Europe covers about 10.18 million km2 (3.93 million sq mi), or 2% of Earth's surface (6.8% of land area), making it the second-smallest continent (using the seven-continent model). Politically, Europe is divided into about fifty sovereign states, of which Russia is the largest and most populous, spanning 39% of the continent and comprising 15% of its population. Europe had a total population of about 745 million (about 10% of the world population) in 2021.[2][3] The European climate is largely affected by warm Atlantic currents that temper winters and summers on much of the continent, even at latitudes along which the climate in Asia and North America is severe. Further from the sea, seasonal differences are more noticeable than close to the coast.
international organizations aiming to represent the European continent on a political level. The Council of Europe was founded in 1948 with the idea of unifying Europe[18] to achieve common goals and prevent future wars. Further European integration by some states led to the formation of the European Union, a separate political entity that lies between a confederation and a federation.[19] The EU originated in Western Europe but has been expanding eastward since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. A majority of its members have adopted a common currency, the euro, and a large bloc of countries, the Schengen Area
, have abolished internal border and immigration controls.
Ancient Greek: Εὐρώπη, Eurṓpē) was a Phoenician princess. One view is that her name derives from the Ancient Greek elements εὐρύς (eurús) 'wide, broad', and ὤψ (ōps, gen.ὠπός, ōpós) 'eye, face, countenance', hence their composite Eurṓpē would mean 'wide-gazing' or 'broad of aspect'.[20][21][22][23]Broad has been an epithet of Earth herself in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion and the poetry devoted to it.[20] An alternative view is that of Robert Beekes, who has argued in favour of a Pre-Indo-European origin for the name, explaining that a derivation from eurus would yield a different toponym than Europa. Beekes has located toponyms related to that of Europa in the territory of ancient Greece, and localities such as that of Europos in ancient Macedonia.[24]
There have been attempts to connect Eurṓpē to a Semitic term for west, this being either Akkadianerebu meaning 'to go down, set' (said of the sun) or Phoenician'ereb 'evening, west',[25] which is at the origin of Arabicmaghreb and Hebrewma'arav. Martin Litchfield West stated that "phonologically, the match between Europa's name and any form of the Semitic word is very poor",[26] while Beekes considers a connection to Semitic languages improbable.[24]
Most major world languages use words derived from Eurṓpē or Europa to refer to the continent. Chinese, for example, uses the word Ōuzhōu (歐洲/欧洲), which is an abbreviation of the transliterated name Ōuluóbā zhōu (歐羅巴洲) (zhōu means "continent"); a similar Chinese-derived term Ōshū (欧州) is also sometimes used in Japanese such as in the Japanese name of the European Union, Ōshū Rengō (欧州連合), despite the katakanaYōroppa (ヨーロッパ) being more commonly used. In some Turkic languages, the originally Persian name Frangistan ('land of the Franks') is used casually in referring to much of Europe, besides official names such as Avrupa or Evropa.[27]
Definition
Further information:
Boundaries between the continents of Earth § Asia and Europe
The prevalent definition of Europe as a geographical term has been in use since the mid-19th century.
Europe is taken to be bounded by large bodies of water to the north, west and south; Europe's limits to the east and north-east are usually taken to be the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, and the Caspian Sea; to the south-east, the Caucasus Mountains, the Black Sea, and the waterways connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea.[28]
A medieval T and O map printed by Günther Zainer in 1472, showing the three continents as domains of the sons of Noah – Asia to Sem (Shem), Europe to Iafeth (Japheth) and Africa to Cham (Ham
)
Islands are generally grouped with the nearest continental landmass, hence Iceland is considered to be part of Europe, while the nearby island of Greenland is usually assigned to North America, although politically belonging to Denmark. Nevertheless, there are some exceptions based on sociopolitical and cultural differences. Cyprus is closest to Anatolia (or Asia Minor), but is considered part of Europe politically and it is a member state of the EU. Malta was considered an island of North-western Africa for centuries, but now it is considered to be part of Europe as well.[29]
"Europe", as used specifically in British English, may also refer to Continental Europe exclusively.[30]
. In contrast, the present eastern boundary of Europe partially adheres to the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, which is somewhat arbitrary and inconsistent compared to any clear-cut definition of the term "continent".
The current division of Eurasia into two continents now reflects
continents separated from Europe by large bodies of water. Spain, for example, has territories south of the Mediterranean Sea—namely, Ceuta and Melilla—which are parts of Africa
and share a border with Morocco. According to the current convention, Georgia and Azerbaijan are transcontinental countries where waterways have been completely replaced by mountains as the divide between continents.
who took the Tanais (the modern Don River) as the boundary.
The Roman Empire did not attach a strong identity to the concept of continental divisions. However, following the fall of the
Islamic world
.
A cultural definition of Europe as the lands of
Iberia, the British Isles, France, Christianised western Germany, the Alpine regions and northern and central Italy.[39] The concept is one of the lasting legacies of the Carolingian Renaissance: Europa often[dubious – discuss] figures in the letters of Charlemagne's court scholar, Alcuin.[40] The transition of Europe to being a cultural term as well as a geographic one led to the borders of Europe being affected by cultural considerations in the East, especially relating to areas under Byzantine, Ottoman, and Russian influence. Such questions were affected by the positive connotations associated with the term Europe by its users. Such cultural considerations were not applied to the Americas, despite their conquest and settlement by European states. Instead, the concept of "Western civilization" emerged as a way of grouping together Europe and these colonies.[41]
A New Map of Europe According to the Newest Observations (1721) by Hermann Moll draws the eastern boundary of Europe along the Don River flowing south-west and the Tobol, Irtysh and Ob rivers flowing north.
