HISTORY OF EUROPE - The Major Turning Points
MORE THAN ONE MILLION MEN fell dead or wounded in 1916's Battle of the Somme. Yet that World War I carnage had no discernible effect beyound the gotting of a generation of young Europeans. In the 1850s an unknown refugee scholar drudged through endless reading in the British Museum, preparing his treatise. Karl Marx's Das Kapital was to become the base of an ideological wall that has split Europe into East and West.
The great turning of European history have swung as much of the hinges of ideas as on those events. Concepts from the classical age of Greece, such as national inquiry into nature, ideal beauty, moderation, and political freedom, were absorbed, faded away, and emerged again in altered states. Rome contributed language, systems of law and administration, public works and architecture.
Christianity firmly established an authority higher than the state's, preserved learning, and inspired painting, music, and stone soarings of Gothic cathedrals. It also provided the sole unifying thread of continuity. For a millennium, inhabitants thought of themselves more as wards of Christendon than of Europe.
Invading Islamic Arabs brought ancient texts, notably Aristotle's and a system of mathematical notation critical to the development of experimental science and the industrial revolution.
The early European–Celts, Germanic tribes, and others–though transformed by such inported ideas, kept alive many native traditions and folkways.
This welter of influences, spreading across a diversity of peoples and topography, gave rise to a dynamic culture. While a roomful of historians might never agree on a set number of the most significant turning points in European history, those presented here are surely among them. And few would argue with the proposition that the modern industrial and nationalistic world–for good and for ill–is Europe's child.
BY A.D. 400 ROME was in sharp decline, its once invincible empire shared by two capitals, with Constantinople dominant, and its frontiers breached by the first major waves of invaders. With the capture of rome itself by Visigoths in 410, the later sacking of the city by Vandals, and the deposing of the last emperor of the West, Romulus Augustus, in 476, the focus of Western European development moved north of the Alps.
OF THE MANY agrarian Germanic kingdoms that emerged after the fall of Rome, that of the Franks rose to prominence after 768 under Charlemagne (742-814), crowned Emperor of the Romans by the pope in 800. The Carolingian Emprie endured for nearly a century, until its diruption by Magyar and Viking invasions. The incorporation of these newcomers into Latin Christendom about A.D. 1000 in effect marked the birth of Western European society and the high Middle Ages.
EDUCATED EUROPEANS had believed since before the Christian era that the Earth was a sphere. Later use of the compass and astrolabe made long sea voyages possible. Early in the 15th century, Portuguese Prince Henry the Navigator founded an institute for the collection and analysis of geographic information and for the systematic planning of voyages. Between 1492 and 1525 expeditions by Columbus, Cabral, da Gama, Cabot, and Magellan began the great age of exploration and set the stage for centuries of European colonizaton over the entire globe.
AS FIRST CONSUL of France in 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte established a peaceful and enlightened despotism at home, then as emperor after 1804, embarked on a series of wars of conquest aided by alliances of convenience. By 1810 Napoleon dominated nearly all Europe, but a disastrous Russian campaign culminated in this abdication and exile in 1814. Escape, and a brief return to power, ended at Waterloo in 1815. In the aftermath of Napoleon's Empire, the Congress of Vienna was convened in 1814-15, rusulting in new political boundaries.
GERMAN CONSOLIDATION began when the province of Brandenburg combined with Prussia in 1648. Losses to Napoleon in 1807 were largely regained in 1815, and German territory comprised 39 independent but confederated states. Of these, Prussia rose to dominance after 1862 under Otto von Bismarck, and annexations led to the North German confederation of 1867. Incorporation os states to the south completed the German empire of 1871. Germany's growth, like Italy's of the same period, exemplifies the complex conbinations of political, economic, and military factors involved in the formation of the nations of Europe.
WITH DOMESTIC INDUSTRIES MATURING, and with a push to open markets for their products as well as to secure raw materials. European nations competed for colonies in the late 19th century. Where they had once been content with trade concessions, they now imposed control, directly or through puppet regimes, under the justifying banner of bestowing civilization upon the benighted. Much of Africa, for example, was carved and served as the Berlin Conference of 1884-85. Such attempts at cooperative colonialism did not prevent dangerous confrontation.
