{"id":145,"date":"2026-07-10T22:14:27","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T22:14:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.palomar.edu\/europeaconcisehistory2\/front-matter\/introduction\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T22:18:07","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T22:18:07","slug":"introduction","status":"publish","type":"front-matter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.palomar.edu\/europeaconcisehistory2\/front-matter\/introduction\/","title":{"raw":"Introduction","rendered":"Introduction"},"content":{"raw":"Once upon a time, this course was titled, \u201cWestern Civilization.\u201d Today we use the much more accurate term European History. However, before we get into that history, it is important to understand that change. First, we need to start by asking hat is \u201cWestern Civilization\u201d? Furthermore, who or what is part of it? Like all ideas, the concept of Western Civilization itself has a history, one that coalesced in college textbooks and curriculums for the first time in the United States in the 1920s. In many ways, the very idea of Western Civilization is a \u201cloaded\u201d one, separating one branch of civilization from others as if they were distinct, even unrelated. Thus, before examining the events of Europe\u2019s history, it is important to unpack the history of the concept of Western Civilization.\r\n

Where is the West?<\/h2>\r\nThe most obvious question to start with is \u201cwest of what\u201d? A follow up would be, where is \u201cthe east\u201d? Terms used in present-day geopolitics regularly refer to an east and west, as in \u201cFar East,\u201d and \u201cMiddle East,\u201d as well as in \u201cWestern\u201d ideas or attitudes. In modern usage then \u201cthe West\u201d refers to Europe. After all, if the area including T\u00fcrkiye, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Palestine, Israel, and Egypt is somewhere called the \u201cMiddle\u201d or \u201cNear\u201d East, doesn't that imply that it is just to the east of something else?\r\n\r\nIn fact, we get the original distinction between east and west from ancient Greece. Greece is the center-point: east of the Balkan Peninsula was east, west of the Balkans was west, and the Greeks were at the center of their self-understood world. Likewise, the sea that both separated and united the Greeks and their neighbors, including the Egyptians and the Persians, is still called the Mediterranean, which means \u201csea in the middle of the earth\u201d (albeit in Latin, not Greek\u2014we get the word from a later \"Western\" civilization, the Romans). The ancient civilizations clustered around the Mediterranean treated it as the center of the world itself, their major trade route to one another and a major source of their food as well.\r\n\r\nTo the Greeks, there were two kinds of people: Greeks and barbarians (the Greek word is barbaros<\/em>). Supposedly, the word barbarian came from Greeks mocking the sound of non-Greek languages: \u201cbar-bar-bar-bar.\u201d The Greeks traded with all of their neighbors and knew perfectly well that the Persians and the Egyptians and the Phoenicians, among others, were not their inferiors in learning, art, or political organization, but the fact remains that they were not Greek, either. Thus, one of the core themes of Western Civilization is that right from its inception\u2014of the east being east of Greece and the west being west of Greece, and of the world being divided between Greeks and barbarians\u2014there was an idea of who was central and superior, and who was out on the periphery and inferior, or at least not part of the best version of civilization.\r\n\r\nThe Greeks themselves did not have a concept of \u201cWestern Civilization,\u201d just Greek versus barbarian, which included the other peoples who inhabited Europe. Likewise, the Greeks did not invent \u201ccivilization\u201d itself; they inherited things like agriculture and writing from their neighbors. Neither was there ever a united Greek empire: there was a great Greek civilization when Alexander the Great conquered what he thought was most of the world, stretching from Greece itself through Egypt, the Middle East, as far as western India, but it collapsed into feuding kingdoms after he died. Thus, while later cultures came to look to the Greeks as their intellectual and cultural ancestors, the Greeks themselves did not set out to found \u201cWestern Civilization\u201d itself.\r\n

Mesopotamia and Civilization<\/h2>\r\n\u201cThe West\u201d as a concept is rooted in the geography of Greece, but \u201ccivilization\u201d is not. The word is linked to the Latin word for city, civitas<\/em>, and it suggests a way of life centering on the products of an urbanized culture. Likewise, as noted above with the Greeks, civilization was usually seen as the opposite of barbarism, and historically it was nomadic, non-urbanized peoples who were most likely to be labeled as \u201cbarbarians.\u201d For the sake of historical analysis, however, we can set aside the pejorative distinction between civilization and barbarism and instead consider civilization as a set of essential technological advances and examine how those technologies altered human life on an enormous scale. That process began in the Middle East thousands of years before the first cities of ancient Greece existed.\r\n\r\nThe most ancient human civilizations arose in the Fertile Crescent, an area stretching from present-day Palestine and Israel through southern T\u00fcrkiye and into Iraq. Closely related, and lying within the Fertile Crescent, is the region of Mesopotamia, which is the area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in present-day Iraq. In these areas, people first invented the most crucial technology necessary for the development of civilization: agriculture. The Mesopotamians also invented other things that are central to civilization, including towns and cities, the earliest writing systems, mathematics, engineering, and both organized religion and complex political systems. Similar advances happened in key regions across the globe, including China, India, and Mesoamerica, but it happened first in Mesopotamia, and it was from Mesopotamia that civilization spread to the rest of western Eurasia.\r\n

Greece and Rome<\/h2>\r\nEven if we do not attribute the idea of Western Civilization to the Greeks, we do need to acknowledge their importance. Alexander the Great was one of the most famous and important military leaders in history, a man who started conquering \u201cthe world\u201d when he was eighteen years old. When he died his empire fell apart, in part because he did not say which of his generals was to take over after his death. Nevertheless, the empires he left behind were united in important ways, using Greek as one of their languages, employing Greek architecture in their buildings, putting on plays in the Greek style, and of course, trading with one another. This period in history is called the Hellenistic Age. The people who were part of that age were European, Middle Eastern, and North African, people who worshiped both Greeks gods and the gods of their own regions, spoke all kinds of different languages, and lived as part of a hybrid culture. Hellenistic civilization demonstrates the fact that Western Civilization has always been a blend of different peoples, not a single encompassing group or language or religion.\r\n\r\nPerhaps the most important empire in the ancient history of Western Civilization was ancient Rome. Over the course of roughly five centuries, the Romans expanded from the city of Rome in the middle of the Italian peninsula to rule an empire that stretched from Britain to Spain and from North Africa to Persia (present-day Iran). Through both incredible engineering, the hard work of Roman citizens, and later subjects, and the massive use of slave labor, they built remarkable buildings and created infrastructure like roads and aqueducts that survive to the present day.\r\n\r\nThe Romans\u2014sometimes grudgingly\u2014acknowledged Greece as a cultural model. Roman architecture used Greek shapes and forms, the Roman gods shared many similarities with the Greek pantheon, and educated Romans spoke and read Greek so that they could read the works of the great Greek poets, playwrights, and philosophers. Thus, the Romans deliberately adopted an older set of ideas and considered themselves part of an ongoing civilization that blended Greek and Roman values. Like the Greeks before them, they also divided civilization itself in a stark binary: there was Greco-Roman culture on the one hand and barbarism on the other, although they reluctantly acknowledged the civilized character of Persia at times.\r\n\r\nThe Romans were largely successful at assimilating the people they conquered. They united their provinces using three major cultural elements. The first was the Latin language, which is the precursor of all of the major languages spoken in Southern Europe today (French, Italian, Spanish, Romanian, etc.). Second was Roman Law, which is the basis of most forms of law still in use today in Europe. Third was the Roman form of government. Along with those factors, the Romans promoted Greek and Roman science, learning, and literature across their empire. In many ways, the Romans believed that they were bringing civilization itself everywhere they went, and because they made the connection between Greek civilization and their own, they played a significant role in inventing the idea of Western Civilization as something that was ongoing.\r\n\r\nHowever, the Romans themselves did not use the term \u201cWestern Civilization\u201d and as their empire expanded, even the connection between Roman identity and Europe itself weakened. During the period that the empire was at its height, the bulk of the population and wealth was in the east, concentrated in Egypt, Anatolia (the region corresponding to the present-day nation of T\u00fcrkiye) and the Middle East. This shift to the east culminated in the move of the capital of the empire from the city of Rome to the Greek town of Byzantium, where it at first was known as Nova Roma but later renamed Constantinople in honor of the emperor who ordered the move: Constantine. Thus, while the Greco-Roman legacy was certainly a major factor in the development of the idea<\/em> of Western Civilization much later, \u201cRoman\u201d was certainly not the same thing as \u201cwestern\u201d at the time.\r\n

