Europe and The West
This era in Western Europe is referred to as the early modern European period and includes the Protestant Reformation, the European wars of religion, the Age of Discovery and the beginning of European colonialism, the rise of strong centralized governments, the beginnings of recognizable nation-states that are the direct antecedents of today's states, the Age of Enlightenment and from the associated scientific advances the first phase of the Industrial Revolution. The emergence of cultural and political dominance of the Western world during this period is known as the Great Divergence.
The early modern period is taken to end with the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, and the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire at the Congress of Vienna. At the end of the early modern period, the British and Russian empires had emerged as world powers from the multipolar contest of colonial empires, while the three great Asian empires of the early modern period, Ottoman Turkey, Mughal India and Qing China, all entered a period of stagnation or decline.
Read more about this topic: Early Modern Period
Famous quotes containing the words europe and the, europe and, europe and/or west:
“Europe and the U.K. are yesterday’s world. Tomorrow is in the United States.”
—R.W. “Tiny” Rowland (b. 1917)
“No human being can tell what the Russians are going to do next, and I think the Japanese actions will depend much on what Russia decides to do both in Europe and the Far East—especially in Europe.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“I believe that the fundamental proposition is that we must recognize that the hostilities in Europe, in Africa, and in Asia are all parts of a single world conflict. We must, consequently, recognize that our interests are menaced both in Europe and in the Far East.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“The [nineteenth-century] young men who were Puritans in politics were anti-Puritans in literature. They were willing to die for the independence of Poland or the Manchester Fenians; and they relaxed their tension by voluptuous reading in Swinburne.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)