World History

World history, global history or transnational history (not to be confused

with diplomatic or international history) is a field of historical study that emerged as a distinct
academic field in the 1980s. It examines history from a global perspective. It is not to be confused
with comparative history, which, like world history, deals with the history of multiple cultures and
nations, but does not do so on a global scale.

World history looks for common patterns that emerge across all cultures. World historians use
a thematic approach, with two major focal points: integration (how processes of world history have
drawn people of the world together) and difference (how patterns of world history reveal the diversity
of the human experience).

Establishment of the field[edit]

The advent of world history as a distinct academic field of study can be traced to 1980s, [1] and was
heralded by the creation of the World History Association and graduate programs at a handful of
universities. Over the next decades scholarly publications, professional and academic organizations,
and graduate programs in world history proliferated. World History has often displaced Western
Civilization in the required curriculum of American high schools and universities, and is supported by
new textbooks with a world history approach.

Organizations[edit]

 The H-World discussion list[2] serves as a network of communication among practitioners of

world history, with discussions among scholars, announcements, syllabi, bibliographies and
book reviews.

 The International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations (ISCSC) approaches
world history from the standpoint of comparative civilizations. Founded at a conference in 1961
in Salzburg, Austria, that was attended by Othmar Anderlie, Pitirim Sorokin, and Arnold J.
Toynbee, this is an international association of scholars that publishes a journal,Comparative
Civilization Review, and hosts an annual meeting in cities around the world.

 The Journal of World History has been published quarterly by the World History Association
since 1990.[3]
 World History Association (WHA) - Established in the 1980s, the WHA is predominantly an
American phenomenon.[4]

History[edit]
Pre-modern[edit]
The study of world history, as distinct from national history, has existed in many world cultures.
However, early forms of world history were not truly global, and were limited to only the regions
known by the historian.

In Ancient China, Chinese world history, that of China and the surrounding people of East Asia, was
based on the dynastic cycle articulated by Sima Qian in circa 100 BC. Sima Qian's model is based
on the Mandate of Heaven. Rulers rise when they united China, then are overthrown when a ruling
dynasty became corrupt.[5] Each new dynasty begins virtuous and strong, but then decays, provoking
the transfer of Heaven's mandate to a new ruler. The test of virtue in a new dynasty is success in
being obeyed by China and neighboring barbarians. After 2000 years Sima Qian's model still
dominates scholarship, although the dynastic cycle is no longer used for modern Chinese history.[6]

In Ancient Greece, Herodotus (5th century BC), as founder of Greek historiography., [7] presents
insightful and lively discussions of the customs, geography, and history of Mediterranean peoples,
particularly the Egyptians. However, his great rival Thucydides promptly discarded Herodotus's all-
embracing approach to history, offering instead a more precise, sharply focused monograph, dealing
not with vast empires over the centuries but with 27 years of war between Athens and Sparta. In
Rome, the vast, patriotic history of Rome by Livy (59 BC-17 AD) approximated Herodotean
inclusiveness;[8] Polybius (c.200-c.118 BC) aspired to combine the logical rigor of Thucydides with the
scope of Herodotus.[9]

In Central Asia, The Secret History of Mongols is regarded as the single significant native Mongolian
account of Genghis Khan. The Secret History is regarded as a piece of classic literature in both
Mongolia and the rest of the world.

In the Middle East, Ala'iddin Ata-Malik Juvayni (1226–1283) was a Persian historian who wrote an
account of the Mongol Empire entitled Ta' rīkh-i jahān-gushā (History of the World Conqueror). [10] The
standard edition of Juvayni is published under the title Ta' rīkh-i jahān-gushā, ed. Mirza Muhammad
Qazwini, 3 vol, Gibb Memorial Series 16 (Leiden and London, 1912–37). An English translation by
John Andrew Boyle "The History of the World-Conqueror" was republished in 1997.

Rashīd al-Dīn Fadhl-allāh Hamadānī (1247–1318), was a Persian physician of Jewish origin,
polymathic writer and historian, who wrote an enormous Islamic history, the Jami al-Tawarikh, in the
Persian language, often considered a landmark in intercultural historiography and a key document
on the Ilkhanids (13th and 14th century).[11] His encyclopedic knowledge of a wide range of cultures
from Mongolia to China to the Steppes of Central Eurasia to Persia, the Arab lands, and Europe,
provide the most direct access to information on the late Mongol era. His descriptions also highlight
the manner in which the Mongol Empire and its emphasis on trade resulted in an atmosphere of
cultural and religious exchange and intellectual ferment, resulting in the transmission of a host of
ideas from East to West and vice versa.

One Arab scholar, Ibn Khaldun (1332-1409) broke with traditionalism and offered a model of
historical change in Muqaddimah, an exposition of the methodology of scientific history. Ibn Khaldun
focused on the reasons for the rise and fall of civilization, arguing that the causes of change are to
be sought in the economic and social structure of society. His work was largely ignored in the Muslim
world.[12] Otherwise the Muslim, Chinese and Indian intellectuals held fast to a religious traditionalism,
leaving them unprepared to advise national leaders on how to confront the European intrusion into
Asia after 1500.

Early modern[edit]
During the Renaissance in Europe, history was written about states or nations. The study of history
changed during the Enlightenment and Romanticism. Voltaire described the history of certain ages
that he considered important, rather than describing events in chronological order. History became
an independent discipline. It was not called philosophia historiae anymore, but merely history
(historia).

Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) in Italy wrote Scienza nuova seconda (The New Science) in 1725,
which argued history as the expression of human will and deeds. He thought that men are historical
entities and that human nature changes over time. Each epoch should be seen as a whole in which
all aspects of culture—art, religion, philosophy, politics, and economics—are interrelated (a point
developed later by Oswald Spengler). Vico showed that myth, poetry, and art are entry points to
discovering the true spirit of a culture. Vico outlined a conception of historical development in which
great cultures, like Rome, undergo cycles of growth and decline. His ideas were out of fashion
during the Enlightenment, but influenced the Romantic historians after 1800.

A major theoretical foundation for world history was given by German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel,
who saw the modern Prussian state as the highest stage of world development.

Contemporary[edit]
World history became a popular genre in the 20th century with universal history.

In the 1920s several best-sellers dealt with the history of the world, including surveys The Story of
Mankind (1921) by Hendrik Willem van Loon and The Outline of History (1918) byH.G. Wells.

Influential writers who have reached wide audiences include H. G. Wells, Oswald Spengler, Arnold J.
Toynbee, Pitirim Sorokin, Carroll Quigley, Christopher Dawson,[13] and Lewis Mumford. Scholars
working the field include Eric Voegelin,[14] William Hardy McNeill and Michael Mann.[15]
Spengler's Decline of the West (2 vol 1919–1922) compared nine organic cultures: Egyptian (3400
BC-1200 BC), Indian (1500 BC-1100 BC), Chinese (1300 BC-AD 200), Classical (1100 BC-400 BC),
Byzantine (AD 300–1100), Aztec (AD 1300–1500), Arabian (AD 300–1250), Mayan (AD 600–960),
and Western (AD 900–1900). His book was a smashing success among intellectuals worldwide as it
predicted the disintegration of European and American civilization after a violent "age of Caesarism,"
arguing by detailed analogies with other civilizations. It deepened the post-World War I pessimism in
Europe, and was warmly received by intellectuals in China, India and Latin America who hoped his
predictions of the collapse of European empires would soon come true. [16]

In 1936–1954, Toynbee's ten-volume A Study of History came out in three separate installments. He
followed Spengler in taking a comparative topical approach to independent civilizations. Toynbee
said they displayed striking parallels in their origin, growth, and decay. Toynbee rejected Spengler's
biological model of civilizations as organisms with a typical life span of 1,000 years. Like Sima Qian,
Toynbee explained decline as due to their moral failure. Many readers rejoiced in his implication (in
vols. 1–6) that only a return to some form of Catholicism could halt the breakdown of western
civilization which began with the Reformation. Volumes 7–10, published in 1954, abandoned the
religious message, and his popular audience slipped away, while scholars picked apart his
mistakes.,[17]

McNeill wrote The Rise of the West (1965) to improve upon Toynbee by showing how the separate
civilizations of Eurasia interacted from the very beginning of their history, borrowing critical skills from
one another, and thus precipitating still further change as adjustment between traditional old and
borrowed new knowledge and practice became necessary. McNeill took a broad approach organized
around the interactions of peoples across the globe. Such interactions have become both more
numerous and more continual and substantial in recent times. Before about 1500, the network of
communication between cultures was that of Eurasia. The term for these areas of interaction differ
from one world historian to another and include world-system and ecumene. Whatever it is called,
the importance of these intercultural contacts has begun to be recognized by many scholars. [18]

History education[edit]
United States[edit]
In college curricula of the United States, world history became a popular replacement for courses
on Western Civilization, beginning in the 1970s. Professors Patrick Manning, previously of
Northeastern University and now at the University of Pittsburgh's World History Center; and Ross E.
Dunn at San Diego State are leaders in promoting innovative teaching methods. [19]

In schools of architecture in the U.S. the National Architectural Accrediting Board now requires that
schools teach history that includes a non-west or global perspective. This reflects a decade-long
effort to move past the standard Euro-centric approach that had dominated the field. [20]
Recent themes[edit]
In recent years, the relationship between African and world history has shifted rapidly from one of
antipathy to one of engagement and synthesis. Reynolds (2007) surveys the relationship between
African and world histories, with an emphasis on the tension between the area studies paradigm and
the growing world-history emphasis on connections and exchange across regional boundaries. A
closer examination of recent exchanges and debates over the merits of this exchange is also
featured. Reynolds sees the relationship between African and world history as a measure of the
changing nature of historical inquiry over the past century. [21]

Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower
reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. It is one of six civilizations
globally to arise independently. Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC (according
to conventional Egyptian chronology)[1] with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under
the firstpharaoh.[2] The history of ancient Egypt occurred in a series of stable Kingdoms, separated by
periods of relative instability known as Intermediate Periods: the Old Kingdom of the Early Bronze
Age, the Middle Kingdom of the Middle Bronze Age and the New Kingdom of the Late Bronze Age.

Egypt reached the pinnacle of its power during the New Kingdom, in the Ramesside period where it
rivalled the Hittite Empire,Assyrian Empire and Mitanni Empire, after which it entered a period of
slow decline. Egypt was invaded or conquered by a succession of foreign powers (such as
the Canaanites/Hyksos, Libyans, Nubians, Assyria, Babylonia, Achaemenids andMacedon/Greece)
in the Third Intermediate Period of Egypt and Late Period. In the aftermath of Alexander the Great's
death, one of his generals, Ptolemy Soter, established himself as the new ruler of Egypt.
This Greek Ptolemaic Dynasty ruled Egypt until 30 BC, when, under Cleopatra, it fell to the Roman
Empire and became a Roman province.[3]

The success of ancient Egyptian civilization came partly from its ability to adapt to the conditions of
the Nile River valley. The predictable flooding and controlled irrigation of the fertile valley produced
surplus crops, which supported a more dense population, and social development and culture. With
resources to spare, the administration sponsored mineral exploitation of the valley and surrounding
desert regions, the early development of an independent writing system, the organization of
collective construction and agricultural projects, trade with surrounding regions, and a military
intended to defeat foreign enemies and assert Egyptian dominance. Motivating and organizing these
activities was a bureaucracy of elite scribes, religious leaders, and administrators under the control
of a pharaoh, who ensured the cooperation and unity of the Egyptian people in the context of an
elaborate system of religious beliefs.[4][5]

The many achievements of the ancient Egyptians include the quarrying, surveying and construction
techniques that supported the building of monumental pyramids, temples, and obelisks; a system
of mathematics, a practical and effective system of medicine, irrigation systems and agricultural
production techniques, the first known ships,[6] Egyptian faience and glass technology, new forms
ofliterature, and the earliest known peace treaty, made with the Hittites.[7] Egypt left a lasting legacy.
Its art and architecture were widely copied, and its antiquities carried off to far corners of the world.
Its monumental ruins have inspired the imaginations of travelers and writers for centuries. A new-
found respect for antiquities and excavations in the early modern period by Europeans and
Egyptians led to the scientific investigation of Egyptian civilization and a greater appreciation of its
cultural legacy.[8]

History

Map of ancient Egypt, showing major cities and sites of the Dynastic period (c. 3150 BC to 30 BC)

Main articles: History of ancient Egypt, History of Egypt and Population history of Egypt
The Nile has been the lifeline of its region for much of human history.[9] The fertile floodplain of the
Nile gave humans the opportunity to develop a settled agricultural economy and a more
sophisticated, centralized society that became a cornerstone in the history of human civilization.
[10]
Nomadic modern human hunter-gatherers began living in the Nile valley through the end of
theMiddle Pleistocene some 120 thousand years ago. By the late Paleolithic period, the arid climate
of Northern Africa became increasingly hot and dry, forcing the populations of the area to
concentrate along the river region.

Predynastic period
Main article: Predynastic Egypt

A typical Naqada II jar decorated with gazelles. (Predynastic Period)

In Predynastic and Early Dynastic times, the Egyptian climate was much less arid than it is today.
Large regions of Egypt were covered in treed savanna and traversed by herds of grazingungulates.
Foliage and fauna were far more prolific in all environs and the Nile region supported large
populations of waterfowl. Hunting would have been common for Egyptians, and this is also the
period when many animals were first domesticated.[11]

By about 5500 BC, small tribes living in the Nile valley had developed into a series of cultures
demonstrating firm control of agriculture and animal husbandry, and identifiable by their pottery and
personal items, such as combs, bracelets, and beads. The largest of these early cultures in upper
(Southern) Egypt was the Badari, which probably originated in the Western Desert; it was known for
its high quality ceramics, stone tools, and its use of copper.[12]

The Badari was followed by the Amratian (Naqada I) and Gerzeh (Naqada II) cultures,[13] which
brought a number of technological improvements. As early as the Naqada I Period, predynastic
Egyptians imported obsidian from Ethiopia, used to shape blades and other objects from flakes.[14]In
Naqada II times, early evidence exists of contact with the Near East, particularly Canaan and
the Byblos coast.[15] Over a period of about 1,000 years, the Naqada culture developed from a few
small farming communities into a powerful civilization whose leaders were in complete control of the
people and resources of the Nile valley.[16] Establishing a power center at Hierakonpolis, and later
at Abydos, Naqada III leaders expanded their control of Egypt northwards along the Nile.[17] They
also traded with Nubiato the south, the oases of the western desert to the west, and the cultures of
the eastern Mediterranean and Near East to the east.[17] Royal Nubian burials at Qustul produced
artifacts bearing the oldest-known examples of Egyptian dynastic symbols, such as the white crown
of Egypt and falcon.[18][19]

The Naqada culture manufactured a diverse selection of material goods, reflective of the increasing
power and wealth of the elite, as well as societal personal-use items, which included combs, small
statuary, painted pottery, high quality decorative stone vases, cosmetic palettes, and jewelry made of
gold, lapis, and ivory. They also developed a ceramic glaze known as faience, which was used well
into the Roman Period to decorate cups, amulets, and figurines.[20] During the last predynastic phase,
the Naqada culture began using written symbols that eventually were developed into a full system
of hieroglyphs for writing the ancient Egyptian language.[21]

Early Dynastic Period (c. 3050–2686 BC)

Main article: Early Dynastic Period of Egypt

The Early Dynastic Period was approximately contemporary to the early Sumerian-
Akkadian civilisation of Mesopotamia and of ancient Elam. The third-century BC Egyptian
priestManetho grouped the long line of pharaohs from Menes to his own time into 30 dynasties, a
system still used today.[22] He chose to begin his official history with the king named "Meni"
(or Menes in Greek) who was believed to have united the two kingdoms of Upper and Lower
Egypt (around 3100 BC).[23]

The transition to a unified state happened more gradually than ancient Egyptian writers represented,
and there is no contemporary record of Menes. Some scholars now believe, however, that the
mythical Menes may have been the pharaoh Narmer, who is depicted wearing royal regalia on the
ceremonial Narmer Palette, in a symbolic act of unification.[24] In the Early Dynastic Period about
3150 BC, the first of the Dynastic pharaohs solidified control over lower Egypt by establishing a
capital at Memphis, from which he could control thelabour force and agriculture of the fertile delta
region, as well as the lucrative and critical trade routes to the Levant. The increasing power and
wealth of the pharaohs during the early dynastic period was reflected in their
elaborate mastaba tombs and mortuary cult structures at Abydos, which were used to celebrate the
deified pharaoh after his death.[25] The strong institution of kingship developed by the pharaohs
served to legitimize state control over the land, labour, and resources that were essential to the
survival and growth of ancient Egyptian civilization.[26]
The Narmer Palette depicts the unification of the Two Lands.[27]

Old Kingdom (2686–2181 BC)

Main article: Old Kingdom

The Giza Pyramids

Major advances in architecture, art, and technology were made during the Old Kingdom, fueled by
the increased agricultural productivity and resulting population, made possible by a well-developed
central administration.[28] Some of ancient Egypt's crowning achievements, the Giza
pyramids andGreat Sphinx, were constructed during the Old Kingdom. Under the direction of
the vizier, state officials collected taxes, coordinated irrigation projects to improve crop yield, drafted
peasants to work on construction projects, and established a justice system to maintain peace and
order.[29]
Khafre Enthroned

Along with the rising importance of a central administration arose a new class of educated scribes
and officials who were granted estates by the pharaoh in payment for their services. Pharaohs also
made land grants to their mortuary cults and local temples, to ensure that these institutions had the
resources to worship the pharaoh after his death. Scholars believe that five centuries of these
practices slowly eroded the economic power of the pharaoh, and that the economy could no longer
afford to support a large centralized administration.[30] As the power of the pharaoh diminished,
regional governors called nomarchs began to challenge the supremacy of the pharaoh. This,
coupled with severe droughtsbetween 2200 and 2150 BC,[31] is assumed to have caused the country
to enter the 140-year period of famine and strife known as the First Intermediate Period. [32]

First Intermediate Period (2181–1991 BC)

Main article: First Intermediate Period of Egypt

After Egypt's central government collapsed at the end of the Old Kingdom, the administration could
no longer support or stabilize the country's economy. Regional governors could not rely on the king
for help in times of crisis, and the ensuing food shortages and political disputes escalated into
famines and small-scale civil wars. Yet despite difficult problems, local leaders, owing no tribute to
the pharaoh, used their new-found independence to establish a thriving culture in the provinces.
Once in control of their own resources, the provinces became economically richer—which was
demonstrated by larger and better burials among all social classes.[33] In bursts of creativity, provincial
artisans adopted and adapted cultural motifs formerly restricted to the royalty of the Old Kingdom,
and scribes developed literary styles that expressed the optimism and originality of the period.[34]

