entities. Several factors contribute to

396-502: A Western and an Eastern one, each with their own emperors, capitals, and governments, although ostensibly they still belonged to one formal Empire. The Western Roman Empire provinces eventually were replaced by Northern European Germanic ruled kingdoms in the 5th century due to civil wars, corruption, and devastating Germanic invasions from such tribes as the Huns , Goths , the Franks and

528-471: A defined territory and organized under an independent government; a sovereign political state.... The word "nation" is sometimes used as synonym for: Thus the phrase "nations of the world" could be referring to the top-level governments (as in the name for the United Nations ), various large geographical territories, or various large ethnic groups of the planet. Depending on the meaning of "nation" used,

660-445: A fully modern political nationalism rooted in the model of biblical nationalism . In a 2013 article "Biblical nationalism and the sixteenth-century states", Diana Muir Appelbaum expands Gorski's argument to apply to a series of new, Protestant, sixteenth-century nation states. A similar, albeit broader, argument was made by Anthony D. Smith in his books, Chosen Peoples: Sacred Sources of National Identity and Myths and Memories of

792-641: A linear development of the West can be traced from Ancient Greece and Rome , while others argue that such a projection constructs a false genealogy. A geographical concept of the West started to take shape in the 4th century CE when Constantine , the first Christian Roman emperor, divided the Roman Empire between the Greek East and Latin West . The East Roman Empire , later called the Byzantine Empire , continued for

924-491: A major influence on the world today. Latin language has been the base from which Romance languages evolved and it has been the official language of the Catholic Church and all Catholic religious ceremonies all over Europe until 1967, as well as an or the official language of countries such as Italy and Poland (9th–18th centuries). In AD 395, a few decades before its Western collapse, the Roman Empire formally split into

1056-674: A millennium, while the West Roman Empire lasted for only about a century and a half. Significant theological and ecclesiastical differences led Western Europeans to consider the Christians in the Byzantine Empire as heretics. In 1054 CE, when the church in Rome excommunicated the patriarch of Byzantium , the politico-religious division between the Western church and Eastern church culminated in

1188-448: A national identity is also a political action with political consequences, like the need to redraw the geopolitical map or alter the composition of political regimes and states". There are three notable perspectives on how nations developed. Primordialism (perennialism), which reflects popular conceptions of nationalism but has largely fallen out of favour among academics, proposes that there have always been nations and that nationalism

1320-601: A plea to the Pope in Rome to send military aid to restore the lost territories to Christian rule. The result was a series of western European military campaigns into the eastern Mediterranean, known as the Crusades. Unfortunately for the Byzantines, the crusaders (belonging to the members of nobility from France, German territories, the Low countries, England, Italy and Hungary) had no allegiance to

1452-669: A population of 100 million. From the time of Caesar (100–44 BC) to the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, Rome dominated Southern Europe , the Mediterranean coast of Northern Africa and the Levant , including the ancient trade routes with population living outside. Ancient Rome has contributed greatly to the development of law, war, art, literature, architecture, technology and language in the Western world , and its history continues to have

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1584-511: A result, its political, legal , linguistic and cultural legacy is widespread throughout the Western world . In the aftermath of the Second World War , decolonizing efforts were employed by all Western powers under United Nations (ex- League of Nations ) international directives. Most of colonized nations received independence by 1960. Great Britain showed ongoing responsibility for the welfare of its former colonies as member states of

1716-714: A scramble for new markets for European industrial products and financial services in Africa, the Americas, Eastern Europe, and especially in Asia (Western powers exploited their advantages in China for example by the Opium Wars ). This resulted in the " New Imperialism ", which saw a shift in focus from trade and indirect rule to formal colonial control of vast overseas territories ruled as political extensions of their mother countries. The later years of

1848-478: A series of political developments in Asia in the last decades of the 14th century, which put an end to further European exploration of Asia: namely the new Ming rulers were found to be unreceptive of religious proselytism by European missionaries and merchants. Meanwhile, the Ottoman Turks consolidated control over the eastern Mediterranean , closing off key overland trade routes. The Portuguese spearheaded

1980-601: A system of ecclesiastical proscription or imprisonment, but without using torture, and seldom resorting to executions. This very profitable Central European Fourth Crusade had prompted the 14th century Renaissance (translated as 'Rebirth') of Italian city-states including the Papal States , on eve of the Protestant Reformation and Counter-Reformation (which established the Roman Inquisition to succeed

2112-432: A term coined by Benedict Anderson . A nation is an imagined community in the sense that the material conditions exist for imagining extended and shared connections and that it is objectively impersonal, even if each individual in the nation experiences themselves as subjectively part of an embodied unity with others. For the most part, members of a nation remain strangers to each other and will likely never meet. Nationalism

2244-457: A unique civilization, differentiating from others like Islam , giving rise to the concept of Western civilization. By the 15th century, Renaissance intellectuals solidified this concept, associating Western civilization not only with Christianity but also with the intellectual and political achievements of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Historians, such as Carroll Quigley in "The Evolution of Civilizations" , contend that Western civilization

2376-501: A vast Middle Eastern area, when it ended. Conquest was enforced using the Roman legions and then through cultural assimilation by eventual recognition of some form of Roman citizenship's privileges. Nonetheless, despite its great legacy, a number of factors led to the eventual decline and ultimately fall of the Roman Empire . The Roman Empire succeeded the approximately 500-year-old Roman Republic ( c. 510–30 BC). In 350 years, from

2508-511: Is a Nation? ", argues that a nation is "a daily referendum", and that nations are based as much on what the people jointly forget as on what they remember. Carl Darling Buck argued in a 1916 study, "Nationality is essentially subjective, an active sentiment of unity, within a fairly extensive group, a sentiment based upon real but diverse factors, political, geographical, physical, and social, any or all of which may be present in this or that case, but no one of which must be present in all cases." In

