European - Ethnic Relations
Europe has been populated by various prehistoric human types. It is likely
that the first, Homo erectus, immigrated from North Africa about
750,000 years ago. The oldest finds are from the caves at Vallonet and Escale in
southern France.
The modern man, Homo sapiens sapiens, to which all living people of
the world belong, first appeared in Europe for approx. 40,000 years ago, during
the last ice age. Their direct predecessors were a sparse population
of Neanderthals ( Homo sapiens neanderthalensis ). These seem to have
died out some time after modern humans invaded Europe from the Middle East and
North Africa. Many scientists claim that the invaders not only displaced the
Neanderthals, but also interfered with them, so that they partly joined the new
population.
Throughout prehistory as well as in historical times, larger and smaller
groups of people have migrated into Europe from Asia and from the African
Mediterranean. Immigrants have varied quite strongly in physical type, and have
mingled with the native population and with each other. This has produced a very
variable, predominantly light-skinned human type belonging to
the Caucasoid branch of humanity. Large parts of Europe, including Scandinavia,
have an ethnically very homogeneous population, while the picture is far more
diverse in, for example, Central, Southern and Southeastern Europe.
Particularly after the Second World War, some countries in Western Europe
have experienced a fairly large immigration of people from the former colonies
in Africa, Asia and America as well as from Turkey. See more information about
Europe on
AbbreviationFinder.org. This has helped to increase
ethnic, linguistic and religious diversity, creating a foundation for both
conflict and dynamic development, including in the cultural field.
Europe - History (Middle Ages)
In the mid-700-t. the Arab expansion reached its peak. In the centuries
before the year 1000, Europe was divided into a Western Roman Catholic-Latin and
an Eastern Greco-Orthodox-Byzantine Christian culture. In addition, Islam had
gained a foothold in southwestern Europe, and that pagan cultures prevailed in
northern and eastern Europe. The Muslims had penetrated to southern France and
had settled on the Iberian Peninsula. North Africa, the Middle East and
southeastern Turkey were Arab territory. The Eastern Roman Empire had lost over
half of its land, therefore the kingdom was reorganized in the following time.
For the historians of the past, this reorganization has come to the fore in the
designation of the Byzantine Empire, which was not used in modern times. The
kingdom maintained a certain political and ecclesiastical connection to the pope
in Rome until the final schism between the Greco-Orthodox Church and the Roman
Catholic in 1054, i.a. because of the kingdom's possessions in Italy, which were
lost at the end of 1000-t. But the orientation was from the mid-700-t. targeting
the central parts of the Balkans and Asia Minor.
The Byzantine Empire continued the traditions of the Late Roman state in a
more direct sense than the new kingdoms of Western Europe and, in part, even the
Arab Empire. Revised editions of the laws of the Roman Empire tied the kingdom
together under one common law. The notion of a sovereign state represented by
the emperor standing over the law was part of Byzantine law. The emperor's power
was absolute; he was supreme legislator, judge, and military leader, and also
head of both the secular and ecclesiastical administration. Although the emperor
could not administer the sacraments, he had an influence on the interpretation
of religion, as well as the right to enter and expel patriarchs and other
clergy.
The Arabs' further advance in Western Europe was effectively halted after
Pippin III the Little with the Pope's consent in 751 had deposed the last
Merovingian king and proclaimed himself king. Pippin conquered southern France
from the Arabs, and his son Karl, nicknamed the Great, drove the Muslims in
northern Spain back. Karl conquered the kingdoms of the Longobards in Italy and
defeated and co-Christianized Saxony; he created a kingdom that could largely
compare with the West Roman Empire.
The center of the Carolingian kingdom became the Rhineland and the thriving
city of Aachen, where Karl had his palace and court chapel built. The
establishment of this kingdom significantly strengthened the western
Christianity north of the Alps, and with the imperial coronation of Karl in Rome
on Christmas Day 800 the connection between the worldly and the spiritual power
was finally anchored. A state coinage and an expanded administration developed,
which linked the aristocracy strongly to the central power.
