Civilization

History of Europe
Contents
1 The origins
2 The Greeks
3 Rome
4 Early Middle Ages
5 High Middle Ages
6 Later Middle Ages
7 Renaissance and Reformation
8 Colonial expansion
9 Early Modern period: 16th, 17th and 18th century
10 The English Civil War
11 The French Revolution
12 Napoleonic Wars
13 Congress of Vienna
14 The 19th century
15 Early 20th century: the World Wars
16 Late 20th century: the Cold War
17 Early 21st century: the European Union

The origins

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Homo erectus and Neanderthals settled Europe long
before the emergence of modern humans, Homo
sapiens. The earliest appearance of anatomically
modern people in Europe has been dated to the
35,000 BC. Evidence of permanent settlement dates
from the 7th millennium BC in Bulgaria, Romania
and Greece. The Neolithic reached Central Europe in
the 6th millennium BC and parts of Northern Europe
in the 5th and 4th millennium BC. There is no
prehistoric culture that covers the whole of Europe.
For short introductions to the various cultures, see
Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze Age and
Iron Age.

The first well-known literate civilization in Europe

was that of the Minoans of the island of Crete and
later the Myceneans in the adjacent parts of Greece,
starting at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC.
Around 400 BC, the La Tene culture spread over
most of the interior as far as the Iberian Peninsula
(Spain and Portugal), and later Anatolia. The
Etruscans inhabited central Italy and Lombardy,
where they were displaced by the Celts, who mingled

2
with earlier residents of Iberia to produce a unique
Celtiberian culture. As the Celts did not use a written
language, knowledge of them is piecemeal. The
Romans encountered them and recorded a great deal
about them; these records and the archaeological
evidence form our primary understanding of this
extremely influential culture. The Celts posed a
formidable, if disorganized, competition to the
Roman state, that later colonized and conquered
much of the southern portion of Europe.

At the end of the Bronze Age the older Greek

kingdoms collapsed and a brilliant new civilization
grew up in their place. The Hellenic civilization took
the form of a collection of city-states (the most
important being Athens and Sparta), having vastly
differing types of government and cultures, including
what are more-or-less unprecedented developments
in various governmental forms, philosophy, science,
politics, sports, theatre and music. The Hellenic city-
states founded a large number of colonies on the
shores of the Black Sea and the Mediterranean sea,
Asia Minor, Sicily and Southern Italy in Magna

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Graecia, but in the 4th century BC their internal wars
made them an easy prey for king Philip II of
Macedonia. The campaigns of his son Alexander the
Great spread Greek culture into Persia, Egypt and
India, but also favoured contact with the older
learnings of those countries, opening up a new period
of development, known as Hellenism.

Rome

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Much of Greek learning was assimilated by the
nascent Roman state as it expanded outward from
Italy, taking advantage of its enemies' inability to
unite: the only real challenge to Roman ascent came
from the Phoenician colony of Carthage, but its
defeat in the end of the 3rd century BC marked the
start of Roman hegemony. First governed by kings,
then as a senatorial republic (the Roman Republic),
Rome finally became an empire at the end of the 1st
century BC, under Augustus and his authoritarian
successors. The Roman Empire had its centre in the
Mediterranean Sea, controlling all the countries on its
shores; the northern border was marked by the Rhine
and Danube rivers; under emperor Trajan (2nd
century AD) the empire reached its maximum
expansion, including Britain, Romania and parts of
Mesopotamia. The empire brought peace, civilization
and an efficient centralized government to the subject
territories, but in the 3rd century a series of civil wars
undermined its economic and social strength. In the
4th century, the emperors Diocletian and Constantine
were able to slow down the process of decline by

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splitting the empire into a Western and an Eastern
part. Whereas Diocletian severely persecuted
Christianity, Constantine declared an official end to
state-sponsored persecution of Christians in 313 with
the Edict of Milan, thus setting the stage for the
empire to later become officially Christian in about
380 (which would cause the Church to become an
important institution).

