Europe: An Overview
NEWSREEL AND HISTOICAL FOOTAGE
Voiceover: Europe is the birthplace of western civilization and a land of great beauty, with majestic mountains, dense
forests, open plains, beautiful coastlines, ancient monuments and historic sites, magnificent cathedrals, spectacular
cities. Europe is also a land of stark contrasts.
Stretching westward from the Ural Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean, Europe is bordered on the north by the Arctic
Ocean and faces the Mediterranean and Black Seas to the south. Slightly larger than the United States, the continent
can best be described as a peninsula jutting out from the gigantic Eurasian landmass. With hundreds of inlets, gulfs, and
bays, Europe’s shoreline is equal in distance to the circumference of the earth. The region is broken up by a number of
mountain ranges: The Pyrenees, Alps, Balkans, Caucasus, and the Urals. Europe also has an extensive system of rivers
that greatly contributed to its development by establishing transportation and communication links throughout the
area. There are 45 countries on the continent. Five are islands: Great Britain, Ireland, Iceland, Cyprus, and Malta.
After Asia, Europe is the most densely populated continent on earth. Seven hundred twenty million people representing
more than 60 different ethnic groups coexist in this small region of the world. Because of their frequent contact with
one another, many Europeans speak three or more languages.
The history of the Europeans goes back several thousand years. Europe is the birthplace of western civilization. Ancient
Greece and Rome left many legacies – the Greeks with their eminent statesmen and great intellectuals; their classical
ideas on democracy, philosophy, literature, and science, and their extraordinary achievements in art and architectures.
The Romans also made many contributions to western civilization, their system of codified laws, and concepts of
citizenship, their language and great works of literature, and their outstanding achievements in architecture are with us
to this very day.
Rome was the center of the Western world for almost 1,000 years, encompassing most of Europe and vast regions
around the Mediterranean. But in the 5th century, after the empire had been weakened by plagues and invasions,
nomadic tribes swept down from the north onto the Italian peninsula and sacked Rome.
After the fall of Rome, Western Europe faced a bleak period known as the Middle Ages that lasted for more than 700
years. This was a time of brutal warfare and feudalism when warlords granted land to vassals in exchange for military
service. It was also an age of chivalry with a strict code of conduct and time when monarchies were established and
when the Catholic Pope in Rome became the spiritual, political, and economic authority throughout the western part of
the continent. However, in the East, Christian leaders in the Byzantine Empire resented the Pope’s increasing authority.
This led to a split in the 11th century between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches which still exists to this day.
For the next 150 years. Christians, inspired by the Catholic Church, led a number of crusades to recapture Jerusalem and
areas in Europe controlled by Muslims. During this same period of time, many cities based on trade flourished. Then
toward the end of the middle Ages, a catastrophic plague, the Black Death, invaded Europe killing one-third of the
people.
In the 14th century in the Italian city-states, there was a revival of classical Greek and Roman culture, which brought a
new era of prosperity to Western Europe and was the beginning of the Renaissance. The Renaissance was a golden
period of artistic and scientific achievement. It was also an age of exploration that led to the discovery of the New
World in the late 15th century.
Then in the 16th century, many Europeans demanded religious reform. This was in response to the secular ideas of the
Renaissance and the growing corruption and repression of the Catholic Church. Martin Luther, a former Catholic monk,
led the first Protestant revolt, which brought about the Reformation. The Reformation was a time when violent protests
led to a series of wars that rages throughout the continent for more than 100 years, killing one-third of the population.
By the end of these conflicts, Protestant Churches had gained control in many areas throughout Europe, and the Roman
Catholic Church no longer dominated the continent.
During the 17th and 18th centuries, after the decline of the Catholic Church, European rulers became more oppressive
and fought to increase their rule over the continent. In response to this oppression, the people of France stormed the
Bastille. This was the beginning of the French Revolution. After 10 years of bloody revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte
came into power proclaiming himself as emperor of France. He then attempted to conquer all of Europe, but was
defeated in 1815 by the British and their allies.
To prevent France or any other state from ever dominating Europe again, the major European powers convened the
Congress of Vienna. They redrew Europe’s political boundaries in the hope of preserving peace through a balance of
power. But during the 19th century, nationalist movements continued to weaken Europe’s empires from within and new
nation-states emerged.
European powers also continued to expand their colonial powers around the world. Toward the end of the century, the
architect of German unification, Otto Von Bismarck, developed an Alliance System that divided Europe into armed
camps. Tensions among European nations continued to build, and ethnic conflicts escalated. In 1914, the First World
War began. This was at a time when the Industrial Revolution made possible the mass production of devastating new
weapons. More than 20 million people died. The hope that WWI would be the war to end all wars was crushed with the
rise of Adolph Hitler in Germany and the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939.
World War II devastated Europe. Over 40 million people were killed. Six million were Jews, systematically
exterminated. Great cities were left in ruin, and millions were homeless.
No war in all of history had ever been so destructive. But who would rebuild Europe, and how? This was the major
question that faced the victorious allies, the so-called Big Three: Great Britain, The United States, and the Soviet Union.
Despite several meetings among these leaders, roadblocks of territorial expansion, opposed ideologies, and different
points of view prevented agreement on how to rebuild Europe, so Europe and the rest of the world entered into a Cold
War. For almost 50 years, the continent was divided into two armed camps – West Europe was closely tied to the
United States, East Europe to the Soviet Union. The Cold War was a time of great tension in Europe. On several
occasions, crises developed over Berlin and elsewhere that brought the world to the brink of World War III and possible
nuclear annihilation, but fortunately diplomacy and caution prevailed, and no war broke out in Europe.
Then in the late 1980’s, an amazing series of events began to unfold in the Soviet Union and East Europe that brought
the Cold War to a close – almost 50 years after the end of the World War II. The Berlin Wall fell, East and West Germany
were reunified, and the Soviet Union ceased to exist.
Since the end of the Cold War, the people of Eastern and Central Europe have been struggling to build new political and
economic systems while at the same time; Western Europeans continued to move toward a long-standing dream of a
unified Europe. As the new millennium begins, will this movement toward unity among European nations provide
economic and political integration while still preserving the sovereignty of 45 countries and the unique cultural diversity
that is Europe today? Or will the forces of ethnic hatred and national rivalry lead to further divisiveness?