2640-610: Is a natural phenomenon. Ethnosymbolism explains nationalism as a dynamic, evolving phenomenon and stresses the importance of symbols, myths and traditions in the development of nations and nationalism. Modernization theory , which has superseded primordialism as the dominant explanation of nationalism, adopts a constructivist approach and proposes that nationalism emerged due to processes of modernization , such as industrialization , urbanization, and mass education, which made national consciousness possible. Proponents of modernization theory describe nations as " imagined communities ",

2772-716: Is a term to describe the ancient Roman society that conquered Central Italy assimilating the Italian Etruscan culture , growing from the Latium region since about the 8th century BC, to a massive empire straddling the Mediterranean Sea . In its 10-centuries territorial expansion, Roman civilization shifted from a small monarchy (753–509 BC), to a republic (509–27 BC), into an autocratic empire (27 BC – AD 476). Its Empire came to dominate Western, Central and Southeastern Europe, Northern Africa and, becoming an autocratic Empire

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2904-790: Is also closely associated with Christianity , the dominant religion in the West, with roots in Greco - Roman and Jewish thought . Christian ethics , drawing from the ethical and moral principles of its historical roots in Judaism , has played a pivotal role in shaping the foundational framework of Western societies. Earlier civilizations, such as the ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians , had also significantly influenced Western civilization through their advancements in writing, law codes, and societal structures. The convergence of Greek-Roman and Judeo-Christian influences in shaping Western civilization has led certain scholars to characterize it as emerging from

3036-416: Is and whether there are viable or developing alternatives. The theory of the clash of civilizations lies in direct contrast to cosmopolitan theories about an ever more-connected world that no longer requires nation states. According to political scientist Samuel P. Huntington , people's cultural and religious identities will be the primary source of conflict in the post– Cold War world. The theory

3168-572: Is called the Byzantine Empire was the Roman Empire transformed into a nation-state in the Middle Ages . Azar Gat also argues China , Korea and Japan were nations by the time of the European Middle Ages . In contrast, Geary rejects the conflation of early medieval and contemporary group identities as a myth, arguing it is a mistake to conclude continuity based on the recurrence of names. He criticizes historians for failing to recognize

3300-501: Is consequently seen an " invented tradition " in which shared sentiment provides a form of collective identity and binds individuals together in political solidarity. A nation's foundational "story" may be built around a combination of ethnic attributes, values and principles, and may be closely connected to narratives of belonging. Scholars in the 19th and early 20th century offered constructivist criticisms of primordial theories about nations. A prominent lecture by Ernest Renan, " What

3432-632: Is credited with creating the modern university, the modern hospital system, scientific economics, and natural law (which would later influence the creation of international law ). European culture developed a complex range of philosophy, medieval scholasticism , mysticism and Christian and secular humanism , setting the stage for the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, which fundamentally altered religious and political life. Led by figures like Martin Luther , Protestantism challenged

3564-521: Is estimated to have first reached one billion in 1804. Also, the new philosophical movement later known as Romanticism originated, in the wake of the previous Age of Reason of the 1600s and the Enlightenment of 1700s. These are seen as fostering the 19th century Western world' s sustained economic development. Before the urbanization and industrialization of the 1800s, demand for oriental goods such as porcelain , silk , spices and tea remained

3696-527: Is generally more overtly political than an ethnic group . Benedict Anderson defines a nation as "an imagined political community […] imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion", while Anthony D Smith defines nations as cultural-political communities that have become conscious of their autonomy , unity and particular interests. The consensus among scholars

3828-409: Is that nations are socially constructed , historically contingent, organizationally flexible, and a distinctly modern phenomenon. Throughout history, people have had an attachment to their kin group and traditions , territorial authorities and their homeland, but nationalism – the belief that state and nation should align as a nation state – did not become a prominent ideology until the end of

3960-670: Is the time when the Huns (part of the ancient Eastern European tribes named barbarians by the Romans) from modern-day Hungary penetrated into the Dalmatian (modern-day Croatia ) region then originating in the following 150 years in the Roman Empire officially splitting in two halves. Also the time of the formal acceptance of Christianity as Empire's religious policy, when the Emperors began actively banning and fighting previous pagan religions . The Eastern Roman Empire included lands south-west of

4092-468: Is to be sought... only among those who are called Catholic or orthodox Christians, that is, guardians of truth and followers of right." Over time, the Western Christianity gradually identified with the "Catholic" label, and people of Western Europe gradually associated the "Orthodox" label with Eastern Christianity (although in some languages the "Catholic" label is not necessarily identified with

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4224-584: Is where the idea of "the West" began to emerge. The Eastern Roman Empire , governed from Constantinople , is usually referred to as the Byzantine Empire after AD 476, the traditional date for the fall of the Roman Empire and beginning of the Early Middle Ages . The survival of the Eastern Roman Empire protected Roman legal and cultural traditions, combining them with Greek and Christian elements, for another thousand years. The name Byzantine Empire

4356-699: The ancient Western world was partly preserved during this period due to the survival of the Eastern Roman Empire and the introduction of the Catholic Church ; it was also greatly expanded by the Arab importation of both the Ancient Greco-Roman and new technology through the Arabs from India and China to Europe. Since the Renaissance, the West evolved beyond the influence of the ancient Greeks and Romans and

4488-466: The 15th to 20th centuries . This influence persists through the exportation of mass culture, a phenomenon often referred to as Westernization . There was debate among some in the 1960s as to whether Latin America as a whole is in a category of its own. Western culture , also known as Western civilization, European civilization, Occidental culture, or Western society, refers to the diverse culture of

4620-509: The Atlantic slave trade between the 1490s and the 1800s, which also contributed to the development of African intertribal warfare and racist ideology. Before the abolition of its slave trade in 1807, the British Empire alone (which had started colonial efforts in 1578 , almost a century after Portuguese and Spanish empires) was responsible for the transportation of 3.5 million African slaves to