The Middle Ages and Christianity<\/h2>\r\nAnother stage in the development of the idea of Western Civilization came about after Rome ceased to exist as a united empire, during the era known as the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages were the period between the political decline of Rome\u2014which happened around 476 CE\u2014and the Renaissance\u2014which started around 1300 CE. During the Middle Ages, another concept that has come to be a core component of Western Civilization arose among Europeans. However, it expanded beyond the connection to Roman and Greek accomplishments and focused instead on religion. The Roman Empire had started to become Christian in the early fourth century CE when the emperor Constantine made it illegal to persecute someone based on religion. As the Christian faith continued to spread, many Europeans in the Middle Ages came to believe that despite the fact that they spoke different languages and had different rulers, they were united as part of \u201cChristendom.\u201d\r\n\r\nChristianity played an important role in the history of Europe and the development of the idea of Western Civilization. It inspired amazing art and music and was at the heart of scholarship and learning for centuries. However, it also justified the aggressive expansion of European kingdoms. Europeans truly believed that members of other religions were infidels (meaning \"those who are unfaithful,\" which included Jews and Muslims, but also Christians who deviated from official orthodoxy) or pagans (those who worshiped false gods) who should either convert or be exterminated. Despite the fact that Muslims and Jews worshiped the same God and shared much of the same sacred literature, medieval Europeans had absolutely no qualms about invading Muslim lands and committing atrocities in the name of their religion. Likewise, medieval antisemitism\u2014prejudice and hatred directed against Jews\u2014eventually drove many Jews from Europe itself to take shelter in the Muslim kingdoms and empires of the Middle East and North Africa. Historically, it was much safer and more comfortable for Jews to live in places like the Muslim-ruled Ottoman Empire than in most of Christian Europe.\r\n\r\nA major irony of the idea that Western Civilization is somehow inherently Christian is that Islam is unquestionably just as \u201cWestern.\u201d Islam\u2019s point of origin, the Arabian Peninsula, is geographically very close to that of both Judaism and Christianity. Its holy writings are also closely aligned to Jewish and Christian values and thought. The connections were not just religious in nature. Islamic kingdoms and empires were part of the networks of trade, scholarship, and exchange that linked together the entire greater Mediterranean region. Thus, despite the fervor of European crusaders, it would be profoundly misleading to separate Islamic states and cultures from the rest of Western Civilization.\r\n

The Renaissance and European Expansion<\/h2>\r\nPerhaps the most crucial development in the idea of Western Civilization in the pre-modern period was the Renaissance. The idea of the \u201cMiddle Ages\u201d was invented by thinkers during the Renaissance, which started around 1300 CE. The great thinkers and artists of the period claimed to be moving away from the ignorance and darkness of the Middle Ages\u2014which they also described as the \u201cDark Ages\u201d\u2014and returning to the greatness of the Romans and Greeks. People like Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Christine de Pizan, and Petrarch proudly connected their work to that of the Romans and Greeks, claiming that there was an unbroken chain of ideas, virtues, and accomplishments stretching back more than a thousand years to people like Alexander the Great, Plato, and Socrates.\r\n\r\nAnd so, during the Renaissance, educated people in Europe based their own philosophies and outlooks on Plato and Aristotle, as well as that of other Greek thinkers. They directly connected their art to its inspiration from Greek and Roman forms. Additionally, the scientific discoveries of the Renaissance were inspired by the same spirit of inquiry that Greek scientists and Roman engineers had cultivated. In this way, Renaissance thinkers proudly linked together their own era to that of the Greeks and Romans, thus strengthening the concept of Western Civilization as an ongoing enterprise.\r\n\r\nIn the process of reviving the ideas of the Greeks and Romans, Renaissance thinkers created a new program of education known as \u201chumanistic\u201d education. Celebrating the inherent goodness and potentialities of humankind, humanistic education saw in the study of classical literature a source of inspiration for not just knowledge, but also morality and virtue. Combining the practical study of languages, history, mathematics, and rhetoric\u2014among other subjects\u2014with the cultivation of an ethical code, the humanists ultimately devised a curriculum meant to create well-rounded, virtuous individuals. That program of education remained intact into the twentieth century, with the study of the \u201cclassics \u2014Greek and Roman literature\u2014remaining a hallmark of elite education until it began to be displaced by the more specialized disciplinary studies of the modern university system that was born near the end of the nineteenth century.\r\n\r\nIt was not Renaissance ideas, however, that had the greatest impact on the globe at the time. Instead, it was European soldiers, colonists, and most consequentially, diseases. The first people from Eurasia since prehistory to travel to the Americas and remain\u2014an earlier Viking colony did not survive\u2014were European explorers who, entirely by accident, \u201cdiscovered\u201d the Americas at the end of the fifteenth century CE. It bears emphasis that the \u201cdiscovery\u201d of the Americas is a misnomer: millions of people already lived there, as their ancestors had for thousands of years. However, geography had left them ill-prepared for the arrival of the newcomers. With the European colonists came an onslaught of epidemics to which the native peoples of the Americas had no resistance, and within a few generations the immense majority \u2014 perhaps as many as 90 percent\u2014 of Indigenous Americans perished as a result. This catastrophic event, the greatest demographic collapse in world history, is remembered as the \u201cGreat Dying.\u201d The subsequent conquest of the Americas by Europeans and their descendants was thus made vastly easier. Europeans suddenly had access to an astonishing wealth of land and natural resources. Wealth that they extracted in large part by enslaving Indigenous Americans and soon, Africans.\r\n\r\nDue largely to the European conquest of the Americas and the exploitation of American resources and enslaved people, in the following centuries Europe went from a region of little economic and military power and importance to one of the most formidable. Following the Spanish and Portuguese conquest of Central and South America, the other major European states embarked on their own imperialistic ventures in the following centuries. \u201cTrade empires\u201d emerged over the course of the seventeenth century, first and foremost those of the Dutch and English, which established the precedent that profit and territorial control were mutually reinforcing priorities for European states. Driven by that conjoined motive, European states established huge, and growing, global empires. By 1800, roughly 35 percent of the surface of the world was controlled by Europeans or their descendants.\r\n

