History of Europe in the context of "Radziwiłł"

Western culture, also known as Western civilization, European civilization, Occidental culture, Western society, or simply the West, is the internally diverse culture of the Western world. The term "Western" encompasses the social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, belief systems, political systems, artifacts and technologies primarily rooted in European and Mediterranean histories. A broad concept, "Western culture" does not relate to a region with fixed members or geographical confines. It generally refers to the classical era cultures of Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, and their Christian successors that expanded across the Mediterranean basin and Europe, and later circulated around the world predominantly through colonization and globalization.

Historically, scholars have closely associated the idea of Western culture with the classical era of Greco-Roman antiquity. However, scholars also acknowledge that other cultures, like Ancient Egypt, the Phoenician city-states, and several Near-Eastern cultures stimulated and influenced it. The Hellenistic period also promoted syncretism, blending Greek, Roman, and Jewish cultures. Major advances in literature, engineering, and science shaped the Hellenistic Jewish culture from which the earliest Christians and the Greek New Testament emerged. The eventual Christianization of Europe in late-antiquity would ensure that Christianity, particularly the Catholic Church, remained a dominant force in Western culture for many centuries to follow.

Classical antiquity, also known as the classical era, classical period, classical age, or simply antiquity, is the period of cultural European history between the 8th century BC and the 5th century AD. It comprises the interwoven civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome, known together as the Greco-Roman world, which played a major role in shaping the culture of the Mediterranean basin. It is the period during which ancient Greece and Rome flourished and had major influence throughout much of Europe, North Africa, and West Asia. Classical antiquity was succeeded by Late antiquity.

Conventionally, it is often considered to begin with the earliest recorded Epic Greek poetry of Homer (8th–7th centuries BC) and end with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD. Such a wide span of history and territory covers many disparate cultures and periods. Classical antiquity may also refer to an idealized vision among later people of what was, in Edgar Allan Poe's words, "the glory that was Greece, and the grandeur that was Rome".

The Early Middle Ages (or early medieval period), sometimes controversially referred to as the Dark Ages, is typically regarded by historians as lasting from the late 5th to the 10th century. They marked the start of the Middle Ages of European history, following the decline of the Western Roman Empire, and preceding the High Middle Ages (c. 11th to 14th centuries). The alternative term late antiquity, for the early part of the period, emphasizes elements of continuity with the Roman Empire, while Early Middle Ages is used to emphasize developments characteristic of the earlier medieval period.

The period saw a continuation of trends evident since late classical antiquity, including population decline, especially in urban centres, a decline of trade, a small rise in average temperatures in the North Atlantic region and increased migration. In the 19th century the Early Middle Ages were often labelled the Dark Ages, a characterization based on the relative scarcity of literary and cultural output from this time. The term is rarely used by academics today. The Eastern Roman Empire, or Byzantine Empire, survived, though in the 7th century the Rashidun Caliphate and the Umayyad Caliphate conquered the southern part of the Roman territory.

In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, comparable with the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and transitioned into the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery. The Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history: classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is itself subdivided into the Early, High, and Late Middle Ages.

Population decline, counterurbanisation, the collapse of centralised authority, invasions, and mass migrations of tribes, which had begun in Late antiquity (c. ~3rd–8th centuries) and into the Early Middle Ages (c. 5th–10th centuries). The large-scale movements of the Migration Period, including various Germanic peoples, formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the 7th century, North Africa and the Middle East—once part of the Byzantine Empire—came under the rule of the Umayyad Caliphate, an Islamic empire, after conquest by Muhammad's successors. Although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, the break with classical antiquity was incomplete. The still-sizeable Byzantine Empire, Rome's direct continuation, survived in the Eastern Mediterranean and remained a major power. The empire's law code, the Corpus Juris Civilis or "Code of Justinian", was rediscovered in Northern Italy in the 11th century. In the West, most kingdoms incorporated the few extant Roman institutions. Monasteries were founded as campaigns to Christianise the remaining pagans across Europe continued. The Franks, under the Carolingian dynasty, briefly established the Carolingian Empire during the later 8th and early 9th centuries. It covered much of Western Europe but later succumbed to the pressures of internal civil wars combined with external invasions: Vikings from the north, Magyars from the east, and Saracens from the south.

The Age of Enlightenment (also the Age of Reason) was a period in the history of Europe and Western civilization during which the Enlightenment, an intellectual and cultural movement, flourished, emerging in the late 17th century in Western Europe and reaching its peak in the 18th century, as its ideas spread more widely across Europe and into the European colonies, in the Americas and Oceania. Characterized by an emphasis on reason, empirical evidence, and scientific method, the Enlightenment promoted ideals of individual liberty, religious tolerance, progress, and natural rights. Its thinkers advocated for constitutional government, the separation of church and state, and the application of rational principles to social and political reform.

The Enlightenment emerged from and built upon the Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, which had established new methods of empirical inquiry through the work of figures such as Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, Francis Bacon, Pierre Gassendi, Christiaan Huygens and Isaac Newton. Philosophical foundations were laid by thinkers including René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, Baruch Spinoza, and John Locke, whose ideas about reason, natural rights, and empirical knowledge became central to Enlightenment thought. The dating of the period of the beginning of the Enlightenment can be attributed to the publication of Descartes' Discourse on the Method in 1637, with his method of systematically disbelieving everything unless there was a well-founded reason for accepting it, and featuring his dictum, Cogito, ergo sum ('I think, therefore I am'). Others cite the publication of Newton's Principia Mathematica (1687) as the culmination of the Scientific Revolution and the beginning of the Enlightenment. European historians traditionally dated its beginning with the death of Louis XIV of France in 1715 and its end with the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789. Many historians now date the end of the Enlightenment as the start of the 19th century, with the latest proposed year being the death of Immanuel Kant in 1804.