1916 political map of Europe showing most of Moll's waterways replaced by von Strahlenberg's Ural Mountains and Freshfield's Caucasus Crest, land features of a type that normally defines a subcontinent
The question of defining a precise eastern boundary of Europe arises in the Early Modern period, as the eastern extension of
Don (ancient Tanais). But maps produced during the 16th to 18th centuries tended to differ in how to continue the boundary beyond the Don bend at Kalach-na-Donu (where it is closest to the Volga, now joined with it by the Volga–Don Canal
), into territory not described in any detail by the ancient geographers.
Around 1715,
Irtysh River
, a major tributary of the Ob, as components of a series of partly-joined waterways taking the boundary between Europe and Asia from the Turkish Straits, and the Don River all the way to the Arctic Ocean. In 1721, he produced a more up to date map that was easier to read. However, his proposal to adhere to major rivers as the line of demarcation was never taken up by other geographers who were beginning to move away from the idea of water boundaries as the only legitimate divides between Europe and Asia.
Four years later, in 1725,
Ural Rivers), then north and east along the latter waterway to its source in the Ural Mountains. At this point he proposed that mountain ranges could be included as boundaries between continents as alternatives to nearby waterways. Accordingly, he drew the new boundary north along Ural Mountains rather than the nearby and parallel running Ob and Irtysh rivers.[42] This was endorsed by the Russian Empire and introduced the convention that would eventually become commonly accepted. However, this did not come without criticism. Voltaire, writing in 1760 about Peter the Great's efforts to make Russia more European, ignored the whole boundary question with his claim that neither Russia, Scandinavia, northern Germany, nor Poland were fully part of Europe.[38] Since then, many modern analytical geographers like Halford Mackinder have declared that they see little validity in the Ural Mountains as a boundary between continents.[43]
The mapmakers continued to differ on the boundary between the lower Don and Samara well into the 19th century. The 1745 atlas published by the Russian Academy of Sciences has the boundary follow the Don beyond Kalach as far as Serafimovich before cutting north towards Arkhangelsk, while other 18th- to 19th-century mapmakers such as John Cary followed Strahlenberg's prescription. To the south, the Kuma–Manych Depression was identified circa 1773 by a German naturalist, Peter Simon Pallas, as a valley that once connected the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea,[44][45] and subsequently was proposed as a natural boundary between continents.
By the mid-19th century, there were three main conventions, one following the Don, the
Greater Caucasus watershed to the Caspian. The question was still treated as a "controversy" in geographical literature of the 1860s, with Douglas Freshfield advocating the Caucasus crest boundary as the "best possible", citing support from various "modern geographers".[46]
In
Emba River; and Kuma–Manych Depression,[48] thus placing the Caucasus entirely in Asia and the Urals entirely in Europe.[49] However, most geographers in the Soviet Union favoured the boundary along the Caucasus crest,[50]
and this became the common convention in the later 20th century, although the Kuma–Manych boundary remained in use in some 20th-century maps.
Some view the separation of Eurasia into Asia and Europe as a residue of Eurocentrism: "In physical, cultural and historical diversity, China and India are comparable to the entire European landmass, not to a single European country. [...]."[51]
The modern native populations of Europe largely descend from three distinct lineages:
Iron Age Italy and Greece from around the 8th century BCE gradually gave rise to historical Classical antiquity, whose beginning is sometimes dated to 776 BCE, the year of the first Olympic Games.[72]
Expanding from their base in central Italy beginning in the third century BCE, the Romans gradually expanded to eventually rule the entire Mediterranean Basin and Western Europe by the turn of the millennium. The
imperial persecution. Constantine also permanently moved the capital of the empire from Rome to the city of Byzantium (modern-day Istanbul) which was renamed Constantinople in his honour in 330 CE. Christianity became the sole official religion of the empire in 380 CE and in 391–392 CE, the emperor Theodosius outlawed pagan religions.[83] This is sometimes considered to mark the end of antiquity; alternatively antiquity is considered to end with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE; the closure of the pagan Platonic Academy of Athens in 529 CE;[84] or the rise of Islam in the early 7th century CE. During most of its existence, the Byzantine Empire was one of the most powerful economic, cultural, and military forces in Europe.[85]
Isolated monastic communities were the only places to safeguard and compile written knowledge accumulated previously; apart from this very few written records survive and much literature, philosophy, mathematics and other thinking from the classical period disappeared from Western Europe, though they were preserved in the east, in the Byzantine Empire.[87]
While the Roman empire in the west continued to decline, Roman traditions and the Roman state remained strong in the predominantly Greek-speaking
Eastern Roman Empire, also known as the Byzantine Empire. During most of its existence, the Byzantine Empire was the most powerful economic, cultural and military force in Europe. Emperor Justinian I presided over Constantinople's first golden age: he established a legal code that forms the basis of many modern legal systems, funded the construction of the Hagia Sophia and brought the Christian church under state control.[88]
From the 7th century onwards, as the Byzantines and neighbouring
Leon and Galicia were laid and from where the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula would start. However, no coordinated attempt would be made to drive the Moors out. The Christian kingdoms were mainly focused on their own internal power struggles. As a result, the Reconquista
took the greater part of eight hundred years, in which period a long list of Alfonsos, Sanchos, Ordoños, Ramiros, Fernandos and Bermudos would be fighting their Christian rivals as much as the Muslim invaders.