The Modern Era<\/h2>\r\nMost of the world, however, was off limits to large-scale European expansion. Not only were there prosperous and sophisticated kingdoms in many regions of Africa, but\u2014in an ironic reversal of the impact of European diseases on Americans\u2014African diseases ensured that would-be European explorers and conquerors were initially unable to penetrate beyond the coasts of most of Africa south of the Sahara. Meanwhile, the enormous and powerful empires and kingdoms of China, Japan, Southeast Asia, and South Asia (i.e. India) largely regarded Europeans as incidental trading partners of relatively little importance. The Middle East was dominated by two powerful and \u201cwestern\u201d empires of its own: Persia and the Ottoman Empire.\r\n\r\nThe explosion of European power, one that coincided with the fruition of the idea that Western Civilization was both distinct from and better<\/em> than other branches of civilization, came as a result of a development in technology: the Industrial Revolution. Starting in Great Britain in the middle of the eighteenth century, Europeans learned how to exploit fossil fuels in the form of coal to harness hitherto unimaginable amounts of energy. That energy underwrote a vast and dramatic expansion of European technology, wealth, and military power, this time built on the backs not of outright slaves, but of workers paid subsistence wages.\r\n\r\nOver the course of the nineteenth century, the Industrial Revolution underwrote and enabled the transformation of Europe from regional powerhouse to global hegemon. By the early twentieth century, Europe and the American nations founded by the descendants of Europeans controlled roughly 85 percent of the globe. Europeans either forced foreign states to concede to their economic demands and political influence, as in China and the Ottoman Empire, or simply conquered and controlled regions directly, as in India and Africa. None of this would have been possible without the technological revolution wrought by industrialism.\r\n\r\nTo Europeans and North Americans, however, the reason that they had come to enjoy such wealth and power was not because of a (temporary) monopoly of industrial technology. Instead, it was the inevitable result of their inherent biological and cultural superiority. The idea that the human species was divided into biologically distinct races was not entirely invented in the nineteenth century, but it became the predominant outlook and acquired all the trappings of a \u201cscience\u201d over the course of the 1800s. By the year 1900, almost any person of European descent would have claimed to be part of a distinct, superior \u201crace\u201d whose global dominance was simply part of their collective birthright. Likewise, for the first time, the idea of \u201cthe West\u201d started emerging among certain philosophers, although at the time the concept excluded all of eastern Europe, not just non-European regions and continents.\r\n\r\nThe conceit that the West represented the leading edge of human development arrived at its zenith in the first half of the twentieth century. The European powers themselves fell upon one another in the First World War in the name of expanding, or at least preserving, their share of global dominance. Soon after, the new ideology of fascism put racial superiority at the very center of their worldviews. The Second World War was the direct result of those ideologies, when racial warfare was unleashed for the first time not just on external peoples Europeans had already classified as \u201cinferior,\u201d but on European ethnicities that fascists now considered inferior races in their own right, most notably the Jews. The bloodbath that followed resulted in approximately 60 million deaths, including the 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust.\r\n

Western Civilization Is Reinvented<\/h2>\r\nIt was against the backdrop of this descent into what Europeans and Americans frequently called \u201cbarbarism\u201d\u2014the old antithesis of the \u201ctrue\u201d civilization that started with the Greeks\u2014that the history of Western Civilization first came into being as a textbook topic and soon, a mainstay of college curriculums. Prominent scholars in the United States, especially historians, came to believe that the best way to defend the elements of civilization with which they most strongly identified, including certain concepts of rationality and political equality, was to describe all of human existence as an ascent from primitive savagery into enlightenment, an ascent that may not have strictly speaking started in Europe, but which they felt enjoyed its greatest success there. The early proponents of the \u201cWestern Civ\u201d concept spoke and wrote explicitly of European civilization as an unbroken ladder of ideas, technologies, and cultural achievements that led to the present. Along the way, of course, they included the United States as both a product of those European achievements and, in the twentieth century, as one of the staunchest defenders of that legacy.\r\n\r\nThat first generation of historians of Western Civilization succeeded in crafting what was to be the core of history curriculums for most of the twentieth century in American colleges, universities, and high schools. The narrative in the introduction in this book follows a traditional Western Civilization curriculum\u2019s basic contours: it starts with Greece, goes through Rome, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, then on to the growth in European power leading up to the recent past. The traditional story, however, usually made a distinction between Western Civilization as the site of progress, and the rest of the world\u2014usually referred to as the \u201cOrient,\u201d until textbooks started changing their terms in the 1980s\u2014which was normally characterized as lagging behind. Outside of the West, went the narrative, there was despotism, stagnation, and corruption, so it was almost inevitable that the West would eventually achieve global dominance.\r\n\r\nThis was, in hindsight, a somewhat surprising conclusion given when the narrative was invented. The West\u2019s self-understanding as the most \u201ccivilized\u201d culture had imploded with the world wars, but the inventors of Western Civilization as a concept were determined to not only rescue its legacy from that implosion, but to celebrate it as the only<\/em> major historical legacy of relevance to the present. In doing so, they reinforced many of the intellectual dividing lines created centuries earlier: there was true civilization opposed by barbarians, there was an ongoing and unbroken legacy of achievement and progress, and most importantly, only people who were born in or descended from people born in Europe had played a significant historical role. The entire history of most of humankind was not just irrelevant to the narrative of European or American history, it was irrelevant to the history of the modern world for everyone<\/em>. In other words, Africans and Asians, to say nothing of the people of the Pacific or Indigenous Americans, could have little of relevance to learn from their own history. And yet, this astonishing conclusion was born from a culture that had unleashed the most horrific destruction ever witnessed by the human species.\r\n

The West: The Problems of the Concept<\/h2>\r\nToday, the terms \u201cThe West\u201d and \u201cWestern\u201d remain prevalent in journalism, politics, and casual language alike. However, rarely are they considered in much depth. To pick one particularly glaring example, Russia under the regime of its dictatorial president Vladimir Putin is usually described in terms of its opposition to the West, which is understood to mean the United States and Western Europe. Those countries correspond fairly neatly to the members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which was originally created to limit the expansion of the Soviet Union during the Cold War that followed World War II. Is Russia, however, \u201cEastern\u201d? As of the 2020s, it is in close political alliance with China, as well as other American political adversaries like Iran, but Russian cultural history is unquestionably linked more closely to Europe than to East Asia or the Middle East, and most contemporary Russians consider themselves Europeans.\r\n\r\nWhen we consider the fact that the very term \u201cthe West\u201d was not used in earnest until the later part of the nineteenth century, and then it generally only included European countries west of Poland, and when we reflect on the historical connections between nominally Western and (Middle) Eastern developments in the history of ideas, commerce, politics, and religion, it is clear that the very concept of the West is empirically (i.e. factually) questionable, even if most people today have at least a vague sense of what it is supposed to mean. None of this is to suggest that the idea is useless or should necessarily be abandoned, but it is<\/em> to suggest that the concept should be subject to scrutiny even if we conclude that it remains useful for historical or political analysis.\r\n\r\nThe other obvious problem with the idea of the West is its appropriation by the contemporary far-right, which openly celebrates a neo-fascist form of politics tied to western chauvinism. The risk of studying the history of western civilization without applying a critical and thoughtful lens to the idea is that it may implicitly endorse the outdated and inaccurate concepts of western exceptionalism and triumphalism that came of age in the late 1800s and which continue to inspire racist and anti-democratic politics in the present. To be clear, the immense majority of people who use the idea of the West in academia, journalism, politics, or even casual conversation do not accept cultural chauvinism or racism, but it is impossible to disentangle the concept from its abuses over the last two centuries and should, therefore, be \u201cunpacked\u201d in a deliberate, thoughtful, and focused manner whenever possible. This is a major reason why this course is now known as European history, in an attempt to distance the material from that chauvinistic perspective.\r\n

