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Western Europe Widens its Horizons

Great empires developed in India and China as well as in the Mediterranean world. Although many of the beliefs and ways of life under these empires endured, in time most of the empires themselves tended to split apart. What happened in Europe after the Western Roman Empire broke up? At first, life was much more difficult than it had been in Roman times. Gradually, however, the people of Europe developed their own ways of making a living and governing themselves. They revived Greek and Roman ideas and borrowed others from the Arabs. In short, they combined new and old to build a European civilization which exists today.

Describing life in Europe in the Middle Ages, after barbarian invasions wrecked the Roman Empire. Most people lived in small farming communities, cut-off from one another. Central governments were much weaker than the local governments of powerful noblemen. Western Europe was united only by the Roman Catholic Church, to which all Christians belonged. The growth of towns and trade in Europe, increasing population and wealth enabled Europeans to undertake the Crusades, a series of wars to reconquer the Holy Land. The resulting contacts with eastern European and Moslem civilizations sparked a revived interest in learning and the arts which spread over western Europe.

How did kings in such countries as England and France increase their power? As central governments became stronger, people felt greater loyalty to kings than to local nobles. The growing power of kings led to conflicts with churchmen and a great split in the Roman Catholic Church left many kings stronger than ever. Finally, how did the Europeans use their new strength and knowledge to explore distant lands? Explorers found new routes to China and India and discovered the Americas. By the 1600’s, western Europe had widened its horizons to include many parts of the world.

Europeans Explore and Settle Other Lands

Visitors to the Portuguese city of Lisbon, on a certain day in 1499, would have found the people in a holiday mood. Groups of townsmen who gathered here and there talked excitedly about the arrival of two ships and there was good reason. In the two years since these vessels had sailed down the river and slipped out of sight, they had completed the first trip from Europe around Africa to India and back. Such an event indeed deserved to be celebrated. Not only had the fearless captain of this expedition, Vasco da Gama, performed a great feat of navigation, …

Kings Compete for Power with Nobles and the Church

Western Europe Widens its Horizons

Henry Tudor was a patient young man, who waited and watched while civil war raged in England and quarreling lords fought to see who would be king. He waited safely in France, biding his time until his spies told him the hour had come to strike. Then from northern France he crossed the English Channel with 2000 soldiers. Ahead of Henry and his soldiers had gone his agents, who sought to weaken the position of England’s King, Richard III. Henry’s agents had plotted secretly with some of Richard’s supporters, lords who led small armies of their own. That was why …

The Revival of Town Life and the Growth of Learning

Western Europe Widens its Horizons

Pierre watched the merchant caravan clatter down the narrow dirt road that led through the manor. Pack mules threaded their way to avoid the deep puddles, while the horses strained as they pulled the creaking two wheeled carts. Pierre envied the merchants as well as the sturdy bowmen who guarded the caravan. During his seventeen years Pierre had never been more than a few miles from the manor where he had been born a serf. He was not free to move around as were these merchants who were city folk. Was it true, as Pierre had heard, that a serf …

Leadership of Churchmen and Nobles in the Middle Ages

Western Europe Widens its Horizons

The civilizations of India, China and the Moslem world progressed to about the year 1500 A.D., but what had been happening in western Europe in the centuries after Roman power began to decline and barbarian tribesmen had overrun the lands once part of the proud Roman Empire? What had taken the place of Roman might, government and law in western Europe? As Rome’s rule faded away, western Europe entered a period known as the Middle Ages or the medieval period. For a long time there was neither a single empire nor nations as we know them to day. Central governments, …