4752-711: The Black Sea and bordering on the Eastern Mediterranean and parts of the Adriatic Sea . This division into Eastern and Western Roman Empires was later reflected in the administration of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Greek Orthodox churches, with Rome and Constantinople debating over whether either city was the capital of Western religion . As the Eastern (Orthodox) and Western (Catholic) churches spread their influence,

4884-522: The British Empire held sway over 412 million people, 23% of the world population at the time, and by 1920, it covered 35,500,000 km (13,700,000 sq mi), 24% of the Earth's total land area. At its apex, the phrase " the empire on which the sun never sets " described the British Empire, because its expanse around the globe meant that the sun always shone on at least one of its territories. As

5016-531: The British —derived from colonization , and immigration of Europeans —factors that grounded such countries to the West. Depending on the context and the historical period in question, Russia was sometimes seen as a part of the West, and at other times juxtaposed with it. Running parallel to the rise of the United States as a great power and the development of communication–transportation technologies "shrinking"

5148-731: The Dalmatia , a region of interest to the maritime medieval Venetian Republic moneylenders and its rivals, such as the Republic of Genoa) rebelling against the Venetian economic domination. What followed dealt an irrevocable blow to the already weakened Byzantine Empire with the Crusader army's sack of Constantinople in April 1204, capital of the Greek Christian -controlled Byzantine Empire , described as one of

5280-792: The German Empire . At the close of the Spanish–American War in 1898 the Philippines , Puerto Rico , Guam and Cuba were ceded to the United States under the terms of the Treaty of Paris . The US quickly emerged as the new imperial power in East Asia and in the Pacific Ocean area . The Philippines continued to fight against colonial rule in the Philippine–American War . By 1913,

5412-633: The Hellenistic Jewish culture from which the earliest Christians and the Greek New Testament emerged. The eventual Christianization of Europe in late-antiquity would ensure that Christianity , particularly the Catholic Church , remained a dominant force in Western culture for many centuries to follow. Western culture continued to develop during the Middle Ages as reforms triggered by

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5544-785: The Indian Subcontinent and Southeast Asia . Japan was involved primarily during the Meiji period (1868–1912), though earlier contacts with the Portuguese, Spaniards and Dutch were also present in the Japanese Empire 's recognition of the strategic importance of European nations. Traditional Japanese society became an industrial and militarist power like the Western British Empire and the French Third Republic , and similar to

5676-689: The Industrial Revolution , would produce powerful social transformations, political and economic institutions that have come to influence (or been imposed upon) most nations of the world today. Historians agree that the Industrial Revolution has been one of the most important events in history. The course of three centuries since Christopher Columbus' late 15th century's voyages, of deportation of slaves from Africa and British dominant northern- Atlantic location, later developed into modern-day United States of America , evolving from

5808-597: The Medieval Inquisition ). There followed the discovery of the American continent, and consequent dissolution of West Christendom as even a theoretical unitary political body, later resulting in the religious Eighty Years War (1568–1648) and Thirty Years War (1618–1648) between various Protestant and Catholic states of the Holy Roman Empire (and emergence of religiously diverse confessions ). In this context,

5940-733: The Mediterranean basin and Europe , and later circulated around the world predominantly through colonization and globalization . Historically, scholars have closely associated the idea of Western culture with the classical era of Greco-Roman antiquity . However, scholars also acknowledge that other ancient cultures, like Ancient Egypt , the Phoenician city-states , and several Near-Eastern cultures stimulated and fostered Western civilization. The Hellenistic period also promoted syncretism , blending Greek, Roman, and Jewish cultures. Major advances in literature, engineering, and science shaped

6072-423: The Middle Ages Western culture in fact entered other global-spanning cultures during the colonial 15th–20th centuries. Historically colonialism had been justified with the values of individualism and enlightenment . The concepts of a world of nation-states born by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, coupled with the ideologies of the Enlightenment, the coming of modernity , the Scientific Revolution and

6204-507: The New World , which today constitutes much of the "geographical" Western world. Starting from the late 1960s, certain parts of the Western world have become notable for their diversity due to immigration . The idea of "the West" over the course of time has evolved from a directional concept to a socio-political concept that had been temporalized and rendered as a concept of the future bestowed with notions of progress and modernity. The origins of Western civilization can be traced back to

6336-479: The Oxford English dictionary , the earliest reference to the term "Western world" was from 1586, found in the writings of William Warner . Countries that are considered to constitute the West vary according to perspective rather than their geographical location. Countries like Australia and New Zealand, located in the Eastern Hemisphere are included in modern definitions of the Western world, as these regions and others like them have been significantly influenced by

6468-523: The People's Republic of China , though this is disputed, since the People's Republic of China, as communist, had friendly relations—at certain times—with the Soviet bloc, and had a significant degree of importance in global geopolitics. Some Third World countries aligned themselves with either the US-led West or the Soviet-led Eastern bloc. A number of countries did not fit comfortably into this neat definition of partition, including Switzerland, Sweden, Austria, and Ireland , which chose to be neutral. Finland

6600-499: The Pope in Rome as the Holy Roman Empire (Latin Christian revival of the ancient Roman Empire, under perpetual Germanic rule from AD 962) inheriting ancient Roman Empire's prestige but offending the Eastern Roman Emperor in Constantinople, and leading to the Crusades and the East–West Schism. The crowning of the Emperor by the Pope led to the assumption that the highest power was the papal hierarchy , quintessential Roman Empire's spiritual heritage authority, establishing then, until

6732-480: The Roman Empire , the destination of a massive influx of pagans (meaning "non-Christians" ) Bulgars and Slavs , an area where Catholic and Orthodox Christianity met, as well as the meeting point between Islam and Christianity. The Papal Inquisition was established in AD 1229 on a permanent basis, run largely by clergymen in Rome, and abolished six centuries later. Before AD 1100, the Catholic Church suppressed what they believed to be heresy, usually through