Early Middle Ages

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Western Europe emerged as the site of a distinct
civilization after the fall of the Western Roman
Empire in the 5th century, as barbarian invasions
separated it from the rest of the Mediterranean, where
the Eastern Roman Empire (a.k.a. Byzantine Empire)
survived for another millennium. In the 7th century
the Arab expansion brought Islamic cultures to the
southern Mediterranean shores (from Turkey to Sicily
and Spain), further enlarging the differences between
the various Mediterranean civilizations. Huge
amounts of technology and learning were lost, trade
languished and people returned to local agrarian
communities. In the same century, Bulgarians created
the first Slavic state in Europe - Bulgaria. Feudalism
replaced the centralized Roman administration. The
only institution surviving the collapse of the Western
Roman Empire was the Roman Catholic Church,
which preserved part of the Roman cultural
inheritance and remained the primary source of
learning in its domain at least until the 13th century;
the bishop of Rome, known as the Pope, became the

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leader of the western church (in the east his
supremacy was never accepted).

The Holy Roman Empire emerged around 800, as

Charlemagne, king of the Franks, subdued western
Germany, large parts of Italy and chunks of
surrounding countries; he received substantial help
from an alliance with the Pope, who wanted to cut the
remaining ties with the Byzantine Empire; in this
way the domains of the Pope became an independent
state in central Italy.

In the late 9th century and 10th century, northern and

western Europe felt the burgeoning power and
influence of the Vikings who raided, traded,
conquered and settled swiftly and efficiently with
their advanced sea-going vessels such as the
longships.

The subsequent period, ending around 1000, saw the

further growth of feudalism, which weakened the
Holy Roman Empire.

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High Middle Ages

After the East-West Schism, Western Christianity was

adopted by newly created kingdoms of Central
Europe: Poland, Hungary and Bohemia. The Roman
Catholic Church developed as a major power, leading
to conflicts between the Pope and Emperor.

Later Middle Ages

Early signs of the rebirth of civilization in western

Europe began to appear in the 11th century as trade
started again in Italy, leading to the economic and
cultural growth of independent city states such as
Venice and Florence; at the same time, nation-states
began to take form in places such as France, England,
Spain, and Portugal, although the process of their
formation (usually marked by rivalry between the
monarchy, the aristocratic feudal lords and the
church) actually took several centuries. On the other
hand, the Holy Roman Empire, essentially based in
Germany and Italy, further fragmented into a myriad

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of feudal principalities or small city states, whose
subjection to the emperor was only formal.

One of the largest catastrophes to have hit Europe

was the bubonic plague, also known as the Black
Death. There were numerous outbreaks, but the most
severe was in the mid-1300s and is estimated to have
killed a third of Europe's population. Since many
Jews worked as money-lenders (usury was not
allowed for Christians) and were generally more
immune to disease (thanks to their kosher laws
concerning hygiene), the Jews were often disliked by
Europeans, so it was popular to blame them for the
epidemic. This led to increased persecution of the
Jews and pogroms in some areas. Thousands of Jews
fled to Poland which, ironically, was spared by the
plague.

Beginning in the 14th century, the Baltic Sea became

one of the most important trade routes. The Hanseatic
League, an alliance of trading cities, facilitated the
absorption of vast areas of Poland, Lithuania and
other Baltic countries into the economy of Europe.

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The conventional end of the Middle Ages is usually
associated with the fall of the city Constantinople and
of the Byzantine Empire to the Ottoman Turks in
1453. The Turks made the city (with the new name of
Istanbul) the capital of their Ottoman Empire, which
lasted until 1919 and also included Egypt, Syria and
most of the Balkans.

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Renaissance and Reformation

In the 15th century, at the end of the Middle Ages,

powerful nation states had appeared, built by the New
Monarchs who had centralized power in France,
England, and Spain. Contrariwise, the Church was
losing much of its power because of corruption,
internal conflicts, and the spread of culture leading to
the artistic, philosophical, scientific and technological
improvements of the Renaissance era.

