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Europe: Geography and History
Physical Geography
 Europe is a peninsula because it is surrounded by water on three sides.
 Europe forms the western peninsula of Eurasia – includes Europe and Asia.
 Europe also contains several smaller peninsulas – Italy, Scandinavia, and Iberia.
 Great Britain, Ireland, Corsica, Greenland, Iceland, and Sicily are all islands of Europe.
 Four land regions:
1. Western Uplands
2. Northern European Plain
3. Central Uplands
4. Alps
 Europe has varied climates because of the currents, winds, and latitude.
 The North Atlantic Drift, an ocean current of warm water, makes the climate warmer in Europe because of its
current.
A Long Coastline
 Europe has more than 24,000 miles of coastline.
 Europe has conducted much trade and exploration because most places have easy access to water.
 Early sailors traveled to nearly every port on the Mediterranean Sea, bringing back goods and ideas from other
lands, such as grains, olive oil, and new religions.
 Since Europe had plenty of ocean coastlines, fishing industries developed there.
 The people of the Netherlands increased their farming industry by building dikes to hold back the sea and
creating polders by draining water from the land, which was often used for farming. (Polders are lands in the
Netherlands that have been reclaimed from the sea for farming.)
Mountains, Rivers, and Plains
 Europe’s Alpine region contains several mountain chains: the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Apennines, and the
Carpathians.
 The mountain chains of Europe provide natural resources, such as forests and minerals.
 Europe also has many rivers; most are navigable (can travel easily on).
 The Danube and Rhine rivers are important because they can be used easily for transportation.
 Many people live on the Northern European Plain because it has fertile soil for growing crops and is quite large,
so it contains many farms. Large cities grew up where there were so many people.
Protecting the Mediterranean
 The Mediterranean climate has hot dry summers and mild rainy winters.
 Pollution, overfishing, and overdevelopment has harmed the natural environment of the Mediterranean Sea.
Roots of Democracy
 Democracy, a government in which people can influence law and vote for representatives, was one of the great
achievements of Greek civilization.
 People first arrived in Greece around 50,000 BC.
 Around 800 BC, several Greek city-states started to thrive. A city-state is an independent community that
includes a city and its surrounding territory.
 Geography made traveling and communicating difficult so the Greek city-states were independent from one
another.
 Sparta and Athens are the two most important city-states in Greece.
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The earliest form of government in the city-states was a monarchy, in which a king or queen rules. Over time, a
group of upper-class noblemen called aristocrats began to act as advisors to the king. This council was a form of
oligarchy, a small group that rules.
Around 650 BC, tyrants seized power away from the councils in many city-states, took control of the
government, and re-established one-person rule. Today any harsh ruler may be called a tyrant, but not all
tyrants in ancient Greece were bad leaders.
Around 600 BC in Athens, a statesman named Solon began the beginnings of a democracy. Followed by
Cleisthenes in 508 BC who established a direct democracy.
Democracy developed in Athens, but in Sparta an oligarchy ruled.
Classical Greece
 During the golden age of Greece, democracy, wealth, and culture flourished in Athens.
 Pericles improved Athens power by constructing a strong navy.
 The golden age of Greece was a period of extraordinary achievements.
o Greek architects designed temples and theaters with columns
o Philosophers, people who examine questions about the universe, including Socrates and Plato.
o In the sciences, mathematician Euclid developed the principles of geometry; physician Hippocrates
changed the practice of medicine insisting that illnesses were not caused by evil spirits.
 A long war between the Sparta and Athens weakened Greece, allowing Philip of Macedonia to conquer Greece.
 Alexander the Great extended his empire through most of Eurasia.
The Republic of Rome
 In 509 BC, the Romans rebelled against King Tarquin, a brutal tyrant, and began to create a republic (a form of
government in which the people elect officials who govern according to law).
 Two main classes of people lived in Rome at this time: the patricians, wealthy landowners, and plebeians, the
farmers.
 The branches of the Republic of Rome government were the executive, legislative, and judicial.
 The Roman Republic was different from earlier governments in Italy because the citizens had rights and roles in
the government.
 The Senate and the Assembly made the laws when Rome was a republic.
 The Roman Way is a code of values for Roman citizens. These values included self-control, working hard, doing
one’s duty, and pledging loyalty to Rome.
The Roman Empire
 Julius Caesar rose to power and became the sole ruler of Rome in 46 BC. Although he helped the poor and tried
to re-establish order to Rome, he made powerful enemies, He was stabbed to death in 44 BC by a small group of
senators.
 Caesar’s nephew, Octavian, took over. The Roman Republic ended when Octavian became the emperor. He
began calling himself Augustus, which means “honored one.” His rule began a period called the Pax Romana,
which is Latin for “Roman peace.”
 The Roman Empire was the most powerful empire in the ancient world. Its rule extended over three continents.
 Emperor Constantine moved the capital to Byzantium and legalized Christianity.
 Rome’s Legacy:
o Network of road that connected the empire; many still in use today.
o Developed the arch and used it to construct buildings and aqueducts, which carried water to parts of the
empire.
o Latin, the language of Rome, became the basis for Romance languages, such as Spanish and Italian.
Many English words have Latin roots.