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6864-409: The Vandals by their late expansion throughout Europe. The three-day Visigoths's AD 410 sack of Rome who had been raiding Greece not long before, a shocking time for Greco-Romans , was the first time after almost 800 years that Rome had fallen to a foreign enemy, and St. Jerome , living in Bethlehem at the time, wrote that "The City which had taken the whole world was itself taken." There followed

6996-471: The ancient Mediterranean world . Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome are generally considered to be the birthplaces of Western civilization—Greece having heavily influenced Rome—the former due to its impact on philosophy , democracy , science , aesthetics , as well as building designs and proportions and architecture ; the latter due to its influence on art , law , warfare , governance , republicanism , engineering and religion . Western Civilization

7128-539: The fall of the Byzantine Empire ), granting Portugal navigation, war and trade monopoly for any newly discovered lands, and competing Spanish navigators. It continued with the rise of the Dutch East India Company by the destabilizing Spanish discovery of the New World , and the creation and expansion of the English and French colonial empires, and others. Even after demands for self-determination from subject peoples within Western empires were met with decolonization , these institutions persisted. One specific example

7260-463: The medieval renaissances , the influence of the Islamic world via Al-Andalus and Sicily (including the transfer of technology from the East, and Latin translations of Arabic texts on science and philosophy by Greek and Hellenic-influenced Islamic philosophers), and the Italian Renaissance as Greek scholars fleeing the fall of Constantinople brought ancient Greek and Roman texts back to central and western Europe. Medieval Christianity

7392-496: The sack of AD 455 lasting 14 days, this time conducted by the Vandals , retaining Rome's eternal spirit through the Holy See of Rome (the Latin Church ) for centuries to come. The ancient Barbarian tribes, often composed of well-trained Roman soldiers paid by Rome to guard the extensive borders, had become militarily sophisticated "Romanized barbarians", and mercilessly slaughtered the Romans conquering their Western territories while looting their possessions. The Roman Empire

7524-528: The telescope and acceptance of heliocentrism . 18th century scholars continued to refine Newton's theory of gravitation , notably Leonhard Euler , Pierre Louis Maupertuis , Alexis-Claude Clairaut , Jean Le Rond d'Alembert , Joseph-Louis Lagrange , Pierre-Simon de Laplace . Laplace's five-volume Treatise on Celestial Mechanics is one of the great works of 18th-century Newtonianism. Astronomy gained in prestige as new observatories were funded by governments and more powerful telescopes developed, leading to

7656-502: The 13th and 14th centuries, a number of European travelers, many of them Christian missionaries , had sought to cultivate trading with Asia and Africa . With the Crusades came the relative contraction of the Orthodox Byzantine 's large silk industry in favor of Catholic Western Europe and the rise of Western Papacy . The most famous of these merchant travelers pursuing East–west trade was Venetian Marco Polo . But these journeys had little permanent effect on east–west trade because of

7788-741: The 18th century. The English word nation from Middle English c. 1300, nacioun "a race of people, large group of people with common ancestry and language," from Old French nacion "birth ( naissance ), rank; descendants, relatives; country, homeland" (12c.) and directly from Latin nationem (nominative natio (nātĭō), supine of verb nascar « to birth » ( supine  : natum) ) "birth, origin; breed, stock, kind, species; race of people, tribe," literally "that which has been born," from natus , past participle of nasci "be born" ( Old Latin gnasci ), from PIE root *gene- "give birth, beget," with derivatives referring to procreation and familial and tribal groups. In Latin, natio represents

7920-527: The 19th century saw the transition from "informal imperialism" ( hegemony ) by military influence and economic dominance, to direct rule (a revival of colonial imperialism ) in the African continent and Middle East . During the socioeconomically optimistic and innovative decades of the Second Industrial Revolution between the 1870s and 1914, also known as the " Beautiful Era ", the established colonial powers in Asia (United Kingdom, France, Netherlands) added to their empires also vast expanses of territory in

8052-483: The Americas, a third of all slaves transported across the Atlantic. The Holy Roman Empire was dissolved in 1806 by the French Revolutionary Wars ; abolition of the Roman Catholic Inquisition followed. Due to the reach of these empires, Western institutions expanded throughout the world. This process of influence (and imposition) began with the voyages of discovery , colonization, conquest, and exploitation of Portugal enforced as well by papal bulls in 1450s (by

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8184-435: The Byzantine Emperor and established their own states in the conquered regions, including the heart of the Byzantine Empire . The Holy Roman Empire would dissolve on 6 August 1806, after the French Revolution and the creation of the Confederation of the Rhine by Napoleon . The decline of the Byzantine Empire (13th–15th centuries) began with the Latin Christian Fourth Crusade in AD 1202–04, considered to be one of

8316-422: The Commonwealth of Nations . But the end of Western colonial imperialism saw the rise of Western neocolonialism or economic imperialism. Multinational corporations came to offer "a dramatic refinement of the traditional business enterprise", through "issues as far ranging as national sovereignty, ownership of the means of production, environmental protection, consumerism, and policies toward organized labor." Though

8448-404: The Eastern European world such as the East and South Slavic peoples. Roman Catholic Western and Central Europe, as such, maintained a distinct identity particularly as it began to redevelop during the Renaissance. Even following the Protestant Reformation , Protestant Europe continued to see itself as more tied to Roman Catholic Europe than other parts of the perceived civilized world . Use of

8580-413: The European spice trade with Asia, who had journeyed overland to the Far East contributing to geographical knowledge of parts of the Asian continent. They are of enormous significance in Western history as they marked the beginning of the European exploration, colonization and exploitation of the American continents and their native inhabitants . The European colonization of the Americas led to

8712-400: The Great , in particular, drew on biblical language in his law code and that during his reign selected books of the Bible were translated into Old English to inspire Englishmen to fight to turn back the Norse invaders. Hastings argues for a strong renewal of English nationalism (following a hiatus after the Norman conquest ) beginning with the translation of the complete bible into English by