Free from their loyalties to the pharaoh, local rulers began competing with each other for territorial
control and political power. By 2160 BC, rulers in Herakleopolis controlled Lower Egypt in the north,
while a rival clan based in Thebes, the Intef family, took control of Upper Egypt in the south. As the
Intefs grew in power and expanded their control northward, a clash between the two rival dynasties
became inevitable. Around 2055 BC the northern Theban forces under Nebhepetre Mentuhotep
II finally defeated the Herakleopolitan rulers, reuniting the Two Lands. They inaugurated a period of
economic and cultural renaissance known as the Middle Kingdom.[35]

Middle Kingdom (2134–1690 BC)

Main article: Middle Kingdom of Egypt

Amenemhat III, the last great ruler of the Middle Kingdom

The pharaohs of the Middle Kingdom restored the country's prosperity and stability, thereby
stimulating a resurgence of art, literature, and monumental building projects. [36] Mentuhotep II and
his Eleventh Dynasty successors ruled from Thebes, but the vizier Amenemhat I, upon assuming
kingship at the beginning of the Twelfth Dynasty around 1985 BC, shifted the nation's capital to the
city of Itjtawy, located in Faiyum.[37]From Itjtawy, the pharaohs of the Twelfth Dynasty undertook a far-
sighted land reclamation and irrigation scheme to increase agricultural output in the region.
Moreover, the military reconquered territory in Nubia that was rich in quarries and gold mines, while
laborers built a defensive structure in the Eastern Delta, called the "Walls-of-the-Ruler", to defend
against foreign attack.[38]

With the pharaohs' having secured military and political security and vast agricultural and mineral
wealth, the nation's population, arts, and religion flourished. In contrast to elitist Old Kingdom
attitudes towards the gods, the Middle Kingdom experienced an increase in expressions of personal
piety and what could be called a democratization of the afterlife, in which all people possessed a
soul and could be welcomed into the company of the gods after death. [39] Middle Kingdom literature
featured sophisticated themes and characters written in a confident, eloquent style. [34] The reliefand
portrait sculpture of the period captured subtle, individual details that reached new heights of
technical perfection.[40]

The last great ruler of the Middle Kingdom, Amenemhat III, allowed Semitic-
speaking Canaanite settlers from the Near East into the delta region to provide a sufficient labour
force for his especially active mining and building campaigns. These ambitious building and mining
activities, however, combined with severe Nile floodslater in his reign, strained the economy and
precipitated the slow decline into the Second Intermediate Period during the later Thirteenth and
Fourteenth dynasties. During this decline, the Canaanite settlers began to seize control of the delta
region, eventually coming to power in Egypt as the Hyksos.[41]

Second Intermediate Period (1674–1549 BC) and the Hyksos

Main article: Second Intermediate Period of Egypt

Around 1785 BC, as the power of the Middle Kingdom pharaohs weakened,
a Semitic Canaanite people called the Hyksos had already settled in the Eastern Delta town
of Avaris, seized control of Egypt, and forced the central government to retreat to Thebes. The
pharaoh was treated as a vassal and expected to pay tribute. [42] The Hyksos ("foreign rulers")
retained Egyptian models of government and identified as pharaohs, thus integrating Egyptian
elements into their culture. They and other Semitic invaders introduced new tools of warfare into
Egypt, most notably the composite bow and the horse-drawn chariot.[43]

After their retreat, the native Theban kings found themselves trapped between the Canaanite
Hyksos ruling the north and the Hyksos' Nubian allies, the Kushites, to the south of Egypt. After
years of vassalage, Thebes gathered enough strength to challenge the Hyksos in a conflict that
lasted more than 30 years, until 1555 BC [42] The pharaohs Seqenenre Tao II and Kamose were
ultimately able to defeat the Nubians to the south of Egypt, but failed to defeat the Hyksos. That task
fell to Kamose's successor, Ahmose I, who successfully waged a series of campaigns that
permanently eradicated the Hyksos' presence in Egypt. He established a new dynasty. In the New
Kingdom that followed, the military became a central priority for the pharaohs seeking to expand
Egypt's borders and attempting to gain mastery of the Near East.[44]

The maximum territorial extent of ancient Egypt (15th century BC)

New Kingdom (1549–1069 BC)

Main article: New Kingdom

The New Kingdom pharaohs established a period of unprecedented prosperity by securing their
borders and strengthening diplomatic ties with their neighbours, including
the Mitanni Empire, Assyria, and Canaan. Military campaigns waged under Tuthmosis I and his
grandson Tuthmosis IIIextended the influence of the pharaohs to the largest empire Egypt had ever
seen. Between their reigns, Hatshepsut generally promoted peace and restored trade routes lost
during the Hyksos occupation, as well as expanding to new regions. When Tuthmosis III died in
1425 BC, Egypt had an empire extending from Niya in north west Syria to the fourth waterfall of the
Nile in Nubia, cementing loyalties and opening access to critical imports such as bronze and wood.[45]

Djeser-Djeseru is the main building of Hatshepsut's mortuary templecomplex at Deir el-Bahri, the building is an
example of perfect symmetry that predates the Parthenon by a thousand years

The New Kingdom pharaohs began a large-scale building campaign to promote the god Amun,
whose growing cult was based in Karnak. They also constructed monuments to glorify their own
achievements, both real and imagined. The pharaoh Hatshepsut used such hyperbole and grandeur
during her reign of almost twenty-two years.[46] Her reign was very successful, marked by an
extended period of peace and wealth-building, trading expeditions to Punt, restoration of foreign
trade networks, and great building projects, including an elegant mortuary temple that rivaled the
Greek architecture of a thousand years later, a colossal pair of obelisks, and a chapel at Karnak.
Despite her achievements, Amenhotep II, the heir to Hatshepsut's nephew-stepson Tuthmosis III,
sought to erase her legacy near the end of his father's reign and throughout his, touting many of her
accomplishments as his.[47] He also tried to change many established traditions that had developed
over the centuries, which some suggest was a futile attempt to prevent other women from becoming
pharaoh and to curb their influence in the kingdom.

Around 1350 BC, the stability of the New Kingdom seemed threatened further when Amenhotep IV
ascended the throne and instituted a series of radical and chaotic reforms. Changing his name
to Akhenaten, he touted the previously obscure sun deity Aten as the supreme deity, suppressed the
worship of most other deities, and attacked the power of the temple that had become dominated by
the priests of Amun in Thebes, whom he saw as corrupt.[48] Moving the capital to the new city of
Akhetaten (modern-day Amarna), Akhenaten turned a deaf ear to events in the Near East (where
the Hittites, Mitanni, and Assyrians were vying for control). He was devoted to his new religion and
artistic style. After his death, the cult of the Aten was quickly abandoned, the priests of Amun soon
regained power and returned the capital to Thebes. Under their influence the subsequent
pharaohs Tutankhamun, Ay, andHoremheb worked to erase all mention of Akhenaten's heresy, now
known as the Amarna Period.[49]

Four colossal statues of Ramesses II flank the entrance of his temple Abu Simbel

Around 1279 BC, Ramesses II, also known as Ramesses the Great, ascended the throne, and went
on to build more temples, erect more statues and obelisks, and sire more children than any other
pharaoh in history.[50] A bold military leader, Ramesses II led his army against the Hittites in the Battle
of Kadesh (in modern Syria) and, after fighting to a stalemate, finally agreed to the first recorded
peace treaty, around 1258 BC.[51] With both the Egyptians and Hittite Empire proving unable to gain
the upper hand over one another, and both powers also fearful of the expanding Middle Assyrian
Empire, Egyptwithdrew from much of the Near East. The Hittites were thus left to compete
unsuccessfully with the powerful Assyrians and the newly arrived Phrygians.

Egypt's wealth, however, made it a tempting target for invasion, particularly by the Libyan Berbers to
the west, and the Sea Peoples, a powerful confederation of
largely Greek, Luwian and Phoenician/Caananite pirates from the Aegean. Initially, the military was
able to repel these invasions, but Egypt eventually lost control of its remaining territories in
southern Caanan, much of it falling to the Assyrians. The effects of external threats were
exacerbated by internal problems such as corruption, tomb robbery, and civil unrest. After regaining
their power, the high priests at the temple of Amun in Thebes accumulated vast tracts of land and
wealth, and their expanded power splintered the country during the Third Intermediate Period. [52]

Third Intermediate Period (1069–653 BC)

Main article: Third Intermediate Period of Egypt

Following the death of Ramesses XI in 1078 BC, Smendes assumed authority over the northern part
of Egypt, ruling from the city of Tanis. The south was effectively controlled by the High Priests of
Amun at Thebes, who recognized Smendes in name only.[53] During this time, Berber tribes from what
was later to be called Libya had been settling in the western delta, and the chieftains of these
settlers began increasing their autonomy. Libyan princes took control of the delta under Shoshenq
I in 945 BC, founding the Libyan Berber, or Bubastite, dynasty that ruled for some 200 years.
Shoshenq also gained control of southern Egypt by placing his family members in important priestly
positions.

In the mid-ninth century BC, Egypt made a failed attempt to once more gain a foothold in Western
Asia. Osorkon II of Egypt, along with a large alliance of nations and peoples,
including; Israel, Hamath, Phoenicia/Caanan, the Arabs, Arameans, and neo Hittites among others,
engaged in the Battle of Karkar against the powerful Assyrian king Shalmaneser III in 853 BC.
However, this coalition of powers failed and the Assyrian Empire continued to dominate Western
Asia.

Libyan Berber control began to erode as a rival native dynasty in the delta arose under Leontopolis.
Also, the Nubians of the Kushites threatened Egypt from the lands to the south.[54]

Around 730 BC Libyans from the west fractured the political unity of the country

Drawing on millennia of interaction (trade, acculturation, occupation, assimilation, and war [55]) with
Egypt,[56] the Kushite king Piye left his Nubiancapital of Napata and invaded Egypt around 727 BC.
Piye easily seized control of Thebes and eventually the Nile Delta.[57] He recorded the episode on his
stela of victory. Piye set the stage for subsequent Twenty-fifth dynasty pharaohs,[58] such as Taharqa,
to reunite the "Two lands" of Northern and Southern Egypt. The Nile valley empire was as large as it
had been since the New Kingdom.

The Twenty-fifth dynasty ushered in a renaissance period for ancient Egypt. [59] Religion, the arts, and
architecture were restored to their glorious Old, Middle, and New Kingdom forms. Pharaohs, such as
Taharqa, built or restored temples and monuments throughout the Nile valley, including at Memphis,
Karnak, Kawa, Jebel Barkal, etc.[60] It was during the Twenty-fifth dynasty that there was the first
widespread construction of pyramids (many in modern Sudan) in the Nile Valley since the Middle
Kingdom.[61][62][63]

Piye made various unsuccessful attempts to extend Egyptian influence in the Near East, then
controlled by Assyria. In 720 BC, he sent an army in support a rebellion against Assyria, which was
taking place in Philistia and Gaza. However, Piye was defeated by Sargon II and the rebellion failed.
In 711 BC, Piye again supported a revolt against the Assyrians by the Israelites of Ashdod and was
once again defeated by the Assyrian king Sargon II. Subsequently, Piye was forced from the Near
East.[64]

From the 10th century BC onwards, Assyria fought for control of the southern Levant. Frequently,
cities and kingdoms of the southern Levant appealed to Egypt for aide in their struggles against the
powerful Assyrian army. Taharqa enjoyed some initial success in his attempts to regain a foothold in
the Near East. Taharqa aided the Judean King Hezekiah when Hezekiah and Jerusalem was
besieged by the Assyrian king, Sennacherib. Scholars disagree on the primary reason for Assyria's
abandonment of their siege on Jerusalem. Reasons for the Assyrian withdrawal range from conflict
with the Egyptian/Kushite army to divine intervention to surrender to disease. [65] Henry Aubin argues
that the Kushite/Egyptian army saved Jerusalem from the Assyrians and prevented the Assyrians
from returning to capture Jerusalem for the remainder of Sennacherib's life (20 years). [66]Some argue
that disease was the primary reason for failing to actually take the city and Senacherib's annals
claim Judah was forced into tribute regardless.[67]

The Assyrians began their invasion of Egypt under king Esarhaddon, successor of Sennacherib.
Sennacherib had been murdered by his own sons for destroying the rebellious city ofBabylon. In 674
BC, Taharqa defeated Esarhaddon and the Assyrian army outright on Egyptian soil. [68] In 671 BC,
Esarhaddon drove the Kushites from Northern Egypt and back to their Nubian homeland. However,
the native Egyptian rulers installed by Esarhaddon were unable to retain full control of the whole
country for long. Two years later, Taharqa returned from Nubia and seized control of a section of
southern Egypt as far north as Memphis. Esarhaddon prepared to return to Egypt and once more
eject Taharqa, however he fell ill and died in his capital, Nineveh, before he left Assyria. His
successor, Ashurbanipal, sent a general with a small, but well trained army, which defeated Taharqa
at Memphis and once more drove him from Egypt. Taharqa died in Nubia two years later.

His successor, Tanutamun, also made a failed attempt to regain Egypt for Nubia. He successfully
defeated Necho, the puppet ruler installed by Ashurbanipal, taking Thebes in the process. The
Assyrians then sent a large army southwards. Tantamani (Tanutamun) was heavily routed and fled
back to Nubia. The Assyrian army sacked Thebes to such an extent it never truly recovered. A native
ruler, Psammetichus I was placed on the throne, as a vassal of Ashurbanipal, and the Nubians were
never again to pose a threat.[69]
Twenty-fifth Dynasty

Late Period (672–332 BC)

Main articles: Late Period of ancient Egypt and History of Achaemenid Egypt

With no permanent plans for conquest, the Assyrians left control of Egypt to a series of vassals who
became known as the Saite kings of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty. By 653 BC, the Saite king Psamtik
I (taking advantage of the fact that Assyria was involved in a fierce war conquering Elam and that
few Assyrian troops were stationed in Egypt) was able to free Egypt relatively peacefully from
Assyrian vassalage with the help of Lydian and Greekmercenaries, the latter of whom were recruited
to form Egypt's first navy. Psamtik and his successors however were careful to maintain peaceful
relations with Assyria. Greek influence expanded greatly as the city of Naukratis became the home
of Greeks in the delta.

In 609 BC Necho II went to war with Babylonia, the Chaldeans, the Medians and the Scythians in an
attempt to save Assyria, which after a brutal civil war was being ovverrun by this coalition of powers.
However, the attempt to save Egypts former masters failed. The Egyptians delayed intervening too
long, and Nineveh had already fallen and King Sin-shar-ishkun was dead by the time Necho II sent
his armies northwards. However, Necho easily brushed aside the Israelite army under
King Josiah but he and the Assyrians then lost a battle at Harran to the Babylonians, Medes and
Scythians. Necho II and Ashur-uballit II of Assyria were finally defeated
at Carchemish in Aramea (modern Syria) in 605 BC. The Egyptians remained in the area for some
decades, struggling with the Babylonian kings Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar II for control of
portions of the former Assyrian Empire inThe Levant. However, they were eventually driven back into
Egypt, and Nebuchadnezzar II even briefly invaded Egypt itself in 567 BC.[67] The Saite kings based
in the new capital ofSais witnessed a brief but spirited resurgence in the economy and culture, but in
525 BC, the powerful Persians, led by Cambyses II, began their conquest of Egypt, eventually
capturing the pharaoh Psamtik III at the battle of Pelusium. Cambyses II then assumed the formal
title of pharaoh, but ruled Egypt from his home of Susa in Persia (modern Iran), leaving Egypt under
the control of a satrapy. A few temporarily successful revolts against the Persians marked the fifth
century BC, but Egypt was never able to permanently overthrow the Persians. [70]

Following its annexation by Persia, Egypt was joined with Cyprus and Phoenicia (modern Lebanon)
in the sixth satrapy of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. This first period of Persian rule over Egypt,
also known as the Twenty-seventh dynasty, ended in 402 BC, and from 380–343 BC the Thirtieth
Dynasty ruled as the last native royal house of dynastic Egypt, which ended with the kingship
of Nectanebo II. A brief restoration of Persian rule, sometimes known as the Thirty-first Dynasty,
began in 343 BC, but shortly after, in 332 BC, the Persian ruler Mazaces handed Egypt over to
the Macedonian ruler Alexander the Great without a fight.[71]

Ptolemaic dynasty

Alexander the Great, 100 BC – 100 AD, 54.162, Brooklyn Museum

Main articles: History of Ptolemaic Egypt and Ptolemaic dynasty

In 332 BC, Alexander the Great conquered Egypt with little resistance from the Persians and was
welcomed by the Egyptians as a deliverer. The administration established by Alexander's
successors, the Macedonian Ptolemaic dynasty, was based on an Egyptian model and based in the
new capital city of Alexandria. The city showcased the power and prestige of Hellenistic rule, and
became a seat of learning and culture, centered at the famous Library of Alexandria.
[72]
The Lighthouse of Alexandria lit the way for the many ships that kept trade flowing through the city
—as the Ptolemies made commerce and revenue-generating enterprises, such as papyrus
manufacturing, their top priority.[73]

Hellenistic culture did not supplant native Egyptian culture, as the Ptolemies supported time-honored
traditions in an effort to secure the loyalty of the populace. They built new temples in Egyptian style,
supported traditional cults, and portrayed themselves as pharaohs. Some traditions merged, as
Greek and Egyptian gods were syncretized into composite deities, such as Serapis, and classical
Greek forms of sculpture influenced traditional Egyptian motifs. Despite their efforts to appease the
Egyptians, the Ptolemies were challenged by native rebellion, bitter family rivalries, and the powerful
mob of Alexandria that formed after the death of Ptolemy IV.[74] In addition, as Rome relied more
heavily on imports of grain from Egypt, the Romans took great interest in the political situation in the
country. Continued Egyptian revolts, ambitious politicians, and powerful Syriac opponents from
the Near East made this situation unstable, leading Rome to send forces to secure the country as a
province of its empire.[75]

Roman Period
Main article: History of Roman Egypt

The Fayum mummy portraitsepitomize the meeting of Egyptian and Roman cultures.