Middle Ages and Christianity
 After the fall of the Roman Empire, Western Europe entered a period known as the Middle Ages.
 The most powerful influences on the Europeans during the Middle Ages were the Roman Catholic Church and
feudalism.
 The Church played a leading role in government. It collected taxes, made laws, and waged wars. It also began a
series of Crusades, military expeditions undertaken to take back holy lands in Southwest Asia from Muslim
control.
 From about 400 to 800, a German group called the Franks stopped the fighting and unified most of Western
Europe. Their most important leader was Charlemagne.
 After Charlemagne’s death, warfare returned and the feudal system was developed to provide security for each
kingdom. The feudal system was like a pyramid:
o King – owned vast territory
o Lords – powerful noblemen who owned land
o Vassals – given pieces of lord’s land in return for loyalty and service of the lord
o Serfs - farmed the lord’s land in return for shelter and protection
 The feudal system ended because towns grew; serfs and farmers left manors to find jobs in trades and
businesses; and the bubonic plague killed millions in towns, which reduced the workforce, so farmers went to
cities to make higher wages.
Renaissance and Reformation
 The Renaissance was a rebirth of art and learning that started in Italy in the 1300s and spread through Europe by
1500.
 During the Renaissance, the arts, philosophy, and culture were “reborn”.
o Studying the works of Greek and Roman scholars encouraged humanism, focusing on human values
instead of religious values.
o German inventor, Johannes Gutenberg, developed the printing press, giving access to knowledge
including the new humanist ideas.
o Michelangelo, Leonardo de Vinci, and Raphael were artists who used perspective to make a painting
look 3-dimensional.
 The Reformation, a movement to reform Christianity, was started by Martin Luther because of the corrupt
practices of some priests.
 Because of this, Protestant churches were formed, and the Roman Catholic Church started a CounterReformation.
Exploration and Colonization
 Prince Henry of Portugal started a school of navigation, which taught sailors about mapmaking and shipbuilding.
It also marked the beginning of the Age of Exploration.
 The main purposes of European exploration was to trade and establish new colonies. They also wanted to
convert people in other lands to their religion.
o Portuguese explorers Bartolomeu Dias and Vasco da Gama sailed along the coast of Africa to open trade
with Asia in the late 1400s.
o Italian explorer Christopher Columbus uncovered the “new world” – North and South America – in 1492.
o Jacques Cartier explored parts of North America for France in the 1530s.
o Englishman Sir Francis Drake sailed around the world in 1577.
The Industrial Revolution
 The textile industry in Great Britain started the Industrial Revolution, a period when industry grew rapidly.
 During the Industrial Revolution, workers produced goods by machine in factories.
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Cities grew; standards of living rose, and a prosperous middle class grew.
Factory workers worked in bad conditions for too many hours a day; children worked in factories;
neighborhoods were crowded; and sewers spread diseases.
The French Revolution
 The French people had not benefited from the Industrial Revolution. Harvests were poor, prices skyrocketed. On
July 14, 1789, mobs attacked the Bastille, Paris’ ancient prison, sparking the French Revolution.
 France’s lower and middle classes suffered unfair treatment for years. They wanted a change, influenced by the
Enlightenment, a movement that stressed the rights of the individual.
 Ideas from the Enlightenment helped inspire the American Revolution in 1776.
 Natural rights, such as life, liberty, and property, are described in the Declaration of Independence and the
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.
 In 1792, the Jacobins, a group of radicals, seized power, formed the National Convention, and executed King
Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.
 As the violence worsened, the Jacobins used a guillotine to cut off the heads of around 40,000 people.
 Napoleon Bonaparte, took over and became Emperor Napoleon I, conquering other European powers and
building an empire. He was defeated in 1815.
Nationalism and World War I
 During the 1800s, nationalism, a strong sense of loyalty to one’s country, swept through Europe.
 Just before WWI, countries made alliances to increase their power.
 Britain, France, and Russia formed an alliance, agreement to work toward a common goal, called the Triple
Entente. The German Empire and Austria-Hungary formed an alliance known as the Central Powers. In 1918, the
war ended about a year after the U.S. troops sided with France and Britain. Ten million soldiers died in WWI
along with about 7 million civilians.
 Germany was blamed for World War I and punished by the Treaty of Versailles, being forced to pay several
billion dollars in damages (reparations) and accepting full blame for the war.
 This treaty that ended World War I resulted in several new countries being formed that were once German
territories, including Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Turkey.
 The tensions in Europe continued, helping to lead way for another world war in 20 years.
World War II and the Cold War
 The Great Depression helped Adolf Hitler gain power in Germany.
 Axis Powers (America’s enemies during World War II) - Germany, Italy, and Japan
 Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939 started World War II.
 In 1941, Japan attacked the U.S. at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, causing the U.S. to enter the war on the side of Britain
and the Soviet Union. They were known as the Allies.
 Over time, many other countries took sides, joining either with the Allies or the Axis Powers.
 The Holocaust in WWII was the killing of 6 million Jews and others. These people had been held in Nazi
concentration camps.
 In the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union never fought each other directly. There were threats
and political tensions.
 The Iron Curtain is an imaginary border that divided Europe during the Cold War.