Europe

PAGE CONTENTS:

Armenia

Germany

Great Britain

Italy

Spain

Turkey

Armenia

A U.S. congressional committee approved a bill that would officially recognize as "genocide" the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks during World War I. The vote provoked outrage in Turkey and cheers in Armenia. At KnowledgeNews HQ, it provoked a desire to learn more about Armenia, from ancient roots to recent atrocities and more.

Ancient Armenia

Armenia's ancient roots run all the way back to Biblical times. Some scholars even connect the place with the birth of civilization. The country's geographical heyday actually came in the first century BC, when King Tigranes the Great built a short-lived empire stretching from Syria to Georgia (that's the Georgia between Turkey and Russia, where Armenia lies, too).

In AD 301, Armenia--then under Roman rule--became the first nation in the world to adopt Christianity as its state religion. The Armenian Apostolic Church has since played a pivotal part in preserving Armenian culture and identity. It's had to. For most of the last two millennia, bigger powers have dominated Armenia politically: Persians, Byzantines, Arabs, Turks, and Russians, to name a few.

During the 16th century, most of ancient Armenia fell under Ottoman Turkish rule. During the 19th century, imperial Russia crept into the region and assumed control of some Armenian lands. Late in the century, while the Ottoman and Russian empires eyed each other suspiciously, Armenian nationalists began calling for independence.

Recent Atrocities

Both empires responded by repressing this new Armenian nationalism, but especially the Ottomans, who massacred hundreds of thousands of Armenians between 1894 and 1896. Sadly, the killing didn't stop then. During World War I, from 1915 to 1917, the Ottomans conducted a series of deportations and mass killings that many scholars count as the first example of 20th-century genocide.

Hundreds of thousands of Armenians--perhaps as many as 1.5 million of them--died in those dark days. The Turkish government hotly contests the use of the term "genocide" to describe what happened. It argues for lower fatality figures and blames many of the deaths on famine and fighting. But none of that makes the numbers any easier to stomach.

Continuing Conflicts

After the war, Armenia enjoyed a brief bit of independence--until Russia's Red Army came calling in 1920. The nation remained under Soviet control until 1991, when the Soviet Union itself collapsed. By then, Armenia was engaged in a still-unresolved conflict with neighboring Azerbaijan. At issue: control of Nagomo-Karabakh , an ethnically Armenian enclave inside Azerbaijan.

In 1988, Nagorno-Karabakh voted to secede from Azerbaijan. Armenia supported the secessionists, and ethnic fighting followed. Negotiations to resolve the conflict have been ongoing since 1992, and a ceasefire has largely held since 1994. But Armenians continue to hold more than 10 percent of Azerbaijan. Meanwhile, Azerbaijan and Turkey continue to blockade Armenia, creating serious economic problems for the landlocked, resource-poor nation.

--Steve Sampson

GERMANY

Ideas about Germany date back at least to the Romans, who used the term Germanus to refer to a variety of peoples. But the modern German nation dates only to the late 19th century, when a conservative Prussian chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, created an empire.

For centuries, Germany had been divided into numerous independent kingdoms, principalities, and free cities. By the 18th century, two of those kingdoms--Prussia and Austria--had grown big enough to dominate the region and to become fierce rivals. Only later did the two big Germanic states find themselves allies, thanks to the French Revolution.

In 1791, fearing that the French Revolution might spread, Prussia and Austria offered to intervene on the French king's behalf. France responded by declaring war on them. Then it beat them both up, from 1792 till Napoleon's fall in 1814.

When Napoleon's reign finally ended, many German volk hoped for national unification, representative government, and civil rights. Instead, their princes produced a 39-state "German Confederation." It was more orderly than a patchwork of principalities, but it wasn't a modern nation state.

Over the next several decades, progressive proponents of unification won some political victories, but conservatives consistently rolled them back. Meanwhile, Germany industrialized, the middle class expanded, and nationalistic sentiments spread.

