Editing Europe (section)

===Early modern period===
{{Main|Early modern period}}
{{See also|Renaissance|Reformation|Scientific Revolution|Age of Discovery}}
[[File:La scuola di Atene.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|''[[The School of Athens]]'' (1511) by [[Raphael]]: Contemporaries of the artist, including [[Leonardo da Vinci]] and [[Michelangelo]], are represented in classical guise in this work emblematic of [[Renaissance humanism]].]]

The Renaissance was a period of cultural change originating in [[Florence]], and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The rise of a [[Renaissance humanism|new humanism]] was accompanied by the recovery of forgotten [[Classical Greece|classical Greek]] and Arabic knowledge from [[monastic]] libraries, often translated from Arabic into [[Latin language|Latin]].<ref name="Barrett"/><ref>[[Roberto Weiss|Weiss, Roberto]] (1969) ''The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity'', {{ISBN|1-59740-150-1}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|first=Jacob|last=Burckhardt|orig-year=1878|url=https://archive.org/details/civilizationofre00burc_0|title=The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy|translator-first=S. G. C. |translator-last=Middlemore|year=1990|isbn=978-0-14-044534-3|publisher=Penguin|location=London|author-link=Jacob Burckhardt}}</ref> The Renaissance spread across Europe between the 14th and 16th centuries: it saw the flowering of [[Renaissance art|art]], [[philosophy]], [[music]], and [[History of science in the Renaissance|the sciences]], under the joint patronage of [[Royal family|royalty]], the nobility, the [[Catholic Church]] and an emerging merchant class.<ref name="natgeo 254">National Geographic, 254.</ref><ref>Jensen, De Lamar (1992), ''Renaissance Europe'', {{ISBN|0-395-88947-2}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last=Levey|first=Michael|title=Early Renaissance|publisher=Penguin Books|year=1967}}</ref> Patrons in Italy, including the [[Medici]] family of Florentine bankers and the [[pope]]s in [[Rome]], funded prolific [[quattrocento]] and [[cinquecento]] artists such as [[Raphael]], [[Michelangelo]] and [[Leonardo da Vinci]].<ref name="natgeo 292">National Geographic, 292.</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last=Levey|first=Michael|title=High Renaissance|publisher=Penguin|year=1971}}</ref>

Political intrigue within the Church in the mid-14th century caused the [[Western Schism]]. During this 40-year period, two popes—one in [[Avignon]] and one in Rome—claimed rulership over the Church. Although the schism was eventually healed in 1417, the papacy's spiritual authority had suffered greatly.<ref name="natgeo 193">National Geographic, 193.</ref> In the 15th century, Europe started to extend itself beyond its geographic frontiers. Spain and Portugal, the greatest naval powers of the time, took the lead in exploring the world.<ref>{{Cite book|first=John Morris |last=Roberts|title=Penguin History of Europe|year=1997|publisher=Penguin|isbn=978-0-14-026561-3|url=https://archive.org/details/penguinhistoryof00robe_1}}</ref><ref name="natgeo 296">National Geographic, 296.</ref> Exploration reached the [[Southern Hemisphere]] in the Atlantic and the southern tip of Africa. [[Christopher Columbus]] reached the [[New World]] in 1492, and [[Vasco da Gama]] opened the ocean route to the East, linking the Atlantic and [[Indian Ocean]]s in 1498. The Portuguese-born explorer [[Ferdinand Magellan]] reached Asia westward across the Atlantic and the [[Pacific Ocean]]s in a Spanish expedition, resulting in the first [[Timeline of Magellan's circumnavigation|circumnavigation of the globe]], completed by the Spaniard [[Juan Sebastián Elcano]] (1519–1522). Soon after, the Spanish and Portuguese began establishing large global empires in the [[Americas]], Asia, Africa and Oceania.<ref name="natgeo 338">National Geographic, 338.</ref> France, the [[Netherlands]] and England soon followed in building large colonial empires with vast holdings in Africa, the Americas and Asia. In 1588, the [[Spanish Armada]] failed to invade England. A year later, [[English Armada|England tried unsuccessfully to invade Spain]], allowing [[Philip II of Spain]] to maintain his dominant war capacity in Europe. This English disaster also allowed the Spanish fleet to retain its capability to wage war for the next decades. However, two more Spanish armadas failed to invade England ([[2nd Spanish Armada]] and [[3rd Spanish Armada]]).<ref>Elliott p. 333</ref><ref>Morris, Terence Alan (1998). ''Europe and England in the sixteenth century''. Routledge, p. 335. {{ISBN|0-415-15041-8}}</ref><ref>Rowse, A. L. (1969). ''Tudor Cornwall: portrait of a society''. C. Scribner, p. 400</ref><ref>"One decisive action might have forced Philip II to the negotiating table and avoided fourteen years of continuing warfare. Instead the King was able to use the brief respite to rebuild his naval forces and by the end of 1589 Spain once again had an Atlantic fleet strong enough to escort the American treasure ships home." ''The Mariner's Mirror'', Volumes 76–77. Society for Nautical Research., 1990</ref>

