Europe is well-known for the country’s rich historical background, notably the Anne Frank’s House, Stonehenge, Colosseum, and many more. However, it is easy to overlook the changes in its maps and the backstory behind how it is formed as the second smallest of the world’s continents. It is sure to blow away anyone who is willing to delve into how complex and enormous its history can be and how amazing the progress to form Europe from empire to empire. You can even check it out on map creator on how the map looks like in today’s world.
Here are the maps in Europe that explains the country’s history and how it created the modern Europe you see or live right now:
The Roman Empire
A number of European languages and institutions can be traced back to the Roman Empire. In 500 BC, Rome was a tiny city-state on the Italian peninsula, but Italy was later conquered by the Roman Empire – By 264, it had progressed from being one of numerous city-states in 340 BC to being master of the entire peninsula. It conquered Greece and Spain over the next two centuries, as well as the North African coast, much of the Middle East, modern-day France, and even the isolated island of Britain. The republic was transformed into an empire in 27 BC, and it lasted for another 400 years. Rome reigned over large parts of North Africa and the Levant that are now considered non-European, but omitting the majority of Germany, the Nordic countries, and the majority of central and eastern Europe. It has become such a vast power that comparing it to the modern United States is easier to picture the entire continent.
The Ottoman Empire
By the beginning of the twentieth century, the Ottoman Empire, which had been a fixture in Eastern Europe for hundreds of years, was in its decline. The empire had ceded land in two costly wars with Italy and Balkan states, and by the time the dust settled on WWI, Turkey’s borders began at the farthest point of continental Europe. Also well-known by many as the Turkish Empire, it was founded around the end of the 13th century in northwestern Anatolia near Bilecik and Söüt by Osman, an Oghuz Turkish tribal chief. The Ottoman Empire was a multicultural, multilingual empire that controlled most of Southeast Europe, Western Asia, the Caucasus, North Africa, and the Horn of Africa at its peak under the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent. The empire had 32 provinces and numerous vassal nations at the start of the 17th century with some becoming part of the Ottoman Empire later on. For six centuries, the Ottoman Empire was at the core of exchanges between the Eastern and Western civilizations, with Constantinople as its capital and control of areas around the Mediterranean basin.
Charlemagne’s Empire
Charles the Great, often known as Charlemagne, unified much of Western Europe into a single kingdom. He established the Holy Roman Empire, spurred European economic and political life, and supported the Carolingian Renaissance, making him a well-known figure in European history. The empire weakened after his passing, and his empire was legally partitioned into three pieces, each ruled by one of Charlemagne’s grandsons. The center kingdom was the weakest of the three and was absorbed by the eastern and western kingdoms. These two kingdoms would eventually become modern France and Germany. In this position, the significance of this entire ordeal is that he promoted Europe’s Carolingian Renaissance, a cultural and intellectual resurgence. After his death in 814 A.D, Charlemagne’s empire spanned much of Western Europe, and he was also responsible for the survival of Christianity in the West. Some consider Charlemagne to be the “Father of Europe” today. His reign of the empire is called the Carolingian Empire.
The Holy Roman Empire
Do not be fooled by the name, because neither the word ‘holy’ nor empire is true in any sense. It was, instead, the most prominent and influential of a group of Medieval political organizations that did not evolve into contemporary state structures. The empire’s borders shifted over time, but it was essentially dormant by the 18th century as different rulers — both within and beyond the empire — sought to establish their own great centralized kingdoms. The Empire was a multi-ethnic complex of lands in Western and Central Europe that arose in the Early Middle Ages and lasted until its dissociation in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars. After Napoleon’s soldiers marched over Europe, they dissolved the Holy Roman Empire, and when he was defeated, the victorious states made no attempt to reassemble Humpty Dumpty. Instead, the Habsburg Dynasty, which had long held the title of Holy Roman Emperor, simply started referring to its territories in Austria and Central Europe as an empire.