ADOLF HITLER CAME TO POWER in the early 1930s, a symbol of German resurgence from the national humiliation that resulted from the Treaty of Versailles ending World War I. In 1933 he proclaimed the Third Reich–heir to the might of the unified Germany of 1871 that overwhelmed France in the Franco-Prussian War. Hitler's 1939 invasion of Poland triggered World War II, which ended with Germany's defeat in 1945, after which the horrors of the Holocaust were revealed. Postwar interests of the victorious Soviet Union and Western Allies ultimately divided Europe into Eastern and Western ideological camps.
TAPESTRY OF HISTORY
4500 B.C. - AGE OF METALWORKING - Hammered copper and gold and copper smelting by 4500 B.C. precede bronze–a copper and tin alloy that helps foster trade routes. Ironworking, spread by Celts after the eighth century B.C., proves crucial to the development of the metal plw that will transform agriculture.
800 B.C. PHOENICIAN COLONIES FLOURISH - After the waning of Crete and Mycenae, Greeks of the Hellenic period colonize much of the Mediterranean and Black Sea. Their homeland city-states reach a political and artistic peak of development in the fifth century.
400 B.C. - CLASSICAL GREEK CIVILIZATION REACHES PEAK
300 B.C. - IRON AGE CELTS DOMINATE CENTRAL EUROPE - Following the golden age of the Greek city-states, Athens first among them, and the short-lived empire of the Macedonian Alexander the Great, Romans expand from the west and absorb the Greek world as part of an even greater world dominion.
146 B.C. - GREECE FALLS TO ROMAN POWER - After destroying its archenemy, Carthage, Rome consolidates holdings in Spain. Julius Caesar triumphs in Gaul and sets the stage for the fall of republican and the rise of imperial Rome. Later emperors extend conquests, eventully conferring citizenship on the vanquished, and continue building roads to bind and defend an empire whose continental limits extend to the Rhine and Danube Rivers. Many Roman outposts bcome the nuclei of modern European cities.
330 A.D. - CONSTANTINOPLE FOUNDED
372 A.D. - 372 BARBARIANS INVADE EUROPE
476 A.D. - LAST ROMAN EMPEROR IN WEST FALLS - Germanic tribes including Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Vandals, goths, Visigoths–and the Huns of Central Asia–penetrate all regions of the Western Roman Empire.
550 A.D. - BYSANTINE EMPIRE AT HEIGHT - After the death of the Prophet Muhannad in 632, Islamic Arab forces sweep across North Africa, invade the Iberian Peninsula, and cross the Pyrenees. After defeat at Tours, 732, Arabic influence in Europe is confined to Spain and Sicily.
711 A.D. - ARABS INVADE SPAIN FROM NORTH AFRICA
800 A.D. - POPE CROWNS CHARLEMAGNE EMPEROR - After the last invasions by barbarians–Viking and Magyars–Europe's population grows, agriculture is improved and extended, while developing towns are joined by networks of communication and trade. Feudalism, with its reciprocal obligations of vassals and lords, begins to form the primary social organization from the local manor to kingdoms, although in some regions independent city-states are federated in leagues. The church is omnipresent, a holder of vast properties as well as the dispenser of salvation.
1096 - POPE URBAN II LAUNCHES FIRST CRUSADE -
The crusades of the 11th, 12th and early 14th centuries mount five major campaigns by European Christians to unseat the Seljuk Turks, who had captured Jerusalem in 1071. Whle the Crusades ultimately fail in their great mission, they establish a kingdom that rules in Palestine for a hundred years, open trade routes, and bring to Europe new knowledge, fashions, and foods. The Norman kingdoms in southern Italy and Sicily follow, and powerful brotherhoods such as the Knights Hospitalers are moving forces in European politics for generations.
1215 - MAGNA CARTA GUARANTEES RIGHTS IN ENGLAND -
In the high Middle ages universities flourish, and the scholar St. Thomas Aquinas develops a philosophical system that mirrors the times: Everything in society and all men have a fixed place in a chain of being descending from God. But the social fabric is shattered by the black death, bubonic and pneumonic plague, that kills every third European.