This Textbook<\/h2>\r\nEurope: A Concise History is a two-volume account of the region\u2019s development from the Greeks to the modern day.<\/em> Volume 1 covers from the ancient period through the Reformation. Volume 2 takes us from the Reformation to the modern period. This book is an adaptation of the Portland Community College textbook Western Civilization: A Concise History<\/em> and was written by Dr. Christopher Brooks and originally appeared in three volumes. I have adapted the book to cover the time period covered by the Palomar Community College course Hist 105 European History through the Reformation. This new Volume 1 incorporates elements of Volume 2 as originally written by Christopher Brooks. While the new Volume 2 has also been expanded to include all of the original Volume 3. I have also added new material and edited some sections for greater clarity. Europe: A Concise History<\/em> is intended to serve as the main textbook for a single semester or term class and is designed to be accessible to students who do not possess prior knowledge of the region or its history.\r\n\r\nRevisions for Version 2.0 of the textbook were supported by a grant from Open Oregon, a state-run consortium that supports Open Educational Resources. Revisions for Version 3.0 were supported by a grant from PCC\u2019s OER Steering Committee. Version 4.0 has been made possible by a grant from the California Community College Chancellor\u2019s Office. This current version was updated and edited by Travis Ritt of Palomar College with the support of the 2024 California Community College Chancellor\u2019s Office (CCCCO) OER Grant. As such, people are welcome to engage in the 5Rs of OER. They may retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute this textbook so long as they adhere to the following conditions: that they do so for non-commercial purposes, that they assign the same licensing conditions to any revised versions as have been applied to the original work, and that they acknowledge Christopher Brooks as the original author. Western Civilization: A Concise History<\/em>\u00a0by Portland Community College is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.\r\n\r\nI would like to wholeheartedly thank Dr. Brooks, Portland Community College, and Open Oregon for their work in this area of open educational resources.\r\n

The following changes were made to this book as a whole:<\/h2>\r\nThroughout I have edited sentences for greater clarity and flow.\r\n\r\nThe introduction has been updated.\r\n\r\nChapters 1-4 have been moved to Volume 1\r\n\r\nChapters 1-3 of Volume 2 are the same as Chapters 15-17 in Volume 1. They have been included here to serve as a foundation for those students who have not taken European History to the Reformation.\r\n\r\nAll chapters from Volume 3 have been included in Volume 2 and been renumbered\r\n

The following changes were made to specific chapters:<\/h2>\r\nChapter 1 (formerly Chapter 5)\r\n<\/strong>Added more context to the decline of Venetian maritime importance\r\n\r\nChanged from Montezuma to Moctezuma\r\n\r\nChapter 2: \u00a0(formerly Chapter 6)<\/strong>\r\n\r\nAdded the concept of the reprobate to Calvinism\r\n\r\nAdded more nuance to the beginning of the\u00a0 English Reformation\r\n\r\nConverted the Effects of the Reformation section into paragraphs rather than bullet points\r\n\r\nAdded a paragraph on the effects of the Protestant Revolution on the Eastern Orthodox Church\r\n\r\nChapter 3: \u00a0(formerly Chapter 7)<\/strong>\r\n\r\nReplaced the pixilated image titled The Spanish Fury with a clear image of the same\r\n\r\nIntroduced the concept of constitutional monarchy in the conclusion\r\n\r\nChapter 4 (formerly Chapter 8)<\/strong>\r\n\r\nTitle changed to include Constitutional Monarchy\r\n\r\nFixed the length of Louis XIV\u2019s rule and the number of fountains in the gardens at Versailles\r\n\r\nCorrected the naming conventions for Brandenburg and Prussia in the early 17th century\r\n\r\nChanged the title of the subsection\u201d The English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution\u201d to \u201c The English: From Civil War to Constitutional Monarchy\u201d\r\n\r\nAdded cultural analysis to the rule of Cromwell\r\n\r\nChapter 5 (formerly Chapter 9)<\/strong>\r\n\r\nModified the meaning of \u201cMiddle Passage\u201d\r\n\r\nChapter 6 (formerly Chapter 10)<\/strong>\r\n\r\nDeleted image of Newton\u2019s treatise on the properties of light because could not find a CC license\r\n\r\nExpanded the section on the development of Galileo's telescope\r\n\r\nAdded the concept of herem when discussing Baruch Spinoza\r\n\r\nChapter 7 (formerly Chapter 11)<\/strong>\r\n\r\nChanged image of Voltaire to one in the public domain\r\n\r\nExpanded the meaning of philosophes\r\n\r\nChapter 8 (formerly Chapter 12)<\/strong>\r\n\r\nReorganized and combined the introduction with the social orders section\r\n\r\nAdded population statistics and introduced France as an exemplar of the Three Estates.\r\n\r\nAdded more information to the section on the Clergy\/First Estate\r\n\r\nModified meaning of serf versus peasant\r\n\r\nChapter 9 (formerly Chapter 13)<\/strong>\r\n\r\nAdded material on the activities of the Marquis de Lafayette\r\n\r\nChapter 10 (formerly Chapter 1 of Volume 3)<\/strong>\r\n\r\nAdded to the popularity of Napoleon among his troops\r\n\r\nChapter 11 (formerly Chapter 2 of Volume 3)<\/strong>\r\n\r\nAdded in more on industrialization in Germanic areas\r\n\r\nChapter 12 (formerly Chapter 3 of Volume 3)<\/strong>\r\n\r\nAdded image citation for the Phalanst\u00e8re image\r\n\r\nReframed ideas into elite-isms and mass-isms\r\n\r\nMoved the discussion on liberalism earlier in the chapter to pair it with conservatism in the elite-isms\r\n\r\nChanged the concept from anarchist socialism to revolutionary socialism\r\n\r\nChapter 13 (formerly Chapter 4 of Volume 3)<\/strong>\r\n\r\nAdded credit and link to Europe 1848 map\r\n\r\nAdded more on the Corn Laws\r\n\r\nStrengthened the section on Louis Bonaparte\r\n\r\nChapter 14 (formerly Chapter 5 of Volume 3)<\/strong>\r\n\r\nModified the explanation of hominids\r\n\r\nChapter 15 (formerly Chapter 6 of Volume 3)<\/strong>\r\n\r\nRemoved coal and steel production chart because reference citation could not be found\r\n\r\nUsed Turkish spellings for names of Ottoman rulers\r\n\r\nFixed the timeline of the Armenian Genocide\r\n\r\nChapter 16 (formerly Chapter 7 of Volume 3)<\/strong>\r\n\r\nClarified the beginning military actions of World War I\r\n\r\nAdded to the discussion of trench warfare\r\n\r\nInserted an argument of whether World War I should be considered a \u201cworld\u201d war\r\n\r\nChapter 17 (formerly Chapter 8 of Volume 3)<\/strong>\r\n\r\nReorganized the section on the Bolshevik revolution\r\n\r\nChanged subsection from Summing up to Conclusion\r\n\r\nChapter 18 (formerly Chapter 9 of Volume 3)<\/strong>\r\n\r\nCombined the sections on the Weimar Republic and Nazism\r\n\r\nRemoved diagram of electoral results in Weimar Republic due to confusing nature\r\n\r\nModified the understanding of fascism in Spain\r\n\r\nChapter 19 (formerly Chapter 10 of Volume 3)<\/strong>\r\n\r\nModified introduction to show understanding that World War II was not primarily a European affair, as WWI had been.\r\n\r\nModified language to reflect that German actions were in fact those of Germany, not just the Nazi party\r\n\r\nAdded a more nuanced understanding to the Battle of Britain\r\n\r\nAdded a statement on German women during the war\r\n\r\nChapter 20 (formerly Chapter 11 of Volume 3)<\/strong>\r\n\r\nAdded more to what the Einsatzgruppen were doing\r\n\r\nChapter 21 (formerly Chapter 12 of Volume 3)<\/strong>\r\n\r\nUpdated the numbers of those believed to have died in Stalin\u2019s purges\r\n\r\nAdded to the agreement made at Bretton Woods\r\n\r\nChapter 22 (formerly Chapter 13 of Volume 3)<\/strong>\r\n\r\nReorganized the Major Cold War Conflicts section for better flow\r\n\r\nCreated a new sub-section for decolonization in Asia\r\n\r\nChapter 23 (formerly Chapter 14 of Volume 3)<\/strong>\r\n\r\nNo major changes\r\n\r\nChapter 24 (formerly Chapter 15 of Volume 3)<\/strong>\r\n\r\nAdded more to the concept of perestroika\r\n\r\nUpdated the section on the Russian invasion of Ukraine\r\n\r\nReplaced map of EU with an up to date one\r\n\r\nRemoved the section on the Middle East as it does not fit the COR of the course\r\n\r\nUpdated the section on the success of Far-Right politics in Europe","rendered":"