8844-481: The Great Schism or the East–West Schism . Even though friendly relations continued between the two parts of the Christendom for some time, the crusades made the schism definitive with hostility. The West during these crusades tried to capture trade routes to the East and failed, it instead discovered the Americas . In the aftermath of European colonization of the Americas , an idea of the "Western" world, as an inheritor of Latin Christendom emerged. According to

8976-428: The Human Mind (1794), from primitive society to agrarianism , the invention of writing, the later invention of the printing press and the advancement to "the Period when the Sciences and Philosophy threw off the Yoke of Authority". French writer Pierre Bayle denounced Spinoza as a pantheist (thereby accusing him of atheism ). Bayle's criticisms garnered much attention for Spinoza. The pantheism controversy in

9108-445: The Islamic world, due to the successful Second Agricultural , Commercial , Scientific , and Industrial revolutions (propellers of modern banking concepts). The West rose further with the 18th century's Age of Enlightenment and through the Age of Exploration 's expansion of peoples of Western and Central European empires, particularly the globe-spanning colonial empires of 18th and 19th centuries. Numerous times, this expansion

9240-517: The Jews of the late Second Temple period provide "a closer approximation to the ideal type of the nation ... perhaps anywhere else in the ancient world." Susan Reynolds has argued that many European medieval kingdoms were nations in the modern sense, except that political participation in nationalism was available only to a limited prosperous and literate class, while Hastings claims England's Anglo-Saxon kings mobilized mass nationalism in their struggle to repel Norse invasions. He argues that Alfred

9372-421: The Nation . In her book Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity , Liah Greenfeld argued that nationalism was invented in England by 1600. According to Greenfeld, England was “the first nation in the world". For Smith, creating a 'world of nations' has had profound consequences for the global state system, as a nation comprises both a cultural and political identity. Therefore, he argues, "any attempt to forge

9504-588: The Protestant Reformation (1517) may be viewed as a schism within the Catholic Church . German monk Martin Luther , in the wake of precursors, broke with the pope and with the emperor by the Catholic Church's abusive commercialization of indulgences in the Late Medieval Period , backed by many of the German princes and helped by the development of the printing press , in an attempt to reform corruption within

9636-533: The Protestant Reformation, the civilization of Western Christendom . The earliest concept of Europe as a cultural sphere (instead of simple geographic term) is believed to have been formed by Alcuin of York during the Carolingian Renaissance of the 9th century, but was limited to the territories that practised Western Christianity at the time. The Latin Church of western and central Europe split with

9768-643: The West. The Western world likewise is called the Occident (from Latin occidens  'setting down, sunset, west') in contrast to the Eastern world known as the Orient (from Latin oriens  'origin, sunrise, east'). The West is considered an evolving concept; made up of cultural, political, and economic synergy among diverse groups of people, and not a rigid region with fixed borders and members. Definitions of "Western world" vary according to context and perspectives. Some historians contend that

9900-459: The Western Church). This was in note of the fact that both Catholic and Orthodox were in use as ecclesiastical adjectives as early as the 2nd and 4th centuries respectively. Meanwhile, the extent of both Christendoms expanded, as Germanic peoples, Bohemia, Poland, Hungary, Scandinavia, Finnic peoples, Baltic peoples, British Isles and the other non-Christian lands of the northwest were converted by

10032-738: The Western Church, while Eastern Slavic peoples, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, Russian territories, Vlachs and Georgia were converted by the Eastern Orthodox Church . In 1071, the Byzantine army was defeated by the Muslim Turco-Persians of medieval Asia , resulting in the loss of most of Asia Minor . The situation was a serious threat to the future of the Eastern Orthodox Byzantine Empire . The Emperor sent

10164-566: The Western World. The term "Western" encompasses the social norms , ethical values , traditional customs , belief systems , political systems , artifacts and technologies primarily rooted in European and Mediterranean histories. A broad concept, "Western culture" does not relate to a region with fixed members or geographical confines. It generally refers to the classical era cultures of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome that expanded across

10296-664: The Wycliffe circle in the 1380s , positing that the frequency and consistency in usage of the word nation from the early fourteenth century onward strongly suggest English nationalism and the English nation have been continuous since that time. However, John Breuilly criticizes Hastings's assumption that continued usage of a term such as 'English' means continuity in its meaning. Patrick J. Geary agrees, arguing names were adapted to different circumstances by different powers and could convince people of continuity, even if radical discontinuity

10428-520: The authority of the Catholic Church and promoted ideas of individual freedom and religious reform , paving the way for modern notions of personal responsibility and governance. The geopolitical divisions in Europe that created a concept of East and West originated in the ancient tyrannical and imperialistic Graeco-Roman times. The Eastern Mediterranean was home to the highly urbanized cultures that had Greek as their common language (owing to

10560-442: The children of the same birth and also a human group of same origin. By Cicero , natio is used for "people". Black's Law Dictionary defines a nation as follows: nation , n. (14c) 1. A large group of people having a common origin, language, tradition, and usage constitutes a political entity. • When a nation is coincident with a state, the term nation-state is often used.... ... 2. A community of people inhabiting

10692-462: The church. Both these religious wars ended with the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which enshrined the concept of the nation-state , and the principle of absolute national sovereignty in international law . As European influence spread across the globe, these Westphalian principles , especially the concept of sovereign states, became central to international law and to the prevailing world order. In

10824-596: The city of Constantinople (today's Istanbul ) in modern-day Turkey as the "New Rome" when he picked it as capital of his Empire (later called " Byzantine Empire " by modern historians) in AD 330. This internal conflict of legacies had possibly emerged since the assassination of Julius Caesar three centuries earlier, when Roman imperialism had just been born with the Roman Republic becoming "Roman Empire", but reached its zenith during 3rd century's many internal civil wars . This

10956-445: The differences between earlier ways of perceiving group identities and more contemporary attitudes, stating they are "trapped in the very historical process we are attempting to study". Similarly, Sami Zubaida notes that many states and empires in history ruled over ethnically diverse populations, and "shared ethnicity between ruler and ruled did not always constitute grounds for favour or mutual support". He goes on to argue ethnicity