Viking raids and division of the Frankish Empire at the Treaty of Verdun
in 843
During the Dark Ages, the
Carolingian dynasty who had conquered most of Western Europe, was anointed "Holy Roman Emperor" by the Pope in 800. This led in 962 to the founding of the Holy Roman Empire, which eventually became centred in the German principalities of central Europe.[93]
Kiev to become the largest state in Europe by the 10th century. In 988, Vladimir the Great adopted Orthodox Christianity as the religion of state.[94][95] Further East, Volga Bulgaria became an Islamic state in the 10th century, but was eventually absorbed into Russia several centuries later.[96]
The maritime republics of medieval Italy reestablished contacts between Europe, Asia and Africa with extensive trade networks and colonies across the Mediterranean, and had an essential role in the Crusades.[97][98]
In the east, a resurgent Byzantine Empire recaptured Crete and Cyprus from the Muslims, and reconquered the Balkans. Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest city in Europe from the 9th to the 12th centuries, with a population of approximately 400,000.
, steadily expanding to the east and south over the next centuries.
The Great Famine of 1315–1317 was the first crisis that would strike Europe in the late Middle Ages.[121] The period between 1348 and 1420 witnessed the heaviest loss. The population of France was reduced by half.[122][123] Medieval Britain was afflicted by 95 famines,[124] and France suffered the effects of 75 or more in the same period.[125] Europe was devastated in the mid-14th century by the Black Death, one of the most deadly pandemics in human history which killed an estimated 25 million people in Europe alone—a third of the European population at the time.[126]
The plague had a devastating effect on Europe's social structure; it induced people to live for the moment as illustrated by
frequently raided the Slavic-speaking areas of contemporary Russia and Ukraine for hundreds of years, until the Russian expansion and conquest of most of northern Eurasia (i.e. Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Siberia).
The Renaissance and the
Galileo and Isaac Newton.[159] According to Peter Barrett, "It is widely accepted that 'modern science' arose in the Europe of the 17th century (towards the end of the Renaissance), introducing a new understanding of the natural world."[130]
Public Health Act of 1875 was passed, which significantly improved living conditions in many British cities.[177] Europe's population increased from about 100 million in 1700 to 400 million by 1900.[178] The last major famine recorded in Western Europe, the Great Famine of Ireland, caused death and mass emigration of millions of Irish people.[179] In the 19th century, 70 million people left Europe in migrations to various European colonies abroad and to the United States.[180] The industrial revolution also led to large population growth, and the share of the world population living in Europe reached a peak of slightly above 25% around the year 1913.[181][182]
Two world wars and an economic depression dominated the first half of the 20th century. The First World War was fought between 1914 and 1918. It started when
forced labour. Stalin was also responsible for the Great Purge of 1937–38 in which the NKVD executed 681,692 people;[192] millions of people were deported and exiled to remote areas of the Soviet Union.[193]
Serbian war efforts (1914–1918) cost the country one quarter of its population.[194][195][196][197][198]
Nazi Germany began the devastating Second World War in Europe by its leader, Adolf Hitler. Here Hitler, on the right, with his closest ally, the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini
.
Economic instability, caused in part by debts incurred in the First World War and 'loans' to Germany played havoc in Europe in the late 1920s and 1930s. This, and the Wall Street Crash of 1929, brought about the worldwide Great Depression. Helped by the economic crisis, social instability and the threat of communism, fascist movements developed throughout Europe placing Adolf Hitler in power of what became Nazi Germany.[199][200]
In 1933, Hitler became the leader of Germany and began to work towards his goal of building Greater Germany. Germany re-expanded and took back the Saarland and Rhineland in 1935 and 1936. In 1938, Austria became a part of Germany following the Anschluss. Later that year, following the Munich Agreement signed by Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Italy, Germany annexed the Sudetenland, which was a part of Czechoslovakia inhabited by ethnic Germans, and in early 1939, the remainder of Czechoslovakia was split into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, controlled by Germany and the Slovak Republic. At the time, the United Kingdom and France preferred a policy of appeasement.