Once upon a time, this course was titled, \u201cWestern Civilization.\u201d Today we use the much more accurate term European History. However, before we get into that history, it is important to understand that change. First, we need to start by asking hat is \u201cWestern Civilization\u201d? Furthermore, who or what is part of it? Like all ideas, the concept of Western Civilization itself has a history, one that coalesced in college textbooks and curriculums for the first time in the United States in the 1920s. In many ways, the very idea of Western Civilization is a \u201cloaded\u201d one, separating one branch of civilization from others as if they were distinct, even unrelated. Thus, before examining the events of Europe\u2019s history, it is important to unpack the history of the concept of Western Civilization.<\/p>\n

Where is the West?<\/h2>\n

The most obvious question to start with is \u201cwest of what\u201d? A follow up would be, where is \u201cthe east\u201d? Terms used in present-day geopolitics regularly refer to an east and west, as in \u201cFar East,\u201d and \u201cMiddle East,\u201d as well as in \u201cWestern\u201d ideas or attitudes. In modern usage then \u201cthe West\u201d refers to Europe. After all, if the area including T\u00fcrkiye, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Palestine, Israel, and Egypt is somewhere called the \u201cMiddle\u201d or \u201cNear\u201d East, doesn’t that imply that it is just to the east of something else?<\/p>\n

In fact, we get the original distinction between east and west from ancient Greece. Greece is the center-point: east of the Balkan Peninsula was east, west of the Balkans was west, and the Greeks were at the center of their self-understood world. Likewise, the sea that both separated and united the Greeks and their neighbors, including the Egyptians and the Persians, is still called the Mediterranean, which means \u201csea in the middle of the earth\u201d (albeit in Latin, not Greek\u2014we get the word from a later “Western” civilization, the Romans). The ancient civilizations clustered around the Mediterranean treated it as the center of the world itself, their major trade route to one another and a major source of their food as well.<\/p>\n

To the Greeks, there were two kinds of people: Greeks and barbarians (the Greek word is barbaros<\/em>). Supposedly, the word barbarian came from Greeks mocking the sound of non-Greek languages: \u201cbar-bar-bar-bar.\u201d The Greeks traded with all of their neighbors and knew perfectly well that the Persians and the Egyptians and the Phoenicians, among others, were not their inferiors in learning, art, or political organization, but the fact remains that they were not Greek, either. Thus, one of the core themes of Western Civilization is that right from its inception\u2014of the east being east of Greece and the west being west of Greece, and of the world being divided between Greeks and barbarians\u2014there was an idea of who was central and superior, and who was out on the periphery and inferior, or at least not part of the best version of civilization.<\/p>\n

The Greeks themselves did not have a concept of \u201cWestern Civilization,\u201d just Greek versus barbarian, which included the other peoples who inhabited Europe. Likewise, the Greeks did not invent \u201ccivilization\u201d itself; they inherited things like agriculture and writing from their neighbors. Neither was there ever a united Greek empire: there was a great Greek civilization when Alexander the Great conquered what he thought was most of the world, stretching from Greece itself through Egypt, the Middle East, as far as western India, but it collapsed into feuding kingdoms after he died. Thus, while later cultures came to look to the Greeks as their intellectual and cultural ancestors, the Greeks themselves did not set out to found \u201cWestern Civilization\u201d itself.<\/p>\n

Mesopotamia and Civilization<\/h2>\n

\u201cThe West\u201d as a concept is rooted in the geography of Greece, but \u201ccivilization\u201d is not. The word is linked to the Latin word for city, civitas<\/em>, and it suggests a way of life centering on the products of an urbanized culture. Likewise, as noted above with the Greeks, civilization was usually seen as the opposite of barbarism, and historically it was nomadic, non-urbanized peoples who were most likely to be labeled as \u201cbarbarians.\u201d For the sake of historical analysis, however, we can set aside the pejorative distinction between civilization and barbarism and instead consider civilization as a set of essential technological advances and examine how those technologies altered human life on an enormous scale. That process began in the Middle East thousands of years before the first cities of ancient Greece existed.<\/p>\n

The most ancient human civilizations arose in the Fertile Crescent, an area stretching from present-day Palestine and Israel through southern T\u00fcrkiye and into Iraq. Closely related, and lying within the Fertile Crescent, is the region of Mesopotamia, which is the area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in present-day Iraq. In these areas, people first invented the most crucial technology necessary for the development of civilization: agriculture. The Mesopotamians also invented other things that are central to civilization, including towns and cities, the earliest writing systems, mathematics, engineering, and both organized religion and complex political systems. Similar advances happened in key regions across the globe, including China, India, and Mesoamerica, but it happened first in Mesopotamia, and it was from Mesopotamia that civilization spread to the rest of western Eurasia.<\/p>\n

Greece and Rome<\/h2>\n

Even if we do not attribute the idea of Western Civilization to the Greeks, we do need to acknowledge their importance. Alexander the Great was one of the most famous and important military leaders in history, a man who started conquering \u201cthe world\u201d when he was eighteen years old. When he died his empire fell apart, in part because he did not say which of his generals was to take over after his death. Nevertheless, the empires he left behind were united in important ways, using Greek as one of their languages, employing Greek architecture in their buildings, putting on plays in the Greek style, and of course, trading with one another. This period in history is called the Hellenistic Age. The people who were part of that age were European, Middle Eastern, and North African, people who worshiped both Greeks gods and the gods of their own regions, spoke all kinds of different languages, and lived as part of a hybrid culture. Hellenistic civilization demonstrates the fact that Western Civilization has always been a blend of different peoples, not a single encompassing group or language or religion.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most important empire in the ancient history of Western Civilization was ancient Rome. Over the course of roughly five centuries, the Romans expanded from the city of Rome in the middle of the Italian peninsula to rule an empire that stretched from Britain to Spain and from North Africa to Persia (present-day Iran). Through both incredible engineering, the hard work of Roman citizens, and later subjects, and the massive use of slave labor, they built remarkable buildings and created infrastructure like roads and aqueducts that survive to the present day.<\/p>\n

The Romans\u2014sometimes grudgingly\u2014acknowledged Greece as a cultural model. Roman architecture used Greek shapes and forms, the Roman gods shared many similarities with the Greek pantheon, and educated Romans spoke and read Greek so that they could read the works of the great Greek poets, playwrights, and philosophers. Thus, the Romans deliberately adopted an older set of ideas and considered themselves part of an ongoing civilization that blended Greek and Roman values. Like the Greeks before them, they also divided civilization itself in a stark binary: there was Greco-Roman culture on the one hand and barbarism on the other, although they reluctantly acknowledged the civilized character of Persia at times.<\/p>\n

The Romans were largely successful at assimilating the people they conquered. They united their provinces using three major cultural elements. The first was the Latin language, which is the precursor of all of the major languages spoken in Southern Europe today (French, Italian, Spanish, Romanian, etc.). Second was Roman Law, which is the basis of most forms of law still in use today in Europe. Third was the Roman form of government. Along with those factors, the Romans promoted Greek and Roman science, learning, and literature across their empire. In many ways, the Romans believed that they were bringing civilization itself everywhere they went, and because they made the connection between Greek civilization and their own, they played a significant role in inventing the idea of Western Civilization as something that was ongoing.<\/p>\n