The new nation states were frequently in a state of

political flux and war. In particular, after Martin
Luther started the Reformation in 1517, wars of
politics and religion ravaged the continent: the
schism of the dominant western church was to have
major political, social and cultural implications for
Europe. What became the split between Catholicism
and Protestantism was particularly pronounced in
England (where the king Henry VIII severed ties with
Rome and proclaimed himself head of the church),
and in Germany (where the Reformation united the

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various Protestant princes against the Catholic
Hapsburg emperors).

Unlike Western Europe, the countries of Central

Europe, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and
Hungary, resolved religious questions by adopting
religious tolerance. Central Europe was already split
between Eastern and Western Christianity. Now it
became divided between Catholics, Protestants,
Orthodox and Jews.

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Colonial expansion

Age of Discovery

The numerous wars did not prevent the new states

from exploring and conquering wide portions of the
world, particularly in Asia (Siberia) and in the newly-
discovered America. In the 15th century, Portugal led
the way in geographical exploration, followed by
Spain in early 16th century, were the first states to set
up colonies in South America and trade stations on
the shores of Africa and Asia, but they were soon
followed by France, England and the Netherlands.

Colonial expansion proceeded in the following

centuries (with some setbacks, such as the American
Revolution and the wars of independence in many
South American colonies). Spain had control of a
great deal of South America, the Caribbean and the
Philippines; Britain took the whole of Australia and
New Zealand, most of India, and large parts of Africa
and North America; France held parts of Canada and
India (nearly all of which was lost to Britain in 1763),

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Indochina and large parts of Africa; the Netherlands
gained the East Indies (now Indonesia) and islands in
the Caribbean; Portugal obtained Brazil and several
territories in Africa and Asia; and later, powers such
as Germany, Belgium, Italy and Russia acquired
further colonies.

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Early Modern period: 16th, 17th and 18th century

Early Modern Europe

The Reformation had profound effects on the unity of

Europe. Not only were nations divided one from
another by their religious orientation, but some states
were torn apart internally by religious strife, avidly
fostered by their external enemies. France suffered
this fate in the 16th century in the series of conflicts
known as the French Wars of Religion, which ended
in the triumph of the Bourbon Dynasty. England
avoided this fate for a while and settled down under
Elizabeth to a moderate Anglicanism. Germany,
divided into numerous small states under the
theoretical framework of the Holy Roman Empire,
was also divided along internally drawn sectarian
lines, until the Thirty Years' War seemed to see
religion replaced by nationalism as the motor of
European conflict.

Throughout the early part of this period, capitalism

was replacing feudalism as the principal form of

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economic organization, at least in the western half of
Europe. The expanding colonial frontiers resulted in a
Commercial Revolution. The period is noted for the
rise of modern science and the application of its
findings to technological improvements, which
culminated in the Industrial Revolution. New forms
of trade and expanding horizons made new
developments in international law necessary.

After the Treaty of Westphalia which ended the

Thirty Years War, Absolutism became the norm of
the continent, while parts of Europe experimented
with constitutions foreshadowed by the English Civil
War and particularly the Glorious Revolution.
European military conflict did not cease, but had less
disruptive effects on the lives of Europeans. In the
advanced north-west, the Enlightenment gave a
philosophical underpinning to the new outlook, and
the continued spread of literacy, made possible by the
printing press, created new secular forces in thought.

Eastern Europe was an arena of conflict for

domination between Sweden, the Polish-Lithuanian

17
Commonwealth and the Ottoman Empire. This period
saw a gradual decline of these three powers which
were eventually replaced by new enlightened
absolutist monarchies, Russia, Prussia and Austria.
By the turn of the 19th century they became new
powers, having divided Poland between them, with
Sweden and Turkey having experienced substantial
territorial losses to Russia and Austria respectively.
Numerous Polish Jews emigrated to Western Europe,
founding Jewish communities in places where they
had been expelled from during the Middle Ages.