With tensions mounting between Germany and
European Theatre of the Second World War.[201][202][203] The Soviet invasion of Poland started on 17 September and Poland fell soon thereafter. On 24 September, the Soviet Union attacked the Baltic countries and, on 30 November, Finland, the latter of which was followed by the devastating Winter War for the Red Army.[204] The British hoped to land at Narvik and send troops to aid Finland, but their primary objective in the landing was to encircle Germany and cut the Germans off from Scandinavian resources. Around the same time, Germany moved troops into Denmark. The Phoney War
After the staggering Battle of Stalingrad in 1943, the German offensive in the Soviet Union turned into a continual fallback. The Battle of Kursk, which involved the largest tank battle in history, was the last major German offensive on the Eastern Front. In June 1944, British and American forces invaded France in the D-Day landings, opening a new front against Germany. Berlin finally fell in 1945, ending the Second World War in Europe. The war was the largest and most destructive in human history, with 60 million dead across the world.[209] More than 40 million people in Europe had died as a result of the Second World War,[210] including between 11 and 17 million people who perished during the Holocaust.[211] The Soviet Union lost around 27 million people (mostly civilians) during the war, about half of all Second World War casualties.[212] By the end of the Second World War, Europe had more than 40 million refugees.[213][214][215] Several post-war expulsions in Central and Eastern Europe displaced a total of about 20 million people.[216]
The First World War, and especially the Second World War, diminished the eminence of Western Europe in world affairs. After the Second World War the map of Europe was redrawn at the
Berlin blockade in 1948 and 1949 and the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 were one of the great international crises of the Cold War.[218][219][220]
The two new
decolonisation, which had already started after the First World War, gradually resulted in the independence of most of the European colonies in Asia and Africa.[17]
full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, marking the largest humanitarian and refugee crisis in Europe since the Second World War[234] and the Yugoslav Wars.[235]
Map of populous Europe and surrounding regions showing physical, political and population characteristics, as per 2018
Europe makes up the western fifth of the Eurasian landmass.[28] It has a higher ratio of coast to landmass than any other continent or subcontinent.[236] Its maritime borders consist of the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west and the Mediterranean, Black and Caspian Seas to the south.[237]
Land relief in Europe shows great variation within relatively small areas. The southern regions are more mountainous, while moving north the terrain descends from the high
Great European Plain and at its heart lies the North German Plain. An arc of uplands also exists along the north-western seaboard, which begins in the western parts of the islands of Britain and Ireland, and then continues along the mountainous, fjord
-cut spine of Norway.
This description is simplified. Subregions such as the Iberian Peninsula and the Italian Peninsula contain their own complex features, as does mainland Central Europe itself, where the relief contains many plateaus, river valleys and basins that complicate the general trend. Sub-regions like Iceland, Britain and Ireland are special cases. The former is a land unto itself in the northern ocean that is counted as part of Europe, while the latter are upland areas that were once joined to the mainland until rising sea levels cut them off.
The Gulf Stream is nicknamed "Europe's central heating", because it makes Europe's climate warmer and wetter than it would otherwise be. The Gulf Stream not only carries warm water to Europe's coast but also warms up the prevailing westerly winds that blow across the continent from the Atlantic Ocean.
Therefore, the average temperature throughout the year of Aveiro is 16 °C (61 °F), while it is only 13 °C (55 °F) in New York City which is almost on the same latitude, bordering the same ocean. Berlin, Germany; Calgary, Canada; and Irkutsk, in far south-eastern Russia, lie on around the same latitude; January temperatures in Berlin average around 8 °C (14 °F) higher than those in Calgary and they are almost 22 °C (40 °F) higher than average temperatures in Irkutsk.[238]
In general, Europe is not just colder towards the north compared to the south, but it also gets colder from the west towards the east. The climate is more oceanic in the west and less so in the east. This can be illustrated by the following table of average temperatures at locations roughly following the 64th, 60th, 55th, 50th, 45th and 40th
latitudes
. None of them is located at high altitude; most of them are close to the sea. (location, approximate latitude and longitude, coldest month average, hottest month average and annual average temperatures in degrees C)
[241]
It is notable how the average temperatures for the coldest month, as well as the annual average temperatures, drop from the west to the east. For instance, Edinburgh is warmer than Belgrade during the coldest month of the year, although Belgrade is around 10° of latitude farther south.
The geological history of Europe traces back to the formation of the
late Tertiary period about five million years ago.[242]
The geology of Europe is hugely varied and complex and gives rise to the wide variety of landscapes found across the continent, from the Scottish Highlands to the rolling plains of Hungary.[243] Europe's most significant feature is the dichotomy between highland and mountainous Southern Europe and a vast, partially underwater, northern plain ranging from Ireland in the west to the Ural Mountains in the east. These two halves are separated by the mountain chains of the Pyrenees and Alps/Carpathians. The northern plains are delimited in the west by the Scandinavian Mountains and the mountainous parts of the British Isles. Major shallow water bodies submerging parts of the northern plains are the Celtic Sea, the North Sea, the Baltic Sea complex and Barents Sea.
The northern plain contains the old geological continent of
Land use map of Europe with arable farmland (yellow), forest (dark green), pasture (light green) and tundra, or bogs, in the north (dark yellow)
Having lived side by side with agricultural peoples for millennia, Europe's animals and plants have been profoundly affected by the presence and activities of humans. With the exception of Fennoscandia and northern Russia, few areas of untouched wilderness are currently found in Europe, except for various national parks.