Egypt became a province of the Roman Empire in 30 BC, following the defeat of Marc
Antony and Ptolemaic Queen Cleopatra VII by Octavian (later EmperorAugustus) in the Battle of
Actium. The Romans relied heavily on grain shipments from Egypt, and the Roman army, under the
control of a prefect appointed by the Emperor, quelled rebellions, strictly enforced the collection of
heavy taxes, and prevented attacks by bandits, which had become a notorious problem during the
period.[76] Alexandria became an increasingly important center on the trade route with the orient, as
exotic luxuries were in high demand in Rome.[77]

Although the Romans had a more hostile attitude than the Greeks towards the Egyptians, some
traditions such as mummification and worship of the traditional gods continued. [78] The art of mummy
portraiture flourished, and some Roman emperors had themselves depicted as pharaohs, though not
to the extent that the Ptolemies had. The former lived outside Egypt and did not perform the
ceremonial functions of Egyptian kingship. Local administration became Roman in style and closed
to native Egyptians.[78]

From the mid-first century AD, Christianity took root in Egypt as it was seen as another cult that
could be accepted. However, it was an uncompromising religion that sought to win converts
from Egyptian Religion and Greco-Roman religion and threatened the popular religious traditions.
This led to persecution of converts to Christianity, culminating in the great purges
of Diocletian starting in 303, but eventually Christianity won out. [79] In 391 the Christian
Emperor Theodosiusintroduced legislation that banned pagan rites and closed temples.[80] Alexandria
became the scene of great anti-pagan riots with public and private religious imagery destroyed. [81] As
a consequence, Egypt's native religious culture was continually in decline. While the native
population certainly continued to speaktheir language, the ability to read hieroglyphic writing slowly
disappeared as the role of the Egyptian temple priests and priestesses diminished. The temples
themselves were sometimes converted to churches or abandoned to the desert.[82]

In the fourth century AD, the Roman Empire split into two, and Egypt became part of the Eastern
Empire, known as the Byzantine Empire. The Eastern Empire became increasingly "oriental" and
"Eastern" in style, as its links with the old Greco-Roman world faded. The Greek system of local
government by citizens had now entirely disappeared.

The Sassanid Persians who were involved in a long running and draining war with Byzantium for
control of the Near East, Asia Minor, North Africa and the east Mediterranean, briefly recaptured
Egypt under King Khosrow II in 618 AD, but were ejected by the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius in 628
AD.

Arab Muslim Period

An army of 4,000 Arabs led by Amr Ibn Al-Aas was sent by the Caliph Umar, successor to
Muhammad, to spread Islamic rule to the west. The Arabs crossed into Egypt fromPalestine in
December 639 AD, and advanced rapidly into the Nile Delta. The Imperial garrisons, exhausted by
constant war with the Persians, retreated into the walled towns, where they successfully held out for
a year or more. But the Arabs sent for reinforcements, and in April 641 they captured Alexandria. The
Byzantines did assemble a fleet with the aim of recapturing Egypt, and won back Alexandria in 645,
but the Muslims retook the city in 646, completing the Arab Muslim conquest of Egypt. Thus ended
975 years of Græco-Roman rule over Egypt.

Local resistance by the native Egyptian Copts however, began to materialize shortly thereafter and
would last until at least the ninth century. The Arabs imposed a special tax, known as Jizya, on the
Egyptians, who were by this time Coptic Christians. They acquired the status of dhimmis, and all
native Egyptians were prohibited from joining the army. The Arabs in the seventh century used the
term quft to describe the indigenous people of Egypt. Thus, Egyptians became known as Copts, and
the non-Chalcedonian Egyptian Church became known as the Coptic Church. The indigenous
population of Egypt was gradually and largely Arabized and Islamicized over the following centuries,
However, native Egyptian identity and language survived among the Copts, who spoke the Coptic
language, a direct descendant of the Demotic Egyptian (which itself was an evolution of Ancient
Egyptian) spoken in the Roman era. Since the eighteenth century, Coptic has mostly been limited to
liturgical use and today Coptic is extinct as a primary language. Copts still to this day espouse
anEgyptian rather than Arab ethnic identity.

Government and economy

Administration and commerce
The pharaoh was usually depicted wearing symbols of royalty and power.

The pharaoh was the absolute monarch of the country and, at least in theory, wielded complete
control of the land and its resources. The king was the supreme military commander and head of the
government, who relied on a bureaucracy of officials to manage his affairs. In charge of the
administration was his second in command, the vizier, who acted as the king's representative and
coordinated land surveys, the treasury, building projects, the legal system, and the archives. [83] At a
regional level, the country was divided into as many as 42 administrative regions called nomes each
governed by anomarch, who was accountable to the vizier for his jurisdiction. The temples formed
the backbone of the economy. Not only were they houses of worship, but were also responsible for
collecting and storing the nation's wealth in a system of granaries and treasuries administered
by overseers, who redistributed grain and goods.[84]

Much of the economy was centrally organized and strictly controlled. Although the ancient Egyptians
did not use coinage until the Late period, they did use a type of money-barter system,[85] with
standard sacks of grain and the deben, a weight of roughly 91 grams (3 oz) of copper or silver,
forming a common denominator.[86] Workers were paid in grain; a simple laborer might earn 5½ sacks
(200 kg or 400 lb) of grain per month, while a foreman might earn 7½ sacks (250 kg or 550 lb).
Prices were fixed across the country and recorded in lists to facilitate trading; for example a shirt
cost five copper deben, while a cow cost 140 deben.[86] Grain could be traded for other goods,
according to the fixed price list.[86] During the fifth century BC coined money was introduced into
Egypt from abroad. At first the coins were used as standardized pieces of precious metal rather than
true money, but in the following centuries international traders came to rely on coinage. [87]

Social status
Egyptian society was highly stratified, and social status was expressly displayed. Farmers made up
the bulk of the population, but agricultural produce was owned directly by the state, temple, or noble
family that owned the land.[88] Farmers were also subject to a labor tax and were required to work on
irrigation or construction projects in a corvée system.[89] Artists and craftsmen were of higher status
than farmers, but they were also under state control, working in the shops attached to the temples
and paid directly from the state treasury. Scribes and officials formed the upper class in ancient
Egypt, known as the "white kilt class" in reference to the bleached linen garments that served as a
mark of their rank.[90] The upper class prominently displayed their social status in art and literature.
Below the nobility were the priests, physicians, and engineers with specialized training in their
field. Slavery was known in ancient Egypt, but the extent and prevalence of its practice are unclear. [91]

Punishment in ancient Egypt.

Young Egyptian laborers treated by doctors after circumcision, as a part of a rite of passage to citizenship.

The ancient Egyptians viewed men and women, including people from all social classes except
slaves, as essentially equal under the law, and even the lowliest peasant was entitled to petition
the vizier and his court for redress.[92] Although, slaves were mostly used as indentured servants.
They were able to buy and sell, or work their way to freedom or nobility, and usually were treated
by doctors in the workplace.[93] Both men and women had the right to own and sell property, make
contracts, marry and divorce, receive inheritance, and pursue legal disputes in court. Married
couples could own property jointly and protect themselves from divorce by agreeing to marriage
contracts, which stipulated the financial obligations of the husband to his wife and children should
the marriage end. Compared with their counterparts in ancient Greece, Rome, and even more
modern places around the world, ancient Egyptian women had a greater range of personal choices
and opportunities for achievement. Women such as Hatshepsut and Cleopatra VI even became
pharaohs, while others wielded power as Divine Wives of Amun. Despite these freedoms, ancient
Egyptian women did not often take part in official roles in the administration, served only secondary
roles in the temples, and were not as likely to be as educated as men.[92]
Scribes were elite and well educated. They assessed taxes, kept records, and were responsible for administration.

Legal system
The head of the legal system was officially the pharaoh, who was responsible for enacting laws,
delivering justice, and maintaining law and order, a concept the ancient Egyptians referred to
as Ma'at.[83] Although no legal codes from ancient Egypt survive, court documents show that Egyptian
law was based on a common-sense view of right and wrong that emphasized reaching agreements
and resolving conflicts rather than strictly adhering to a complicated set of statutes. [92] Local councils
of elders, known as Kenbet in the New Kingdom, were responsible for ruling in court cases involving
small claims and minor disputes.[83] More serious cases involving murder, major land transactions,
and tomb robbery were referred to the Great Kenbet, over which the vizier or pharaoh presided.
Plaintiffs and defendants were expected to represent themselves and were required to swear an
oath that they had told the truth. In some cases, the state took on both the role of prosecutor and
judge, and it could torture the accused with beatings to obtain a confession and the names of any
co-conspirators. Whether the charges were trivial or serious, court scribes documented the
complaint, testimony, and verdict of the case for future reference.[94]

Punishment for minor crimes involved either imposition of fines, beatings, facial mutilation, or exile,
depending on the severity of the offense. Serious crimes such as murder and tomb robbery were
punished by execution, carried out by decapitation, drowning, or impaling the criminal on a stake.
Punishment could also be extended to the criminal's family. [83] Beginning in the New
Kingdom, oracles played a major role in the legal system, dispensing justice in both civil and criminal
cases. The procedure was to ask the god a "yes" or "no" question concerning the right or wrong of
an issue. The god, carried by a number of priests, rendered judgment by choosing one or the other,
moving forward or backward, or pointing to one of the answers written on a piece of papyrus or
an ostracon.[95]

Agriculture
See also: Ancient Egyptian agriculture, Ancient Egyptian cuisine and Gardens of ancient Egypt
A tomb relief depicts workers plowing the fields, harvesting the crops, and threshing the grain under the direction of
an overseer, painting in the tomb of Nakht.

Measuring and recording the harvest is shown in a wall painting in the tomb of Menna, at Thebes, Egypt (Eighteenth
dynasty).

A combination of favorable geographical features contributed to the success of ancient Egyptian

culture, the most important of which was the rich fertile soil resulting from annual inundations of the
Nile River. The ancient Egyptians were thus able to produce an abundance of food, allowing the
population to devote more time and resources to cultural, technological, and artistic pursuits. Land
management was crucial in ancient Egypt because taxes were assessed based on the amount of
land a person owned.[96]

Farming in Egypt was dependent on the cycle of the Nile River. The Egyptians recognized three
seasons:Akhet (flooding), Peret (planting), and Shemu (harvesting). The flooding season lasted from
June to September, depositing on the river's banks a layer of mineral-rich silt ideal for growing crops.
After the floodwaters had receded, the growing season lasted from October to February. Farmers
plowed and planted seeds in the fields, which were irrigated with ditches and canals. Egypt received
little rainfall, so farmers relied on the Nile to water their crops.[97] From March to May, farmers
used sickles to harvest their crops, which were then threshed with aflail to separate the straw from
the grain. Winnowing removed the chaff from the grain, and the grain was then ground into flour,
brewed to make beer, or stored for later use.[98]

The ancient Egyptians cultivated emmer and barley, and several other cereal grains, all of which
were used to make the two main food staples of bread and beer.[99] Flax plants, uprooted before they
started flowering, were grown for the fibers of their stems. These fibers were split along their length
and spun into thread, which was used to weave sheets of linen and to make
clothing. Papyrus growing on the banks of the Nile River was used to make paper. Vegetables and
fruits were grown in garden plots, close to habitations and on higher ground, and had to be watered
by hand. Vegetables included leeks, garlic, melons, squashes, pulses, lettuce, and other crops, in
addition to grapes that were made into wine.[100]

Sennedjem plows his fields with a pair of oxen, used as beasts of burden and a source of food.

Animals

The Egyptians believed that a balanced relationship between people and animals was an essential
element of the cosmic order; thus humans, animals and plants were believed to be members of a
single whole.[101] Animals, both domesticated and wild, were therefore a critical source of spirituality,
companionship, and sustenance to the ancient Egyptians. Cattle were the most important livestock;
the administration collected taxes on livestock in regular censuses, and the size of a herd reflected
the prestige and importance of the estate or temple that owned them. In addition to cattle, the
ancient Egyptians kept sheep, goats, and pigs. Poultry such as ducks, geese, and pigeons were
captured in nets and bred on farms, where they were force-fed with dough to fatten them. [102] The Nile
provided a plentiful source of fish. Bees were also domesticated from at least the Old Kingdom, and
they provided both honey and wax.[103]

The ancient Egyptians used donkeys and oxen as beasts of burden, and they were responsible for
plowing the fields and trampling seed into the soil. The slaughter of a fattened ox was also a central
part of an offering ritual.[102] Horses were introduced by the Hyksos in the Second Intermediate
Period, and the camel, although known from the New Kingdom, was not used as a beast of burden
until the Late Period. There is also evidence to suggest thatelephants were briefly utilized in the Late
Period, but largely abandoned due to lack of grazing land.[102] Dogs, cats and monkeys were common
family pets, while more exotic pets imported from the heart of Africa, such as lions, were reserved for
royalty. Herodotus observed that the Egyptians were the only people to keep their animals with them
in their houses.[101] During the Predynastic and Late periods, the worship of the gods in their animal
form was extremely popular, such as the cat goddess Bastet and the ibis god Thoth, and these
animals were bred in large numbers on farms for the purpose of ritual sacrifice. [104]

Natural resources
Further information: Mining industry of Egypt

Egypt is rich in building and decorative stone, copper and lead ores, gold, and semiprecious stones.
These natural resources allowed the ancient Egyptians to build monuments, sculpt statues, make
tools, and fashion jewelry.[105] Embalmers used salts from the Wadi Natrun for mummification, which
also provided the gypsum needed to make plaster.[106]Ore-bearing rock formations were found in
distant, inhospitable wadis in the eastern desert and the Sinai, requiring large, state-controlled
expeditions to obtain natural resources found there. There were extensive gold mines in Nubia, and
one of the first maps known is of a gold mine in this region. The Wadi Hammamat was a notable
source of granite,greywacke, and gold. Flint was the first mineral collected and used to make tools,
and flint handaxes are the earliest pieces of evidence of habitation in the Nile valley. Nodules of the
mineral were carefully flaked to make blades and arrowheads of moderate hardness and durability
even after copper was adopted for this purpose. [107] Ancient Egyptians were among the first to use
minerals such as sulfur as cosmetic substances.[108]

The Egyptians worked deposits of the lead ore galena at Gebel Rosas to make net sinkers, plumb
bobs, and small figurines. Copper was the most important metal for toolmaking in ancient Egypt and
was smelted in furnaces from malachite ore mined in the Sinai.[109] Workers collected gold by washing
the nuggets out of sediment in alluvial deposits, or by the more labor-intensive process of grinding
and washing gold-bearing quartzite. Iron deposits found in upper Egypt were utilized in the Late
Period.[110] High-quality building stones were abundant in Egypt; the ancient Egyptians quarried
limestone all along the Nile valley, granite from Aswan, and basalt and sandstone from the wadis of
the eastern desert. Deposits of decorative stones such as porphyry, greywacke, alabaster,
and carnelian dotted the eastern desert and were collected even before the First Dynasty. In the
Ptolemaic and Roman Periods, miners worked deposits of emeralds in Wadi Sikait and amethyst in
Wadi el-Hudi.[111]

Trade
Main article: Ancient Egyptian trade

Hatshepsut's trading expedition to the Land of Punt.

The ancient Egyptians engaged in trade with their foreign neighbors to obtain rare, exotic goods not
found in Egypt. In the Predynastic Period, they established trade with Nubia to obtain gold and
incense. They also established trade with Palestine, as evidenced by Palestinian-style oil jugs found
in the burials of the First Dynasty pharaohs.[112] An Egyptian colony stationed in
southern Canaan dates to slightly before the First Dynasty.[113] Narmer had Egyptian pottery produced
in Canaan and exported back to Egypt.[114]

By the Second Dynasty at latest, ancient Egyptian trade with Byblos yielded a critical source of
quality timber not found in Egypt. By the Fifth Dynasty, trade with Punt provided gold, aromatic
resins, ebony, ivory, and wild animals such as monkeys and baboons.[115] Egypt relied on trade
with Anatolia for essential quantities of tin as well as supplementary supplies of copper, both metals
being necessary for the manufacture of bronze. The ancient Egyptians prized the blue stone lapis
lazuli, which had to be imported from far-away Afghanistan. Egypt's Mediterranean trade partners
also included Greece and Crete, which provided, among other goods, supplies of olive oil.[116] In
exchange for its luxury imports and raw materials, Egypt mainly exported grain, gold, linen, and
papyrus, in addition to other finished goods including glass and stone objects. [117]

Language
Main article: Egyptian language

Historical development

r n kmt
'Egyptian language'
in hieroglyphs

The Egyptian language is a northern Afro-Asiatic language closely related to the Berber and Semitic
languages.[118] It has the second longest history of any language (after Sumerian), having been
written from c. 3200 BC to the Middle Ages and remaining as a spoken language for longer. The
phases of ancient Egyptian are Old Egyptian, Middle Egyptian (Classical Egyptian), Late
Egyptian, Demotic and Coptic.[119] Egyptian writings do not show dialect differences before Coptic, but
it was probably spoken in regional dialects around Memphis and later Thebes. [120]

Ancient Egyptian was a synthetic language, but it became more analytic later on. Late Egyptian
develops prefixal definite and indefinite articles, which replace the older inflectional suffixes. There is
a change from the older verb–subject–object word order to subject–verb–object.[121] The
Egyptian hieroglyphic, hieratic, and demotic scripts were eventually replaced by the more
phonetic Coptic alphabet. Coptic is still used in the liturgy of the Egyptian Orthodox Church, and
traces of it are found in modern Egyptian Arabic.[122]

Sounds and grammar

Ancient Egyptian has 25 consonants similar to those of other Afro-Asiatic languages. These
include pharyngeal and emphatic consonants, voiced and voiceless stops, voicelessfricatives and
voiced and voiceless affricates. It has three long and three short vowels, which expanded in Later
Egyptian to about nine.[123] The basic word in Egyptian, similar to Semitic and Berber, is a triliteral or
biliteral root of consonants and semiconsonants. Suffixes are added to form words. The verb
conjugation corresponds to the person. For example, the triconsonantal skeleton S-Ḏ-M is the
semantic core of the word 'hear'; its basic conjugation is sḏm, 'he hears'. If the subject is a noun,
suffixes are not added to the verb:[124] sḏm ḥmt, 'the woman hears'.

