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Western Europe is the region comprising the western part of Europe. Below, some different geographic, geopolitical and cultural definitions of the term are outlined.

For centuries, Western Europe was defined as the countries with dominant Catholic and Protestant churches, while Eastern Europe was dominated by the Eastern Orthodox Church. A more contemporary definition subdivides Western Europe into several other regions like Central Europe or Northern Europe.

Western Europe's significant historical events include the time of the Roman Republic (including the Punic, Gallic an Civil Wars fought by Rome), the reign of Augustus, the spreading of The Gospel under St Paul, Pax Romana, Fall of the Western Roman Empire reign of Charlemange, the Viking Invasions, the Black Death, the Renaissance, the Age of Discovery, the Protestant Reformation as well as the Counter-Reformation of the Catholic Church, the Age of Enlightenment, the French Revolution, Industrial Revolution, the two World Wars and the Cold War.

Historical divisions

Classical antiquity and medieval origins

Prior to the Roman conquest, a large part of Western Europe had adopted the newly developed La Tène culture. 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. This cultural and linguistic division was eventually reinforced by the later political east-west division of the Roman Empire. The Western Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire controlled the two divergent regions between the 3rd and the 5th century.

The division between these two was enhanced during Late antiquity and the Middle Ages by a number of events. The Western Roman Empire collapsed, starting the Early Middle Ages. By contrast, the Eastern Roman Empire, mostly known as the Greek or Byzantine Empire, survived and even thrived for another 1000 years. 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.

After 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.

In East Asia, Western Europe was historically known as taixi in China and taisei in Japan, which literally translates as the "Far West". The term Far West became synonymous with Western Europe in China during the Ming dynasty. 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. In Ricci's writings, Ricci referred to himself as "Matteo of the Far West". The term was still in use in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Religion

The East–West Schism, which has lasted since the 11th century, divided Christianity in Europe, and consequently the world, into Western Christianity and Eastern Christianity.

With certain simplifications, Western Europe is thus Catholic or Protestant and uses the Latin alphabet. Eastern Europe is Orthodox and uses the Cyrillic script.

Western Europe according to this definition is formed by countries with dominant Roman Catholic and Protestant churches, including countries which are considered part of Central Europe now:

Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and United Kingdom.

Eastern Europe is formed by countries with dominant Eastern Orthodox churches, like Greece, Belarus, Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania, Russia, Ukraine for instance.

The schism is the break of communion and theology between what are now the Eastern (Orthodox) and Western (Roman Catholic from 11th century, as well as from the 16th century also Protestant) churches.

This division dominated Europe for centuries, in opposition to the rather short lived Cold War division of 4 decades.

• Division between the Eastern and Western Churches
• Religious division in 1054

Since the Great Schism of 1054, Europe has been divided between Roman Catholic and Protestant churches in the West, and the Eastern Orthodox Christian (many times incorrectly labeled "Greek Orthodox") churches in the east. Due to this religious cleavage, Eastern Orthodox countries are often associated with Eastern Europe. A cleavage of this sort is, however, often problematic; for example, Greece is overwhelmingly Orthodox, but is very rarely included in "Eastern Europe", for a variety of reasons.

Cold War

During the four decades of the Cold War, the definition of East and West was rather simplified by the existence of the Eastern Bloc. Historians and social scientists generally view the Cold War definition of Western and Eastern Europe as outdated or relegating.

During 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. President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the Premier of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin.

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. With the onset of the Cold War, Europe was divided by the Iron Curtain. 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 popularised by Winston Churchill, who used it in his famous "Sinews of Peace" address on 5 March 1946 at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri:

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia; all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow.

Although some countries were officially neutral, they were classified according to the nature of their political and economic systems. This division largely defines the popular perception and understanding of Western Europe and its borders with Eastern Europe.

The world changed dramatically with the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989. West Germany peacefully absorbed East Germany, in the German reunification. Comecon and the Warsaw Pact were dissolved, and in 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Several countries which had been part of the Soviet Union regained full independence.

Western European Union

In 1948 the Treaty of Brussels was signed between Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. It was further revisited in 1954 at the Paris Conference, when the Western European Union was established. It was declared defunct in 2011, after the Treaty of Lisbon, and the Treaty of Brussels was terminated. When the Western European Union was dissolved, it had 10 member countries, six associate member countries, five observer countries and seven associate partner countries.

Modern divisions

CIA definitions

The CIA divides Western Europe into two smaller subregions.
The Western Europe group consists of eight countries:

•  Belgium
•  France
•  Ireland
•  Luxembourg
•  Monaco
•  Netherlands
•   Switzerland
•  United Kingdom

The Southwestern group consists of three countries:

•  Andorra
•  Portugal
•  Spain

Western European and Others Group

The Western European and Others Group is one of several unofficial Regional Groups in the United Nations that act as voting blocs and negotiation forums. Regional voting blocs were formed in 1961 to encourage voting to various UN bodies from different regional groups.