[[File:Habsburg dominions 1700.png|thumb|upright=1.2|[[House of Habsburg|Habsburg dominions]] in the centuries following their partition by [[Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor]]. The principal military base of Philip II in Europe was the Spanish road stretching from the Netherlands to the [[Duchy of Milan]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Kamen |first1=Henry |title=Spain's Road to Empire: The Making of a World Power, 1492–1763 |page=221}}</ref>]]
The Church's power was further weakened by the [[Reformation]], which began in 1517 when German theologian [[Martin Luther]] nailed his ''[[Ninety-five Theses]]'' criticising the selling of indulgences to the church door. He was subsequently excommunicated in the papal bull ''[[Exsurge Domine]]'' in 1520 and his followers were condemned in the 1521 [[Diet of Worms]], which divided German princes between [[Protestant]] and Catholic faiths.<ref name="natgeo 256">National Geographic, 256–257.</ref> [[European wars of religion|Religious fighting and warfare]] spread with Protestantism.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/European_History/Religious_Wars_in_Europe|title=European History/Religious Wars in Europe – Wikibooks, open books for an open world|website=en.wikibooks.org|access-date=30 July 2022|archive-date=31 May 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220531224323/https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/European_History/Religious_Wars_in_Europe|url-status=live}}</ref> The plunder of the empires of the Americas allowed Spain to finance [[Spanish Inquisition|religious persecution]] in Europe for over a century.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Humphreys |first1=Kenneth |title=Jesus Never Existed: An Introduction to the Ultimate Heresy}}</ref> The [[Thirty Years' War]] (1618–1648) crippled the Holy Roman Empire and devastated much of Germany, killing between 25 and 40 percent of its population.<ref>[https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/195896/history-of-Europe/58335/Demographics History of Europe – Demographics] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150101023616/http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/195896/history-of-Europe/58335/Demographics |date=1 January 2015 }}. Encyclopædia Britannica.</ref> In the aftermath of the [[Peace of Westphalia]], France rose to predominance within Europe.<ref name="natgeo 269">National Geographic, 269.</ref> The defeat of the [[Ottoman Empire|Ottoman Turks]] at the [[Battle of Vienna]] in 1683 marked the historic end of [[Ottoman wars in Europe|Ottoman expansion into Europe]].<ref>Virginia Aksan, Ottoman Wars, 1700–1860: An Empire Besieged, (Pearson Education Limited, 2007), 28.</ref>