The English Civil War

The English Civil War was a battle between King

Charles I and Parliament. Under Elizabeth I and
James I England had become a relatively prosperous
state. However, the acession of Charles I would see
great changes.

The first and foremost cause of the English Civil War

was religion. Elizabeth had established the Anglican
Church in 1559 and had deliberately avoided

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controversial issues, such as Catholic-style relics in
churches and ceremonial vestments in order to keep
the peace. James had allowed the Elizabethan Church
to continue. However, when Charles became King in
1625 he allowed an Arminian style of Anglicanism,
which seemed like a slide back toward Catholicism
and popery. Charles' marriage to the French Catholic
princess Henrietta Maria seemed to confirm this
slide.

Charles could never seem to get along with

Parliaments, and unproductive sessions in 1625,
1626, 1628 and 1629 resulted in Charles's closure of
Parliament for 11 years — called by his opponents
the 11 Years Tyranny. Neither King or Parliament
could agree over his (really his favourite minister the
1st Duke of Buckingham's) very expensive wars
against Spain and France. Therefore, as Charles
relied on Parliament for money, he spent carefully
and ruthlessly enforced prerogative taxation, the most
contentious of which was Ship Money.

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Buckingham was murdered in 1628 and Charles's
new ministers were Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of
Strafford and William Laud, Archbishop of
Canterbury. Wentworth became Lord Deputy of
Ireland in 1633 to ensure the colony became more
profitable. Laud however started the Bishops Wars
when in 1637 he tried to introduce the English Prayer
Book in Scotland, and so the Scots invaded England
in 1640.

Charles was forced to call Parliament to raise money

for an army. However Parliament wanted its
grievances addressed and was furious at not being
referred to for 11 years. The Petition of Right, pushed
through Parliament by the main opposition leader,
John Pym, forced Charles to agree that the English
people had rights and liberties and that he had been
undermining them. Strafford was executed on 12
May 1641, and Laud was to follow him to the
scaffold in 1645. Charles attempted to arrest Pym and
five other members in February 1642 after they
attempted to impeach the Queen, claiming that

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Henrietta had been attempting to control Charles and
impose a French style tyranny on them.

The King and his family left London in May 1642

and the Queen and her children sailed for France. The
raising of the royal standard at Nottingham started
war. Charles's side were called the Cavaliers;
Parliament's side were the Roundheads. In spite of
initial successes, Charles's defeat was assured by
1644, when Pym signed an agreement with the Scots.
Charles was defeated and captured at Marston Moor
in 1647, but he fled to the Isle of Wight and enlisted
the help of the Scots, as Parliament had reneged on
their agreement. However, his hopes came to naught
when the Roundheads defeated them at Naseby.

Pym had since died and the Grandees in the New

Model Army and Parliament including Oliver
Cromwell, faced with Charles's perceived duplicity,
reluctantly came to the conclusion that they would
have to kill him. Charles was brought to trial by a
special court in January 1649, he was found guilty by
fifty nine Commissioners (Judges) of high treason

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and executed the same month. With the abolition of
the Monarchy Britain entered a period known as the
English Commonwealth, Government by a Council
of State with a Rump Parliament as the legislator.
Real power rested with the Grandees of the New
Model Army and in 1653 Oliver Cromwell became
Lord Protector of the Protectorate. After Cromwell
died in 1658 his son Richard Cromwell inherited the
title of Lord Protector but not the power. After a short
return of the Commonwealth, the English
Interregnum came to an end with the English
Restoration of the Monarchy under the son of Charles
I, King Charles II of England.