Then, in 1862, progressive Prussian ministers locked horns with their king, William I, over army reforms. William responded by appointing a new ministry under a brilliant, unyielding conservative: Otto von Bismarck.

Bismarck eventually made peace with the Prussian progressives. He figured he could trade national unification, which they wanted, for continuing aristocratic dominance, which he wanted. And, if national unification came by military means, well, that would give the liberals good reason to support a strong army. He figured right.

Austria didn't like the idea of Bismarck's Prussia uniting and leading the rest of Germany. So, in 1866, it went to war to stop it. But it was no match for the Prussian army, which prevailed in seven weeks. Bismarck quickly turned the military victory to his advantage--convincing 21 German states north of the Main River to join a new, Prussian-led nation: the North German Confederation.

Meanwhile, back in France, Emperor Napoleon III had been hoping that war between Austria and Prussia would weaken both. When it produced the North German Confederation instead, the French emperor prepared for a showdown with his newly united neighbor. Bismarck didn't object. On the contrary, in the summer of 1870, he exploited an aristocratic tiff to provoke both sides. A week later, France declared war.

As Bismarck suspected, French aggression spurred German states south of the Main River, such as Bavaria, into joining his union. The Franco-Prussian War would rage until January 1871. Before it was over, Bismarck would see his boss--King William I of Prussia--proclaimed kaiser of the new German Empire.

Germany, as we know it, was born.

After the Allies beat the Nazis in World War II, Germany was divided into two nations: the Federal Republic of Germany (a.k.a. "West Germany"), which became an integral part of western Europe, and the German Democratic Republic (a.k.a. "East Germany"), which became a boundary state in the Soviet bloc.

In 1990, as the Cold War cooled down, those two Germanys reunited. Despite some serious reintegration pains, the expanded Federal Republic of Germany has been a key player in European politics and global economics ever since. Here's how Germany measures up today.

138,000 - Germany's total area, in square miles (357,000 sq km). That makes it a little smaller than Japan, but a little larger than Italy. It also makes it larger than all but four U.S. states (Alaska, Texas, California, and Montana).

16 - Number of states in the Federal Republic of Germany. Germany's two largest cities, Berlin and Hamburg, are states unto themselves. Several other states--including Bavaria and Saxony--were independent duchies or principalities long before modern Germany came to be.

Steven Sampson

United Kingdom of Great Britain

People don't always distinguish very carefully between the terms "England," "Great Britain," and the "United Kingdom." But understanding the differences between them is key to understanding the place--or, rather, places--to which they refer. So, here's a quick review.

First, the formal name of the current nation is the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland." That makes it sound like a union of two main entities, but the UK actually includes four "constituent countries": England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

The union between these four has developed over centuries, and it continues to change. England emerged as a kingdom more than 1,000 years ago. England and Wales, a principality, were bound together in 1284 and formally united in 1536. The Kingdom of Scotland signed on in 1707, forming Great Britain (the country, not the island they all inhabit).

In 1801, Great Britain established a legislative union with Ireland, and the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland" was born. That UK was reduced in 1922, when all but six of Ireland's 32 counties left to form an independent republic. The six remaining counties became Northern Ireland and, in 1927, the UK adopted its current official name.

94,526 – The UK's total area, in square miles (244,820 sq km). That makes it a little smaller than Michigan or Italy. England accounts for more than half of this area (around 50,000 square miles, or 130,000 sq km). Scotland covers about a third (around 30,000 square miles, or 78,000 sq km). Wales covers a tenth. Northern Ireland, a twentieth.

14 – Number of "British Overseas Territories." Most are small islands that were once colonies of the British Empire, including Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, and the Falkland Islands. One, the British Antarctic Territory, is seven times the size of the UK, but it's home to penguins, not people.

5th or 6th – Where the UK ranks on a list of the world's largest economies. It comes behind the United States, Japan, Germany, and China. By some measures, it may also trail India, which was part of the British Empire until 1947.