Adjectives are derived from nouns through a process that Egyptologists call nisbation because of its
similarity with Arabic.[125] The word order is PREDICATE–SUBJECT in verbal and adjectival sentences,
and SUBJECT–PREDICATE in nominal and adverbial sentences.[126] The subject can be moved to the
beginning of sentences if it is long and is followed by a resumptive pronoun. [127] Verbs and nouns are
negated by the particle n, but nn is used for adverbial and adjectival sentences. Stress falls on the
ultimate or penultimate syllable, which can be open (CV) or closed (CVC). [128]

Writing
Main articles: Egyptian hieroglyphs and Hieratic

The Rosetta stone (ca 196 BC) enabled linguists to begin the process of hieroglyph decipherment.[129]

Hieroglyphic writing dates from c. 3000 BC, and is composed of hundreds of symbols. A hieroglyph
can represent a word, a sound, or a silent determinative; and the same symbol can serve different
purposes in different contexts. Hieroglyphs were a formal script, used on stone monuments and in
tombs, that could be as detailed as individual works of art. In day-to-day writing, scribes used a
cursive form of writing, called hieratic, which was quicker and easier. While formal hieroglyphs may
be read in rows or columns in either direction (though typically written from right to left), hieratic was
always written from right to left, usually in horizontal rows. A new form of writing, Demotic, became
the prevalent writing style, and it is this form of writing—along with formal hieroglyphs—that
accompany the Greek text on the Rosetta Stone.[130]

Around the first century AD, the Coptic alphabet started to be used alongside the Demotic script.
Coptic is a modified Greek alphabet with the addition of some Demotic signs.[131] Although formal
hieroglyphs were used in a ceremonial role until the fourth century, towards the end only a small
handful of priests could still read them. As the traditional religious establishments were disbanded,
knowledge of hieroglyphic writing was mostly lost. Attempts to decipher them date to the
Byzantine[132] and Islamic periods in Egypt,[133] but only in 1822, after the discovery of the Rosetta
stone and years of research by Thomas Young and Jean-François Champollion, were hieroglyphs
almost fully deciphered.[134]

Literature
Main article: Ancient Egyptian literature

The Edwin Smith surgical papyrus (c. 16th century BC) describes anatomy and medical treatments and is written in
hieratic.

Writing first appeared in association with kingship on labels and tags for items found in royal tombs.
It was primarily an occupation of the scribes, who worked out of the Per Ankh institution or the
House of Life. The latter comprised offices, libraries (called House of Books), laboratories and
observatories.[135] Some of the best-known pieces of ancient Egyptian literature, such as
the Pyramid and Coffin Texts, were written in Classical Egyptian, which continued to be the language
of writing until about 1300 BC. Later Egyptian was spoken from the New Kingdom onward and is
represented in Ramesside administrative documents, love poetry and tales, as well as in Demotic
and Coptic texts. During this period, the tradition of writing had evolved into the tomb autobiography,
such as those of Harkhuf and Weni. The genre known as Sebayt ("instructions") was developed to
communicate teachings and guidance from famous nobles; the Ipuwer papyrus, a poem of
lamentations describing natural disasters and social upheaval, is a famous example.

The Story of Sinuhe, written in Middle Egyptian, might be the classic of Egyptian literature.[136] Also
written at this time was the Westcar Papyrus, a set of stories told to Khufu by his sons relating the
marvels performed by priests.[137] The Instruction of Amenemope is considered a masterpiece of near-
eastern literature.[138] Towards the end of the New Kingdom, the vernacular language was more often
employed to write popular pieces like theStory of Wenamun and the Instruction of Any. The former
tells the story of a noble who is robbed on his way to buy cedar from Lebanon and of his struggle to
return to Egypt. From about 700 BC, narrative stories and instructions, such as the popular
Instructions of Onchsheshonqy, as well as personal and business documents were written in
the demotic script and phase of Egyptian. Many stories written in demotic during the Graeco-
Roman period were set in previous historical eras, when Egypt was an independent nation ruled by
great pharaohs such as Ramesses II.[139]

Culture
Daily life

Ostraca of hunting a lion with a spear, aided by a dog.

Statues depicting lower-class ancient Egyptian occupations.

A painted depiction of Senet(in the tomb of Queen Nefertari, Valley of the Queens, Thebes, Egypt), one ofthe world's
earliest known board games.

Most ancient Egyptians were farmers tied to the land. Their dwellings were restricted to immediate
family members, and were constructed ofmud-brick designed to remain cool in the heat of the day.
Each home had a kitchen with an open roof, which contained a grindstone for milling grain and a
small oven for baking the bread.[140] Walls were painted white and could be covered with dyed linen
wall hangings. Floors were covered with reed mats, while wooden stools, beds raised from the floor
and individual tables comprised the furniture.[141]

The ancient Egyptians placed a great value on hygiene and appearance. Most bathed in the Nile
and used a pasty soap made from animal fat and chalk. Men shaved their entire bodies for
cleanliness; perfumes and aromatic ointments covered bad odors and soothed skin. [142]Clothing was
made from simple linen sheets that were bleached white, and both men and women of the upper
classes wore wigs, jewelry, and cosmetics. Children went without clothing until maturity, at about age
12, and at this age males were circumcised and had their heads shaved. Mothers were responsible
for taking care of the children, while the father provided the family's income.[143]

The ancient Egyptians maintained a rich cultural heritage complete with feasts and festivals accompanied by music
and dance.

Music and dance were popular entertainments for those who could afford them. Early instruments
included flutes and harps, while instruments similar to trumpets, oboes, and pipes developed later
and became popular. In the New Kingdom, the Egyptians played on bells, cymbals, tambourines,
drums, and imported lutes and lyres from Asia.[144] The sistrum was a rattle-like musical
instrument that was especially important in religious ceremonies.

The ancient Egyptians enjoyed a variety of leisure activities, including games and music. Senet, a
board game where pieces moved according to random chance, was particularly popular from the
earliest times; another similar game was mehen, which had a circular gaming board. Juggling
and ball games were popular with children, and wrestling is also documented in a tomb at Beni
Hasan.[145] The wealthy members of ancient Egyptian society enjoyed hunting and boating as well.

The excavation of the workers' village of Deir el-Madinah has resulted in one of the most thoroughly
documented accounts of community life in the ancient world that spans almost four hundred years.
There is no comparable site in which the organisation, social interactions, working and living
conditions of a community were studied in such detail.[146]

Cuisine
Main article: Ancient Egyptian cuisine

Egyptian cuisine remained remarkably stable over time; indeed, the cuisine of modern Egypt retains
some striking similarities to the cuisine of the ancients. The staple diet consisted of bread and beer,
supplemented with vegetables such as onions and garlic, and fruit such as dates and figs. Wine and
meat were enjoyed by all on feast days while the upper classes indulged on a more regular basis.
Fish, meat, and fowl could be salted or dried, and could be cooked in stews or roasted on a grill. [147]
Karnak temple's hypostyle halls are constructed with rows of thick columns supporting the roof beams.

Architecture
Main article: Ancient Egyptian architecture

The well preserved Temple of Horus at Edfu is an exemplar of Egyptian architecture.

The architecture of ancient Egypt includes some of the most famous structures in the world:
the Great Pyramids of Giza and the temples at Thebes. Building projects were organized and funded
by the state for religious and commemorative purposes, but also to reinforce the power of the
pharaoh. The ancient Egyptians were skilled builders; using simple but effective tools and sighting
instruments, architects could build large stone structures with accuracy and precision.[148]

The domestic dwellings of elite and ordinary Egyptians alike were constructed from perishable
materials such as mud bricks and wood, and have not survived. Peasants lived in simple homes,
while the palaces of the elite were more elaborate structures. A few surviving New Kingdom palaces,
such as those in Malkataand Amarna, show richly decorated walls and floors with scenes of people,
birds, water pools, deities and geometric designs.[149] Important structures such as temples and tombs
that were intended to last forever were constructed of stone instead of bricks. The architectural
elements used in the world's first large-scale stone building, Djoser's mortuary complex, include post
and lintel supports in the papyrus and lotus motif.
The earliest preserved ancient Egyptian temples, such as those at Giza, consist of single, enclosed
halls with roof slabs supported by columns. In the New Kingdom, architects added the pylon, the
open courtyard, and the enclosed hypostyle hall to the front of the temple's sanctuary, a style that
was standard until the Graeco-Roman period.[150] The earliest and most popular tomb architecture in
the Old Kingdom was the mastaba, a flat-roofed rectangular structure of mudbrick or stone built over
an underground burial chamber. The step pyramid of Djoser is a series of stone mastabas stacked
on top of each other. Pyramids were built during the Old and Middle Kingdoms, but most later rulers
abandoned them in favor of less conspicuous rock-cut tombs.[151] The Twenty-fifth dynasty was a
notable exception, as all Twenty-fifth dynasty pharaohs constructed pyramids. [61][62][63]

Art

The Bust of Nefertiti, by the sculptor Thutmose, is one of the most famous masterpieces of ancient Egyptian art.

Main article: Art of ancient Egypt

The ancient Egyptians produced art to serve functional purposes. For over 3500 years, artists
adhered to artistic forms and iconography that were developed during the Old Kingdom, following a
strict set of principles that resisted foreign influence and internal change. [152] These artistic standards
—simple lines, shapes, and flat areas of color combined with the characteristic flat projection of
figures with no indication of spatial depth—created a sense of order and balance within a
composition. Images and text were intimately interwoven on tomb and temple walls, coffins, stelae,
and even statues. The Narmer Palette, for example, displays figures that can also be read as
hieroglyphs.[153] Because of the rigid rules that governed its highly stylized and symbolic appearance,
ancient Egyptian art served its political and religious purposes with precision and clarity. [154]

Ancient Egyptian artisans used stone to carve statues and fine reliefs, but used wood as a cheap
and easily carved substitute. Paints were obtained from minerals such as iron ores (red and yellow
ochres), copper ores (blue and green), soot or charcoal (black), and limestone (white). Paints could
be mixed with gum arabic as a binder and pressed into cakes, which could be moistened with water
when needed.[155]

Hathor-Menkaure-Bat triadof the Fourth Dynasty – the deities flank the pharaoh and provide the authority to rule –
Cairo Museum

Pharaohs used reliefs to record victories in battle, royal decrees, and religious scenes. Common
citizens had access to pieces of funerary art, such as shabti statues and books of the dead, which
they believed would protect them in the afterlife. [156] During the Middle Kingdom, wooden or clay
models depicting scenes from everyday life became popular additions to the tomb. In an attempt to
duplicate the activities of the living in the afterlife, these models show laborers, houses, boats, and
even military formations that are scale representations of the ideal ancient Egyptian afterlife. [157]

Despite the homogeneity of ancient Egyptian art, the styles of particular times and places sometimes
reflected changing cultural or political attitudes. After the invasion of the Hyksos in the Second
Intermediate Period, Minoan-style frescoes were found in Avaris.[158] The most striking example of a
politically driven change in artistic forms comes from the Amarna period, where figures were radically
altered to conform to Akhenaten's revolutionary religious ideas.[159] This style, known as Amarna art,
was quickly and thoroughly erased after Akhenaten's death and replaced by the traditional forms. [160]

Religious beliefs
Main article: Ancient Egyptian religion
The Book of the Dead was a guide to the deceased's journey in the afterlife.

Beliefs in the divine and in the afterlife were ingrained in ancient Egyptian civilization from its
inception; pharaonic rule was based on the divine right of kings. The Egyptian pantheon was
populated by gods who had supernatural powers and were called on for help or protection. However,
the gods were not always viewed as benevolent, and Egyptians believed they had to be appeased
with offerings and prayers. The structure of this pantheon changed continually as new deities were
promoted in the hierarchy, but priests made no effort to organize the diverse and sometimes
conflictingmyths and stories into a coherent system.[161] These various conceptions of divinity were
not considered contradictory but rather layers in the multiple facets of reality. [162]

The Ka statue provided a physical place for the Ka to manifest.

Gods were worshiped in cult temples administered by priests acting on the king's behalf. At the
center of the temple was the cult statue in a shrine. Temples were not places of public worship or
congregation, and only on select feast days and celebrations was a shrine carrying the statue of the
god brought out for public worship. Normally, the god's domain was sealed off from the outside world
and was only accessible to temple officials. Common citizens could worship private statues in their
homes, and amulets offered protection against the forces of chaos.[163] After the New Kingdom, the
pharaoh's role as a spiritual intermediary was de-emphasized as religious customs shifted to direct
worship of the gods. As a result, priests developed a system of oracles to communicate the will of
the gods directly to the people.[164]

The Egyptians believed that every human being was composed of physical and spiritual parts
oraspects. In addition to the body, each person had a šwt (shadow), a ba (personality or soul),
aka (life-force), and a name.[165] The heart, rather than the brain, was considered the seat of thoughts
and emotions. After death, the spiritual aspects were released from the body and could move at will,
but they required the physical remains (or a substitute, such as a statue) as a permanent home. The
ultimate goal of the deceased was to rejoin his ka and ba and become one of the "blessed dead",
living on as an akh, or "effective one". For this to happen, the deceased had to be judged worthy in a
trial, in which the heart was weighed against a "feather of truth". If deemed worthy, the deceased
could continue their existence on earth in spiritual form. [166]

Pharaohs' tombs were provided with vast quantities of wealth, such as this golden mask from the mummy
ofTutankhamun.

Burial customs
Main article: Ancient Egyptian burial customs

The ancient Egyptians maintained an elaborate set of burial customs that they believed were
necessary to ensure immortality after death. These customs involved preserving the body
by mummification, performing burial ceremonies, and interring with the body goods the deceased
would use in the afterlife.[156] Before the Old Kingdom, bodies buried in desert pits were naturally
preserved by desiccation. The arid, desert conditions were a boon throughout the history of ancient
Egypt for burials of the poor, who could not afford the elaborate burial preparations available to the
elite. Wealthier Egyptians began to bury their dead in stone tombs and use artificial mummification,
which involved removing the internal organs, wrapping the body in linen, and burying it in a
rectangular stone sarcophagus or wooden coffin. Beginning in the Fourth Dynasty, some parts were
preserved separately in canopic jars.[167]

Anubis was the ancient Egyptian god associated with mummification and burial rituals; here, he attends to a mummy.
By the New Kingdom, the ancient Egyptians had perfected the art of mummification; the best
technique took 70 days and involved removing the internal organs, removing the brain through the
nose, and desiccating the body in a mixture of salts called natron. The body was then wrapped in
linen with protective amulets inserted between layers and placed in a decorated anthropoid coffin.
Mummies of the Late Period were also placed in painted cartonnage mummy cases. Actual
preservation practices declined during the Ptolemaic and Roman eras, while greater emphasis was
placed on the outer appearance of the mummy, which was decorated.[168]

Wealthy Egyptians were buried with larger quantities of luxury items, but all burials, regardless of
social status, included goods for the deceased. Beginning in the New Kingdom, books of the
dead were included in the grave, along with shabti statues that were believed to perform manual
labor for them in the afterlife.[169] Rituals in which the deceased was magically re-animated
accompanied burials. After burial, living relatives were expected to occasionally bring food to the
tomb and recite prayers on behalf of the deceased. [170]

Military
Main article: Military of ancient Egypt

An Egyptian chariot.

The ancient Egyptian military was responsible for defending Egypt against foreign invasion, and for
maintaining Egypt's domination in theancient Near East. The military protected mining expeditions to
the Sinai during the Old Kingdom and fought civil wars during the First and Second Intermediate
Periods. The military was responsible for maintaining fortifications along important trade routes, such
as those found at the city of Buhen on the way to Nubia. Forts also were constructed to serve as
military bases, such as the fortress at Sile, which was a base of operations for expeditions to
the Levant. In the New Kingdom, a series of pharaohs used the standing Egyptian army to attack
and conquer Kush and parts of the Levant.[171]

Typical military equipment included bows and arrows, spears, and round-topped shields made by
stretching animal skin over a wooden frame. In the New Kingdom, the military began
using chariots that had earlier been introduced by the Hyksos invaders. Weapons and armor
continued to improve after the adoption of bronze: shields were now made from solid wood with a
bronze buckle, spears were tipped with a bronze point, and the Khopesh was adopted from Asiatic
soldiers.[172] The pharaoh was usually depicted in art and literature riding at the head of the army, it
has been suggested that at least a few pharaohs, such as Seqenenre Tao II and his sons, did do so.
[173]
although it has also been argued that "kings of this period did not personally act as frontline war
leaders, fighting alongside their troops."[174] Soldiers were recruited from the general population, but
during, and especially after, the New Kingdom, mercenaries from Nubia, Kush, and Libya were hired
to fight for Egypt.[175]

Technology, medicine, and mathematics

Technology
Main article: Ancient Egyptian technology

In technology, medicine and mathematics, ancient Egypt achieved a relatively high standard of
productivity and sophistication. Traditional empiricism, as evidenced by the Edwin Smith and Ebers
papyri (c. 1600 BC), is first credited to Egypt. The Egyptians created their own alphabet and decimal
system.

Glassmaking was a highly developed art.

Faience and glass

Even before the Old Kingdom, the ancient Egyptians had developed a glassy material known
as faience, which they treated as a type of artificial semi-precious stone. Faience is a non-clay
ceramic made of silica, small amounts of lime and soda, and a colorant, typically copper.[176] The
material was used to make beads, tiles, figurines, and small wares. Several methods can be used to
create faience, but typically production involved application of the powdered materials in the form of
a paste over a clay core, which was then fired. By a related technique, the ancient Egyptians
produced a pigment known as Egyptian Blue, also called blue frit, which is produced by fusing
(or sintering) silica, copper, lime, and an alkali such as natron. The product can be ground up and
used as a pigment.[177]
The ancient Egyptians could fabricate a wide variety of objects from glass with great skill, but it is not
clear whether they developed the process independently.[178] It is also unclear whether they made
their own raw glass or merely imported pre-made ingots, which they melted and finished. However,
they did have technical expertise in making objects, as well as adding trace elements to control the
color of the finished glass. A range of colors could be produced, including yellow, red, green, blue,
purple, and white, and the glass could be made either transparent or opaque. [179]

Medicine
Main article: Ancient Egyptian medicine

Ancient Egyptian medical instruments depicted in a Ptolemaic period inscription on the temple at Kom Ombo.