The French Revolution

Main article: French Revolution

By 1789 France was on the verge of crisis, but

revolution was not obvious before this time. Its
causes were royal absolutism, ideas of the
Enlightenment (embodied particularly in the person
of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a French philosopher),

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and the American war of independence. King Louis
XVI's absolute refusal to give up power resulted in
the storming of the Bastille in Paris on 14 July 1789.
Louis was forced to call the Estates-General, the
French Parliament, which had last been called in
1614. This comprised of the three estates -- the clergy
(First Estate), the nobility (Second Estate) and the
commons (Third Estate). The parliament issued the
Declaration of the Rights of Man, demanding an end
to the feudal system. The Tennis Court Oath of 1790
led to the drafting of a constitution by the Third
Estate for a constitutional monarchy, which the King
ignored. As the famine which had plagued France
deepened, hundreds of Parisians marched on the
royal chateau at Versailles, demanding bread. Louis
was hunting at this time, and his hated Austrian wife,
Marie-Antoinette, fled. Word has it that when Louis
saw this march on Versailles, he asked one of his
ministers, "Is it a revolt?". This minister replied, "No
Sire, it is a revolution." Louis failed to respond and
increased violence led the King and Queen, with the
royal children, attempting to flee to Austria. They got

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as far as Varennes, in northern France, before they
were discovered and were forced to return to Paris.
(The King's side portrait was on all currency. Due to
his prominent nose, he was recognized by a
commoner.) The Duke of Brunswick, the brother of
Marie-Antoinette, issued the 'Brunswick Manifesto',
threatening war against the French revolutionaries if
the Queen and the royal family were injured in any
way. In 1791 the Committee of Public Safety, led by
the sans-culotte formed the French Republic, headed
by the lawyer Maximilien Robespierre. Over 40 000
Parisians were executed by the newly invented
guillotine, in an effort to rid France of all aristocrats.
Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette were to share their
fate in 1793, or Year II of the Republic. Robespierre
was eventually conspired against and guillotined in
1794. Austria and France went to war after the deaths
of Louis and Marie-Antoinette, but the Austrians
were defeated. It is important to note that the French
Revolution was also a revolt against the Catholic
Church. Church property was seized, many clergy
were killed and Papal authority was challenged.

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Never again would the Catholic Church have as
much influence on France.

Napoleonic Wars

The revolutionary period ended when General

Napoleon Bonaparte seized control of the
government in 1799. Although he began as a
defender of the Revolution against aggression from
Austria and Britain, he conquered half Europe before
finally being defeated and deposed by the powers
allied against him.

Congress of Vienna

The Congress of Vienna was a conference between

ambassadors from the major powers in Europe. It was
held in Vienna from 1 October 1814, to 9 June 1815.
The discussions continued despite Napoleon's return
and the Congress's Final Act was signed nine days
before his final defeat at Waterloo. The Congress was

25
concerned with determining the entire shape of
Europe after the Napoleonic wars, with the exception
of the terms of peace with France, which had already
been decided by the Treaty of Paris in May 1814.

The Congress's principal results, apart from its

confirmation of France's loss of the territories
annexed in 1795 - 1810, were the enlargement of
Russia, (which gained most of the Duchy of Warsaw)
and Prussia, which acquired Westphalia and the
northern Rhineland. Germany was consolidated from
the ~300 states of the Holy Roman Empire (dissolved
in 1806) into 39 states. These states were formed into
a loose German Confederation under the leadership
of Prussia and Austria.

Representatives at the Congress agreed to numerous

other territorial changes. Norway was transferred
from Denmark to Sweden. Austria gained Lombardy-
Venetia in Northern Italy, while much of the rest of
North-Central Italy went to Habsburg dynasts (The
Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Duchy of Modena, and
the Duchy of Parma). The Pope was restored to the

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Papal States. The Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia was
restored to its mainland possessions, and also gained
control of the Republic of Genoa. In Southern Italy
the Bourbon Ferdinand IV was restored to the throne.
A large United Kingdom of the Netherlands was
created for the Prince of Orange, including both the
old United Provinces and the formerly Austrian-ruled
territories in the Southern Netherlands.