The main natural vegetation cover in Europe is mixed forest. The conditions for growth are very favourable. In the north, the Gulf Stream and North Atlantic Drift warm the continent. Southern Europe has a warm but mild climate. There are frequent summer droughts in this region. Mountain ridges also affect the conditions. Some of these, such as the Alps and the Pyrenees, are oriented east–west and allow the wind to carry large masses of water from the ocean in the interior. Others are oriented south–north (Scandinavian Mountains, Dinarides, Carpathians, Apennines) and because the rain falls primarily on the side of mountains that is oriented towards the sea, forests grow well on this side, while on the other side, the conditions are much less favourable. Few corners of mainland Europe have not been grazed by livestock at some point in time, and the cutting down of the preagricultural forest habitat caused disruption to the original plant and animal ecosystems.
Floristic regions of Europe and neighbouring areas, according to Wolfgang Frey and Rainer Lösch
Possibly 80 to 90 percent of Europe was once covered by forest.
conifers have replaced the original mixed natural forest, because these grow quicker. The plantations now cover vast areas of land, but offer poorer habitats for many European forest dwelling species which require a mixture of tree species and diverse forest structure. The amount of natural forest in Western Europe is just 2–3% or less, while in its Western Russia its 5–10%. The European country with the smallest percentage of forested area is Iceland (1%), while the most forested country is Finland (77%).[245]
In temperate Europe, mixed forest with both broadleaf and coniferous trees dominate. The most important species in central and western Europe are beech and oak. In the north, the taiga is a mixed spruce–pine–birch forest; further north within Russia and extreme northern Scandinavia, the taiga gives way to tundra as the Arctic is approached. In the Mediterranean, many olive trees have been planted, which are very well adapted to its arid climate; Mediterranean Cypress is also widely planted in southern Europe. The semi-arid Mediterranean region hosts much scrub forest. A narrow east–west tongue of Eurasian grassland (the steppe) extends westwards from Ukraine and southern Russia and ends in Hungary and traverses into taiga to the north.
Balkan peninsula, Scandinavia and Russia; a small number also persist in other countries across Europe (Austria, Pyrenees etc.), but in these areas brown bear populations are fragmented and marginalised because of the destruction of their habitat. In addition, polar bears may be found on Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago far north of Scandinavia. The wolf, the second largest predator in Europe after the brown bear, can be found primarily in Central and Eastern Europe and in the Balkans, with a handful of packs in pockets of Western Europe
Important European herbivores are snails, larvae, fish, different birds and mammals, like rodents, deer and roe deer, boars and living in the mountains, marmots, steinbocks, chamois among others. A number of insects, such as the small tortoiseshell butterfly, add to the biodiversity.[248]
Sea creatures are also an important part of European flora and fauna. The sea flora is mainly
whales
.
Biodiversity is protected in Europe through the Council of Europe's
The political map of Europe is substantially derived from the re-organisation of Europe following the
parliamentary democracy, in most cases in the form of Republic; in 1815, the prevalent form of government was still the Monarchy. Europe's remaining eleven monarchies[249] are constitutional
.
Second World War. The European Union has been the focus of economic integration on the continent since its foundation in 1993. More recently, the Eurasian Economic Union
has been established as a counterpart comprising former Soviet states.
GDP (PPP) per capita of European countries in 2021
>$60,000
$50,000 - $60,000
$40,000 - $50,000
$30,000 - $40,000
$20,000 - $30,000
$10,000 - $20,000
As a continent, the economy of Europe is currently the largest on Earth and it is the richest region as measured by assets under management with over $32.7 trillion compared to North America's $27.1 trillion in 2008.
The model of the Blue Banana was designed as an economic geographic representation of the respective economic power of the regions, which was further developed into the Golden Banana or Blue Star. The trade between East and West, as well as towards Asia, which had been disrupted for a long time by the two world wars, new borders and the Cold War, increased sharply after 1989. In addition, there is new impetus from the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative across the Suez Canal towards Africa and Asia.[252]
The European Union, a political entity composed of 27 European states, comprises the largest single economic area in the world. Nineteen EU countries share the euro as a common currency.
Five European countries rank in the top ten of the world's largest national economies in GDP (PPP). This includes (ranks according to the CIA): Germany (6), Russia (7), the United Kingdom (10), France (11) and Italy (13).[253]
Some European countries are much richer than others. The richest in terms of nominal GDP is Monaco with its US$185,829 per capita (2018) and the poorest is Ukraine with its US$3,659 per capita (2019).[254]
As a whole, Europe's GDP per capita is US$21,767 according to a 2016 International Monetary Fund assessment.[255]
Capitalism has been dominant in the Western world since the end of feudalism.[258] From Britain, it gradually spread throughout Europe.[259] The Industrial Revolution started in Europe, specifically the United Kingdom in the late 18th century,[260] and the 19th century saw Western Europe industrialise. Economies were disrupted by the First World War, but by the beginning of the Second World War, they had recovered and were having to compete with the growing economic strength of the United States. The Second World War, again, damaged much of Europe's industries.
After the Second World War the economy of the UK was in a state of ruin,
Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON).[265]
The states which retained a
European Community
was expanded from 6 founding members to 12. The emphasis placed on resurrecting the West German economy led to it overtaking the UK as Europe's largest economy.
With the fall of communism in Central and Eastern Europe in 1991, the post-socialist states underwent shock therapy measures to liberalise their economies and implement free market reforms.
By the millennium change, the EU dominated the economy of Europe, comprising the five largest European economies of the time: Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Spain. In 1999, 12 of the 15 members of the EU joined the Eurozone, replacing their national currencies by the euro.
