Questions about Western Europe
Short answers, pulled from the story.
What is Western Europe and which countries does it include?
Western Europe is the western subregion of the European continent, though its exact boundaries depend on the classification system used. The United Nations geoscheme lists nine countries: Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. The CIA uses a narrower seven-country definition, while EuroVoc, maintained by the Publications Office of the European Union, includes twelve countries.
How did the Iron Curtain divide Western Europe during the Cold War?
The Iron Curtain divided Europe for 46 years, from 1945 to 1991, into a Western Bloc led by the United States through NATO and an Eastern Bloc organised under the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact. The term was popularised by Winston Churchill in his "Sinews of Peace" address on the 5th of March 1946 at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. The division ended with the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
What languages are spoken in Western Europe?
Western European languages fall mainly into two Indo-European families: Romance languages, descended from the Latin of the Roman Empire, and Germanic languages, whose ancestor Proto-Germanic originated in southern Scandinavia. Celtic languages such as Irish, Welsh, and Breton form a third group. Basque is the only surviving Old European language isolate, unrelated to any other living language family.
What is the religion of Western Europe?
Christianity is the largest religion in Western Europe. A 2018 study by the Pew Research Center found that 71.0% of Western Europeans identified as Christians. The region has been shaped by the East-West Schism of 1054, which separated Roman Catholicism from Eastern Orthodoxy, and by the 16th-century Reformation, which established Protestantism as a major denomination primarily in the western part of Europe.
Who was Matteo Ricci and what did he call Western Europe?
Matteo Ricci was an Italian Jesuit priest who was among the first writers in China to use the term "Far West" as an Asian counterpart to the European concept of the Far East. In his own writings, he referred to himself as "Matteo of the Far West". He worked during the Ming dynasty, when Western Europe was known in China as taixi, meaning the "Far West".
How does the climate of Western Europe compare to the rest of the northern midlatitudes?
Western Europe is a recognised heatwave hotspot, with warming trends rising at a rate three to four times faster than the rest of the northern midlatitudes. The climate ranges from Mediterranean conditions along the coasts of Italy, Portugal, and Spain to alpine climates in the Pyrenees and the Alps. The western and northwestern areas have a mild, generally humid climate influenced by the North Atlantic Current.