Occidens

The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident (from Latin: occidens "sunset, West"; as contrasted with the Orient), is a term referring to different nations depending on the context. There is no agreed upon definition about what all these nations have in common apart from having a significant population of European descent and having cultures and societies heavily influenced by and connected to Europe.

The concept of the Western part of the earth has its roots in Greco-Roman civilization in Europe, with the advent of Christianity. In the modern era, the Western culture has been heavily influenced by the traditions of Renaissance, Protestant Reformation, Age of Enlightenment, and shaped by the expansive colonialism of the 15th-20th centuries. Its political usage was temporarily changed by an internal antagonism during the Cold War in the mid-to-late 20th Century (1947–1991).

The term originally had a literal geographic meaning, contrasting Europe with the linked cultures and civilizations of the Middle East, North Africa, Near East, South Asia, South East Asia and remote Far East, which used to be seen as the East by early-modern Europeans, but today this has little geographic relevance, since the USA and Canada are in the Americas, Russia expands to Northern Asia and Australia and New Zealand are part of Oceania.

In the contemporary cultural meaning, the Western world includes Europe, as well as many countries of European colonial origin with majority European populations in the Americas and Oceania, such as the United States of America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina etc.