11088-463: The discovery of new planets, asteroids , nebulae and comets , and paving the way for improvements in navigation and cartography . Astronomy became the second most popular scientific profession, after medicine . A common metanarrative of the Enlightenment is the "secularization theory". Modernity, as understood within the framework, means a total break with the past. Innovation and science are

11220-601: The distance between both the Atlantic Ocean shores, the US became more prominently featured in the conceptualizations of the West. Between the eighteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, prominent countries in the West such as the United States, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Australia, and New Zealand have been once envisioned as ethnocracies for Whites . Racism is cited as a contributing factor to European colonization of

11352-506: The diverse theories about the nature of global politics in the post– Cold War period. Some theorists and writers argued that human rights , liberal democracy and capitalist free market economics had become the only remaining ideological alternative for nations in the post–Cold War world. Specifically, Francis Fukuyama , in The End of History and the Last Man , argued that the world had reached

11484-567: The drive to find oceanic routes that would provide cheaper and easier access to South and East Asian goods, by advancements in maritime technology such as the caravel ship introduced in the mid-1400s. The charting of oceanic routes between East and West began with the unprecedented voyages of Portuguese and Spanish sea captains. In 1492, European colonialism expanded across the globe with the exploring voyage of merchant, navigator, and Hispano-Italian colonizer Christopher Columbus . Such voyages were influenced by medieval European adventurers after

11616-504: The driving force behind European imperialism in Asia, and (with the important exception of British East India Company rule in India) the European stake in Asia remained confined largely to trading stations and strategic outposts necessary to protect trade. Industrialization , however, dramatically increased European demand for Asian raw materials; and the severe Long Depression of the 1870s provoked

11748-633: The early 4th century, the central focus of power was on two separate imperial legacies within the Roman Empire: the older Aegean Sea Greek heritage (of Classical Greece ) in the Eastern Mediterranean, and the newer most successful Tyrrhenian Sea Latin heritage (of Ancient Latium and Tuscany ) in the Western Mediterranean. A turning point was Constantine the Great 's decision to establish

11880-787: The eastern Greek patriarchates in the Christian East–West Schism , also known as the "Great Schism", during the Gregorian Reforms (calling for a more central status of the Roman Catholic Church Institution), three months after Pope Leo IX 's death in April 1054. Following the 1054 Great Schism , both the Western Church and Eastern Church continued to consider themselves uniquely orthodox and catholic. Augustine wrote in On True Religion: "Religion

12012-506: The eve of the 10th century. Hugh Poulton argues the development of Old Church Slavonic literacy in the country had the effect of preventing the assimilation of the South Slavs into neighboring cultures and stimulated the development of a distinct ethnic identity. A symbiosis was carried out between the numerically weak Bulgars and the numerous Slavic tribes in that broad area from the Danube to

12144-561: The good, representing the modern values of rationalism , while faith is ruled by superstition and traditionalism. Inspired by the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment embodied the ideals of improvement and progress. Descartes and Isaac Newton were regarded as exemplars of human intellectual achievement. Condorcet wrote about the progress of humanity in the Sketch of the Progress of

12276-543: The late 18th century saw Gotthold Lessing attacked by Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi over support for Spinoza's pantheism. Lessing was defended by Moses Mendelssohn , although Mendelssohn diverged from pantheism to follow Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in arguing that God and the world were not of the same substance (equivalency). Spinoza was excommunicated from the Dutch Sephardic community, but for Jews who sought out Jewish sources to guide their own path to secularism, Spinoza

12408-512: The late 20th century, many social scientists argued that there were two types of nations, the civic nation of which French republican society was the principal example and the ethnic nation exemplified by the German peoples. The German tradition was conceptualized as originating with early 19th-century philosophers, like Johann Gottlieb Fichte , and referred to people sharing a common language, religion, culture, history, and ethnic origins , that differentiate them from people of other nations. On

12540-507: The legacies of Athens and Jerusalem , or Athens, Jerusalem and Rome . In ancient Greece and Rome, individuals identified primarily as subjects of states, city-states, or empires, rather than as members of Western civilization. The distinct identification of Western civilization began to crystallize with the rise of Christianity during the Late Roman Empire . In this period, peoples in Europe started to perceive themselves as part of

12672-515: The line between Eastern and Western Christianity was moving. Its movement was affected by the influence of the Byzantine empire and the fluctuating power and influence of the Catholic church in Rome. The geographic line of religious division approximately followed a line of cultural divide . In AD 800 under Charlemagne , the Early Medieval Franks established an empire that was recognized by

12804-480: The majority thought and felt was likely to have been minor". A significant early use of the term nation , as natio , occurred at Medieval universities to describe the colleagues in a college or students, above all at the University of Paris , who were all born within a pays , spoke the same language and expected to be ruled by their own familiar law. In 1383 and 1384, while studying theology at Paris, Jean Gerson

12936-562: The most important events, solidifying the schism between the Christian churches of Greek Byzantine Rite and Latin Roman Rite . An anti-Western riot in 1182 broke out in Constantinople targeting Latins. The extremely wealthy (after previous Crusades ) Venetians in particular made a successful attempt to maintain control over the coast of Catholic present-day Croatia (specifically

13068-662: The most profitable and disgraceful sacks of a city in history. This paved the way for Muslim conquests in present-day Turkey and the Balkans in the coming centuries (only a handful of the Crusaders followed to the stated destination thereafter, the Holy Land ). The geographical identity of the Balkans is historically known as a crossroads of cultures, a juncture between the Latin and Greek bodies of

13200-640: The north, to the Aegean Sea to the south, and from the Adriatic Sea to the west, to the Black Sea to the east, who accepted the common ethnonym " Bulgarians ". During the 10th century the Bulgarians established a form of national identity that was far from modern nationalism but helped them to survive as a distinct entity through the centuries. Anthony Kaldellis asserts in Hellenism in Byzantium (2008) that what