However, the Romans themselves did not use the term \u201cWestern Civilization\u201d and as their empire expanded, even the connection between Roman identity and Europe itself weakened. During the period that the empire was at its height, the bulk of the population and wealth was in the east, concentrated in Egypt, Anatolia (the region corresponding to the present-day nation of T\u00fcrkiye) and the Middle East. This shift to the east culminated in the move of the capital of the empire from the city of Rome to the Greek town of Byzantium, where it at first was known as Nova Roma but later renamed Constantinople in honor of the emperor who ordered the move: Constantine. Thus, while the Greco-Roman legacy was certainly a major factor in the development of the idea<\/em> of Western Civilization much later, \u201cRoman\u201d was certainly not the same thing as \u201cwestern\u201d at the time.<\/p>\n

The Middle Ages and Christianity<\/h2>\n

Another stage in the development of the idea of Western Civilization came about after Rome ceased to exist as a united empire, during the era known as the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages were the period between the political decline of Rome\u2014which happened around 476 CE\u2014and the Renaissance\u2014which started around 1300 CE. During the Middle Ages, another concept that has come to be a core component of Western Civilization arose among Europeans. However, it expanded beyond the connection to Roman and Greek accomplishments and focused instead on religion. The Roman Empire had started to become Christian in the early fourth century CE when the emperor Constantine made it illegal to persecute someone based on religion. As the Christian faith continued to spread, many Europeans in the Middle Ages came to believe that despite the fact that they spoke different languages and had different rulers, they were united as part of \u201cChristendom.\u201d<\/p>\n

Christianity played an important role in the history of Europe and the development of the idea of Western Civilization. It inspired amazing art and music and was at the heart of scholarship and learning for centuries. However, it also justified the aggressive expansion of European kingdoms. Europeans truly believed that members of other religions were infidels (meaning “those who are unfaithful,” which included Jews and Muslims, but also Christians who deviated from official orthodoxy) or pagans (those who worshiped false gods) who should either convert or be exterminated. Despite the fact that Muslims and Jews worshiped the same God and shared much of the same sacred literature, medieval Europeans had absolutely no qualms about invading Muslim lands and committing atrocities in the name of their religion. Likewise, medieval antisemitism\u2014prejudice and hatred directed against Jews\u2014eventually drove many Jews from Europe itself to take shelter in the Muslim kingdoms and empires of the Middle East and North Africa. Historically, it was much safer and more comfortable for Jews to live in places like the Muslim-ruled Ottoman Empire than in most of Christian Europe.<\/p>\n

A major irony of the idea that Western Civilization is somehow inherently Christian is that Islam is unquestionably just as \u201cWestern.\u201d Islam\u2019s point of origin, the Arabian Peninsula, is geographically very close to that of both Judaism and Christianity. Its holy writings are also closely aligned to Jewish and Christian values and thought. The connections were not just religious in nature. Islamic kingdoms and empires were part of the networks of trade, scholarship, and exchange that linked together the entire greater Mediterranean region. Thus, despite the fervor of European crusaders, it would be profoundly misleading to separate Islamic states and cultures from the rest of Western Civilization.<\/p>\n

The Renaissance and European Expansion<\/h2>\n

Perhaps the most crucial development in the idea of Western Civilization in the pre-modern period was the Renaissance. The idea of the \u201cMiddle Ages\u201d was invented by thinkers during the Renaissance, which started around 1300 CE. The great thinkers and artists of the period claimed to be moving away from the ignorance and darkness of the Middle Ages\u2014which they also described as the \u201cDark Ages\u201d\u2014and returning to the greatness of the Romans and Greeks. People like Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Christine de Pizan, and Petrarch proudly connected their work to that of the Romans and Greeks, claiming that there was an unbroken chain of ideas, virtues, and accomplishments stretching back more than a thousand years to people like Alexander the Great, Plato, and Socrates.<\/p>\n

And so, during the Renaissance, educated people in Europe based their own philosophies and outlooks on Plato and Aristotle, as well as that of other Greek thinkers. They directly connected their art to its inspiration from Greek and Roman forms. Additionally, the scientific discoveries of the Renaissance were inspired by the same spirit of inquiry that Greek scientists and Roman engineers had cultivated. In this way, Renaissance thinkers proudly linked together their own era to that of the Greeks and Romans, thus strengthening the concept of Western Civilization as an ongoing enterprise.<\/p>\n

In the process of reviving the ideas of the Greeks and Romans, Renaissance thinkers created a new program of education known as \u201chumanistic\u201d education. Celebrating the inherent goodness and potentialities of humankind, humanistic education saw in the study of classical literature a source of inspiration for not just knowledge, but also morality and virtue. Combining the practical study of languages, history, mathematics, and rhetoric\u2014among other subjects\u2014with the cultivation of an ethical code, the humanists ultimately devised a curriculum meant to create well-rounded, virtuous individuals. That program of education remained intact into the twentieth century, with the study of the \u201cclassics \u2014Greek and Roman literature\u2014remaining a hallmark of elite education until it began to be displaced by the more specialized disciplinary studies of the modern university system that was born near the end of the nineteenth century.<\/p>\n

It was not Renaissance ideas, however, that had the greatest impact on the globe at the time. Instead, it was European soldiers, colonists, and most consequentially, diseases. The first people from Eurasia since prehistory to travel to the Americas and remain\u2014an earlier Viking colony did not survive\u2014were European explorers who, entirely by accident, \u201cdiscovered\u201d the Americas at the end of the fifteenth century CE. It bears emphasis that the \u201cdiscovery\u201d of the Americas is a misnomer: millions of people already lived there, as their ancestors had for thousands of years. However, geography had left them ill-prepared for the arrival of the newcomers. With the European colonists came an onslaught of epidemics to which the native peoples of the Americas had no resistance, and within a few generations the immense majority \u2014 perhaps as many as 90 percent\u2014 of Indigenous Americans perished as a result. This catastrophic event, the greatest demographic collapse in world history, is remembered as the \u201cGreat Dying.\u201d The subsequent conquest of the Americas by Europeans and their descendants was thus made vastly easier. Europeans suddenly had access to an astonishing wealth of land and natural resources. Wealth that they extracted in large part by enslaving Indigenous Americans and soon, Africans.<\/p>\n

Due largely to the European conquest of the Americas and the exploitation of American resources and enslaved people, in the following centuries Europe went from a region of little economic and military power and importance to one of the most formidable. Following the Spanish and Portuguese conquest of Central and South America, the other major European states embarked on their own imperialistic ventures in the following centuries. \u201cTrade empires\u201d emerged over the course of the seventeenth century, first and foremost those of the Dutch and English, which established the precedent that profit and territorial control were mutually reinforcing priorities for European states. Driven by that conjoined motive, European states established huge, and growing, global empires. By 1800, roughly 35 percent of the surface of the world was controlled by Europeans or their descendants.<\/p>\n

The Modern Era<\/h2>\n

Most of the world, however, was off limits to large-scale European expansion. Not only were there prosperous and sophisticated kingdoms in many regions of Africa, but\u2014in an ironic reversal of the impact of European diseases on Americans\u2014African diseases ensured that would-be European explorers and conquerors were initially unable to penetrate beyond the coasts of most of Africa south of the Sahara. Meanwhile, the enormous and powerful empires and kingdoms of China, Japan, Southeast Asia, and South Asia (i.e. India) largely regarded Europeans as incidental trading partners of relatively little importance. The Middle East was dominated by two powerful and \u201cwestern\u201d empires of its own: Persia and the Ottoman Empire.<\/p>\n

The explosion of European power, one that coincided with the fruition of the idea that Western Civilization was both distinct from and better<\/em> than other branches of civilization, came as a result of a development in technology: the Industrial Revolution. Starting in Great Britain in the middle of the eighteenth century, Europeans learned how to exploit fossil fuels in the form of coal to harness hitherto unimaginable amounts of energy. That energy underwrote a vast and dramatic expansion of European technology, wealth, and military power, this time built on the backs not of outright slaves, but of workers paid subsistence wages.<\/p>\n