Figures released by
sovereign debt crisis[270] developed concerning some countries in Europe, especially Greece, Ireland, Spain and Portugal.[271] As a result, measures were taken, especially for Greece, by the leading countries of the Eurozone.[272] The EU-27 unemployment rate was 10.3% in 2012.[273] For those aged 15–24 it was 22.4%.[273]
The population of Europe was about 742 million in 2023 according to UN estimates.[2][3] This is slightly more than one ninth of the world's population.[c] The population density of Europe (the number of people per area) is the second highest of any continent, behind Asia. The population of Europe is currently slowly decreasing, by about 0.2% per year,[275] because there are fewer births than deaths. This natural decrease in population is reduced by the fact that more people migrate to Europe from other continents than vice versa.
Southern Europe and Western Europe are the regions with the highest average number of elderly people in the world, today they comprise 21% of the population, with over 65 years.[276] Projections suggest that by 2050 Europe will reach 30%.[277] This is caused by the fact that the population has been having children below replacement level since the 1970s. The United Nations predicts that Europe will decline its population between 2022 and 2050 by -7 per cent, without changing immigration movements.[278]
Pan and Pfeil (2004) count 87 distinct "peoples of Europe", of which 33 form the majority population in at least one sovereign state, while the remaining 54 constitute
According to a population projection of the UN Population Division, Europe's population may fall to between 680 and 720 people by 2050, which would be 7% of the world population at that time.
Map showing areas of European settlement (people who claim full European descent)
Europe is home to the highest number of migrants of all global regions at nearly 87 million people in 2020, according to the
International Organisation for Migration.[283] In 2005, the EU had an overall net gain from immigration of 1.8 million people. This accounted for almost 85% of Europe's total population growth.[284] In 2021, 827,000 persons were given citizenship of an EU member state, a increase of about 14% compared with 2020.[285] 2.3 million immigrants from non-EU countries entered the EU in 2021.[285]
Early modern
emigration from Europe began with Spanish and Portuguese settlers in the 16th century,[286][287] and French and English settlers in the 17th century.[288] But numbers remained relatively small until waves of mass emigration in the 19th century, when millions of poor families left Europe.[289]
Today,
population of European origins). Australia and New Zealand have large European-derived populations. Africa has no countries with European-derived majorities (or with the exception of Cape Verde and probably São Tomé and Príncipe, depending on context), but there are significant minorities, such as the White South Africans in South Africa. In Asia, European-derived populations, (specifically Russians), predominate in North Asia and some parts of Northern Kazakhstan.[290]
Evangelicalism. Although Christianity originated in the Middle East, its centre of mass shifted to Europe when it became the official religion of the Roman Empire in the late 4th century. Today, a bit over 25% of the world's Christians live in Europe.[293]
Balkan peninsula in Southeastern Europe, Islam instead of Christianity is the majority religion. This is of also the case in Turkey and in certain parts of Russia, as well as in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, all of which are at the border to Asia.[294] Many countries in Europe are home to a sizeable Muslim minority, and immigration to Europe
has increased the number of Muslim people in Europe in recent years.
A large and increasing number people in Europe are irreligious, atheist and agnostic. They are estimated to make up about 18.3% of Europe's population currently.[294]
When considering the commuter belts or metropolitan areas, within Europe (for which comparable data is available) Moscow covers the largest population, followed in order by Istanbul, London, Paris, Madrid, Milan, Ruhr Area, Saint Petersburg, Rhein-Süd, Barcelona and Berlin.[303]
This shared cultural heritage is combined by overlapping indigenous national cultures and folklores, roughly divided into
Celtic). Historically, special examples with overlapping cultures are Strasbourg with Latin (Romance) and Germanic or Trieste
with Latin, Slavic and Germanic roots.
Cultural contacts and mixtures shape a large part of the regional cultures of Europe. Europe is often described as "maximum cultural diversity with minimal geographical distances".
Sport in Europe tends to be highly organized with many sports having professional leagues.
The origins of many of the world's most popular sports today lie in the codification of many traditional games, especially in Great Britain. However, a paradoxical feature of European sport is the remarkable extent to which local, regional and national variations continue to exist, and even in some instances to predominate.[305]
^Europe is normally considered its own continent in the English-speaking world, which uses the seven continent model.[10][11] Other models consider Europe as part of a Eurasian or Afro-Eurasian continent. See Continent § Number for more information.
territories lying geographically outside Europe
, but which are nevertheless considered integral parts of that country.
^This number includes Siberia, (about 38 million people) but excludes European Turkey (about 12 million).
Transnistria, internationally recognised as being a legal part of the Republic of Moldova, although de facto control is exercised by its internationally unrecognised government which declared independence from Moldova in 1990.
Russia is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. The vast majority of its population (80%) lives within its European part.[306] However, only the population figure includes the entire state.
Cyprus can be considered part of Europe or Western Asia; it has strong historical and sociopolitical connections with Europe. The population and area figures refer to the entire state, including the de facto independent part Northern Cyprus which is not recognised as a sovereign nation by the vast majority of sovereign nations, nor the UN.