European Union

The European Union (EU) is an economic and political union of 27 member states that are located primarily in Europe.

EFTA

The Western and Northern European countries of Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein are members of EFTA, though cooperating to varying degree with the European Union.

Intermediate Region

The Intermediate Region is an established geopolitical model set forth in the 1970s by the Greek historian Dimitri Kitsikis. Under this model, the lands between the Adriatic Sea and the Indus River form the Intermediate Region, and are considered a bridge between Western and Eastern civilisations.

Other groupings and organisations

Other groupings and organisations covering the western part of Europe include:

• R1b is the most common haplogroup amid Western Europeans.
• Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
• Development Assistance Committee
• IMF developed economies
• European Space Agency

Population

Population of various countries that are commonly referred to as "Western Europe", between the years 2000 and 2016.

Country	Population (2016 est.)	Population (2000 est.)	-/+ of Population	Percent change	Capital	Population density (per km²), 2016
Andorra	69,165	65,399	3766	5.76%	Andorra La Vella	147
Austria	8,569,633	8,002,186	567,447	7.09%	Vienna	104
Belgium	11,371,928	10,296,350	1,075,578	10.45%	Brussels	376
Denmark	5,690,750	5,330,020	360,730	6.77%	Copenhagen	134
Finland	5,523,904	5,167,486	356,418	6.89%	Helsinki	17
France	64,668,129	60,537,977	4,130,152	6.39%	Paris	118
Germany	80,682,351	82,163,475	-1,481,124	-1.80%	Berlin	231
Iceland	331,778	279,049	52,729	18.90%	Reykjavík	3.22
Ireland	4,713,993	3,777,763	936,230	24.78%	Dublin	68
Italy	59,801,004	56,923,524	2,877,480	5.05%	Rome	201
Liechtenstein	37,776	33,282	4,494	13.50%	Vaduz	236
Luxembourg	576,243	433,600	142,643	32.89%	Luxembourg	223
Malta	419,615	381,363	38,252	10.00%	Valletta	1311
Monaco	37,863	32,081	5,782	18.02%	Monaco	25,411
Netherlands	16,979,729	15,863,950	1,115,779	7.03%	Amsterdam	505
Norway	5,271,958	4,478,497	793,461	17.72%	Oslo	15
Portugal	10,304,434	10,195,014	109,420	1.07%	Lisbon	113
San Marino	31,950	27,420	4,530	16.52%	San Marino	533
Spain	46,064,604	40,049,708	6,014,896	15.02%	Madrid	92
Sweden	9,851,852	8,861,426	990,426	1.18%	Stockholm	24
Switzerland	8,379,477	7,162,444	1,217,033	16.99%	Bern	212
United Kingdom	65,111,143	58,785,246	6,325,897	10.76%	London	269
Vatican City	840	880	-40	-4.54%	Vatican City	1909

Climate

The climate of Western Europe varies from subtropical and desertic in the southern coast of Spain to polar in the Pyrenees. The Mediterranean climate of the south is dry and warm. The western and northwestern parts have a mild, generally humid climate, influenced by the North Atlantic Current.

Languages

Western European languages mostly fall within two Indo-European language families: the Romance languages, descended from the Latin of the Roman Empire; and the Germanic languages, whose ancestor language came from southern Scandinavia. Romance languages are spoken primarily in the southern and central part of Western Europe, Germanic languages in the northern part (the British Isles and the Low Countries), as well as a large part of Northern and Central Europe.

Other Indo-European languages include the Celtic group (that is, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx, Welsh, Cornish, and Breton). Basque is the only Western European language isolate.

Multilingualism and the protection of regional and minority languages are recognised political goals in Western Europe today. The Council of Europe Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and the Council of Europe's European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages set up a legal framework for language rights in Europe.

The following is a table displaying the number of speakers of the languages in Western Europe spoken by more than 5 million people:

Language	Speakers	Largest countries where spoken	Largest regions where spoken
Catalan	9,200,000	Andorra,  Spain	Catalonia,  Valencian Community
Dutch	21,944,690	Belgium,  Netherlands
English	59,800,000	Ireland,  United Kingdom (including  Isle of Man,  Jersey,  Guernsey and  Gibraltar)
French	65,700,000	Belgium,  France,  Luxembourg,  Monaco,   Switzerland	Jersey,  Valle d'Aosta
German	95,000,000	Austria,  Belgium,  Germany,  Liechtenstein,  Luxembourg,   Switzerland	South Tyrol
Italian	59,400,000	Italy,  Monaco,  San Marino,   Switzerland,  Vatican City	Istria County,  Malta, Slovene Istria
Portuguese	10,000,000	Portugal
Spanish	45,000,000+	Andorra,  Spain

Economy

Western Europe is one of the richest regions of the world. Germany has the highest GDP in Europe and the largest financial surplus of any country, Luxembourg has the highest GDP per capita, and France has the highest Net National Wealth of any European state.