Over the course of the nineteenth century, the Industrial Revolution underwrote and enabled the transformation of Europe from regional powerhouse to global hegemon. By the early twentieth century, Europe and the American nations founded by the descendants of Europeans controlled roughly 85 percent of the globe. Europeans either forced foreign states to concede to their economic demands and political influence, as in China and the Ottoman Empire, or simply conquered and controlled regions directly, as in India and Africa. None of this would have been possible without the technological revolution wrought by industrialism.<\/p>\n

To Europeans and North Americans, however, the reason that they had come to enjoy such wealth and power was not because of a (temporary) monopoly of industrial technology. Instead, it was the inevitable result of their inherent biological and cultural superiority. The idea that the human species was divided into biologically distinct races was not entirely invented in the nineteenth century, but it became the predominant outlook and acquired all the trappings of a \u201cscience\u201d over the course of the 1800s. By the year 1900, almost any person of European descent would have claimed to be part of a distinct, superior \u201crace\u201d whose global dominance was simply part of their collective birthright. Likewise, for the first time, the idea of \u201cthe West\u201d started emerging among certain philosophers, although at the time the concept excluded all of eastern Europe, not just non-European regions and continents.<\/p>\n

The conceit that the West represented the leading edge of human development arrived at its zenith in the first half of the twentieth century. The European powers themselves fell upon one another in the First World War in the name of expanding, or at least preserving, their share of global dominance. Soon after, the new ideology of fascism put racial superiority at the very center of their worldviews. The Second World War was the direct result of those ideologies, when racial warfare was unleashed for the first time not just on external peoples Europeans had already classified as \u201cinferior,\u201d but on European ethnicities that fascists now considered inferior races in their own right, most notably the Jews. The bloodbath that followed resulted in approximately 60 million deaths, including the 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust.<\/p>\n

Western Civilization Is Reinvented<\/h2>\n

It was against the backdrop of this descent into what Europeans and Americans frequently called \u201cbarbarism\u201d\u2014the old antithesis of the \u201ctrue\u201d civilization that started with the Greeks\u2014that the history of Western Civilization first came into being as a textbook topic and soon, a mainstay of college curriculums. Prominent scholars in the United States, especially historians, came to believe that the best way to defend the elements of civilization with which they most strongly identified, including certain concepts of rationality and political equality, was to describe all of human existence as an ascent from primitive savagery into enlightenment, an ascent that may not have strictly speaking started in Europe, but which they felt enjoyed its greatest success there. The early proponents of the \u201cWestern Civ\u201d concept spoke and wrote explicitly of European civilization as an unbroken ladder of ideas, technologies, and cultural achievements that led to the present. Along the way, of course, they included the United States as both a product of those European achievements and, in the twentieth century, as one of the staunchest defenders of that legacy.<\/p>\n

That first generation of historians of Western Civilization succeeded in crafting what was to be the core of history curriculums for most of the twentieth century in American colleges, universities, and high schools. The narrative in the introduction in this book follows a traditional Western Civilization curriculum\u2019s basic contours: it starts with Greece, goes through Rome, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, then on to the growth in European power leading up to the recent past. The traditional story, however, usually made a distinction between Western Civilization as the site of progress, and the rest of the world\u2014usually referred to as the \u201cOrient,\u201d until textbooks started changing their terms in the 1980s\u2014which was normally characterized as lagging behind. Outside of the West, went the narrative, there was despotism, stagnation, and corruption, so it was almost inevitable that the West would eventually achieve global dominance.<\/p>\n

This was, in hindsight, a somewhat surprising conclusion given when the narrative was invented. The West\u2019s self-understanding as the most \u201ccivilized\u201d culture had imploded with the world wars, but the inventors of Western Civilization as a concept were determined to not only rescue its legacy from that implosion, but to celebrate it as the only<\/em> major historical legacy of relevance to the present. In doing so, they reinforced many of the intellectual dividing lines created centuries earlier: there was true civilization opposed by barbarians, there was an ongoing and unbroken legacy of achievement and progress, and most importantly, only people who were born in or descended from people born in Europe had played a significant historical role. The entire history of most of humankind was not just irrelevant to the narrative of European or American history, it was irrelevant to the history of the modern world for everyone<\/em>. In other words, Africans and Asians, to say nothing of the people of the Pacific or Indigenous Americans, could have little of relevance to learn from their own history. And yet, this astonishing conclusion was born from a culture that had unleashed the most horrific destruction ever witnessed by the human species.<\/p>\n

The West: The Problems of the Concept<\/h2>\n

Today, the terms \u201cThe West\u201d and \u201cWestern\u201d remain prevalent in journalism, politics, and casual language alike. However, rarely are they considered in much depth. To pick one particularly glaring example, Russia under the regime of its dictatorial president Vladimir Putin is usually described in terms of its opposition to the West, which is understood to mean the United States and Western Europe. Those countries correspond fairly neatly to the members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which was originally created to limit the expansion of the Soviet Union during the Cold War that followed World War II. Is Russia, however, \u201cEastern\u201d? As of the 2020s, it is in close political alliance with China, as well as other American political adversaries like Iran, but Russian cultural history is unquestionably linked more closely to Europe than to East Asia or the Middle East, and most contemporary Russians consider themselves Europeans.<\/p>\n

When we consider the fact that the very term \u201cthe West\u201d was not used in earnest until the later part of the nineteenth century, and then it generally only included European countries west of Poland, and when we reflect on the historical connections between nominally Western and (Middle) Eastern developments in the history of ideas, commerce, politics, and religion, it is clear that the very concept of the West is empirically (i.e. factually) questionable, even if most people today have at least a vague sense of what it is supposed to mean. None of this is to suggest that the idea is useless or should necessarily be abandoned, but it is<\/em> to suggest that the concept should be subject to scrutiny even if we conclude that it remains useful for historical or political analysis.<\/p>\n

The other obvious problem with the idea of the West is its appropriation by the contemporary far-right, which openly celebrates a neo-fascist form of politics tied to western chauvinism. The risk of studying the history of western civilization without applying a critical and thoughtful lens to the idea is that it may implicitly endorse the outdated and inaccurate concepts of western exceptionalism and triumphalism that came of age in the late 1800s and which continue to inspire racist and anti-democratic politics in the present. To be clear, the immense majority of people who use the idea of the West in academia, journalism, politics, or even casual conversation do not accept cultural chauvinism or racism, but it is impossible to disentangle the concept from its abuses over the last two centuries and should, therefore, be \u201cunpacked\u201d in a deliberate, thoughtful, and focused manner whenever possible. This is a major reason why this course is now known as European history, in an attempt to distance the material from that chauvinistic perspective.<\/p>\n

This Textbook<\/h2>\n

Europe: A Concise History is a two-volume account of the region\u2019s development from the Greeks to the modern day.<\/em> Volume 1 covers from the ancient period through the Reformation. Volume 2 takes us from the Reformation to the modern period. This book is an adaptation of the Portland Community College textbook Western Civilization: A Concise History<\/em> and was written by Dr. Christopher Brooks and originally appeared in three volumes. I have adapted the book to cover the time period covered by the Palomar Community College course Hist 105 European History through the Reformation. This new Volume 1 incorporates elements of Volume 2 as originally written by Christopher Brooks. While the new Volume 2 has also been expanded to include all of the original Volume 3. I have also added new material and edited some sections for greater clarity. Europe: A Concise History<\/em> is intended to serve as the main textbook for a single semester or term class and is designed to be accessible to students who do not possess prior knowledge of the region or its history.<\/p>\n