Area figure for Serbia includes Kosovo, a province that unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia on 17 February 2008, and whose sovereign status is unclear. Population and density figures are from the first results of 2011 census and are given without the disputed territory of Kosovo.
Armenia can be considered part of Eastern Europe or Western Asia; it has strong historical and sociopolitical connections with Europe. The population and area figures include the entire state, respectively.
Turkey is physiographically considered a transcontinental country, mostly in Western Asia (the Middle East) and Southeast Europe. Turkey has a small part of its territory (3%) in Southeast Europe called Turkish Thrace.[309] However, only the population figure includes the entire state.
The total figures for area and population include only European portions of transcontinental countries. The precision of these figures is compromised by the ambiguous geographical extent of Europe and the lack of references for European portions of transcontinental countries.
unclear
. Its population is July 2009 CIA estimate.
^
West Asia[310] unilaterally declared their independence from Georgia on 25 August 1990 and 28 November 1991, respectively. Their status as sovereign nations is not recognised
by a vast majority of sovereign nations, nor the UN. Population figures stated as of 2003 census and 2000 estimates, respectively.
West Asia, unilaterally declared its independence from Azerbaijan
on 6 January 1992. Its status as a sovereign nation is not recognised by any sovereign nation, nor the UN. Population figures stated as of 2003 census and 2000 estimates, respectively.
Greenland, an autonomous constituent country within the Danish Realm, is geographically a part of the continent of North America, but has been politically and culturally associated with Europe.
The Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic are internationally recognised as being a legal part of Ukraine, although de facto control is exercised by governments which declared independence from Ukraine in 2014.
. "Europe" (pp. 68–69); "Asia" (pp. 90–91): "A commonly accepted division between Asia and Europe ... is formed by the Ural Mountains, Ural River, Caspian Sea, Caucasus Mountains, and the Black Sea with its outlets, the Bosporus and Dardanelles."
from the original on 27 July 2022. Retrieved 30 July 2022. Ancient Greece is often called the cradle of western civilization. ... Ideas from literature and science also have their roots in ancient Greece.
^Geographia 7.5.6 (ed. Nobbe 1845, vol. 2Archived 24 May 2020 at the Wayback Machine, p. 178) Καὶ τῇ Εὐρώπῃ δὲ συνάπτει διὰ τοῦ μεταξὺ αὐχένος τῆς τε Μαιώτιδος λίμνης καὶ τοῦ Σαρματικοῦ Ὠκεανοῦ ἐπὶ τῆς διαβάσεως τοῦ Τανάϊδος ποταμοῦ.
"And [Asia] is connected to Europe by the land-strait between Lake Maiotis and the Sarmatian Ocean where the river Tanais crosses through."
^42.7–41.5 ka (1σ CI).
Douka, Katerina; et al. (2012). "A new chronostratigraphic framework for the Upper Palaeolithic of Riparo Mochi (Italy)". Journal of Human Evolution. 62 (2): 286–299.
^Hunter, Shireen; et al. (2004). Islam in Russia: The Politics of Identity and Security. M.E. Sharpe. p. 3. (..) It is difficult to establish exactly when Islam first appeared in Russia because the lands that Islam penetrated early in its expansion were not part of Russia at the time, but were later incorporated into the expanding Russian Empire. Islam reached the Caucasus region in the middle of the seventh century as part of the Arab conquest of the Iranian Sassanian Empire.
^Kennedy, Hugh (1995). "The Muslims in Europe". In McKitterick, Rosamund, The New Cambridge Medieval History: c. 500 – c. 700, pp. 249–272. Cambridge University Press. 052136292X.
from the original on 11 May 2013. Retrieved 20 January 2013. The Byzantine Empire also interacted with the world of Islam to its east and the new European civilization of the west. Both interactions proved costly and ultimately fatal.
from the original on 11 May 2013. Retrieved 20 January 2013. These Christian allies did not accept the authority of Byzantium, and the Fourth Crusade that sacked Constantinople and established the so-called Latin Empire that lasted until 1261 was a fatal wound from which the empire never recovered until its fall at the hands of the Ottoman Turks in 1453 (Queller and Madden 1997).
. Retrieved 20 January 2013. And though the final blow was struck by the Ottoman Turks, it can plausibly be argued that the fatal injury was inflicted by the Latin crusaders in 1204.
from the original on 11 May 2013. Retrieved 20 January 2013. continue to stand for another 250 before ultimately falling to the Muslim Turks, but it had been irrevocably weakened by the Fourth Crusade.
from the original on 11 May 2013. Retrieved 20 January 2013. 1204 The Fourth Crusade sacks Constantinople, destroying and pillaging many of its treasures, fatally weakening the empire both economically and militarily
from the original on 11 May 2013. Retrieved 20 January 2013. However, the fifty-seven years of plunder that followed made the Byzantine Empire, even when it retook the capital in 1261, genuinely weak. Beginning in 1222, the empire was further weakened by a civil war that lasted until 1355. ... When the Ottomans overran their lands and besieged Constantinople in 1453, sheer poverty and weakness were the causes of the capital city's final fall.
from the original on 11 May 2013. Retrieved 20 January 2013. Not only did the fourth crusade further harden the resentments Greek-speaking Christians felt toward the Latin West, but it further weakened the empire of Constantinople, many say fatally so. After the restoration of Greek imperial rule the city survived as the capital of Byzantium for another two centuries, but it never fully recovered.
from the original on 11 May 2013. Retrieved 20 January 2013. Although the empire was revived, the events of 1204 had so weakened Byzantium that it was no longer a great power.
from the original on 11 May 2013. Retrieved 20 January 2013. Later they established themselves in the Anatolian peninsula at the expense of the Byzantine Empire. ... The Byzantines, however, had been severely weakened by the sack of Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade (in 1204) and the Western occupation of much of the empire for the next half century.