13332-520: The official language of the empire. The inhabitants called themselves Romans because the term "Roman" was meant to signify all Christians . The Pope crowned Charlemagne as Emperor of the Romans of the newly established Holy Roman Empire , and the West began thinking in terms of Western Latins living in the old Western Empire, and Eastern Greeks (those inside the Roman remnant of the old Eastern Empire). In

13464-791: The official policy, there was some secret co-operation with the West. This ranged from Finnish organizations such as the Social Democratic Party accepting U.S. Central Intelligence Agency funding to sharing of seismic data on nuclear tests. Likewise, Eastern Bloc countries conducted espionage in Finland, e.g., the East German Stasi had agents there. The Soviet Union had similar agreements with many nations that were not directly allied with it but depended heavily on Soviet support, such as North Korea since 1961, with India since 1971, and Vietnam since 1978. The first such agreement, however,

13596-578: The old capital Leningrad . Under the pact, Finland was obliged to resist armed attacks by "Germany or its allies" (in reality interpreted as "the United States and allies") against Finland, or against the Soviet Union through Finland. If necessary, Finland was to ask for Soviet military aid to do so. However the pact in itself did not provide any provisions for the Soviet military to enter Finland and stipulated that all such actions would have to be agreed separately should Finland choose to request aid. Furthermore,

13728-552: The older empire of Alexander the Great and of the Hellenistic successors ), whereas the West was much more rural in its character and more readily adopted Latin as its common language. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the beginning of the medieval times (or Middle Ages ), Western and Central Europe were substantially cut off from the East where Byzantine Greek culture and Eastern Christianity became founding influences in

13860-403: The only valid method of arriving at truth". Its precursors were John Milton and Baruch Spinoza . Meeting Galileo in 1638 left an enduring impact on John Milton and influenced Milton's great work Areopagitica , where he warns that, without free speech , inquisitorial forces will impose "an undeserved thraldom upon learning". The achievements of the 17th century included the invention of

13992-483: The other hand, the civic nation was traced to the French Revolution and ideas deriving from 18th-century French philosophers. It was understood as being centred in a willingness to "live together", this producing a nation that results from an act of affirmation. This is the vision, among others, of Ernest Renan . There is an ongoing debate about the future of nations − about whether this framework will persist as

14124-570: The others, and a Knight has charge of each one of these hostels, and provides for the necessities of the inmates according to their religion", as the Spanish traveller Pedro Tafur noted in 1436. In his article, "The Mosaic Moment: An Early Modernist Critique of the Modernist Theory of Nationalism", Philip S. Gorski argues that the first modern nation-state was the Dutch Republic , created by

14256-431: The overt colonial era had passed, Western nations, as comparatively rich, well-armed, and culturally powerful states, wielded a large degree of influence throughout the world, and with little or no sense of responsibility toward the peoples impacted by its multinational corporations in their exploitation of minerals and markets. The dictum of Alfred Thayer Mahan is shown to have lasting relevance, that whoever controls

14388-529: The pact did not place any requirements for Finland to act should the Soviet Union be attacked (if the attack would not take place through Finland). The agreement also recognized Finland's desire to remain outside great-power conflicts, allowing the country to adopt a policy of neutrality in the Cold War . Due to the uncertain status of Finno–Soviet relations in the years after the Continuation War , and

14520-570: The precise interpretation of the treaty's wording, Finland followed the Eastern Bloc countries' decision and did not participate in the Marshall Plan . As a result, Finland's post-war period of economic hardship was prolonged, compared to other European capitalist countries, and it thus became considerably more economically dependent on the Soviet Union. In general, Finland kept its relations towards western military powers officially distant (including

14652-591: The presidency of Urho Kekkonen (1956–1981), who dubbed his foreign policy doctrine the Paasikivi-Kekkonen line . The treaty was an instrumental tool for the Soviet Union to gain political leverage in the internal affairs of Finland in post-war era, in confrontations such as the note crisis . This influence was commonly referred to as Finlandization . It is hotly debated to what degree President Kekkonen (President 1956–1981) intentionally used it to further his own influence and damage his opponents. Despite

14784-513: The proposed Scandinavian Defense Union ) and NATO in particular. By avoiding supporting the West, it attempted to fend off Soviet pressure for affiliation with the Warsaw Pact . No joint military exercises were ever held, and other military cooperation was minimal, despite occasional Soviet advances. The YYA Treaty was a cornerstone in Paasikivi 's foreign policy. It was also a central policy under

14916-555: The ratification of the Constitution of the United States by thirteen States on the North American East Coast before end of the 18th century. In the early-19th century, the systematic urbanization process (migration from villages in search of jobs in manufacturing centers) had begun, and the concentration of labor into factories led to the rise in the population of the towns. World population had been rising as well. It

15048-502: The seas controls the world. Eric Voegelin described the 18th-century as one where "the sentiment grows that one age has come to its close and that a new age of Western civilization is about to be born". According to Voeglin the Enlightenment (also called the Age of Reason ) represents the "atrophy of Christian transcendental experiences and [seeks] to enthrone the Newtonian method of science as

15180-519: The sole exception. He viewed them as the "true proto-nation" that provided the original model of nationhood through the foundational example of ancient Israel in the Hebrew Bible , despite losing their political sovereignty for nearly two millennia. The Jews, however, maintained a cohesive national identity throughout this period, which ultimately culminated in the emergence of Zionism and the establishment of modern lsrael. Anthony D. Smith wrote that

15312-561: The successful and deadliest war with the Phoenicians began in 218 BC to the rule of Emperor Hadrian by AD 117, ancient Rome expanded up to twenty-five times its area. The same time passed before its fall in AD 476. Rome had expanded long before the empire reached its zenith with the conquest of Dacia in AD 106 (modern-day Romania ) under Emperor Trajan. During its territorial peak, the Roman Empire controlled about 5,000,000 square kilometres (1,900,000 sq mi) of land surface and had