Nevertheless, it was a fairly loose kingdom formation, which had more
features in common with the former Germanic realms than with the Byzantine and
Arab contemporaries. After Karl's death in 814, the weaknesses appeared, and
disputes erupted between his sons. At the Settlement in Verdun 843, the kingdom
was divided into three: a western kingdom (later France), an austria (later
Germany) and a kingdom which comprised the area from the Netherlands over the
Rhineland to northern Italy. The ruler of this most important part retained the
imperial title after the father.
In the following years the divide increased in the two westernmost kingdoms,
while the kingdoms in the easternmost part succeeded in maintaining it. King
Otto the Great's successful defense of the Austrian against the Magyars' attacks
from the East strengthened him both inwardly and towards the outside world. He
obtained the imperial title by his intervention in favor of the pope in Italy in
962, and as emperor he and his descendants claimed Italy, Burgundy and the
Rhineland. In the mid-1000-t. most of these lands were placed under the emperor,
who also had a certain power over the territories north and east of the kingdom,
i.a. Denmark.
The German Empire was considered by scholars to be the continuation of the
Carolingian Empire and thus also of the Roman Empire, and the German emperors
competed with the papacy for the leadership position within Western
Christianity. This power struggle culminated with the defeat of the German
emperors in the Investiture battle (1075-1122). The decision on the battle marks
the church's emancipation from worldly power, first and foremost by the denial
of the influence of the imperial power on the insertion of bishops. It is also
the beginning of the unfolding of the spiritual papacy of the medieval papacy,
as well as worldly and especially political power.
At the same time as the early Christianization of the Nordic countries, the
king's power was established in Norway and Denmark around the year 1000. Sweden
with Finland first emerged as a kingdom in the mid-1100s. In the Viking Age,
eastern England was linked to the Nordic countries, and in the period 1019-42
Denmark and England, and for a shorter number of years also Norway, united in
one kingdom.
By the Norman conquest of England in 1066, the Anglo-Nordic connection was
broken. England's union with Normandy laid the groundwork for a new Western
great power, and when Henry II came to the English throne in 1154 and married
Eleonora of Aquitaine, all of western France came into the hands of the English
kings. However, as early as 1202-06, the French king became subservient to the
English lands of northwestern France, but the English kings still had
considerable holdings in southwestern France.
During Henry 6, the German Empire was expanded with the Kingdom of Sicily
through a marriage alliance. After Henry's death in 1197, civil war broke out in
the kingdom. The pope supported Otto IV, who came to power, and in 1214 Otto
formed an alliance with the English aimed at France. However, the French king,
Philip August 2, won a crushing victory in 1214 at the Bouvines in Flanders. He
thus temporarily stopped the attempt by the English to recapture their former
lands in France. In Germany, the defeat meant that Henry VI's son Frederik II
became emperor in 1220. He concentrated on Italy, with the result that Germany
was divided into a number of small principals who were formally under the
emperor's supremacy.
The split of Germany and the French king's control over the north-west French
fortified the French central power. Now it was France who sought to submit to
the old Middle Kingdom. In 1246, Provence came under French influence, and the
Diocese of Lyon and the Duchy of Burgundy as well as the Dauphiné were
incorporated into France in the 1300s. In the north, the French pushed towards
Hainault, Elsaß and the Lorraine, and in Italy, Charles I conquered Anjou Sicily
in 1266. The papacy also came under strong French influence; Philip IV blocked
the Pope's revenues in France and in 1309 the Pope's seat was moved to Avignon.
The weakening of the German imperial power also meant the strengthening of
the kingdoms in the north and east - Denmark, Poland, Bohemia and Hungary - as
well as the principalities within the empire that had been created during the
great colonization of northeastern Europe in the 1100s and 1200s., i.e.