--Steve Sampson

Italy

Gothic was originally a term of criticism among the Italian Renaissance artists who coined it. The term implied that, compared to superior classical buildings, the Gothic medieval cathedrals were so crude that only a Goth could produce them. By indirectly condemning the Goths, the Italian architects revived an old hatred. The southward migration of these warring, loathsome German barbarians in the fifth century A.D. had contributed to the decline of ancient Rome.

The Italian nation is actually less than a century and a half old. Here's Italy's story, from the fall of Rome to the rise of Garibaldi's "Red Shirt" guerrillas.

In the centuries after Rome's fall, Italy was carved into autonomous political units variously ruled by Visigoth kings, Byzantine caesars, Lombard lords, and Holy Roman emperors. No longer the center of an empire--and never yet a nation--the land of Italy largely languished. In the 9th century, it nearly fell to Arab armies.

By the end of the 12th century, though, trade had made many northern Italian cities rich, and wealthy merchants began securing their independence from their medieval monarchs. Powerful city-states emerged in Milan, Genoa, Pisa, Florence, Venice, and elsewhere.

Venice built a vast trading empire and a republic to run it. Florence delivered a renaissance of learning and revitalized western culture. And down in Rome, the pope saw his temporal power grow. Still, la dolce vita proved elusive, at least in the political sphere. Internal squabbles undercut stability, and intercity rivalries led to dangerous alliances with far stronger foreign powers--like France and Spain.

In 1494, French forces under Francis I invaded Italy (with the approval of certain Milanese and Florentine factions). That kicked off a series of "Italian wars" between Francis and Charles I of Spain, who was also Holy Roman emperor and so had his own claims on the place. Charles eventually prevailed, and by the mid-16th century, Spain ruled most of Italy.

Spanish dominance lasted until 1700, when Charles II, the last Spanish king from the house of Habsburg, died. Europe went to war over the Spanish succession, and the treaties that ended that war transferred most of Spain's Italian holdings to Austria (which was ruled by other Habsburgs).

Yet one of the spoils, Sicily, went to Victor Amadeus II, duke of Savoy, a duchy which then included Italy's Piedmont region. Bigger powers soon forced Victor Amadeus to swap Sicily for Sardinia, the next largest Italian island, but they let him take the title "king." It seems like a minor point, but the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont would later play a key role in Italian unification.

Napoleon invaded Italy in 1796. Six years later, he formed a new Italian republic in the north and got himself elected president. Then, after making himself emperor of France, he made himself king of Italy, too. For a time, all of Italy save Sardinia and Sicily came under his control.

A few years later, Europe's other major powers conspired to crush Napoleon. Then, at the Congress of Vienna (1814-15), they tried to turn Europe's political clock back to the days before the French Revolution. Austrian rulers returned to Italy, but the seeds of the Risorgimento--Italy's national "resurgence"--had been sown.

Secret societies favoring independence and unification cropped up across the peninsula, and--though Austria's foreign minister, Klemens von Metternich, quipped that Italy was just "a geographical expression"--Austrians found themselves fighting insurrections in Naples in 1821 and the Papal States in 1831. That same year, the Italian patriot Giuseppe Mazzini founded Giovine Italia ("Young Italy"), radical republicans spearheading insurrections in the north.

In 1848, revolution rocked the Austrian capital, Vienna (along with much of the rest of Europe). The people of Milan and Venice responded immediately, driving Austrian troops out. Meanwhile, the independent king of Sardinia-Piedmont, Charles Albert, declared war on Austria. For a time, Charles Albert looked poised to liberate Italy. When the pope failed to help him, republicans drove the pontiff from Rome.

Then, as suddenly as it had arrived, the revolution unraveled. The Austrians defeated Charles Albert, who abdicated in favor of his son, Victor Emmanuel II. And Catholic forces from France, Spain, and Austria conspired to overturn the newly proclaimed Roman Republic, returning the pope to power. Foreigners once again controlled Italian affairs.