Revisions for Version 2.0 of the textbook were supported by a grant from Open Oregon, a state-run consortium that supports Open Educational Resources. Revisions for Version 3.0 were supported by a grant from PCC\u2019s OER Steering Committee. Version 4.0 has been made possible by a grant from the California Community College Chancellor\u2019s Office. This current version was updated and edited by Travis Ritt of Palomar College with the support of the 2024 California Community College Chancellor\u2019s Office (CCCCO) OER Grant. As such, people are welcome to engage in the 5Rs of OER. They may retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute this textbook so long as they adhere to the following conditions: that they do so for non-commercial purposes, that they assign the same licensing conditions to any revised versions as have been applied to the original work, and that they acknowledge Christopher Brooks as the original author. Western Civilization: A Concise History<\/em>\u00a0by Portland Community College is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.<\/p>\n

I would like to wholeheartedly thank Dr. Brooks, Portland Community College, and Open Oregon for their work in this area of open educational resources.<\/p>\n

The following changes were made to this book as a whole:<\/h2>\n

Throughout I have edited sentences for greater clarity and flow.<\/p>\n

The introduction has been updated.<\/p>\n

Chapters 1-4 have been moved to Volume 1<\/p>\n

Chapters 1-3 of Volume 2 are the same as Chapters 15-17 in Volume 1. They have been included here to serve as a foundation for those students who have not taken European History to the Reformation.<\/p>\n

All chapters from Volume 3 have been included in Volume 2 and been renumbered<\/p>\n

The following changes were made to specific chapters:<\/h2>\n

Chapter 1 (formerly Chapter 5)
\n<\/strong>Added more context to the decline of Venetian maritime importance<\/p>\n

Changed from Montezuma to Moctezuma<\/p>\n

Chapter 2: \u00a0(formerly Chapter 6)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Added the concept of the reprobate to Calvinism<\/p>\n

Added more nuance to the beginning of the\u00a0 English Reformation<\/p>\n

Converted the Effects of the Reformation section into paragraphs rather than bullet points<\/p>\n

Added a paragraph on the effects of the Protestant Revolution on the Eastern Orthodox Church<\/p>\n

Chapter 3: \u00a0(formerly Chapter 7)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Replaced the pixilated image titled The Spanish Fury with a clear image of the same<\/p>\n

Introduced the concept of constitutional monarchy in the conclusion<\/p>\n

Chapter 4 (formerly Chapter 8)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Title changed to include Constitutional Monarchy<\/p>\n

Fixed the length of Louis XIV\u2019s rule and the number of fountains in the gardens at Versailles<\/p>\n

Corrected the naming conventions for Brandenburg and Prussia in the early 17th century<\/p>\n

Changed the title of the subsection\u201d The English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution\u201d to \u201c The English: From Civil War to Constitutional Monarchy\u201d<\/p>\n

Added cultural analysis to the rule of Cromwell<\/p>\n

Chapter 5 (formerly Chapter 9)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Modified the meaning of \u201cMiddle Passage\u201d<\/p>\n

Chapter 6 (formerly Chapter 10)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Deleted image of Newton\u2019s treatise on the properties of light because could not find a CC license<\/p>\n

Expanded the section on the development of Galileo’s telescope<\/p>\n

Added the concept of herem when discussing Baruch Spinoza<\/p>\n

Chapter 7 (formerly Chapter 11)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Changed image of Voltaire to one in the public domain<\/p>\n

Expanded the meaning of philosophes<\/p>\n

Chapter 8 (formerly Chapter 12)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reorganized and combined the introduction with the social orders section<\/p>\n

Added population statistics and introduced France as an exemplar of the Three Estates.<\/p>\n

Added more information to the section on the Clergy\/First Estate<\/p>\n

Modified meaning of serf versus peasant<\/p>\n

Chapter 9 (formerly Chapter 13)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Added material on the activities of the Marquis de Lafayette<\/p>\n

Chapter 10 (formerly Chapter 1 of Volume 3)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Added to the popularity of Napoleon among his troops<\/p>\n

Chapter 11 (formerly Chapter 2 of Volume 3)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Added in more on industrialization in Germanic areas<\/p>\n

Chapter 12 (formerly Chapter 3 of Volume 3)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Added image citation for the Phalanst\u00e8re image<\/p>\n

Reframed ideas into elite-isms and mass-isms<\/p>\n

Moved the discussion on liberalism earlier in the chapter to pair it with conservatism in the elite-isms<\/p>\n

Changed the concept from anarchist socialism to revolutionary socialism<\/p>\n

Chapter 13 (formerly Chapter 4 of Volume 3)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Added credit and link to Europe 1848 map<\/p>\n

Added more on the Corn Laws<\/p>\n

Strengthened the section on Louis Bonaparte<\/p>\n

Chapter 14 (formerly Chapter 5 of Volume 3)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Modified the explanation of hominids<\/p>\n

Chapter 15 (formerly Chapter 6 of Volume 3)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Removed coal and steel production chart because reference citation could not be found<\/p>\n

Used Turkish spellings for names of Ottoman rulers<\/p>\n

Fixed the timeline of the Armenian Genocide<\/p>\n

Chapter 16 (formerly Chapter 7 of Volume 3)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Clarified the beginning military actions of World War I<\/p>\n

Added to the discussion of trench warfare<\/p>\n

Inserted an argument of whether World War I should be considered a \u201cworld\u201d war<\/p>\n

Chapter 17 (formerly Chapter 8 of Volume 3)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reorganized the section on the Bolshevik revolution<\/p>\n

Changed subsection from Summing up to Conclusion<\/p>\n

Chapter 18 (formerly Chapter 9 of Volume 3)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Combined the sections on the Weimar Republic and Nazism<\/p>\n

Removed diagram of electoral results in Weimar Republic due to confusing nature<\/p>\n

Modified the understanding of fascism in Spain<\/p>\n

Chapter 19 (formerly Chapter 10 of Volume 3)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Modified introduction to show understanding that World War II was not primarily a European affair, as WWI had been.<\/p>\n

Modified language to reflect that German actions were in fact those of Germany, not just the Nazi party<\/p>\n

Added a more nuanced understanding to the Battle of Britain<\/p>\n

Added a statement on German women during the war<\/p>\n

Chapter 20 (formerly Chapter 11 of Volume 3)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Added more to what the Einsatzgruppen were doing<\/p>\n

Chapter 21 (formerly Chapter 12 of Volume 3)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Updated the numbers of those believed to have died in Stalin\u2019s purges<\/p>\n

Added to the agreement made at Bretton Woods<\/p>\n

Chapter 22 (formerly Chapter 13 of Volume 3)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reorganized the Major Cold War Conflicts section for better flow<\/p>\n

Created a new sub-section for decolonization in Asia<\/p>\n

Chapter 23 (formerly Chapter 14 of Volume 3)<\/strong><\/p>\n

No major changes<\/p>\n

Chapter 24 (formerly Chapter 15 of Volume 3)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Added more to the concept of perestroika<\/p>\n

Updated the section on the Russian invasion of Ukraine<\/p>\n

Replaced map of EU with an up to date one<\/p>\n

Removed the section on the Middle East as it does not fit the COR of the course<\/p>\n

Updated the section on the success of Far-Right politics in Europe<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"menu_order":1,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"front-matter-type":[],"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-145","front-matter","type-front-matter","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.palomar.edu\/europeaconcisehistory2\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/front-matter\/145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.palomar.edu\/europeaconcisehistory2\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/front-matter"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.palomar.edu\/europeaconcisehistory2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/front-matter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.palomar.edu\/europeaconcisehistory2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.palomar.edu\/europeaconcisehistory2\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/front-matter\/145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":194,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.palomar.edu\/europeaconcisehistory2\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/front-matter\/145\/revisions\/194"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.palomar.edu\/europeaconcisehistory2\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/front-matter\/145\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.palomar.edu\/europeaconcisehistory2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"front-matter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.palomar.edu\/europeaconcisehistory2\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/front-matter-type?post=145"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.palomar.edu\/europeaconcisehistory2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=145"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.palomar.edu\/europeaconcisehistory2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}