The medical problems of the ancient Egyptians stemmed directly from their environment. Living and
working close to the Nile brought hazards frommalaria and debilitating schistosomiasis parasites,
which caused liver and intestinal damage. Dangerous wildlife such as crocodiles and hippos were
also a common threat. The lifelong labors of farming and building put stress on the spine and joints,
and traumatic injuries from construction and warfare all took a significant toll on the body. The grit
and sand from stone-ground flour abraded teeth, leaving them susceptible
to abscesses(though caries were rare).[180]

The diets of the wealthy were rich in sugars, which promoted periodontal disease.[181] Despite the
flattering physiques portrayed on tomb walls, the overweight mummies of many of the upper class
show the effects of a life of overindulgence.[182] Adult life expectancy was about 35 for men and 30 for
women, but reaching adulthood was difficult as about one-third of the population died in infancy. [183]

Ancient Egyptian physicians were renowned in the ancient Near East for their healing skills, and
some, such as Imhotep, remained famous long after their deaths.[184] Herodotus remarked that there
was a high degree of specialization among Egyptian physicians, with some treating only the head or
the stomach, while others were eye-doctors and dentists. [185] Training of physicians took place at
the Per Ankh or "House of Life" institution, most notably those headquartered in Per-Bastet during
the New Kingdom and at Abydos and Saïs in the Late period. Medical papyri show empirical
knowledge of anatomy, injuries, and practical treatments.[186]

Wounds were treated by bandaging with raw meat, white linen, sutures, nets, pads, and swabs
soaked with honey to prevent infection,[187] whileopium thyme and belladona were used to relieve
pain. The earliest records of burn treatment describe burn dressings that use the milk from mothers
of male babies. Prayers were made to the goddess Isis. Moldy bread, honey and copper salts were
also used to prevent infection from dirt in burns.[188] Garlic and onions were used regularly to promote
good health and were thought to relieve asthma symptoms. Ancient Egyptian surgeons stitched
wounds, set broken bones, and amputated diseased limbs, but they recognized that some injuries
were so serious that they could only make the patient comfortable until death occurred. [189]

Shipbuilding

Seagoing ship from Hateshepsut's Deir el-Bahari temple relief of a Punt Expedition

Documented extent of Ancient Egyptian geographic knowledge

Early Egyptians knew how to assemble planks of wood into a ship hull and had mastered advanced
forms of shipbuilding as early as 3000 BC. The Archaeological Institute of America reports that some
of the oldest ships yet unearthed are known as the Abydos boats.[6]These are a group of 14
discovered ships in Abydos that were constructed of wooden planks "sewn" together. Discovered by
Egyptologist David O'Connor of New York University,[190] woven straps were found to have been used
to lash the planks together,[6] and reeds or grassstuffed between the planks helped to seal the
seams.[6] Because the ships are all buried together and near a mortuary belonging to Pharaoh
Khasekhemwy, originally they were all thought to have belonged to him, but one of the 14 ships
dates to 3000 BC, and the associated pottery jars buried with the vessels also suggest earlier dating.
The ship dating to 3000 BC was 75 feet (23 m) long and is now thought to perhaps have belonged to
an earlier pharaoh. According to professor O'Connor, the 5,000-year-old ship may have even
belonged to Pharaoh Aha.[190]

Early Egyptians also knew how to assemble planks of wood with treenails to fasten them together,
using pitch for caulking the seams. The "Khufu ship", a 43.6-meter vessel sealed into a pit in
the Giza pyramid complex at the foot of the Great Pyramid of Giza in the Fourth Dynastyaround
2500 BC, is a full-size surviving example that may have filled the symbolic function of a solar barque.
Early Egyptians also knew how to fasten the planks of this ship together with mortise and
tenon joints.[6]

Large seagoing ships are known to have been heavily used by the Egyptians in their trade with the
city states of the eastern Mediterranean, especially Byblos (on the coast of modern day Lebanon),
and in several expeditions down the Red Sea to the Land of Punt.[191] In fact one of the earliest
Egyptian words for a seagoing ship is a "Byblos Ship" which originally defined a class of Egyptian
seagoing ships used on the Byblos run;however, by the end of the Old Kingdom, the term had come
to include large seagoing ships, whatever their destination. [192]

In 2011 archaeologists from Italy, the United States, and Egypt excavating a dried-up lagoon known
as Mersa Gawasis have unearthed traces of an ancient harbor that once launched early voyages
like Hatshepsut’s Punt expedition onto the open ocean.[193] Some of the site’s most evocative
evidence for the ancient Egyptians’ seafaring prowess include large ship timbers and hundreds of
feet of ropes, made from papyrus, coiled in huge bundles.[193] And in 2013 a team of Franco-Egyptian
archaeologists discovered what is believed to be the world's oldest port, dating back about 4500
years, from the time of King Cheops on the Red Sea coast near Wadi el-Jarf (about 110 miles south
of Suez) [194]

Mathematics
Main article: Egyptian mathematics

Astronomical chart in Senemut's tomb, 18th dynasty[195]

The earliest attested examples of mathematical calculations date to the predynastic Naqada period,
and show a fully developed numeral system.[196] The importance of mathematics to an educated
Egyptian is suggested by a New Kingdom fictional letter in which the writer proposes a scholarly
competition between himself and another scribe regarding everyday calculation tasks such as
accounting of land, labor, and grain.[197] Texts such as the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus and
the Moscow Mathematical Papyrus show that the ancient Egyptians could perform the four basic
mathematical operations—addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division—use fractions, compute
the volumes of boxes and pyramids, and calculate the surface areas of rectangles, triangles, and
circles. They understood basic concepts of algebra andgeometry, and could solve simple sets
of simultaneous equations.[198]

2
⁄3
in hieroglyphs

Mathematical notation was decimal, and based on hieroglyphic signs for each power of ten up to one
million. Each of these could be written as many times as necessary to add up to the desired number;
so to write the number eighty or eight hundred, the symbol for ten or one hundred was written eight
times respectively.[199] Because their methods of calculation could not handle most fractions with a
numerator greater than one, they had to write fractions as the sum of several fractions. For example,
they resolved the fraction two-fifths into the sum of one-third + one-fifteenth. Standard tables of
values facilitated this.[200] Some common fractions, however, were written with a special glyph—the
equivalent of the modern two-thirds is shown on the right.[201]

Ancient Egyptian mathematicians had a grasp of the principles underlying the Pythagorean theorem,
knowing, for example, that a triangle had a right angle opposite the hypotenuse when its sides were
in a 3–4–5 ratio.[202] They were able to estimate the area of a circle by subtracting one-ninth from its
diameter and squaring the result:
Area ≈ [(8⁄9)D]2 = (256⁄81)r 2 ≈ 3.16r 2,

a reasonable approximation of the formula πr 2.[202][203]

The golden ratio seems to be reflected in many Egyptian constructions, including the pyramids,
but its use may have been an unintended consequence of the ancient Egyptian practice of
combining the use of knotted ropes with an intuitive sense of proportion and harmony. [204]

Legacy
See also: Tourism in Egypt
 Tourists riding a camel in front of Giza pyramids

Frontispiece of Description de l'Égypte, published in 38 volumes between 1809 and 1829.

The culture and monuments of ancient Egypt have left a lasting legacy on the world. The cult of
the goddess Isis, for example, became popular in the Roman Empire, as obelisks and other
relics were transported back to Rome.[205] The Romans also imported building materials from
Egypt to erect Egyptian style structures. Early historians such asHerodotus, Strabo,
and Diodorus Siculus studied and wrote about the land, which Romans came to view as a place
of mystery.[206]

During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Egyptian pagan culture was in decline after the
rise of Christianity and later Islam, but interest in Egyptian antiquity continued in the writings of
medieval scholars such as Dhul-Nun al-Misriand al-Maqrizi.[207] In the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, European travelers and tourists brought back antiquities and wrote stories of their
journeys, leading to a wave of Egyptomania across Europe. This renewed interest sent
collectors to Egypt, who took, purchased, or were given many important antiquities. [208]

Although the European colonial occupation of Egypt destroyed a significant portion of the
country's historical legacy, some foreigners had more positive results. Napoleon, for example,
arranged the first studies in Egyptology when he brought some 150 scientists and artists to
study and document Egypt's natural history, which was published in the Description de l'Ėgypte.
[209]
 In the 20th century AD, the Egyptian Government and archaeologists alike recognized the
importance of cultural respect and integrity in excavations. The Supreme Council of
Antiquities now approves and oversees all excavations, which are aimed at finding information
rather than treasure. The council also supervises museums and monument reconstruction
programs designed to preserve the historical legacy of Egypt.

Middle Ages
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about medieval Europe. For a global history of the period between the 5th and 15th
centuries, see Postclassical Era. For other uses, see Middle Ages (disambiguation).

The Cross of Mathilde, a crux gemmata made forMathilde, Abbess of Essen (973–1011), who is shown kneeling
before the Virgin and Child in the enamel plaque. The body of Christ is slightly later. Probably made
inCologne or Essen, the cross demonstrates several medieval techniques: cast figurative sculpture, filigree,
enamelling, gem polishing and setting, and the reuse of Classical cameos and engraved gems.

In European history, the Middle Ages, or Medieval period, lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. It
began with thecollapse of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the Renaissance and
the Age of Discovery. The Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of
Western history: Antiquity, Medieval period, and Modern period. The Medieval period is itself
subdivided into the Early, the High, and the Late Middle Ages.
Depopulation, deurbanisation, invasion, and movement of peoples, which had begun in Late
Antiquity, continued in the Early Middle Ages. The barbarian invaders, including various Germanic
peoples, formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the 7th
century, North Africa and the Middle East, once part of the Eastern Roman Empire came under the
rule of the Caliphate, an Islamic empire, after conquest by Muhammad's successors. Although there
were substantial changes in society and political structures, the break with Antiquity was not
complete. The still-sizeable Byzantine Empire survived in the east and remained a major power. The
empire's law code, the Code of Justinian, was rediscovered in Northern Italy in 1070 and became
widely admired later in the Middle Ages. In the West, most kingdoms incorporated the few extant
Roman institutions. Monasteries were founded as campaigns to Christianise pagan
Europe continued. The Franks, under the Carolingian dynasty, briefly established an empire
covering much of Western Europe; the Carolingian Empire in the later 8th and early 9th century,
when it succumbed to the pressures of internal civil wars combined with external invasions—
Vikings from the north, Magyars from the east, and Saracens from the south.
During the High Middle Ages, which began after AD 1000, the population of Europe increased
greatly as technological and agricultural innovations allowed trade to flourish and the Medieval Warm
Period climate change allowed crop yields to increase. Manorialism, the organisation of peasants
into villages that owed rent and labour services to the nobles, andfeudalism, the political structure
whereby knights and lower-status nobles owed military service to their overlords in return for the
right to rent from lands and manors, were two of the ways society was organised in the High Middle
Ages. TheCrusades, first preached in 1095, were military attempts by Western European Christians
to regain control of the Middle Eastern Holy Land from the Muslims. Kings became the heads of
centralised nation states, reducing crime and violence but making the ideal of a
unified Christendom more distant. Intellectual life was marked by scholasticism, a philosophy that
emphasised joining faith to reason, and by the founding of universities. The theology of Thomas
Aquinas, the paintings ofGiotto, the poetry of Dante and Chaucer, the travels of Marco Polo, and the
architecture of Gothic cathedrals such asChartres are among the outstanding achievements of this
period.
The Late Middle Ages was marked by difficulties and calamities including famine, plague, and war,
which much diminished the population of Western Europe; between 1347 and 1350, the Black
Death killed about a third of Europeans. Controversy, heresy, and schism within
the Church paralleled the interstate conflict, civil strife, and peasant revolts that occurred in the
kingdoms. Cultural and technological developments transformed European society, concluding the
Late Middle Ages and beginning the early modern period.

Etymology and periodisation[edit]

See also: Periodisation
The Middle Ages is one of the three major periods in the most enduring scheme for
analysing European history: classical civilisation, or Antiquity; the Middle Ages; and the Modern
Period.[1]

Medieval writers divided history into periods such as the "Six Ages" or the "Four Empires", and
considered their time to be the last before the end of the world. [2] When referring to their own times,
they spoke of them as being "modern".[3] In the 1330s, the humanist and poet Petrarch referred to
pre-Christian times as antiqua (or "ancient") and to the Christian period as nova (or "new").
[4]
Leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodisation in his History of the Florentine
People (1442).[5] Bruni and later historians argued that Italy had recovered since Petrarch's time, and
therefore added a third period to Petrarch's two. The "Middle Ages" first appears in Latin in 1469
as media tempestas or "middle season".[6] In early usage, there were many variants,
including medium aevum, or "middle age", first recorded in 1604,[7] and media saecula, or "middle
ages", first recorded in 1625.[8] The alternative term "medieval" (or occasionally "mediaeval") derives
from medium aevum.[9] Tripartite periodisation became standard after the German historian Christoph
Cellarius (1638–1707) divided history into three periods: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern. [8]

The most commonly given starting point for the Middle Ages is 476,[10] first used by Bruni.[5][A] For
Europe as a whole, 1500 is often considered to be the end of the Middle Ages, [12]but there is no
universally agreed upon end date. Depending on the context, events such as Christopher
Columbus's first voyage to the Americas in 1492, the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks in
1453, or the Protestant Reformation in 1517 are sometimes used.[13] English historians often use
the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 to mark the end of the period.[14] For Spain, dates commonly
used are the death of King Ferdinand II in 1516, the death of Queen Isabella I of Castile in 1504, or
the conquest of Granada in 1492.[15]Historians from Romance-speaking countries tend to divide the
Middle Ages into two parts: an earlier "High" and later "Low" period. English-speaking historians,
following their German counterparts, generally subdivide the Middle Ages into three intervals:
"Early", "High", and "Late".[1] In the 19th century, the entire Middle Ages were often referred to as the
"Dark Ages",[16][B] but with the adoption of these subdivisions, use of this term was restricted to the
Early Middle Ages, at least among historians.[2]

Later Roman Empire[edit]

Main articles: Late Antiquity, Decline of the Roman Empire and Byzantium under the Constantinian
and Valentinian dynasties
A late Roman statue depicting the four Tetrarchs, now in Venice[17]

The Roman Empire reached its greatest territorial extent during the 2nd century AD; the following
two centuries witnessed the slow decline of Roman control over its outlying territories. [18] Economic
issues, including inflation, and external pressure on the frontiers combined to make the 3rd
century politically unstable, with emperors coming to the throne only to be rapidly replaced by new
usurpers.[19] Military expenses increased steadily during the 3rd century, mainly in response to
the war with Sassanid Persia, which revived in the middle of the 3rd century.[20] The army doubled in
size, and cavalry and smaller units replaced the legion as the main tactical unit.[21] The need for
revenue led to increased taxes and a decline in numbers of the curial, or landowning, class, and
decreasing numbers of them willing to shoulder the burdens of holding office in their native towns.
[20]
More bureaucrats were needed in the central administration to deal with the needs of the army,
which led to complaints from civilians that there were more tax-collectors in the empire than tax-
payers.[21]

The Emperor Diocletian (r. 284–305) split the empire into separately
administered eastern and western halves in 286; the empire was not considered divided by its
inhabitants or rulers, as legal and administrative promulgations in one division were considered valid
in the other.[22][C] In 330, after a period of civil war, Constantine the Great (r. 306–337) refounded the
city of Byzantium as the newly renamed eastern capital, Constantinople.[23]Diocletian's reforms
strengthened the governmental bureaucracy, reformed taxation, and strengthened the army, which
bought the empire time but did not resolve the problems it was facing: excessive taxation, a
declining birthrate, and pressures on its frontiers, among others.[24] Civil war between rival emperors
became common in the middle of the 4th century, diverting soldiers from the empire's frontier forces
and allowing invaders to encroach.[25] For much of the 4th century, Roman society stabilised in a new
form that differed from the earlier classical period, with a widening gulf between the rich and poor,
and a decline in the vitality of the smaller towns.[26] Another change was the Christianisation, or
conversion of the empire to Christianity, a gradual process that lasted from the 2nd to the 5th
centuries.[27][28]
Map of the approximate political boundaries in Europe around 450

In 376, the Ostrogoths, fleeing from the Huns, received permission from Emperor Valens (r. 364–
378) to settle in the Roman province of Thracia in the Balkans. The settlement did not go smoothly,
and when Roman officials mishandled the situation, the Ostrogoths began to raid and plunder.
[D]
Valens, attempting to put down the disorder, was killed fighting the Ostrogoths at the Battle of
Adrianople on 9 August 378.[30] As well as the threat from such tribal confederacies from the north,
internal divisions within the empire, especially within the Christian Church, caused problems. [31] In
400, the Visigoths invaded the Western Roman Empire and, although briefly forced back from Italy,
in 410 sacked the city of Rome.[32] In 406 the Alans, Vandals, and Suevi crossed into Gaul; over the
next three years they spread across Gaul and in 409 crossed the Pyrenees Mountains into modern-
day Spain.[33] The Migration Periodbegan, where various people, initially largely Germanic peoples,
moved across Europe. The Franks, Alemanni, and theBurgundians all ended up in northern Gaul
while the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes settled in Britain.[34] In the 430s the Huns began invading the
empire; their king Attila (r. 434–453) led invasions into the Balkans in 442 and 447, Gaul in 451, and
Italy in 452.[35] The Hunnic threat remained until Attila's death in 453, when the Hunnic
confederation he led fell apart.[36] These invasions by the tribes completely changed the political and
demographic nature of what had been the Western Roman Empire. [34]

By the end of the 5th century the western section of the empire was divided into smaller political
units, ruled by the tribes that had invaded in the early part of the century. [37] The deposition of the last
emperor of the west, Romulus Augustus, in 476 has traditionally marked the end of the Western
Roman Empire.[11][E] The Eastern Roman Empire, often referred to as the Byzantine Empire after the
fall of its western counterpart, had little ability to assert control over the lost western territories.
The Byzantine emperors maintained a claim over the territory, but none of the new kings in the west
dared to elevate himself to the position of emperor of the west, Byzantine control of most of the
Western Empire could not be sustained; the reconquest of the Italian peninsula and Mediterranean
periphery by Justinian (r. 527–565) was the sole, and temporary, exception. [38]
Early Middle Ages[edit]
Main article: Early Middle Ages

New societies[edit]
Main articles: Migration Period and Decline of the Roman Empire

The political structure of Western Europe changed with the end of the united Roman Empire.
Although the movement of peoples during this period are usually described as "invasions", they were
not just military expeditions but migrations of entire peoples into the empire. Such movements were
aided by the refusal of the western Roman elites to support the army or pay the taxes that would
have allowed the military to suppress the migration.[39] The emperors of the 5th century were often
controlled by military strongmen such as Stilicho (d. 408), Aspar (d. 471), Ricimer (d. 472),
or Gundobad (d. 516), who were partly or fully of non-Roman background. When the line of western
emperors ceased, many of the kings who replaced them were from the same background.
Intermarriage between the new kings and the Roman elites was common. [40] This led to a fusion of
Roman culture with the customs of the invading tribes, including the popular assemblies that allowed
free male tribal members more say in political matters than was common in the Roman state.
[41]
Material artefacts left by the Romans and the invaders are often similar, and tribal items were
often modelled on Roman objects.[42] Much of the scholarly and written culture of the new kingdoms
was also based on Roman intellectual traditions.[43] An important difference was the gradual loss of
tax revenue by the new polities. Many of the new political entities no longer supported their armies
through taxes, instead relying on granting them land or rents. This meant there was less need for
large tax revenues and so the taxation systems decayed.[44] Warfare was common between and
within the kingdoms. Slavery declined as the supply weakened, and society became more rural. [45][F]

