欧洲历史英文

Europe, conventionally one of the seven continents of the world. Although referred to as a continent, Europe is actually just the western fifth of the Eurasian landmass, which is made up primarily of Asia. Modern geographers generally describe the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, part of the Caspian Sea, and the Caucasus Mountains as forming the main boundary between Europe and Asia. The name Europe is perhaps derived from that of Europa, the daughter of Phoenix in Greek mythology, or possibly from Ereb, a Phoenician word for “sunset.” The second smallest continent (Australia is the smallest), Europe has an area of 10,355,000 sq km (3,998,000 sq mi), but it has the third largest population of all the continents, 729 million in 2006. The northernmost point of the European mainland is Cape Nordkinn, in Norway; the southernmost, Punta de Tarifa, in southern Spain near Gibraltar. From west to east the mainland ranges from Cabo da Roca, in Portugal, to the northeastern slopes of the Urals, in Russia. Europe has long been a center of great cultural and economic achievement. The ancient Greeks and Romans produced major civilizations, famous for their contributions to philosophy, literature, fine art, and government. The Renaissance, which began in the 14th century, was a period of great accomplishment for European artists and architects, and the age of exploration, beginning in the 15th century, included voyages to new territories by European navigators. European nations, particularly Spain, Portugal, France, and Britain, built large colonial empires, with vast holdings in Africa, the Americas, and Asia. In the 18th century modern forms of industry began to be developed. In the 20th century much of Europe was ravaged by the two world wars. After World War II ended in 1945, the continent was divided into two major political and economic blocs—Communist nations in Eastern Europe and non-Communist countries in Western Europe. Between 1989 and 1991, however, the Eastern bloc broke up. Communist regimes surrendered power in most Eastern European countries. East and West Germany were unified. The Soviet Communist Party collapsed, multilateral military and economic ties between Eastern Europe and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) were severed, and the USSR itself ceased to exist.Modern humans (Homo sapiens) first appeared in Europe during the late Paleolithic Era (the Old Stone Age). Hunters and gatherers, they left behind notable examples of art, dating from approximately 32,000 to 10,000 years ago, that have been found in more than 200 caves, mostly in Spain and France (see Cave Dwellers). Some 10,000 years ago, at the end of the Pleistocene Epoch—the most recent of the Ice Ages—the climate began to improve and gradually approached that of the present. In time, Neolithic (New Stone Age) people developed agricultural economies that replaced hunting. During the 6th millennium bc, farming spread over most of western Europe. Some of these Neolithic cultures, beginning about 5000 bc, erected huge stone monuments (megaliths) either as grave structures or as memorials of notable events. Early Neolithic development was especially intense in the Danube and Balkan areas, in the so-called Starčevo (near Belgrade in present-day Serbia) and Danubian cultures. In the southern Balkans the Sesklo culture (in Thessaly, ancient Greece) had developed complex proto-urban forms by 5000 bc. This in turn led to the Dimini culture (also in Thessaly), which was characterized by fortified villages. Excavations in the Balkans have shown that copper was in use in that area about 4000 bc, during the Vinča culture (4500?-3000? bc). By this time, trade, especially in amber from the Baltic, was becoming more and more important. In central Europe (Bohemia, in what is now the Czech Republic) large deposits of copper and tin facilitated a bronze technology during the 3rd millennium bc. Typical royal or aristocratic burials of this period were covered by barrows or tumuli, but by the late 2nd millennium bc a change occurred; cremation then became common, and burial by urn (in urnfields) became the established custom.When Romulus Augustulus was deposed in 476, he had no designated heir, and when Zeno, the Eastern emperor, was told that there was no immediate reason to appoint a successor, the suggestion seemed reasonable. In law, in theory, and in people’s hearts the empire was indivisible and unconquerable. Many emperors’ reigns had been short, many had ended violently, and the belligerent Germanic peoples had been a fact of Roman political life for more than a century. No one at the time could have known that Romulus Augustulus, who ironically bore the name of Rome’s legendary founder, was to be the last Roman emperor in the West and that an age had come to an end.By the year 1050, Europe was entering a period of great and rapid transformation. The conditions of material life that produced the transformation are not yet well understood, although the following may be noted with certainty: The long period of Germanic and Asian migrations had come to a definite end, and Europe enjoyed a continuity of settled population; a population expansion of striking proportions had begun and was to continue. Town life, which had never entirely ceased during the previous centuries, experienced remarkable growth and development, thereby breaking the tendency of the medieval farm toward economic self-sufficiency. Trade and commerce, particularly in the Mediterranean lands of Italy and southern France and in the Low Countries, increased in quantity, regularity, and extent.The century and a half between the new European contact with America and the end of the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) was an age of transition and intellectual tension. After 1648, religion continued to be important in European history, but the priority of secular concerns was never again in doubt. Because this epochal transvaluation left unrest and uncertainty in its wake, the peoples of Europe exhibited a profound ambivalence; no longer medieval, they were not yet modern.Toward the end of the 18th century, the concentration of power in the hands of the monarch began to be challenged. European reaction to absolutism was enhanced by the success of the American Revolution (1775-1783), with its resultant republic, and by the rise of the English bourgeoisie concomitant to the Industrial Revolution. This reaction first crystallized in France in 1789 and from there spread throughout the continent in the following century.For most Europeans, the years from 1871 to 1914 constituted La Belle Epoque (“the beautiful times”). Science had made life more comfortable and secure, representative government had achieved wide acceptance in principle, and continued progress was confidently expected. Proud of their accomplishments and convinced that history had assigned them a civilizing mission, Europe’s powers laid colonial claim to vast territories in Africa and Asia. Some believed, however, that Europe was dancing on a volcano. Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, and German sociologist Max Weber cautioned against a facile optimism and dismissed the liberal conception of rational humanity, while artists such as Dutch Vincent van Gogh and Norwegian Edvard Munch explored the darker regions of the human heart. Such forebodings began to seem less eccentric in the light of contemporary challenges to the liberal consensus. A new and virulent strain of anti-Semitism infected the political life of Austria-Hungary, Russia, and France; in the home of the revolution, the Dreyfus affair threatened to bring down the Third Republic. National rivalries were exacerbated by imperial competition, and the nationality problem in the Hungarian half of the Habsburg monarchy intensified as a result of the government’s Magyarization policies and the example German and Italian unifications set for the Slavic peoples.As the industrial working class grew in number and organized strength, Marxist social-democratic parties pressured European governments to equalize conditions as well as opportunities. In the midst of an increasingly unsettled atmosphere, Emperor William II of Germany dismissed Bismarck in 1890. For two decades the Iron Chancellor had served as Europe’s “honest broker,” juggling with great dexterity a bewildering array of alliances and alignments and thereby maintaining the peace. None of his successors possessed the skill needed to preserve Bismarck’s system, and when the incompetent emperor jettisoned realpolitik in favor of Weltpolitik (imperial politics), England, France, and Russia formed the Triple Entente.