1348 - THE BLACK DEATH RAVAGES EUROPE
1453 - BYZANTINE EMPIRE FALLS TO TURKS
1456 - GUTENBERG PRINTS BBWITH MOVABLE TYPE
1492 - COLUMBUS LAND IN WESTERN HEMISPHERE
1500 - FLORENCE REACHES RENAISSANCE PEAK
1517 - REFORMATION BEGINS UNDER MARTIN LUTHER -
The Spanish and Roman Inquisition, punishing alleged heresy with torture and immolation, are coming to a close. The Protestant Reformation quickly spreads along the northern tier of Europe, including Scandinavia. The Roman Catholic Church responds with the Council of Trent, which reaffirms dogma while starting to reform ecclesiastical abuses.
By shrewd marriage more than by force, the House of Habsburg becomes the dominant power of the 16th century. Under Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, its domain includes much of Europe, threatening the Continent with universal monarchy.
1588 - ENGLISH DEFEAT THE SPANISH ARMADA
1648 - PEACE OF WESPHALIA ENDS THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR
1687 - ISAAC NEWTON PUBLISHES PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA
1700 - CHARLES XII CROWNED KING OF SWEDEN
1713 - TREATY OF UTRECHT DISMEMBERS SPANISH EMPIRE-
Having expanded thr three centuriesf rom a region around Moscow, Russia under Peter the Great looks to Western Europe as a model for development.
1762 - ROUSSEAU PUBLISHES THE SOCIAL CONTRACT -
The intellectual life of the later 17th and 18th centuries gives rise to the preeminence of natural law over dogmatism, of science over superstition, of modernity over antiquity, of progress over tradition, of urbanity over rusticity. Locke, Newton, and later, Voltaire and Rousseau applied human reason to fundamental questions regardless of the dictates of established authority.
1789 - BEGINNING OF FRENCH REVOLUTION
1804 - NAPOLEON BECOMES EMPEROR OF FRANCE
1815 - CONGRESS OF VIENNA ENDS NAPOLEONIC ERA -
At first by water, then by steam, the application of power and mechanical advantage transforms the nature of work in the 19th century from cottage to factory industry, especially in textiles. This system leads to explitation of workers, antagonism among social classes, and concentration of wealth. Gradually, it increases general wealth and promotes financial and social mobilty.
1848 - MARX AND ENGLELS PUBLISH COMMUNIST MANIFESTO -
Revolution sweeps continental Europe, and though quickly repressed, sets in motion forces of self-determination and nationalism that will shortly prevail against the remnants of feudalism and absolute monarchy.
1859 - CHARLES DARWIN PUBLISHES THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
1870 - ITALY UNIFIED AS NATION
1885 - AGREEMENT ON AFRICAN COLONIAL BOUNDARIES -
Europe reaches the peak of its global power, yet national ambitions and grievances lead to war.
1914 - WORLD WAR I BEGINS
1917 BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION TRANSFORMS RUSSIA
1919 - TREATY OF VERSAILLES FORMALLY ENDS WORLD WAR I
1923 - RUINOUS INFLATION SWEEPS GERMANY
1929 - GLOBAL ECONOMIC DEPRESSION BEGINS
1933 - HITLER PROCLAIMS THIRD REICH
1939 - WORLD WAR II BEGINS
1945 - WORLD WAR II ENDS -
Following World War II, European nations begin divesting themselves of colonies and possessions, and the balance of world power shifts toward the new–and antagonistic–superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. Soviet-bloc countries form economic pact.
1949 - NATO ESTABLISHED AMONG WESTERN ALLIES
1955 - WARSAW PACT BETWEEN U.S.S.R. AND ITS SATELLITES -
Revolt in Soviet-dominated Hungary and subsequent repression escalate the cold war between Eastern and Western blocs.
1957 - SOVIET UNION LAUNCHES SPUTNIK INTO ORBIT -
European Economic Community, also known as the Common market, is established among Western nations in 1957 to remove trade barriers and to encourage free flow of capital, labor, and goods among them.
1961 - EAST GERMANS ERECT WALL IN BERLIN
1968 - SOVIET UNION INVADES CZECHOSLOVAKIA
1975 - EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY FOUNDED -
European Space Agency plans a mission to rendezvous with Halley's comet in 1986, none centuries after that body was seen to be an omen preceding the Norman invasion of England in 1066.
1979 - EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT ELECTED