Coin of Theodoric

Between the 5th and 8th centuries, new peoples and powerful individuals filled the political void left
by Roman centralised government.[43]The Ostrogoths settled in Italy in the late 5th century
under Theodoric (d. 526) and set up a kingdom marked by its co-operation between the Italians and
the Ostrogoths, at least until the last years of Theodoric's reign.[47] The Burgundians settled in Gaul,
and after an earlier realm was destroyed by the Huns in 436 formed a new kingdom in the 440s.
Between today's Geneva and Lyon, it grew to become the powerful realm of Burgundy in the late 5th
and early 6th centuries.[48] In northern Gaul, the Franks and Britons set up small polities.
The Frankish Kingdom was centred in north-eastern Gaul, and the first king of whom much is known
is Childeric (d. 481).[G] Under Childeric's son Clovis (r. 509–511), the Frankish kingdom expanded
and converted to Christianity. Britons, related to the natives of Britannia—modern-day Great Britain
—settled in what is now Brittany.[50][H] Other monarchies were established by the Visigoths in Spain,
the Suevi in north-western Spain, and the Vandals in North Africa.[48] In the 6th century,
the Lombards settled in northern Italy, replacing the Ostrogothic kingdom with a grouping of
duchies that occasionally selected a king to rule over them all. By the late 6th century this
arrangement had been replaced by a permanent monarchy.[51]

The invasions brought new ethnic groups to Europe, although some regions received a larger influx
of new peoples than others. In Gaul for instance, the invaders settled much more extensively in the
north-east than in the south-west. Slavic peoples settled in Central and Eastern Europe and the
Balkan Peninsula. The settlement of peoples was accompanied by changes in languages.
The Latin of the Western Roman Empire was gradually replaced by languages based on, but distinct
from, Latin, collectively known as Romance languages. These changes from Latin to the new
languages took many centuries. Greek remained the language of the Byzantine Empire, but the
migrations of the Slavs added Slavonic languages to Eastern Europe.[52]

Byzantine survival[edit]
Main articles: Byzantine Empire under the Justinian dynasty and Byzantine Empire under the
Heraclian dynasty

Mosaic showing Justinian with the bishop of Ravenna, bodyguards, and courtiers[53]

As Western Europe witnessed the formation of new kingdoms, the Eastern Roman Empire remained
intact and experienced an economic revival that lasted into the early 7th century. There were fewer
invasions of the eastern section of the empire; most occurred in the Balkans. Peace with Persia, the
traditional enemy of Rome, lasted throughout most of the 5th century. The Eastern Empire was
marked by closer relations between the political state and Christian Church, with doctrinal matters
assuming an importance in eastern politics that they did not have in Western Europe. Legal
developments included the codification of Roman law; the first effort—the Theodosian Code—was
completed in 438.[54] Under Emperor Justinian (r. 527–565), another compilation took place—
the Corpus Juris Civilis.[55] Justinian also oversaw the construction of the Hagia Sophia in
Constantinople and the reconquest of North Africa from the Vandals and Italy from the Ostrogoths,
[56]
under Belisarius (d. 565).[57] The conquest of Italy was not complete, as a deadly outbreak
of plague in 542 led to the rest of Justinian's reign concentrating on defensive measures rather than
further conquests.[56] At the emperor's death, the Byzantines had control of most of Italy, North Africa,
and a small foothold in southern Spain. Justinian's reconquests have been criticised by historians for
overextending his realm and setting the stage for the Muslim conquests, but many of the difficulties
faced by Justinian's successors were due not just to over-taxation to pay for his wars but to the
essentially civilian nature of the empire, which made raising troops difficult. [58]

In the Eastern Empire the slow infiltration of the Balkans by the Slavs added a further difficulty for
Justinian's successors. It began gradually, but by the late 540s Slavic tribes were
inThrace and Illyrium, and had defeated an imperial army near Adrianople in 551. In the 560s
the Avars began to expand from their base on the north bank of the Danube; by the end of the 6th
century they were the dominant power in Central Europe and routinely able to force the eastern
emperors to pay tribute. They remained a strong power until 796. [59] An additional problem to face the
empire came as a result of the involvement of Emperor Maurice (r. 582–602) in Persian politics when
he intervened in a succession dispute. This led to a period of peace, but when Maurice was
overthrown, the Persians invaded and during the reign of Emperor Heraclius (r. 610–641) controlled
large chunks of the empire, including Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor, until Heraclius' successful
counterattack. In 628 the empire secured a peace treaty and recovered all of its lost territories. [60]

Western society[edit]
See also: Early medieval European dress and Medieval cuisine

In Western Europe, some of the older Roman elite families died out while others became more
involved with Church than secular affairs. Values attached to Latin scholarship andeducation mostly
disappeared, and while literacy remained important, it became a practical skill rather than a sign of
elite status. In the 4th century, Jerome (d. 420) dreamed that God rebuked him for spending more
time reading Cicero than the Bible. By the 6th century, Gregory of Tours (d. 594) had a similar
dream, but instead of being chastised for reading Cicero, he was chastised for learning shorthand.
[61]
By the late 6th century, the principal means of religious instruction in the Church had become
music and art rather than the book.[62] Most intellectual efforts went towards imitating classical
scholarship, but some original works were created, along with now-lost oral compositions. The
writings of Sidonius Apollinaris (d. 489), Cassiodorus (d. c. 585), and Boethius (d. c. 525) were
typical of the age.[63]

Changes also took place among laymen, as aristocratic culture focused on great feasts held in halls
rather than on literary pursuits. Clothing for the elites was richly embellished with jewels and gold.
Lords and kings supported entourages of fighters who formed the backbone of the military forces.
[I]
Family ties within the elites were important, as were the virtues of loyalty, courage, and honour.
These ties led to the prevalence of the feud in aristocratic society, examples of which included those
related by Gregory of Tours that took place inMerovingian Gaul. Most feuds seem to have ended
quickly with the payment of some sort of compensation.[66] Women took part in aristocratic society
mainly in their roles as wives and mothers of men, with the role of mother of a ruler being especially
prominent in Merovingian Gaul. In Anglo-Saxon society the lack of many child rulers meant a lesser
role for women as queen mothers, but this was compensated for by the increased role played
by abbesses of monasteries. Only in Italy does it appear that women were considered as always
under the protection and control of a male relative.[67]

Reconstruction of an early medieval peasant village in Bavaria

Peasant society is much less documented than the nobility. Most of the surviving information
available to historians comes from archaeology; few detailed written records documenting peasant
life remain from before the 9th century. Most the descriptions of the lower classes come from
either law codes or writers from the upper classes.[68] Landholding patterns in the West were not
uniform; some areas had greatly fragmented landholding patterns, but in other areas large
contiguous blocks of land were the norm. These differences allowed for a wide variety of peasant
societies, some dominated by aristocratic landholders and others having a great deal of autonomy.
[69]
Land settlement also varied greatly. Some peasants lived in large settlements that numbered as
many as 700 inhabitants. Others lived in small groups of a few families and still others lived on
isolated farms spread over the countryside. There were also areas where the pattern was a mix of
two or more of those systems.[70] Unlike in the late Roman period, there was no sharp break between
the legal status of the free peasant and the aristocrat, and it was possible for a free peasant's family
to rise into the aristocracy over several generations through military service to a powerful lord. [71]

Roman city life and culture changed greatly in the early Middle Ages. Although Italian cities remained
inhabited, they contracted significantly in size. Rome, for instance, shrank from a population of
hundreds of thousands to around 30,000 by the end of the 6th century. Roman temples were
converted into Christian churches and city walls remained in use.[21] In Northern Europe, cities also
shrank, while civic monuments and other public buildings were raided for building materials. The
establishment of new kingdoms often meant some growth for the towns chosen as capitals.
[72]
Although there had been Jewish communities in many Roman cities, the Jews suffered periods of
persecution after the conversion of the empire to Christianity. Officially they were tolerated, if subject
to conversion efforts, and at times were even encouraged to settle in new areas. [73]

Rise of Islam[edit]
Main article: Muslim conquests
The Islamic Empire and its expansion. Darkest colour is the extent from 622 to 632, medium colour is expansion
during 632 to 661, and the lightest colour shows the expansion that took place in the period 661 to 750.

Religious beliefs in the Eastern Empire and Persia were in flux during the late 6th and early 7th
centuries. Judaism was an active proselytising faith, and at least one Arab political leader converted
to it.[J] Christianity had active missions competing with the Persians' Zoroastrianism in seeking
converts, especially among residents of the Arabian Peninsula. All these strands came together with
the emergence of Islam in Arabia during the lifetime of Muhammad (d. 632).[75] After his death,
Islamic forces conquered much of the Eastern Empire and Persia, starting with Syria in 634–635 and
reaching Egypt in 640–641, Persiabetween 637 and 642, North Africa in the later 7th century, and
the Iberian Peninsula in 711.[76] By 714, Islamic forces controlled much of the peninsula, a region they
called Al-Andalus.[77]

The Islamic conquests reached their peak in the mid-8th century. The defeat of Muslim forces at
the Battle of Poitiers in 732 led to the reconquest of southern France by the Franks, but the main
reason for the halt of Islamic growth in Europe was the overthrow of the Umayyad dynasty and its
replacement by the Abbasid dynasty. The Abbasids moved their capital to Baghdad and were more
concerned with the Middle East than Europe, losing control of sections of the Muslim lands.
Umayyad descendants took over the Iberian Peninsula, the Aghlabids controlled North Africa, and
the Tulunids became rulers of Egypt.[78] By the middle of the 8th century, new trading patterns were
emerging in the Mediterranean; trade between the Franks and the Arabs replaced the old Roman
patterns of trade. Franks traded timber, furs, swords and slaves in return for silks and other fabrics,
spices, and precious metals from the Arabs.[79]

Trade and economy[edit]

The migrations and invasions of the 4th and 5th centuries disrupted trade networks around the
Mediterranean. African goods stopped being imported into Europe, first disappearing from the
interior and by the 7th century found only in a few cities such as Rome or Naples. By the end of the
7th century, under the impact of the Muslim conquests, African products were no longer found in
Western Europe. The replacement of goods from long-range trade with local products was a trend
throughout the old Roman lands that happened in the Early Middle Ages. This was especially
marked in the lands that did not lie on the Mediterranean, such as northern Gaul or Britain. Non-local
goods appearing in the archaeological record are usually luxury goods. In the northern parts of
Europe, not only were the trade networks local, but the goods carried were simple, with little pottery
or other complex products. Around the Mediterranean, pottery remained prevalent and appears to
have been traded over medium-range networks, not just produced locally. [80]

The various Germanic states in the west all had coinages that imitated existing Roman and
Byzantine forms. Gold continued to be minted until the end of the 7th century, when it was replaced
by silver coins. The basic Frankish silver coin was the denarius or denier, while the Anglo-Saxon
version was called a penny. From these areas, the denier or penny spread throughout Europe during
the centuries from 700 to 1000. Copper or bronze coins were not struck, nor were gold except in
Southern Europe. No silver coins denominated in multiple units were minted. [81]

Church and monasticism[edit]

Main article: History of the East–West Schism

An 11th-century illustration of Gregory the Great dictating to a secretary

Christianity was a major unifying factor between Eastern and Western Europe before the Arab
conquests, but the conquest of North Africa sundered maritime connections between those areas.
Increasingly the Byzantine Church differed in language, practices, and liturgy from the western
Church. The eastern church used Greek instead of the western Latin. Theological and political
differences emerged, and by the early and middle 8th century issues such as iconoclasm, clerical
marriage, and state control of the church had widened to the extent that the cultural and religious
differences were greater than the similarities.[82] The formal break came in 1054, when
the papacy and the patriarchy of Constantinople clashed over papal
supremacy and excommunicated each other, which led to the division of Christianity into two
churches—the western branch became the Roman Catholic Church and the eastern branch
the Orthodox Church.[83]

The ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Empire survived the movements and invasions in the west
mostly intact, but the papacy was little regarded, and few of the western bishops looked to the
bishop of Rome for religious or political leadership. Many of the popes prior to 750 were more
concerned with Byzantine affairs and eastern theological controversies. The register, or archived
copies of the letters, of Pope Gregory the Great(pope 590–604) survives, and of those more than
850 letters, the vast majority were concerned with affairs in Italy or Constantinople. The only part of
Western Europe where the papacy had influence was Britain, where Gregory had sent the Gregorian
mission in 597 to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity. [84] Irish missionaries were most active in
Western Europe between the 5th and the 7th centuries, going first to England and Scotland and then
on to the continent. Under such monks as Columba (d. 597) and Columbanus (d. 615), they founded
monasteries, taught in Latin and Greek, and authored secular and religious works. [85]

The Early Middle Ages witnessed the rise of monasticism in the West. The shape of European
monasticism was determined by traditions and ideas that originated with the Desert
Fathers of Egypt and Syria. Most European monasteries were of the type that focuses on community
experience of the spiritual life, called cenobitism, which was pioneered byPachomius (d. 348) in the
4th century. Monastic ideals spread from Egypt to Western Europe in the 5th and 6th centuries
through hagiographical literature such as the Life of Anthony.[86] Benedict of Nursia (d. 547) wrote
the Benedictine Rule for Western monasticism during the 6th century, detailing the administrative
and spiritual responsibilities of a community of monks led by an abbot.[87] Monks and monasteries
had a deep effect on the religious and political life of the Early Middle Ages, in various cases acting
as land trusts for powerful families, centres of propaganda and royal support in newly conquered
regions, and bases for missions and proselytisation.[88] They were the main and sometimes only
outposts of education and literacy in a region. Many of the surviving manuscripts of the
Latin classics were copied in monasteries in the Early Middle Ages.[89] Monks were also the authors
of new works, including history, theology, and other subjects, written by authors such as Bede (d.
735), a native of northern England who wrote in the late 7th and early 8th centuries. [90]

Carolingian Europe[edit]
Main articles: Francia and Carolingian Empire

Map showing growth of Frankish power from 481 to 814

The Frankish kingdom in northern Gaul split into kingdoms called Austrasia, Neustria,
and Burgundy during the 6th and 7th centuries, all of them ruled by the Merovingian dynasty, who
were descended from Clovis. The 7th century was a tumultuous period of wars between Austrasia
and Neustria.[91] Such warfare was exploited by Pippin (d. 640), the Mayor of the Palace for Austrasia
who became the power behind the Austrasian throne. Later members of his family inherited the
office, acting as advisers and regents. One of his descendants, Charles Martel (d. 741), won the
Battle of Poitiers in 732, halting the advance of Muslim armies across the Pyrenees. [92][K] Great Britain
was divided into small states dominated by the kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia, Wessex, and East
Anglia, which were descended from the Anglo-Saxon invaders. Smaller kingdoms in present-day
Wales and Scotland were still under the control of the native Britons and Picts.[94] Ireland was divided
into even smaller political units, usually known as tribal kingdoms, under the control of kings. There
were perhaps as many as 150 local kings in Ireland, of varying importance.[95]

The Carolingian dynasty, as the successors to Charles Martel are known, officially took control of the
kingdoms of Austrasia and Neustria in a coup of 753 led by Pippin III (r. 752–768). A contemporary
chronicle claims that Pippin sought, and gained, authority for this coup from Pope Stephen II (pope
752–757). Pippin's takeover was reinforced with propaganda that portrayed the Merovingians as
inept or cruel rulers, exalted the accomplishments of Charles Martel, and circulated stories of the
family's great piety. At the time of his death in 768, Pippin left his kingdom in the hands of his two
sons, Charles (r. 768–814) and Carloman (r. 768–771). When Carloman died of natural causes,
Charles blocked the succession of Carloman's young son and installed himself as the king of the
united Austrasia and Neustria. Charles, more often known as Charles the Great or Charlemagne,
embarked upon a programme of systematic expansion in 774 that unified a large portion of Europe,
eventually controlling modern-day France, northern Italy, and Saxony. In the wars that lasted beyond
800, he rewarded allies with war booty and command over parcels of land. [96] In 774, Charlemagne
conquered the Lombards, which freed the papacy from the fear of Lombard conquest and marked
the beginnings of the Papal States.[97][L]

Charlemagne's palace chapel atAachen, completed in 805[99]

The coronation of Charlemagne as emperor on Christmas Day 800 is regarded as a turning point in
medieval history, marking a return of the Western Roman Empire, since the new emperor ruled over
much of the area previously controlled by the western emperors.[100] It also marks a change in
Charlemagne's relationship with the Byzantine Empire, as the assumption of the imperial title by the
Carolingians asserted their equivalence to the Byzantine state. [101] There were several differences
between the newly established Carolingian Empire and both the older Western Roman Empire and
the concurrent Byzantine Empire. The Frankish lands were rural in character, with only a few small
cities. Most of the people were peasants settled on small farms. Little trade existed and much of that
was with the British Isles and Scandinavia, in contrast to the older Roman Empire with its trading
networks centred on the Mediterranean.[100] The empire was administered by an itinerant court that
travelled with the emperor, as well as approximately 300 imperial officials called counts, who
administered the counties the empire had been divided into. Clergy and local bishops served as
officials, as well as the imperial officials called missi dominici, who served as roving inspectors and
troubleshooters.[102]

Carolingian Renaissance[edit]
Main articles: Carolingian Renaissance, Carolingian art and Early medieval literature

Charlemagne's court in Aachen was the centre of the cultural revival sometimes referred to as the
"Carolingian Renaissance". The period saw an increase in literacy, developments in the arts,
architecture and jurisprudence, as well as liturgical and scriptural studies. The English
monk Alcuin (d. 804) was invited to Aachen and brought the education available in the monasteries
of Northumbria. Charlemagne's chancery—or writing office—made use of a new script today known
as Carolingian minuscule,[M] allowing a common writing style that advanced communication across
much of Europe. Charlemagne sponsored changes in church liturgy, imposing the Roman form of
church service on his domains, as well as theGregorian chant in liturgical music for the churches. An
important activity for scholars during this period was the copying, correcting, and dissemination of
basic works on religious and secular topics, with the aim of encouraging learning. New works on
religious topics and schoolbooks were also produced.[104] Grammarians of the period modified the
Latin language, changing it from the Classical Latin of the Roman Empire into a more flexible form to
fit the needs of the church and government. By the reign of Charlemagne, the language had so
diverged from the classical that it was later called Medieval Latin.[105]

