Western Europe makes up 3% of the world’s landmass.  Has a very high population density.

  Nearly every country in Western Europe has

coastline.  What 3 Western European countries are the only landlocked ones?

  2/3 of the region’s people live in 4 nations –

United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Italy.  The 5 largest cities in the region are……?

Two main pockets of population distribution in Western Europe:

·        central England, into France, north across the North European Plain

·        southeastern France and Italy, along the Rhine River Valley

Religion Religion –

Catholicism dominates the southern part of Western Europe (Italy, Spain, Portugal, parts of France, and also Ireland). 

Although Catholicism is found throughout the region, other Christian denominations are more common in the northern countries of Western Europe

·        Only the United States and Israel have more Jews than France.

Language 2 major groups of languages (Romance and

Germanic)

Latin

Roman Empire: the first great central empire in Europe, brought Latin to western and central Europe.  Even after Rome’s demise, Latin remained important because of the Catholic Church

Versions of Latin, its vernaculars,developed into French, Italian, Romanian, Spanish, Portuguese – called Romance languages

Germanic Languages Northern areas of the regions spoke

Germanic languages – when the Angles and Saxons migrated to the British Isles, the Germanic languages went with

The Mutt Language When William the

Conqueror took over England in 1066, he brought the Latin-based French language with him…

gradually, the Anglo-Saxon language of the people mixed with French and became English

Language also moved by colonialism: the extension of a nation's sovereignty over territory and people outside its own boundaries, often to facilitate economic domination over their resources, labor, and usually markets

Examples Spain colonized Mexico and most of Central

and South America, and the Philippines in Asia, bringing Spanish with them

England and France became bitter rivals in colonizing all over the world – North America, Southeast Asia, Middle East, Africa, etc.

India became England’s prized colony until it gained its own independence in 1947.

As the world’s first empires arose here, it is also the home to the first great philosophers, scholars, writers, artists, traders, and explorers of the Western World

“Although Western Europe holds a strategic geographic position, it has

paid a high price for it.” Julius Caesar crushing the Germanic tribes in

55 BCE, establishing the first empire ·        The Germanic tribes ravaging Europe in

toppling the Roman Empire. ·        Thirty Years’ War in 1600s (fought

between colonial rivals) ·        Napoleon Bonaparte of France tried to

take over all of Europe ·        World War I and World War II in the

1900s