Liechtenstein has the highest average wage of any state in Europe, Switzerland ranks highest in Europe on the Social Progress Index.

See also

• Central Europe
• Eastern Europe
• Northern Europe
• Southern Europe
• Far West
• Marshall Plan
• Eurovoc#Western Europe

Notes

1. Both native and second language speakers residing in Europe only.
2. Country is defined as being one of the 193 members of the United Nations. 'Recognised minority language' status is not included.
3. Region is defined as being a subordinate constituent of a country, where a legitimate political entity has granted the language official status in that region.

References

1. Ricci, Matteo (1610) . On Friendship: One Hundred Maxims for a Chinese Prince. Translated by Timothy Billings. Columbia University Press. pp. 19, 71, 87. ISBN 978-0231149242.
2. "Atlas of the Historical Geography of the Holy Land". Rbedrosian.com. Archived from the original on 10 June 2013. Retrieved 23 February 2013. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
3. "home.comcast.net". Archived from the original on 13 February 2013. Retrieved 23 February 2013. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
4. Dragan Brujić (2005). "Vodič kroz svet Vizantije (Guide to the Byzantine World)". Beograd. p. 51.
5. Peter John, Local Governance in Western Europe, University of Manchester, 2001, ISBN 9780761956372
6. "The geopolitical conditions (...) are now a thing of the past, and some specialists today think that Eastern Europe has outlived its usefulness as a phrase.""Regions, Regionalism, Eastern Europe by Steven Cassedy". New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, Charles Scribner's Sons. 2005. Retrieved 31 January 2010Template:Inconsistent citations {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)CS1 maint: postscript (link)
7. "The Economist: Eastern Europe a bogus term - South Eastern Europe - The Sofia Echo".
8. "One very common, but now outdated, definition of Eastern Europe was the Soviet-dominated communist countries of Europe."http://www.cotf.edu/earthinfo/balkans/BKdef.html
9. "Too much writing on the region has – consciously or unconsciously – clung to an outdated image of 'Eastern Europe', desperately trying to patch together political and social developments from Budapest to Bukhara or Tallinn to Tashkent without acknowledging that this Cold War frame of reference is coming apart at the seams. Central Europe Review: Re-Viewing Central Europe By Sean Hanley, Kazi Stastna and Andrew Stroehlein, 1999
10. Berglund, Sten; Ekman, Joakim; Aarebrot, Frank H. (2004). The handbook of political change in Eastern Europe. Edward Elgar Publishing [via Google Books]. p. 2. ISBN 9781781954324. Retrieved 5 October 2011. The term 'Eastern Europe' is ambiguous and in many ways outdated.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)
11. Archived April 3, 2015, at the Wayback Machine. Eurovoc.europa.eu. Retrieved on 2015-03-04.
12. "United Nations Statistics Division- Standard Country and Area Codes Classifications (M49)".
13. "Population Division, DESA, United Nations: World Population Ageing 1950-2050" (PDF).
14. "Basic information on the European Union". European Union. europa.eu. Retrieved 4 October 2012.
15. "European". Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved 3 October 2011. 5 b. spec. Designating a developing series of economic and political unions between certain countries of Europe from 1952 onwards, as European Economic Community, European Community, European Union
16. http://www.scs.illinois.edu/~mcdonald/WorldHaplogroupsMaps.pdf
17. "European Y-DNA haplogroups frequencies by country". Eupedia.
18. . unknown https://www.essex.ac.uk/armedcon/world/europe/western_europe/default.html. Retrieved 6 June 2017. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help)
19. ^ "Europe". Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007. Retrieved 10 June 2008.
20. "Catalan".
21. Dutch at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
22. English at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
23. French at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
24. Le Statut spécial de la Vallée d'Aoste, Article 38, Title VI. Region Vallée d'Aoste. Archived from the original on 4 November 2011. Retrieved 2 May 2014. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
25. http://www.regione.taa.it/normativa/statuto_speciale.pdf
26. Italian at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
27. Portuguese at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
28. Spanish at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)

Sources

• The Making of Europe, ISBN 0-14-015409-4, by Robert Bartlett
• Crescent and Cross, ISBN 1-84212-753-5, by Hugh Bicheno
• The Normans, ISBN 0-7524-2881-0, by Trevor Rowley
• 1066: The Year of the Three Battles, ISBN 0-7126-6672-9, by Frank McLynn

External links

• The European sub-regions according to the UN
• Teaching about Western Europe

• Western Europe
• Regions of Europe