Breakup of the Carolingian Empire[edit]

Main articles: Holy Roman Empire and Viking Age
Territorial divisions of the Carolingian Empire in 843, 855, and 870

Charlemagne planned to continue the Frankish tradition of dividing his kingdom between all his
heirs, but was unable to do so as only one son, Louis the Pious (r. 814–840), was still alive by 813.
Just before Charlemagne died in 814, he crowned Louis as his successor. Louis's reign of 26 years
was marked by numerous divisions of the empire among his sons and, after 829, civil wars between
various alliances of father and sons over the control of various parts of the empire. Eventually, Louis
recognised his eldest sonLothair I (d. 855) as emperor and gave him Italy. Louis divided the rest of
the empire between Lothair andCharles the Bald (d. 877), his youngest son. Lothair took East
Francia, comprising both banks of the Rhine and eastwards, leaving Charles West Francia with the
empire to the west of the Rhineland and the Alps.Louis the German (d. 876), the middle child, who
had been rebellious to the last, was allowed to keep Bavaria under the suzerainty of his elder
brother. The division was disputed. Pepin II of Aquitaine (d. after 864), the emperor's grandson,
rebelled in a contest for Aquitaine, while Louis the German tried to annex all of East Francia. Louis
the Pious died in 840, with the empire still in chaos.[106]

A three-year civil war followed his death. By the Treaty of Verdun (843), a kingdom between
the Rhine and Rhone rivers was created for Lothair to go with his lands in Italy, and his imperial title
was recognised. Louis the German was in control of Bavaria and the eastern lands in modern-day
Germany. Charles the Bald received the western Frankish lands, comprising most of modern-day
France.[106] Charlemagne's grandsons and great-grandsons divided their kingdoms between their
descendants, eventually causing all internal cohesion to be lost.[107][N] In 987 the Carolingian dynasty
was replaced in the western lands, with the crowning of Hugh Capet (r. 987–996) as king.[O][P] In the
eastern lands the dynasty had died out earlier, in 911, with the death of Louis the Child,[110] and the
selection of the unrelated Conrad I (r. 911–918) as king.[111]
The breakup of the Carolingian Empire was accompanied by invasions, migrations, and raids by
external foes. The Atlantic and northern shores were harassed by the Vikings, who also raided the
British Isles and settled there as well as in Iceland. In 911, the Viking chieftain Rollo (d. c. 931)
received permission from the Frankish King Charles the Simple (r. 898–922) to settle in what
became Normandy.[112][Q] The eastern parts of the Frankish kingdoms, especially Germany and Italy,
were under continual Magyar assault until the invader's defeat at the Battle of Lechfeld in 955.[114] The
breakup of the Abbasid dynasty meant that the Islamic world fragmented into smaller political states,
some of which began expanding into Italy and Sicily, as well as over the Pyrenees into the southern
parts of the Frankish kingdoms.[115]

New kingdoms and a revived Byzantium[edit]

Main articles: Byzantine Empire under the Macedonian dynasty, Byzantine Empire under the
Isaurian dynasty, First Bulgarian Empire, Christianisation of Bulgaria, Kingdom of
Germany, Christianisation of Scandinavia and Christianisation of Kievan Rus'

See also: Byzantine–Arab wars (780–1180) and Byzantine–Bulgarian wars

Europe in 814

Efforts by local kings to fight the invaders led to the formation of new political entities. In Anglo-
Saxon England, KingAlfred the Great (r. 871–899) came to an agreement with the Viking invaders in
the late 9th century, resulting in Danish settlements in Northumbria, Mercia, and parts of East Anglia.
[116]
By the middle of the 10th century, Alfred's successors had conquered Northumbria, and restored
English control over most of the southern part of Great Britain. [117] In northern Britain, Kenneth
MacAlpin (d. c. 860) united the Picts and the Scots into the Kingdom of Alba.[118] In the early 10th
century, the Ottonian dynasty had established itself in Germany, and was engaged in driving back
the Magyars. Its efforts culminated in the coronation in 962 of Otto I (r. 936–973) as Holy Roman
Emperor.[119] In 972, he secured recognition of his title by the Byzantine Empire, which he sealed with
the marriage of his son Otto II (r. 967–983) toTheophanu (d. 991), daughter of an earlier Byzantine
Emperor Romanos II (r. 959–963).[120] By the late 10th centuryItaly had been drawn into the Ottonian
sphere after a period of instability;[121] Otto III (r. 996–1002) spent much of his later reign in the
kingdom.[122] The western Frankish kingdom was more fragmented, and although kings remained
nominally in charge, much of the political power devolved to the local lords. [123]

Missionary efforts to Scandinavia during the 9th and 10th centuries helped strengthen the growth of
kingdoms such asSweden, Denmark, and Norway, which gained power and territory. Some kings
converted to Christianity, although not all by 1000. Scandinavians also expanded and colonised
throughout Europe. Besides the settlements in Ireland, England, and Normandy, further settlement
took place in what became Russia and in Iceland. Swedish traders and raiders ranged down the
rivers of the Russian steppe, and even attempted to seize Constantinople in 860 and 907.
[124]
Christian Spain, initially driven into a small section of the peninsula in the north, expanded slowly
south during the 9th and 10th centuries, establishing the kingdoms of Asturias and León.[125]

10th-century Ottonianivory plaque depicting Christ receiving a church from Otto I

In Eastern Europe, Byzantium revived its fortunes under Emperor Basil I (r. 867–886) and his
successors Leo VI (r. 886–912) and Constantine VII (r. 913–959), members of the Macedonian
dynasty. Commerce revived and the emperors oversaw the extension of a uniform administration to
all the provinces. The military was reorganised, which allowed the emperors John I (r. 969–976)
and Basil II (r. 976–1025) to expand the frontiers of the empire on all fronts. The imperial court was
the centre of a revival of classical learning, a process known as the Macedonian Renaissance.
Writers such as John Geometres (fl. early 10th century) composed new hymns, poems, and other
works.[126] Missionary efforts by both eastern and western clergy resulted in the conversion of
the Moravians, Bulgars, Bohemians, Poles, Magyars, and Slavic inhabitants of the Kievan Rus'.
These conversions contributed to the founding of political states in the lands of those peoples—the
states of Moravia, Bulgaria, Bohemia, Poland, Hungary, and the Kievan Rus'.[127] Bulgaria, which was
founded around 680, at its height reached from Budapest to the Black Sea and from the Dnieper
River in modern Ukraine to the Adriatic Sea.[128] By 1018, the last Bulgarian nobles had surrendered
to the Byzantine Empire.[129]

Art and architecture[edit]

Main articles: Medieval art and Medieval architecture
See also: Migration Period art, Pre-Romanesque art and architecture and Carolingian art

A page from the Book of Kells, an illuminated manuscript created in theBritish Isles in the late 8th or early 9th
century[130]

Few large stone buildings were constructed between the Constantinian basilicas of the 4th century
and the 8th century, although many smaller ones were built during the 6th and 7th centuries. By the
beginning of the 8th century, the Carolingian Empire revived the basilica form of architecture. [131]One
feature of the basilica is the use of a transept,[132] or the "arms" of a cross-shaped building that are
perpendicular to the long nave.[133] Other new features of religious architecture include the crossing
tower and a monumental entrance to the church, usually at the west end of the building.[134]

Carolingian art was produced for a small group of figures around the court, and the monasteries and
churches they supported. It was dominated by efforts to regain the dignity and classicism of imperial
Roman and Byzantine art, but was also influenced by the Insular art of the British Isles. Insular art
integrated the energy of Irish Celtic and Anglo-Saxon Germanic styles of ornament with
Mediterranean forms such as the book, and established many characteristics of art for the rest of the
medieval period. Surviving religious works from the Early Middle Ages are mostly illuminated
manuscripts and carved ivories, originally made for metalwork that has since been melted down.[135]
[136]
Objects in precious metals were the most prestigious form of art, but almost all are lost except for
a few crosses such as the Cross of Lothair, several reliquaries, and finds such as the Anglo-Saxon
burial at Sutton Hoo and the hoards of Gourdon from Merovingian France, Guarrazar from Visigothic
Spain and Nagyszentmiklós near Byzantine territory. There are survivals from the
large brooches in fibula or penannular form that were a key piece of personal adornment for elites,
including the Irish Tara Brooch.[137] Highly decorated books were mostly Gospel Books and these
have survived in larger numbers, including the Insular Book of Kells, the Book of Lindisfarne, and the
imperial Codex Aureus of St. Emmeram, which is one of the few to retain its "treasure binding" of
gold encrusted with jewels.[138] Charlemagne's court seems to have been responsible for the
acceptance of figurative monumental sculpture inChristian art,[139] and by the end of the period near
life-sized figures such as the Gero Cross were common in important churches.[140]
Military and technological developments[edit]
During the later Roman Empire, the principal military developments were attempts to create an
effective cavalry force as well as the continued development of highly specialised types of troops.
The creation of heavily armoured cataphract-type soldiers as cavalry was an important feature of the
5th-century Roman military. The various invading tribes had differing emphasis on types of soldiers
—ranging from the primarily infantry Anglo-Saxon invaders of Britain to the Vandals and Visigoths,
who had a high proportion of cavalry in their armies.[141] During the early invasion period,
the stirrup had not been introduced into warfare, which limited the usefulness of cavalry as shock
troops because it was not possible to put the full force of the horse and rider behind blows struck by
the rider.[142] The greatest change in military affairs during the invasion period was the adoption of the
Hunniccomposite bow in place of the earlier, and weaker, Scythian composite bow.[143] Another
development was the increasing use of longswords[144] and the progressive replacement ofscale
armour by mail armour and lamellar armour.[145]

The importance of infantry and light cavalry began to decline during the early Carolingian period,
with a growing dominance of elite heavy cavalry. The use of militia-type levies of the free population
declined over the Carolingian period.[146] Although much of the Carolingian armies were mounted, a
large proportion during the early period appear to have beenmounted infantry, rather than true
cavalry.[147] One exception was Anglo-Saxon England, where the armies were still composed of
regional levies, known as the fyrd, which were led by the local elites.[148] In military technology, one of
the main changes was the return of the crossbow, which had been known in Roman times and
reappeared as a military weapon during the last part of the Early Middle Ages. [149] Another change
was the introduction of the stirrup, which increased the effectiveness of cavalry as shock troops. A
technological advance that had implications beyond the military was the horseshoe, which allowed
horses to be used in rocky terrain.[150]

High Middle Ages[edit]

Main article: High Middle Ages

Society and economic life[edit]

Main articles: Feudalism, Manorialism, Women in the Middle Ages and Medieval household

See also: 1100–1200 in European fashion and 1200–1300 in European fashion

Medieval French manuscript illustration of the three classes of medieval society: those who prayed—the clergy, those
who fought—theknights, and those who worked—thepeasantry.[151] The relationship between these classes was
governed by feudalism and manorialism.[152] (Li Livres dou Sante, 13th century)

The High Middle Ages saw an expansion of population. The estimated population of Europe grew
from 35 to 80 million between 1000 and 1347, although the exact causes remain unclear: improved
agricultural techniques, the decline of slaveholding, a more clement climate and the lack of invasion
have all been suggested.[153][154] As much as 90 per cent of the European population remained rural
peasants. Many were no longer settled in isolated farms but had gathered into small communities,
usually known as manors or villages.[154] These peasants were often subject to noble overlords and
owed them rents and other services, in a system known as manorialism. There remained a few free
peasants throughout this period and beyond,[155] with more of them in the regions of Southern Europe
than in the north. The practice ofassarting, or bringing new lands into production by offering
incentives to the peasants who settled them, also contributed to the expansion of population. [156]

Other sections of society included the nobility, clergy, and townsmen. Nobles, both the
titled nobility and simple knights, exploited the manors and the peasants, although they did not own
lands outright but were granted rights to the income from a manor or other lands by an overlord
through the system of feudalism. During the 11th and 12th centuries, these lands, or fiefs, came to
be considered hereditary, and in most areas they were no longer divisible between all the heirs as
had been the case in the early medieval period. Instead, most fiefs and lands went to the eldest son.
[157][R]
The dominance of the nobility was built upon its control of the land, its military service as heavy
cavalry, control of castles, and various immunities from taxes or other impositions.[S] Castles, initially
in wood but later in stone, began to be constructed in the 9th and 10th centuries in response to the
disorder of the time, and provided protection from invaders as well as allowing lords defence from
rivals. Control of castles allowed the nobles to defy kings or other overlords. [159] Nobles were
stratified; kings and the highest-ranking nobility controlled large numbers of commoners and large
tracts of land, as well as other nobles. Beneath them, lesser nobles had authority over smaller areas
of land and fewer people. Knights were the lowest level of nobility; they controlled but did not own
land, and had to serve other nobles.[160][T]

The clergy was divided into two types: the secular clergy, who lived out in the world, and the regular
clergy, who lived under a religious rule and were usually monks. [162] Throughout the period monks
remained a very small proportion of the population, usually less than one per cent. [163] Most of the
regular clergy were drawn from the nobility, the same social class that served as the recruiting
ground for the upper levels of the secular clergy. The local parish priests were often drawn from the
peasant class.[164] Townsmen were in a somewhat unusual position, as they did not fit into the
traditional three-fold division of society into nobles, clergy, and peasants. During the 12th and 13th
centuries, the ranks of the townsmen expanded greatly as existing towns grew and new population
centres were founded.[165] But throughout the Middle Ages the population of the towns probably never
exceeded 10 per cent of the total population.[166]

13th-century illustration of a Jew (in pointed Jewish hat) and a Christian debating

Jews also spread across Europe during the period. Communities were established
in Germany and England in the 11th and 12th centuries, butSpanish Jews, long settled in Spain
under the Muslims, came under Christian rule and increasing pressure to convert to Christianity.
[73]
Most Jews were confined to the cities, as they were not allowed to own land or be peasants. [167]
[U]
Besides the Jews, there were other non-Christians on the edges of Europe—pagan Slavs in
Eastern Europe and Muslims in Southern Europe.[168]

Women in the Middle Ages were officially required to be subordinate to some male, whether their
father, husband, or other kinsman. Widows, who were often allowed much control over their own
lives, were still restricted legally. Women's work generally consisted of household or other
domestically inclined tasks. Peasant women were usually responsible for taking care of the
household, child-care, as well as gardening and animal husbandry near the house. They could
supplement the household income by spinning or brewing at home. At harvest-time, they were also
expected to help with field-work.[169] Townswomen, like peasant women, were responsible for the
household, and could also engage in trade. What trades were open to women varied by country and
period.[170] Noblewomen were responsible for running a household, and could occasionally be
expected to handle estates in the absence of male relatives, but they were usually restricted from
participation in military or government affairs. The only role open to women in the Church was that
of nuns, as they were unable to become priests.[169]

In central and northern Italy and in Flanders, the rise of towns that were to a degree self-governing
stimulated economic growth and created an environment for new types of trade associations.
Commercial cities on the shores of the Baltic entered into agreements known as the Hanseatic
League, and the Italian Maritime republics such as Venice, Genoa, and Pisa expanded their trade
throughout the Mediterranean.[V] Great trading fairs were established and flourished in northern
France during the period, allowing Italian and German merchants to trade with each other as well as
local merchants.[172] In the late 13th century new land and sea routes to the Far East were pioneered,
famously described in The Travels of Marco Polo written by one of the traders, Marco Polo (d. 1324).
[173]
Besides new trading opportunities, agricultural and technological improvements enabled an
increase in crop yields, which in turn allowed the trade networks to expand. [174] Rising trade brought
new methods of dealing with money, and gold coinage was again minted in Europe, first in Italy and
later in France and other countries. New forms of commercial contracts emerged, allowing risk to be
shared among merchants. Accounting methods improved, partly through the use of double-entry
bookkeeping; letters of credit also appeared, allowing easy transmission of money.[175]

Rise of state power[edit]

Main articles: England in the Middle Ages, France in the Middle Ages, Germany in the Middle
Ages, Italy in the Middle Ages, Scotland in the Middle Ages, Spain in the Middle Ages and Poland in
the Middle Ages

Europe and the Mediterranean Sea in 1190

The High Middle Ages was the formative period in the history of the modern Western state. Kings in
France, England, and Spain consolidated their power, and set up lasting governing institutions.
[176]
New kingdoms such as Hungary and Poland, after their conversion to Christianity, became
Central European powers.[177] The Magyars settled Hungary around 900 under King Árpád (d. c. 907)
after a series of invasions in the 9th century.[178] The papacy, long attached to an ideology of
independence from secular kings, first asserted its claim to temporal authority over the entire
Christian world; the Papal Monarchy reached its apogee in the early 13th century under the
pontificate of Innocent III (pope 1198–1216).[179] Northern Crusades and the advance of Christian
kingdoms and military orders into previously pagan regions in the Baltic and Finnic north-east
brought the forced assimilation of numerous native peoples into European culture. [180]

During the early High Middle Ages, Germany was ruled by the Ottonian dynasty, which struggled to
control the powerful dukes ruling over territorial duchies tracing back to the Migration period. In
1024, they were replaced by the Salian dynasty, who famously clashed with the papacy under
Emperor Henry IV (r. 1084–1105) over church appointments as part of the Investiture Controversy.
[181]
His successors continued to struggle against the papacy as well as the German nobility. A period
of instability followed the death of Emperor Henry V (r. 1111–25), who died without heirs,
until Frederick I Barbarossa (r. 1155–90) took the imperial throne.[182] Although he ruled effectively, the
basic problems remained, and his successors continued to struggle into the 13th century.
[183]
Barbarossa's grandson Frederick II (r. 1220–1250), who was also heir to the throne of Sicily
through his mother, clashed repeatedly with the papacy. His court was famous for its scholars and he
was often accused ofheresy.[184] He and his successors faced many difficulties, including the invasion
of the Mongols into Europe in the mid-13th century. Mongols first shattered the Kievan Rus'
principalities and then invaded Eastern Europe in 1241, 1259, and 1287.[185]

The Bayeux Tapestry (detail) showing William the Conqueror(centre), his half-brothers Robert, Count of
Mortain (right) and Odo, Bishop of Bayeux in the Duchy of Normandy (left)