Fearing republican revolutionaries more than the king of Sardinia-Piedmont, the Austrians granted Victor Emmanuel II an easy peace. Victor Emmanuel, for his part, preserved both the liberal constitution his father had promulgated in 1848 and the parliament it empowered. Italian patriots flocked to Piedmont for protection.

In 1852, Camillo Benso di Cavour became Sardinia-Piedmont's prime minister. Three years later, the wily Cavour led his country into war alongside the British and the French. That service won him friends in high places, including the French emperor Napoleon III. At a secret meeting in 1858, Cavour convinced Napoleon III to defend Piedmont from any Austrian aggression. He then goaded the Austrians into declaring war.

At first, Napoleon III honored his promise. Combined Franco-Piedmontese forces won bloody battles at Magenta and Solferino while insurrections broke out across Italy. But French public opinion turned against the war, and Napoleon III signed a separate peace with Austria, jeopardizing Cavour's plan to unite Italy under Victor Emmanuel.

By then, though, Italians were taking matters into their own hands. In post-insurrection plebiscites across the peninsula, voters demanded union with Sardinia-Piedmont--and, in effect, an independent Italy. The final push came in 1860, when a swashbuckling revolutionary named Giuseppe Garibaldi led a thousand volunteers--the "Red Shirts"--on a mission from the north to liberate Sicily. Joining with the locals, Garibaldi's guerrillas took Sicily (and Naples) in a matter of months "in the name of Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy."

On March 17, 1861, a parliament assembled in Turin--Piedmont's capital--officially proclaimed the Kingdom of Italy. Venice remained under Austrian control until 1866, and the pope ruled Rome until 1870, when French troops guarding him went home to fight the Prussians. As Italian troops finally entered the Eternal City, Pope Pius IX retreated to the Vatican and proclaimed himself a prisoner there. In 1871, Rome became the capital of the new Italian nation.

Steve Sampson

Spain

Who are the Basques? And what is the ETA?

"Basque" refers both to a language and to the roughly 1 million people who speak it (though the people themselves call their language "Euskara"). Linguistically, Basque is one of Europe's greatest mysteries--it doesn't appear to be related to any other recorded language, living or dead.

The Basque homeland covers an area of northern Spain and southwestern France roughly the size of Israel or New Jersey. It's mountainous territory, which is probably the source of the language's longevity.

The Basques' ancestors arrived in the area thousands of years ago. They survived subsequent invasions--by the Celts, Romans, Visigoths, Franks, Normans, and Moors--in part because their territory was so inhospitable. In the medieval period, the Basques enjoyed considerable autonomy under various local kingdoms. But there has never been a Basque nation that united all Basque speakers under a single flag--a fact that still bothers Basque nationalists.

Basque nationalism got its formal start in 1895, when Sabino de Arana founded the Basque Nationalist Party, dedicated to the formation of an independent Basque nation through peaceful means. The organization gradually began to win seats in local governments, and its demands were soon heard in Madrid. The Spanish government was not willing to discuss outright autonomy for the Basque region, but it was willing to allow limited self-government.

That changed when national politics in Spain took a sharp rightward turn, culminating in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) and the fascist dictatorship of Generalissimo Francisco Franco (1939-75). The new government had no sympathy for anyone not dedicated to Spanish unity. It responded to calls for Basque independence with mass arrests, torture, and even assassination squads. Franco outlawed the Basque language, and the Basque nationalist cause went underground, where it took on a new and terrifying shape.

In 1959, a new party arrived on the Basque political scene: ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, or "Basque Homeland and Freedom"). ETA's young, socialist leaders increasingly turned to violence and terror in pursuit of Basque independence. Since its inception, ETA has been blamed for more than 800 deaths, many by bombing. In 1973, an ETA bomb killed Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, Franco's heir-apparent.