. Retrieved 20 January 2013. Western Christians, not Muslims, fatally crippled Byzantine power and opened Islam's path into the West.
^Chronicles. Rockford Institute. 2005. Archived from the original on 11 May 2013. Retrieved 20 January 2013. two-and-a-half centuries to recover from the Fourth Crusade before the Ottomans finally took Constantinople in 1453, ... They fatally wounded Byzantium, which was the main cause of its weakened condition when the Muslim onslaught came. Even on the eve of its final collapse, the precondition for any Western help was submission in Florence.
^Rowse, A. L. (1969). Tudor Cornwall: portrait of a society. C. Scribner, p. 400
^"One decisive action might have forced Philip II to the negotiating table and avoided fourteen years of continuing warfare. Instead the King was able to use the brief respite to rebuild his naval forces and by the end of 1589 Spain once again had an Atlantic fleet strong enough to escort the American treasure ships home." The Mariner's Mirror, Volumes 76–77. Society for Nautical Research., 1990
^Kamen, Henry. Spain's Road to Empire: The Making of a World Power, 1492–1763. p. 221.
– "Lands to the north of the Black Sea probably yielded the most slaves to the Ottomans from 1450. A compilation of estimates indicates that Crimean Tartars seized about 1,750,000 Ukrainians, Poles, and Russians from 1468 to 1694."
^Jessica Caus "Am Checkpoint Charlie lebt der Kalte Krieg" In: Die Welt 4 August 2015.
^Karlo Ruzicic-Kessler "Togliatti, Tito and the Shadow of Moscow 1944/45–1948: Post-War Territorial Disputes and the Communist World", In: Journal of European Integration History, (2/2014).
^Christian Jennings "Flashpoint Trieste: The First Battle of the Cold War", (2017), pp 244.
^Thomas Roser: DDR-Massenflucht: Ein Picknick hebt die Welt aus den Angeln (German – Mass exodus of the GDR: A picnic clears the world) In: Die Presse 16 August 2018.
^Der 19. August 1989 war ein Test für Gorbatschows" (German - August 19, 1989 was a test for Gorbachev), In: FAZ 19 August 2009.
^Michael Frank: Paneuropäisches Picknick – Mit dem Picknickkorb in die Freiheit (German: Pan-European picnic - With the picnic basket to freedom), in: Süddeutsche Zeitung 17 May 2010.
^Andreas Rödder, Deutschland einig Vaterland – Die Geschichte der Wiedervereinigung (2009).
^Padraic Kenney "A Carnival of Revolution: Central Europe 1989" (2002) pp 109.
^Michael Gehler "Der alte und der neue Kalte Krieg in Europa" In: Die Presse 19.11.2015.
^Robert Stradling "Teaching 20th-century European history" (2003), pp 61.
^Global shipping and logistic chain reshaped as China's Belt and Road dreams take off in Hellenic Shipping News, 4. December 2018; Wolf D. Hartmann, Wolfgang Maennig, Run Wang: Chinas neue Seidenstraße. (2017), p 59; Jacob Franks "The Blu Banana - the True Heart of Europe" In: Big Think Edge, 31 December 2014; Zacharias Zacharakis: Chinas Anker in Europa in: Die Zeit 8. May 2018; Harry de Wilt: Is One Belt, One Road a China crisis for North Sea main ports? in World Cargo News, 17 December 2019; Hospers, Gert-Jan "Beyond the blue banana? Structural change in Europe's geo-economy." 2002
^Christoph Pan, Beate Sibylle Pfeil, Minderheitenrechte in Europa. Handbuch der europäischen Volksgruppen (2002). Living-Diversity.euArchived 20 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine, English translation 2004.
^Brasil-Colônia, Geraldo Pieroni doutor em História pela Université Paris-Sorbonnetambém escreveu os livros: Os Excluídos do Reino: Inquisição portuguesa e o degredo para o; Brasil, Os degredados na colonização do; ciganos, Vadios e; autor, Heréticos e Bruxas: os degredados no Brasil Textos publicados pelo autor Fale com o. "A pena do degredo nas Ordenações do Reino - Jus.com.br | Jus Navigandi". jus.com.br (in Brazilian Portuguese). Archived from the original on 21 June 2022. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
^Vishnevsky, Anatoly (15 August 2000). "Replacement Migration: Is it a solution for Russia?"(PDF). Expert Group Meeting on Policy Responses to Population Ageing and Population Decline /UN/POP/PRA/2000/14. United Nations Population Division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs. pp. 6, 10. Archived(PDF) from the original on 29 August 2017. Retrieved 14 January 2008.
(6th century BCE)
(Late Neolithic from 3000 to 2000 BCE)
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