The Migration Period (c. 300 to 600 AD), also known as the Barbarian Invasions, was a period in European history marked by large-scale migrations that saw the fall of the Western Roman Empire and subsequent settlement of its former territories by various tribes, and the establishment of post-Roman kingdoms there.

The term refers to the important role played by the migration, invasion, and settlement of various tribes, notably the Burgundians, Vandals, Goths, Alemanni, Alans, Huns, early Slavs, Pannonian Avars, Bulgars and Magyars within or into the territories of Europe as a whole and of the Western Roman Empire in particular. Historiography traditionally takes the period as beginning in AD 375 (possibly as early as 300) and ending in 568. Various factors contributed to this phenomenon of migration and invasion, and their role and significance are still widely discussed.

The politics of Europe deals with the continually evolving politics within the continent of Europe. It is a topic far more detailed than other continents due to a number of factors including the long history of nation states in the region as well as the modern day trend towards increased political unity amongst the European states.

The current politics of Europe can be traced back to historical events within the continent. Likewise geography, economy, and culture have contributed to the current political make-up of Europe.

The modern era or the modern period is considered the current historical period of human history. It was originally applied to the history of Europe and Western history for events that came after the Classical antiquity and the Middle Ages, often from around the year 1500, like the Reformation in Germany giving rise to Protestantism. Since the 1990s, it has been more common among historians to refer to the period after the Middle Ages and up to the 19th century as the early modern period. The modern period is today more often used for events from the 19th century until today. The time from the end of World War II (1945) can also be described as being part of contemporary history. The common definition of the modern period today is often associated with events like the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, and the transition from nationalism toward the liberal international order.

The modern period has been a period of significant development in the fields of science, politics, warfare, and technology. It has also been an Age of Discovery and globalization. During this time, the European powers and later their colonies, strengthened their political, economic, and cultural colonization of the rest of the world. It also created a new modern lifestyle and has permanently changed the way people around the world live.

The late Middle Ages or late medieval period was the period of European history lasting from 1300 to 1500 AD. The late Middle Ages followed the High Middle Ages and preceded the onset of the early modern period (and in much of Europe, the Renaissance).

Around 1350, centuries of prosperity and growth in Europe came to a halt. A series of famines and plagues, including the Great Famine of 1315–1317 and the Black Death, reduced the population to around half of what it had been before the calamities. Along with depopulation came social unrest and endemic warfare. France and England experienced serious peasant uprisings, such as the Jacquerie and the Peasants' Revolt, as well as over a century of intermittent conflict, the Hundred Years' War. To add to the many problems of the period, the unity of the Catholic Church was temporarily shattered by the Western Schism. Collectively, those events are sometimes called the crisis of the late Middle Ages.

The Hungarian invasions of Europe (Hungarian: kalandozások, German: Ungarneinfälle) occurred in the 9th and 10th centuries, during the period of transition in the history of Europe of the Early Middle Ages, when the territory of the former Carolingian Empire was threatened by invasion by the Magyars (Hungarians) from the east, the Viking expansion from the north, and the Arabs from the south.

The Hungarians took possession of the Carpathian Basin (corresponding to the later Kingdom of Hungary) in a planned manner, with a long period of settlement between 862–895, and launched a number of campaigns both westward into former Francia and southward into the Byzantine Empire. The westward raids were stopped only with the Magyar defeat at the Battle of Lechfeld in 955, which led to the revival of the Holy Roman Empire in 962, producing a new political order in Western Europe. The raids into Byzantine territories continued throughout the 10th century, until the eventual Christianisation of the Magyars and the establishment of the Christian Kingdom of Hungary in 1000.

The early modern period is a historical period, with divisions based primarily on the history of Europe and the broader concept of modernity. There is no exact date that marks the beginning or end of the period and its extent may vary depending on the area of history being studied. In general, the early modern period is considered to have started at the beginning of the 16th century, and is variably considered to have ended at the 18th or 19th century (around 1500 to 1700–1800). In a European context, it is defined as the period following the Middle Ages and preceding the advent of modernity, but there is no universal agreement on the dates of these boundaries. In the context of global history, the early modern period is often used even in contexts where there is no equivalent "medieval" period.

Various events and historical transitions have been proposed as the start of the early modern period, including the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the start of the Renaissance, the end of the Crusades, the Reformation in Germany giving rise to Protestantism, and the beginning of the Age of Discovery and with it the onset of the first wave of European colonization. Its end is often marked by the French Revolution, and sometimes also the American Revolution or Napoleon's rise to power, with the advent of the second wave modern colonization of New Imperialism.

In European history, monarchy was the prevalent form of government throughout the Middle Ages, only occasionally competing with communalism, notably in the case of the maritime republics and the Swiss Confederacy.

In the early modern period (1500 - 1800 CE), Republicanism became more prevalent, but monarchy still remained predominant in Europe until the end of the 19th century. After World War I, however, most European monarchies were abolished. There remain, as of 2025, twelve sovereign monarchies in Europe. Seven are kingdoms: Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Spain, the Netherlands, and Belgium. Three are principalities: Andorra, Liechtenstein, and Monaco. Finally, Luxembourg is a grand duchy and Vatican City is a theocratic, elective monarchy ruled by the pope.