15444-822: The term West as a specific cultural and geopolitical term developed over the course of the Age of Exploration as Europe spread its culture to other parts of the world. Roman Catholics were the first major religious group to immigrate to the New World , as settlers in the colonies of Spain and Portugal (and later, France ) belonged to that faith. English and Dutch colonies, on the other hand, tended to be more religiously diverse. Settlers to these colonies included Anglicans , Dutch Calvinists , English Puritans and other nonconformists , English Catholics , Scottish Presbyterians , French Huguenots , German and Swedish Lutherans , as well as Quakers , Mennonites , Amish , and Moravians . Ancient Rome (6th century BC – AD 476)

15576-487: The term " nation state " could be used to distinguish larger states from small city states , or could be used to distinguish multinational states from those with a single ethnic group. The broad consensus amongst scholars of nationalism is that nations are a recent phenomenon. However, some historians argue that their existence can be traced to the medieval period. Adrian Hastings argued that nations and nationalism are predominantly Christian phenomena, with Jews being

15708-524: The then-occupied and presently independent Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) and Warsaw Pact countries like Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, East Germany (now united with Germany), and Czechoslovakia (now split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia). The Third World consisted of countries, many of which were unaligned with either , and important members included India, Yugoslavia , Finland ( Finlandization ) and Switzerland ( Swiss Neutrality ); some include

15840-467: The trend Huntington identifies, including economic globalization , a rise in importance of multinational corporations , the internationalization of financial markets, the transfer of socio-political power from national authorities to supranational entities, such as multinational corporations, the United Nations and the European Union and the advent of new information and culture technologies such as

15972-533: Was accompanied by Catholic missionaries , who attempted to proselytize Christianity. In the modern era, Western culture has undergone further transformation through the Renaissance , Ages of Discovery and Enlightenment , and the Industrial and Scientific Revolutions . The widespread influence of Western culture extended globally through imperialism , colonialism , and Christianization by Western powers from

16104-418: Was as important as Voltaire and Kant. During the Cold War , a new definition emerged. Earth was divided into three "worlds". The First World , analogous in this context to what was called the West , was composed of NATO members and other countries aligned with the United States. The Second World was the Eastern bloc in the Soviet sphere of influence , including the Soviet Union (15 republics including

16236-562: Was born around AD 500, after the fall of the Western Roman Empire , leaving a vacuum for new ideas to flourish that were impossible in Classical societies. In either view, between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the Renaissance, the West (or those regions that would later become the heartland of the culturally "western sphere") experienced a period of decline, and then readaptation, reorientation and considerable renewed material, technological and political development. Classical culture of

16368-605: Was elected twice as a procurator for the French natio . The University of Prague adopted the division of students into nationes : from its opening in 1349 the studium generale which consisted of Bohemian, Bavarian, Saxon and Polish nations . In a similar way, the nationes were segregated by the Knights Hospitaller of Jerusalem , who maintained at Rhodes the hostels from which they took their name "where foreigners eat and have their places of meeting, each nation apart from

16500-415: Was first used centuries later, after the Byzantine Empire ended. The dissolution of the Western half, nominally ended in AD 476, but in truth a long process that ended by the rise of Catholic Gaul (modern-day France ) ruling from around the year AD 800, left only the Eastern Roman Empire alive. The Eastern half continued to think of itself as the Eastern Roman Empire until AD 610–800, when Latin ceased to be

16632-634: Was in the United States' sphere of influence. Spain did not join the NATO until 1982, seven years after the death of the authoritarian Franco . Nation A nation is a type of social organization where a collective identity , a national identity , has emerged from a combination of shared features across a given population, such as language , history , ethnicity , culture , territory or society . Some nations are constructed around ethnicity (see ethnic nationalism ) while others are bound by political constitutions (see civic nationalism ). A nation

16764-554: Was never the primary basis of identification for the members of these multinational empires. Paul Lawrence criticises Hastings's reading of Bede, observing that those writing so-called 'national' histories may have "been working with a rather different notion of 'the nation' to those writing history in the modern period". Lawrence goes on to argue that such documents do not demonstrate how ordinary people identified themselves, pointing out that, while they serve as texts in which an elite defines itself, "their significance in relation to what

16896-557: Was originally formulated in a 1992 lecture at the American Enterprise Institute , which was then developed in a 1993 Foreign Affairs article titled "The Clash of Civilizations?", in response to Francis Fukuyama 's 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man . Huntington later expanded his thesis in a 1996 book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order . Huntington began his thinking by surveying

17028-513: Was the lived reality. Florin Curta cites Medieval Bulgarian nation as another possible example. Danubian Bulgaria was founded in 680-681 as a continuation of Great Bulgaria . After the adoption of Orthodox Christianity in 864 it became one of the cultural centres of Slavic Europe. Its leading cultural position was consolidated with the invention of the Cyrillic script in its capital Preslav on

17160-407: Was the requirement that post-colonial societies were made to form nation-states (in the Western tradition), which often created arbitrary boundaries and borders that did not necessarily represent a whole nation, people, or culture (as in much of Africa), and are often the cause of international conflicts and friction even to this day. Although not part of Western colonization process proper, following

17292-628: Was under the Soviet Union's military sphere of influence (see FCMA treaty ) but remained neutral and was not communist, nor was it a member of the Warsaw Pact or Comecon but a member of the EFTA since 1986, and was west of the Iron Curtain . In 1955, when Austria again became a fully independent republic, it did so under the condition that it remain neutral; but as a country to the west of the Iron Curtain, it

17424-499: Was with Free France on 10 December 1944. The treaty came to an end in 1992 with the signing of a new treaty ( Naapuruussopimus  [ fi ] ) between Finland and the post-Soviet Russia . Western World The Western world , also known as the West , primarily refers to various nations and states in the regions of Western Europe , Northern America , and Australasia ; with some debate as to whether those in Eastern Europe and Latin America also constitute

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