Mecklenburg, Brandenburg, The German Order State, etc. Europe's population grew
through the Middle Ages until 1300-h, and some could indicate that growth was
strongest from 1000- to 1200-h. In northwestern Europe, certain areas were
characterized by considerable population pressure, which was facilitated by
emigration. Thus, emigration took place from the Netherlands and northwestern
Germany to the newly Christianized areas east of the Elbe.
Although most of the German kings also became kings of Italy, the country
through the Middle Ages was effectively dissolved in areas under various
princes. Unlike the cities in the north, the Italian cities were inhabited by
the nobility and many of them were diocesan cities. The Italian cities were
larger and had natural conditions to become trade centers with a
proto-industrial development, and their central location on the Adriatic and the
Mediterranean helped them to develop into strong urban states as the Byzantine
Empire declined and after the Arab The collapse of the kingdom.
After the acquisition of the Omajjadic Caliphate in Cordoba in 1031, the Arab
possessions in the Iberian Peninsula were divided into small units, and these
little kingdoms soon became subject to aggression by the Christians. It
temporarily culminated with Alfonso 6, king of León and Castile, in 1085
conquering the most important Arab city, Toledo. Almost 200 years later, most of
the Iberian Peninsula was taken from the Muslims and divided into three
Christian kingdoms, Castile, Aragon and Portugal. The Byzantine and Muslim
decline coincided with a strong cultural boom in Western Christianity, which was
largely indebted to these declining cultures. Around 1300, a Western
Christianity had become the leading figure in European spiritual and cultural
life.
Considerable cities had emerged and trade in goods had grown. A network of
trade routes had formed, linking Europe and strengthening commercial relations
with the Orient. The transformation of the trade community from mainly
consisting of the exchange of luxury items to a greater extent also included
food and building products reflected the long division of labor between the
country and the city, which was now seriously breaking out between the European
regions. Proto-industrial centers had emerged, especially in the Netherlands and
Northern Italy, which could only co-exist with raw material and food supply
regions. Thus, food imports into Flanders from the Baltic Sea, Denmark, West
Germany and Northern France started early, while England supplied raw materials
for the Flemish garment manufacture.
From 1200-h. and by the year 1500 the political center of this culture lay in
the rival kingdoms of England and France. Through an arduous conflict that began
in the 1200s. and ended with the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453), the French
royal power succeeded in winning the English counties in southwestern France. In
doing so, the French kings had ruled over a territory that was roughly similar
to modern France. England had subjugated parts of Ireland under Henry II, and
Edward I brought Wales under the English crown. Scotland, on the other hand,
succeeded in resisting the pressure of England in the 13th and 13th centuries,
although the English influence in Scottish domestic policy was considerable at
times.
Thus, in the West, large territorial units were created in the form of
kingdoms, which gradually began to develop into actual state powers.
Developments went faster in England than in France. England had a better
starting point due to an early strong royal power, but probably so important was
that the social and economic development of the country during these centuries
created a number of societal needs that led to the administrative and
constitutional institutions that had become founded in the 1100- and 1200-t.,
was expanded and strengthened.
A similar, but not so strong, development took place in the North, in Eastern
Europe, in the Iberian Peninsula and in the area between France and Germany,
where the Burgundian kingdom expanded its territories in the 1300s and 1400s.
From about 1450, Italy's myriad of petty territories were brought together in
larger and firmer political units, while the dissolution of Germany, which began
in the 1200s, continued into the Middle Ages.
The last centuries of the Middle Ages were marked by plague epidemics. In
1347, the plague was brought to Italy, and from there it spread far and wide
along Europe's well-developed trade routes. The plague epidemics are thought to
have halved Europe's population by the second half of the 1300s, after which the
frequency, prevalence and strength of the epidemics decreased. The decline in
population led to widespread destruction of farms and villages throughout most
of Europe and affected the spiritual and social and economic life in various
ways, but European societies showed an astonishing ability to withstand the
demographic decline. Urban and commercial development continued despite the loss
of population. as a result of a strengthened interregional division of labor
between Eastern and Western Europe.
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