Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. This term had been used during World War II by German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and, later, Count Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk in the last days of the war however, its use was hugely popularized by Winston Churchill, who used it in his famous 'Sinews of Peace' address on 5 March 1946 at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri:įrom Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. With the onset of the Cold War, Europe was divided by the Iron Curtain. Post-war Europe would be divided into two major spheres: the Western Bloc, influenced by the United States, and the Eastern Bloc, influenced by the Soviet Union.

Roosevelt, and the Premier of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin. ĭuring the final stages of World War II, the future of Europe was decided between the Allies in the 1945 Yalta Conference, between the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, the U.S. Historians and social scientists generally view the Cold War definition of Western and Eastern Europe as outdated or relegating. Political spheres of influence in Europe during the Cold War neutral countries (shaded gray or light blue) considered informally Western-oriented but not formally aligned to the Westĭuring the four decades of the Cold War, the definition of East and West was rather simplified by the existence of the Eastern Bloc. Under this definition of Eastern and Western Europe, Eastern Europe contains Southeastern European countries as well, while Western Europe includes Northern and Central European countries.

Ever since the Reformation in the 16th century, the primary Christian denominations in Western Europe have been Catholicism and Protestantism.

This split Europe in two, with Western Europe primarily under the Catholic Church, and Eastern Europe under the Eastern Orthodox Church. In 1054, the East–West Schism divided Christianity into Western Christianity and Eastern Christianity. According to a 2018 study by the Pew Research Center, 71.0% of Western Europeans identified as Christians. The term was still in use in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.Ĭhristianity is the largest religion in Western Europe. In Ricci's writings, Ricci referred to himself as 'Matteo of the Far West'. The Italian Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci was one of the first writers in China to use the Far West as an Asian counterpart to the European concept of the Far East. The term Far West became synonymous with Western Europe in China during the Ming dynasty. In East Asia, Western Europe was historically known as taixi in China and taisei in Japan, which literally translates as the ' Far West'. The rise of the Carolingian Empire in the west, and in particular the Great Schism between Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, enhanced the cultural and religious distinctiveness between Eastern and Western Europe.Īfter the conquest of the Byzantine Empire, center of the Eastern Orthodox Church, by the Muslim Ottoman Empire in the 15th century, and the gradual fragmentation of the Holy Roman Empire (which had replaced the Carolingian Empire), the division between Roman Catholic and Protestant became more important in Europe than that with Eastern Orthodoxy. By contrast, the Eastern Roman Empire, mostly known as the Greek or Byzantine Empire, survived and even thrived for another 1000 years. The Western Roman Empire collapsed, starting the Early Middle Ages. The division between these two was enhanced during Late antiquity and the Middle Ages by a number of events.

The Western Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire controlled the two divergent regions between the 3rd and the 5th centuries. This cultural and linguistic division was eventually reinforced by the later political east–west division of the Roman Empire. As the Roman domain expanded, a cultural and linguistic division appeared between the mainly Greek-speaking eastern provinces, which had formed the highly urbanized Hellenistic civilization, and the western territories, which in contrast largely adopted the Latin language. Prior to the Roman conquest, a large part of Western Europe had adopted the newly developed La Tène culture. Schism of 1054 (East–West Schism) in Christianity, the predominant religion in Europe at the time

Feudal kingdoms western europe