There were other, less important territorial

adjustments, including significant territorial gains for
the German Kingdoms of Hanover and Bavaria, and
the Portuguese rights to the Territory of Olivenza
were recognized.

The countries involved with the Congress also agreed

to meet at intervals and this led to the establishment
of the "Congress system". This system was frequently
criticized by 19th century historians for ignoring
national and liberal impulses associated with the
French Revolution. However, in the twentieth century
many historians began to admire the work of the
statesmen at the Congress of Vienna, whose work

27
appeared to have prevented another large-scale
European war for nearly one hundred years (1818-
1914).

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The 19th century

After the defeat of revolutionary France, the other

great powers tried to restore the situation which
existed before 1789. However, their efforts were
unable to stop the spread of revolutionary
movements: the middle classes had been deeply
influenced by the ideals of democracy of the French
revolution, the Industrial Revolution brought
important economical and social changes, the lower
classes started to be influenced by Socialist,
Communist and Anarchistic ideas (especially those
summarized by Karl Marx in the Manifesto of the
Communist Party), and the preference of the new
capitalists became Liberalism (a term which then,
politically, meant something different from the
modern usage). Further instability came from the
formation of several nationalist movements (in
Germany, Italy, Poland etc.), seeking national
unification and/or liberation from foreign rule. As a
result, the period between 1815 and 1871 saw a large
number of revolutionary attempts and independence

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wars. Even though the revolutionaries were often
defeated, most European states had become
constitutional (rather than absolute) monarchies by
1871, and Germany and Italy had developed into
nation states.

The political dynamics of Europe changed three

times over the 19th century - once after the Congress
of Vienna, and again after the Crimean War. In 1815
at the Congress of Vienna, the major powers of
Europe managed to produce a peaceful balance of
power among the empires after the Napoleonic wars
(despite the occurrence of internal revolutionary
movements). But the peace would only last until the
Ottoman Empire had declined enough to become a
target for the others. This instigated the Crimean War
in 1854 and began a tenser period of minor clashes
among the globe-spanning empires of Europe that set
the stage for the first World War. It changed a third
time with the end of the various wars that turned the
Kingdom of Sardinia and the Kingdom of Prussia
into the Italian and German nation-states,

30
significantly changing the balance of power in
Europe.

31
Early 20th century: the World Wars

After the relative peace of most of the 19th Century,

the rivalry between European powers exploded in
1914, when World War I started. On one side were
Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy and Turkey (the
Central Powers/Triple Alliance), while on the other
side stood Serbia and the Triple Entente - the loose
coalition of France, Britain and Russia, which were
joined by Italy in 1915 and by the United States in
1917. Despite the defeat of Russia in 1917 (the war
was one of the major causes of the Russian
Revolution, leading to the formation of the
communist Soviet Union), the Entente finally
prevailed in the autumn of 1918.

In the Treaty of Versailles (1919) the winners

imposed hard conditions on Germany and recognized
the new states (such as Poland, Czechoslovakia and
Yugoslavia) created in central Europe out of the
defunct German, Austro-Hungarian and Russian
empires, supposedly on the basis of national self-

32
determination. In the following decades, fear of
Communism and the economic Depression of 1929-
1933 led to the rise of extreme governments - Fascist
or National Socialist - in Italy (1922), Germany
(1933), Spain (after a civil war ending in 1939) and
other countries such as Hungary.

After allying with Mussolini's Italy in the "Pact of

Steel" and signing a non-aggression pact with the
Soviet Union, the German dictator Adolf Hitler
started World War II in September 1939 following a
military build-up throughout the late 1930s. After
initial successes (mainly the conquest of western
Poland, much of Scandinavia, France and the Balkans
before 1941) the Axis powers began to over-extend
themselves in 1941. Hitler's ideological foes were the
Communists in Russia but because of the German
failure to defeat Britain and the Italian failures in
North Africa and the Mediterranean the Axis forces
were split between garrisoning western Europe and
Scandinavia and also attacking Africa. Thus, the
attack on the Soviet Union which had partitioned
central Europe together with Germany in 1939-1940,