In 1975, Franco died and Spain moved toward democratic government. A few years later, Spain adopted a constitution that granted significant autonomy to the Basque region, including control over education, health care, police, and taxation. Democratic reforms eroded popular support for violent resistance, and ETA responded by forming a political arm (Batasuna, or "Unity").

Still, ETA also stepped up the frequency of its attacks. Except for ceasefires in 1998-99 and 2006-07, the violence has not stopped. The Spanish Supreme Court has declared ETA's political arm illegal, and ETA's Basque separatists remain prime suspects whenever a bomb goes off in Spain.

--Mark Diller

Turkey

In Turkey, the parliament always picks the president, who is less powerful than the Turkish prime minister, but who has important appointment and veto powers.

Turkey's total area, is 301,384 square miles (780,580 sq km). That makes it a bit larger than Texas, and more than twice the size of Germany or Italy, but only about half the size of Iran.

99 per cent of people in Turkey are Muslims, at least nominally. The vast majority are Sunnis.

Approximately 20 per cent of people in Turkey are ethnic Kurds. Since 1984, struggles with Kurdish separatists, mainly in Turkey's southeast, have cost some 30,000 lives.

Turkey stands at the intercontinental intersection between Europe and Asia. Most of the country is a rugged peninsula long known as Anatolia or Asia Minor. The rest lies on a nook of Europe called Thrace.

Between Anatolia and Thrace lie three strategically important waterways: the Bosporus strait, the Sea of Marmara, and the Dardanelles strait (once known as the Hellespont). Together, these waterways connect the Black Sea to the Aegean, and to the larger Mediterranean beyond.

Turkey's connective geography has made it a cultural crossroads for millennia. Ancient Greeks built cities along the Aegean coast. Armenians and Kurds moved in, too. The Persian Empire came a-conquering. Then, around 333 BC, the area fell to that marauding Macedonian, Alexander the Great.

After Alexander came the Romans, who eventually established a capital along the Bosporus at Byzantium. They renamed the city Constantinople, and in the 4th Century it became the center of the eastern half of the Roman Empire--which, after outliving the western half, became known as the Byzantine Empire.

Byzantine emperors remained Asia Minor's major players until 1071, when Seljuk Turks whipped the Byzantines at the Battle of Manzikert. After that, the empire began to unravel. By the 14th century, a new power--the Ottoman Empire--had mostly taken over.

Constantinople, the last Byzantine bastion, fell to Ottoman forces in 1453. Restyled "Istanbul," the city became the capital of a Turkish and Sunni Islamic empire that, at its height, stretched from northern Africa to southeastern Europe and across the Middle East.

The Ottoman heyday came during the reign of Suleyman the Magnificent (1520-66), who instituted an up-to-date law code, ran an efficient centralized monarchy, and patronized philosophers, artists, and poets. But not long after Suleyman died, the empire went into a long, slow decline.

By the 18th century, Russia was strategically chipping away at Ottoman holdings. By the 19th century, westerners were calling the Ottoman Empire "the sick man of Europe." Before long, Britain took Egypt, France took Algeria, and an internal reform movement took off in Istanbul.

The Ottomans' last gasp came when the regime sided with Germany during World War I. By war's end, the defeated empire had collapsed--though not before the mass deportation and slaughter of perhaps a million Armenians, whom the Ottomans accused of helping the enemy.

Into the resulting power vacuum stepped a reformer and accomplished military officer named Mustafa Kemal, who would later take the surname "Ataturk" (meaning "Father Turk"). While the triumphant Allies parceled out most of the old Ottoman lands, Mustafa Kemal used a combination of diplomacy and military force to secure the boundaries of the modern Turkish state.

As the Republic of Turkey's first president, he then set out to build a European-style nation with a thoroughly secularized government. His successors in Ankara, Turkey's capital, have reinterpreted Ataturk's principles, but none has broken with them entirely--in part because the Turkish military has positioned itself as the defender of "Kemalism" and repeatedly shown its willingness to intervene in Turkish politics.

Steve Sampson

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