In much of Central and Eastern Europe, the 17th century was [[The General Crisis|a period of general decline]];<ref>{{cite web|url=http://libro.uca.edu/payne1/payne15.htm|title=The Seventeenth-Century Decline|access-date=13 August 2008|publisher=The Library of Iberian resources online|archive-date=27 March 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170327015606/http://libro.uca.edu/payne1/payne15.htm|url-status=live}}</ref> the region experienced more than 150 famines in a 200-year period between 1501 and 1700.<ref>"''[https://books.google.com/books?id=juvbIDu9ARIC&pg=PA51 Food, Famine And Fertilisers] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220417115352/https://books.google.com/books?id=juvbIDu9ARIC&pg=PA51 |date=2022-04-17 }}''". Seshadri Kannan (2009). APH Publishing. p. 51. {{ISBN|81-313-0356-X}}</ref> From the [[Union of Krewo]] (1385) east-central Europe was dominated by the [[Kingdom of Poland (1385–1569)|Kingdom of Poland]] and the [[Grand Duchy of Lithuania]]. The hegemony of the vast [[Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth]] had ended with the devastation brought by the [[Northern War of 1655–1660]] ([[Swedish Deluge|Deluge]]) and subsequent conflicts;<ref>{{cite book |last=Frost |first=Robert I. |author-link=Robert I. Frost |year=2004 |title=After the Deluge; Poland-Lithuania and the Second Northern War, 1655–1660 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IfIbP8sfC0wC |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0521544023 |access-date=30 July 2022}}</ref> the state itself was [[Partitions of Poland|partitioned]] and ceased to exist at the end of the 18th century.<ref>{{cite book |last=Lukowski |first=Jerzy |author-link=Jerzy Lukowski |year=2014 |title=The Partitions of Poland 1772, 1793, 1795 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Zm3XAwAAQBAJ |location=New York |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1317886945 |access-date=30 July 2022}}</ref>

From the 15th to 18th centuries, when the disintegrating khanates of the [[Golden Horde]] were conquered by Russia, [[Crimean Tatars|Tatars]] from the [[Crimean Khanate]] frequently [[Crimean-Nogai raids into East Slavic lands|raided]] Eastern Slavic lands to [[Slavery in the Ottoman Empire|capture slaves]].<ref>W. G. Clarence-Smith (2006). "''[https://books.google.com/books?id=nQbylEdqJKkC Islam And The Abolition Of Slavery] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160429200313/https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=nQbylEdqJKkC&f=false |date=2016-04-29 }}''". Oxford University Press. p. 13. {{ISBN|0-19-522151-6}}&nbsp;– "Lands to the north of the Black Sea probably yielded the most slaves to the Ottomans from 1450. A compilation of estimates indicates that Crimean Tartars seized about 1,750,000 Ukrainians, Poles, and Russians from 1468 to 1694."</ref> Further east, the [[Nogai Horde]] and [[Kazakh Khanate]] frequently raided the Slavic-speaking areas of contemporary Russia and Ukraine for hundreds of years, until the Russian expansion and conquest of most of northern Eurasia (i.e. Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Siberia).

The Renaissance and the [[New Monarchs]] marked the start of an Age of Discovery, a period of exploration, invention and scientific development.<ref>{{cite book|last=Hunt|first=Shelby D.|title=Controversy in marketing theory: for reason, realism, truth, and objectivity|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=07lchJbdWGgC&pg=PA18|publisher=M. E. Sharpe|year=2003|page=18|isbn=978-0-7656-0932-8|access-date=30 July 2022}}</ref> Important figures of the [[Scientific Revolution]] during the 16th and 17th centuries included [[Copernicus]], [[Kepler]], [[Galileo]], and [[Isaac Newton]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://users.clas.ufl.edu//ufhatch/pages/03-Sci-Rev/SCI-REV-Home/05-sr-lng-timeline.htm |title=Scientific Revolution: Chronological Timeline: Copernicus to Newton |last=Hatch |first=Robert A. |access-date=24 March 2023 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130723195302/http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/ufhatch/pages/03-Sci-Rev/SCI-REV-Home/05-sr-lng-timeline.htm |archive-date=23 July 2013}}</ref> According to Peter Barrett, "It is widely accepted that 'modern science' arose in the Europe of the 17th century (towards the end of the Renaissance), introducing a new understanding of the natural world."<ref name="Barrett">Peter Barrett (2004), ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=fwxViwX6KuMC&pg=PA14 Science and Theology Since Copernicus: The Search for Understanding] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220422182250/https://books.google.com/books?id=fwxViwX6KuMC&pg=PA14 |date=22 April 2022 }}'', pp. 14–18, Continuum, {{ISBN|0-567-08969-X}}</ref>