33
was not pressed with sufficient strength. Despite
initial successes, the German army was stopped close
to Moscow in December 1941. Over the next year the
tide was turned and the Germans started to suffer a
series of defeats, for example in the siege of
Stalingrad and at Kursk. Meanwhile, Japan (allied to
Germany and Italy since September 1940) attacked
the British in south-east Asia and the United States in
Hawaii on December 7, 1941; Germany then
completed its over-extension by declaring war on the
United States. War raged between the Axis Powers
(Germany, Italy, and Japan) and the Allied Forces
(British Empire, Soviet Union, and the United
States). Allied Forces won in North Africa, invaded
Italy in 1943, and invaded occupied France in 1944.
In the spring of 1945 Germany itself was invaded
from the east by Russia and from the west by the
other Allies respectively; Hitler committed suicide
and Germany surrendered in early May ending the
war in Europe.

Late 20th century: the Cold War

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World War I and especially World War II ended the
pre-eminent position of western Europe. The map of
Europe was redrawn at the Yalta Conference and
divided as it became the principal zone of contention
in the Cold War between the two power blocs, the
capitalistic Western_countries and the communist
Soviet Union. The U.S. and Western Europe (Britain,
France, Italy, West Germany, etc.) established the
NATO alliance as a protection against a possible
Soviet invasion. Later, the Soviet Union and Eastern
Europe (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania,
Bulgaria, East Germany) established the Warsaw Pact
as a protection against a possible U.S. invasion.

Meanwhile, Western Europe slowly began a process

of political and economic integration, desiring to
unite Europe and prevent another war. This process
resulted eventually in the development of
organizations such as the European Union and the
Council of Europe.

Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev initiated perestroika

and glasnost, which weakened Soviet influence in

35
Eastern Europe. Soviet-supported governments
collapsed, and West Germany absorbed East
Germany by 1990. In 1991 the Soviet Union itself
collapsed, splitting into fifteen states, with the
Russian Federation taking the Soviet Union's seat on
the United Nations Security Council.

The most violent breakup happened in Yugoslavia, in

the Balkans. Four (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and
Herzegovina and Macedonia) out of six Yugoslav
republics declared independence and for most of
them a violent war ensued, in some parts lasting until
1995. The remaining two republics formed a new
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, under the direction
of Slobodan Milosevic. Milosevic presided over the
Kosovo War, and was overthrown after his
government was weakened by NATO airstrikes
against Yugoslavia. Following the ouster of
Milosevic, the country changed its name to Serbia
and Montenegro as a move to placate the frictions
between the two federal units and claimed to be
instituting a Western-style democracy.

36
In the post-Cold War era, NATO and the EU have
been gradually admitting most of the former
members of the Warsaw Pact.

37
Early 21st century: the European Union

The process of European integration was slow due to

the reluctance of most nation states to give up their
sovereignty. However, the process began to
accelerate in the early 21st century. Whereas the
European Union started out as a loose economic
alliance among European nations, the European
Union took further steps to more closely integrate the
member states, and make the EU into a more
supranational organisation.

At the turn of the century, nations within the

European Union had created a free trade zone and
eliminated most travel barriers across their borders. A
new common currency for Europe, the Euro, was
established electronically in 1999, officially tying all
of the currencies of each participating nation to each
other. The new currency was put into circulation in
2002 and most of the old currencies were phased out.
However, not all EU member states have decided to
join the Euro project, including the United Kingdom,
Denmark and Sweden.

38
As of 2005, the European Union is in the process of
ratifying a new constitution, inducting additional
member states (most of them in central Europe) and
to consolidate various treaties. However, the creation
of the constitution has been controversial, it is seen
by many eurosceptics as a step towards a single EU
state. There has been disagreement as member states
wrangle over how much voting power each will have
in EU, taxes, and the standards to which new member
states must be held before they are admitted.

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