The Western world , also known as the West and the Occident (Latin: occidens -sunset, -west, as distinct from the Orient), is a term that can have multiple meanings depending on its context (e.g., the time period, the region or social situation). Accordingly, the basic definition of what constitutes "the West" varies, expanding and contracting over time, in relation to various historical circumstances.
The consensus is that the West originated in the northern and eastern Mediterranean with ancient Greece and ancient Rome. Over time, their associated empires grew first to the east and south, conquering and absorbing many older great civilizations; later, they grew to the north and west to include Western Europe.
Other historians, such as Carroll Quigley ( Evolution of Civilizations ), contend that Western Civilization was born around 400 AD, after the total collapse of the Western Roman Empire, leaving a vacuum for new ideas to flourish that were impossible in Classical societies. In either view, between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the Renaissance, the West experienced a period of considerable decline, known as the Middle Ages, which include the Dark Ages and the Crusades.
The knowledge of the ancient Western world was partly preserved during this period due to the survival of the Eastern Roman Empire; it was also greatly expanded by the Arab World, and mostly by the concurrent ascendency of the Islamic Golden Age. The Arab importation of both the Ancient and new technology from the Middle East and the Orient to Renaissance Europe represented “one of the largest technology transfers in world history.”
Since the Renaissance, the West evolved beyond the influence of the ancient Greeks, Romans and Muslims due to the Commercial, Scientific, and Industrial Revolutions, and the expansion of the Christian peoples of Western European empires, and particularly the globe-spanning empires of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Since the Age of Discovery and Columbus, the notion of the West expanded to include the Americas, though much of the Americas have considerable pre-Western cultural influence. Most countries of Latin America, Australia and New Zealand are considered part of Western culture due to their former status as settler colonies of Western Christian nations. Generally speaking, the current consensus would locate the West, at the very least, in the cultures and peoples of Europe, North America (namely Canada, U.S., and Mexico), most countries in South America, Australia and New Zealand. There is debate among some as to whether Eastern Europe is in a category of its own. Culturally Eastern Europe is usually more or less accepted into the 'West', mainly because of its geographic location in what is mostly Europe (and cultural ties). It, however, does not fill the traditional economic and living standard criteria which one associates with "The West".
When referring to current events, the term "Western World" often includes developed countries in Asia, such as Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea, that have strong economic, political and military ties to Western Europe, NATO or the United States. While these countries also have substantial Western influence and similarities in their cultures, they nonetheless maintain largely different and distinctive cultures, religions (although Christianity is a major religion in South Korea), languages, customs, and worldviews that are products of their own indigenous development, rather than solely Western influences.
Japan and South Korea, in particular, are the only Asian members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the two leading full democracies in Asia, having a high standard of living and a high level of human development. All of these are amongst the generally accepted political or economic characteristics of Western nations.
Historic Criteria of West in the European Continent
Medieval appearance of parliaments (the dietal-system), self-government status of big royal/imperial cities, medieval appearance of banking systems and social effects and status of urban bourgeoisie, medieval appearance of universities and the medieval appearance of secular intellectuals, PhilosophY Scholasticism and humanist philosophy,the knight-culture and the effects of crusades in the Holy Land, medieval usage of Latin alphabet and medieval spread of movable type printing, The medieval western theatre: Mystery or cycle plays and morality passion plays, The architecture and fine-arts: Romanesque Gothic and Renaissance styles.
Western Culture
Main article: Western cultureFurther information: History of Western civilizationThe term "Western culture" is used very broadly to refer to a heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, religious beliefs, political systems, and specific artifacts and technologies. Specifically, Western culture may imply:
The concept of Western culture is generally linked to the classical definition of the Western world. In this definition, Western culture is the set of literary, scientific, political, artistic and philosophical principles which set it apart from other civilizations. Much of this set of traditions and knowledge is collected in the Western canon.
The term has come to apply to countries whose history is strongly marked by Western European immigration or settlement, such as the Americas, and Australasia, and is not restricted to Western Europe.
Some tendencies that define modern Western societies are the existence of political pluralism, prominent subcultures or countercultures (such as New Age movements), increasing cultural syncretism resulting from globalization and human migration.
Historical divisions
The origins of the word "West" in terms of geopolitical boundaries started in the 1900s. Prior to this, most people would have thoughts about different nations, languages, individuals, and geographical regions, but with no idea of Western nations as we know it today. Many world maps were so crude and inaccurate before the 1800s that geographical and political differences would be harder to measure. Few would have access to good maps and even fewer had access to accurate descriptions of who lived in far away lands.
Western thought as we think of it today, is shaped by ideas of the 1900s and 1800s, originating mainly in Europe. What we think of as Western thought today is defined as Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian culture, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and colonialism. As a consequence the term "Western thought" is, at times, unhelpful and vague, since it can define separate, though related, sets of traditions and values:
- The Christian moral tradition and respective set of religious values;
- The humanist tradition and set of secular values, often with rationalist, anti-clerical beliefs;
Hellenic
The Hellenic division between the barbarians and the Greeks contrasted in many societies the Greek-speaking culture of the Greek settlements around the Mediterranean to the surrounding non-Greek cultures. Herodotus considered the Persian Wars of the early 5th century BC a conflict of Europa versus Asia (which he considered to be all land North and East of the Sea of Marmara, respectively). The terms "West" and "East" were not used by any Greek author to describe that conflict. The anachronistic application of those terms to that division entails a stark logical contradiction, given that, when the term West appeared, it was used in opposition to the Greeks and Greek-speaking culture.
Western society traces its cultural origins to both Greek thought and Christian religion, thus following an evolution that began in ancient Greece, continued through the Roman Empire and, with the coming of Christianity (which has its origins in the Middle East), spread throughout Europe. The inherently "Greek" classical ideas of history (which one might easily say they invented) and art may, however, be considered almost inviolate in the West, as their original spread of influence survived the Hellenic period of Roman classical antiquity, The Dark Ages, it's resurgence during the western Renaissance, and has managed somehow to retain and exert its pervasive influence down into the present age, with every expectation of it continuing to dominate any secular Western cultural developments.
However, the conquest of the western parts of the Roman Empire by Germanic peoples and the subsequent dominance by the Western Christian Papacy (which held combined political and spiritual authority, a state of affairs absent from Greek civilization in all its stages), resulted into a rupture of the previously existing ties between the Latin West and Greek thought, including Christian Greek thought. The Great Schism and the Fourth Crusade confirmed this deviation.
Hence, the Medieval West is limited to Western Christendom only, as the Greeks and other European peoples not under the authority of the Papacy are not included in it. The clearly Greek-influenced form of Christianity, Orthodoxy, is more linked to Eastern than Western Europe. On the other hand, the Modern West, emerging after the Renaissance as a new civilization, has been influenced by (its own interpretation of) Greek thought, which was preserved in the Byzantine (East Roman) E
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