The History of Europe

Europe is the densest thread in this corpus, with more than two thousand events across the millennium. The timeline opens on a patchwork of feudal kingdoms raising cathedrals and crusading armies, survives the Black Death, and then turns outward: the Renaissance rediscovers antiquity, the Reformation splits the church, and European ships begin binding the continents together on European terms. Revolutions in France and industry in Britain remake the old order, nationalism redraws the map, and two world wars nearly destroy the continent that started them, before an unprecedented project of integration builds the longest peace in its recorded history. The listings below arrange the most significant European events era by era, each linked to its full page and its wider period.