Under the Capetian dynasty France slowly began to expand its authority over the nobility, growing
out of the Île-de-France to exert control over more of the country in the 11th and 12th centuries.
[186]
They faced a powerful rival in the Dukes of Normandy, who in 1066 underWilliam the
Conqueror (duke 1035–1087), conquered England (r. 1066–87) and created a cross-channel empire
that lasted, in various forms, throughout the rest of the Middle Ages.[187][188] Normans also settled in
Sicily and southern Italy, when Robert Guiscard (d. 1085) landed there in 1059 and established a
duchy that later became the Kingdom of Sicily.[189] Under the Angevin dynasty of Henry II (r. 1154–89)
and his son Richard I (r. 1189–99), the kings of England ruled over England and large areas of
France,[190][W] brought to the family by Henry II's marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine (d. 1204), heiress to
much of southern France.[192][X] Richard's younger brother John (r. 1199–1216) lost Normandy and the
rest of the northern French possessions in 1204 to the French King Philip II Augustus (r. 1180–1223).
This led to dissension among the English nobility, while John's financial exactions to pay for his
unsuccessful attempts to regain Normandy led in 1215 to Magna Carta, a charter that confirmed the
rights and privileges of free men in England. Under Henry III (r. 1216–72), John's son, further
concessions were made to the nobility, and royal power was diminished. [193] The French monarchy
continued to make gains against the nobility during the late 12th and 13th centuries, bringing more
territories within the kingdom under their personal rule and centralising the royal administration.
[194]
Under Louis IX (r. 1226–70), royal prestige rose to new heights as Louis served as a mediator for
most of Europe.[195][Y]

In Iberia, the Christian states, which had been confined to the north-western part of the peninsula,
began to push back against the Islamic states in the south, a period known as the Reconquista.
[197]
By about 1150, the Christian north had coalesced into the five major kingdoms
ofLeón, Castile, Aragon, Navarre, and Portugal.[198] Southern Iberia remained under control of Islamic
states, initially under the Caliphate of Córdoba, which broke up in 1031 into a shifting number of
petty states known as taifas,[197] who fought with the Christians until the Almohad Caliphate re-
established centralised rule over Southern Iberia in the 1170s. [199] Christian forces advanced again in
the early 1200s, culminating in the capture of Seville in 1248.[200]

Crusades[edit]
Main articles: Crusades, Reconquista and Northern Crusades

See also: Byzantine Empire under the Macedonian dynasty and Byzantine Empire under the
Komnenos dynasty

Krak des Chevaliers was built during the Crusades for the Knights Hospitallers.[201]

In the 11th century, the Seljuk Turks took over much of the Middle East, occupying Persia during the
1040s, Armenia in the 1060s, and Jerusalem in 1070. In 1071, the Turkish army defeated the
Byzantine army at the Battle of Manzikert and captured the Byzantine EmperorRomanus IV (r. 1068–
71). The Turks were then free to invade Asia Minor, which dealt a dangerous blow to the Byzantine
Empire by seizing a large part of its population and its economic heartland. Although the Byzantines
regrouped and recovered somewhat, they never fully regained Asia Minor and were often on the
defensive. The Turks also had difficulties, losing control of Jerusalem to the Fatimids of Egypt and
suffering from a series of internal civil wars.[202] The Byzantines also faced a revived Bulgaria, which
in the late 12th and 13th centuries spread throughout the Balkans.[203]

The crusades were intended to seize Jerusalem from Muslim control. The First Crusade was
proclaimed by Pope Urban II (pope 1088–99) at the Council of Clermont in 1095 in response to a
request from the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos (r. 1081–1118) for aid against further
Muslim advances. Urban promisedindulgence to anyone who took part. Tens of thousands of people
from all levels of society mobilised across Europe and captured Jerusalem in 1099. [204] One feature of
the crusades was the pogroms against local Jews that often took place as the crusaders left their
countries for the East. These were especially brutal during the First Crusade, [73] when the Jewish
communities in Cologne, Mainz, and Worms were destroyed, and other communities in cities
between the rivers Seine and Rhine suffered destruction.[205] Another outgrowth of the crusades was
the foundation of a new type of monastic order, the military orders of the Templars and Hospitallers,
which fused monastic life with military service.[206]

The crusaders consolidated their conquests into crusader states. During the 12th and 13th centuries,
there were a series of conflicts between those states and the surrounding Islamic states. Appeals
from those states to the papacy led to further crusades,[204] such as the Third Crusade, called to try to
regain Jerusalem, which had been captured by Saladin(d. 1193) in 1187.[207][Z] In 1203, the Fourth
Crusade was diverted from the Holy Land to Constantinople, and captured the city in 1204, setting
up a Latin Empire of Constantinople[209] and greatly weakening the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantines
recaptured the city in 1261, but never regained their former strength.[210] By 1291 all the crusader
states had been captured or forced from the mainland, although a titular Kingdom of
Jerusalem survived on the island of Cyprus for several years afterwards.[211]

Popes called for crusades to take place elsewhere besides the Holy Land: in Spain, southern
France, and along the Baltic.[204] The Spanish crusades became fused with theReconquista of Spain
from the Muslims. Although the Templars and Hospitallers took part in the Spanish crusades, similar
Spanish military religious orders were founded, most of which had become part of the two main
orders of Calatrava and Santiago by the beginning of the 12th century.[212] Northern Europe also
remained outside Christian influence until the 11th century or later, and became a crusading venue
as part of the Northern Crusades of the 12th to 14th centuries. These crusades also spawned a
military order, the Order of the Sword Brothers. Another order, the Teutonic Knights, although
originally founded in the crusader states, focused much of its activity in the Baltic after 1225, and in
1309 moved its headquarters to Marienburg in Prussia.[213]

Intellectual life[edit]
Main articles: Renaissance of the 12th century, Medieval philosophy, Medieval literature, Medieval
poetry and Medieval medicine of Western Europe

Intellectual life in Europe in 1250

During the 11th century, developments in philosophy and theology led to increased intellectual
activity. There was debate between the realists and the nominalists over the concept of "universals".
Philosophical discourse was stimulated by the rediscovery of Aristotle and his emphasis
on empiricism and rationalism. Scholars such as Peter Abelard (d. 1142) and Peter Lombard (d.
1164) introduced Aristotelian logic into theology. The late 11th and early 12th centuries also saw the
rise of cathedral schools throughout Western Europe, signalling the shift of learning from
monasteries to cathedrals and towns.[214] Cathedral schools were in turn replaced by
the universities established in major European cities.[215] Philosophy and theology fused
in scholasticism, an attempt by 12th- and 13th-century scholars to reconcile authoritative texts, most
notably Aristotle and the Bible. This movement tried to employ a systemic approach to truth and
reason[216] and culminated in the thought of Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274), who wrote the Summa
Theologica, or Summary of Theology.[217]

Royal and noble courts saw the development of chivalry and the ethos of courtly love. This culture
was expressed in thevernacular languages rather than Latin, and comprised poems, stories,
legends, and popular songs spread bytroubadours, or wandering minstrels. Often the stories were
written down in the chansons de geste, or "songs of great deeds", such as The Song of
Roland or The Song of Hildebrand.[218] Secular and religious histories were also produced.[219] Geoffrey
of Monmouth (d. c. 1155) composed his Historia Regum Britanniae, a collection of stories and
legends about Arthur.[220] Other works were more clearly history, such as Otto von Freising's (d.
1158) Gesta Friderici Imperatoris detailing the deeds of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, or William of
Malmesbury's (d. c. 1143) Gesta Regumon the kings of England.[219]
A medieval scholar making precise measurements in a 14th-century manuscript illustration

Legal studies advanced during the 12th century. Both secular law and canon law, or ecclesiastical
law, were studied in the High Middle Ages. Secular law, or Roman law, was advanced greatly by the
discovery of the Corpus Juris Civilis in the 11th century, and by 1100 Roman law was being taught
at Bologna. This led to the recording and standardisation of legal codes throughout Western Europe.
Canon law was also studied, and around 1140 a monk named Gratian (fl. 12th century), a teacher at
Bologna, wrote what became the standard text of canon law—the Decretum.[221]

Among the results of the Greek and Islamic influence on this period in European history was the
replacement of Roman numerals with the decimalpositional number system and the invention
of algebra, which allowed more advanced mathematics. Astronomy advanced following the
translation ofPtolemy's Almagest from Greek into Latin in the late 12th century. Medicine was also
studied, especially in southern Italy, where Islamic medicine influenced the school at Salerno.[222]

Technology and military[edit]

Main articles: Medieval technology, Medieval warfare and History of science § Science in the Middle
Ages

Portrait of Cardinal Hugh of Saint-Cher by Tommaso da Modena, 1352, the first known depiction of spectacles[223]

In the 12th and 13th centuries, Europe saw economic growth and innovations in methods of
production. Major technological advances included the invention of the windmill, the first mechanical
clocks, the manufacture of distilled spirits, and the use of the astrolabe.[224] Concave spectacles were
invented around 1286 by an unknown Italian artisan, probably working in or near Pisa. [225]

The development of a three-field rotation system for planting crops[154][AA] increased the usage of land
from one half in use each year under the old two-field system to two-thirds under the new system,
with a consequent increase in production.[226] The development of the heavy plough allowed heavier
soils to be farmed more efficiently, aided by the spread of the horse collar, which led to the use
of draught horses in place of oxen. Horses are faster than oxen and require less pasture, factors that
aided the implementation of the three-field system.[154]
The construction of cathedrals and castles advanced building technology, leading to the
development of large stone buildings. Ancillary structures included new town halls, houses, bridges,
and tithe barns.[227] Shipbuilding improved with the use of the rib and plank method rather than the old
Roman system of mortise and tenon. Other improvements to ships included the use of lateen sails
and the stern-post rudder, both of which increased the speed at which ships could be sailed. [228]

Military affairs saw an increase in the use of infantry with specialised roles. Along with the still-
dominant heavy cavalry, armies often included mounted and infantry crossbowmen, as well
as sappers and engineers.[229] Crossbows, which had been known in Late Antiquity, increased in use
partly because of the increase in siege warfare in the 10th and 11th centuries.[149][AB] The increasing
use of crossbows during the 12th and 13th centuries led to the use of closed-face helmets, heavy
body armour, as well as horse armour.[231] Gunpowder was known in Europe by the mid-13th century
with a recorded use in European warfare by the English against the Scots in 1304, although it was
merely used as an explosive and not as a weapon. Cannon were being used for sieges in the 1320s,
and hand-held guns were in use by the 1360s.[232]

Architecture, art, and music[edit]

Main articles: Medieval art, Romanesque art, Gothic art and Medieval music

The Romanesque Church of Maria Lach, Germany

In the 10th century the establishment of churches and monasteries led to the development of stone
architecture that elaborated vernacular Roman forms, from which the term "Romanesque" is derived.
Where available, Roman brick and stone buildings were recycled for their materials. From the
tentative beginnings known as the First Romanesque, the style flourished and spread across Europe
in a remarkably homogeneous form. Just before 1000 there was a great wave of building stone
churches all over Europe.[233] Romanesque buildings have massive stone walls, openings topped by
semi-circular arches, small windows, and, particularly in France, arched stone vaults. [234] The
largeportal with coloured sculpture in high relief became a central feature of façades, especially in
France, and the capitals of columns were often carved with narrative scenes of imaginative monsters
and animals.[235] According to art historian C. R. Dodwell, "virtually all the churches in the West were
decorated with wall-paintings", of which few survive.[236] Simultaneous with the development in church
architecture, the distinctive European form of the castle was developed, and became crucial to
politics and warfare.[237]

Romanesque art, especially metalwork, was at its most sophisticated in Mosan art, in which distinct
artistic personalities including Nicholas of Verdun (d. 1205) become apparent, and an
almost classical style is seen in works such as a font at Liège,[238] contrasting with the writhing
animals of the exactly contemporary Gloucester Candlestick. Large illuminated bibles
and psalters were the typical forms of luxury manuscripts, and wall-painting flourished in churches,
often following a scheme with a Last Judgement on the west wall, a Christ in Majesty at the east
end, and narrative biblical scenes down the nave, or in the best surviving example, at Saint-Savin-
sur-Gartempe, on the barrel-vaulted roof.[239]

The Gothic interior of Laon Cathedral, France

From the early 12th century, French builders developed the Gothic style, marked by the use of rib
vaults, pointed arches, flying buttresses, and large stained glass windows. It was used mainly in
churches and cathedrals, and continued in use until the 16th century in much of Europe. Classic
examples of Gothic architecture include Chartres Cathedral and Reims Cathedral in France as well
as Salisbury Cathedral in England.[240] Stained glass became a crucial element in the design of
churches, which continued to use extensive wall-paintings, now almost all lost. [241]

During this period the practice of manuscript illumination gradually passed from monasteries to lay
workshops, so that according to Janetta Benton "by 1300 most monks bought their books in shops",
[242]
and the book of hours developed as a form of devotional book for lay-people. Metalwork
continued to be the most prestigious form of art, with Limoges enamel a popular and relatively
affordable option for objects such as reliquaries and crosses.[243] In Italy the innovations
of Cimabue and Duccio, followed by the Trecento master Giotto (d. 1337), greatly increased the
sophistication and status of panel painting and fresco.[244] Increasing prosperity during the 12th
century resulted in greater production of secular art; many carved ivory objects such as gaming-
pieces, combs, and small religious figures have survived.[245]

Church life[edit]
Main articles: Gregorian Reform and Church and state in medieval Europe
Francis of Assisi, depicted by Bonaventura Berlinghieri in 1235, founded the FranciscanOrder.[246]

Monastic reform became an important issue during the 11th century, as elites began to worry that
monks were not adhering to the rules binding them to a strictly religious life. Cluny Abbey, founded in
the Mâcon region of France in 909, was established as part of the Cluniac Reforms, a larger
movement of monastic reform in response to this fear.[247] Cluny quickly established a reputation for
austerity and rigour. It sought to maintain a high quality of spiritual life by placing itself under the
protection of the papacy and by electing its own abbot without interference from laymen, thus
maintaining economic and political independence from local lords. [248]

Monastic reform inspired change in the secular church. The ideals that it was based upon were
brought to the papacy by Pope Leo IX (pope 1049–1054), and provided the ideology of the clerical
independence that led to the Investiture Controversy in the late 11th century. This involved
PopeGregory VII (pope 1073–85) and Emperor Henry IV, who initially clashed over episcopal
appointments, a dispute that turned into a battle over the ideas of investiture, clerical marriage,
and simony. The emperor saw the protection of the Church as one of his responsibilities as well as
wanting to preserve the right to appoint his own choices as bishops within his lands, but the papacy
insisted on the Church's independence from secular lords. These issues remained unresolved after
the compromise of 1122 known as the Concordat of Worms. The dispute represents a significant
stage in the creation of a papal monarchy separate from and equal to lay authorities. It also had the
permanent consequence of empowering German princes at the expense of the German emperors.
[247]
Sénanque Abbey, Gordes, France.

The High Middle Ages was a period of great religious movements. Besides the Crusades and
monastic reforms, people sought to participate in new forms of religious life. New monastic orders
were founded, including the Carthusians and the Cistercians. The latter especially expanded rapidly
in their early years under the guidance of Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153). These new orders were
formed in response to the feeling of the laity that Benedictine monasticism no longer met the needs
of the laymen, who along with those wishing to enter the religious life wanted a return to the
simpler hermetical monasticism of early Christianity, or to live an Apostolic life.[206] Religious
pilgrimages were also encouraged. Old pilgrimage sites such as Rome, Jerusalem,
andCompostela received increasing numbers of visitors, and new sites such as Monte
Gargano and Bari rose to prominence.[249]

In the 13th century mendicant orders—the Franciscans and the Dominicans—who swore vows of
poverty and earned their living by begging, were approved by the papacy. [250] Religious groups such
as the Waldensians and the Humiliati also attempted to return to the life of early Christianity in the
middle 12th and early 13th centuries, but they were condemned as heretical by the papacy. Others
joined the Cathars, another heretical movement condemned by the papacy. In 1209, a crusade was
preached against the Cathars, the Albigensian Crusade, which in combination with the medieval
Inquisition, eliminated them.[251]

Late Middle Ages[edit]

Main article: Late Middle Ages

A manuscript illustration of a bishop blessing victims of the Black Death(Omne Bonum, c. 1360–1375)

War, famine and plague[edit]

Main article: Crisis of the Late Middle Ages

The first years of the 14th century were marked by famines, culminating in the Great Famine of
1315–17.[252] The causes of the Great Famine included the slow transition from the Medieval Warm
Period to the Little Ice Age, which left the population vulnerable when bad weather caused crop
failures.[253] The years 1313–14 and 1317–21 were excessively rainy throughout Europe, resulting in
widespread crop failures.[254] The climate change—which resulted in a declining average annual
temperature for Europe during the 14th century—was accompanied by an economic downturn. [255]

Execution of some of the ringleaders of the jacquerie, from a 14th-century manuscript of the Chroniques de France
ou de St Denis

These troubles were followed in 1347 by the Black Death, a disease that spread throughout Europe
during the following three years.[256][AC] The death toll was probably about 35 million people in Europe,
about one-third of the population. Towns were especially hard-hit because of their crowded
conditions.[AD] Large areas of land were left sparsely inhabited, and in some places fields were left
unworked. Wages rose as landlords sought to entice the reduced number of available workers to
their fields. Further problems were the lower rents and lower demands for food, both of which cut
into agricultural income. Urban workers also felt that they had a right to greater earnings,
and popular uprisings broke out across Europe.[259] Among the uprisings were the jacquerie in
France, thePeasants' Revolt in England, and revolts in the cities of Florence in Italy
and Ghent and Bruges in Flanders. The trauma of the plague led to an increased piety throughout
Europe, which manifested itself in the foundation of new charities, the self-mortification of
the flagellants, and thescapegoating of the Jews.[260] Conditions were further unsettled by the return
of the plague throughout the rest of the 14th century; it continued to strike Europe periodically during
the rest of the Middle Ages.[256]

Society and economy[edit]

See also: 1300–1400 in European fashion and 1400–1500 in European fashion

Society throughout Europe was disturbed by the dislocations caused by the Black Death. Lands that
had been marginally productive were abandoned, as the survivors were able to acquire more fertile
areas.[261] Although serfdom declined in Western Europe it became more common in Eastern Europe,
as landlords imposed it on those of their tenants who had previously been free. [262] Most peasants in
Western Europe managed to change the work they had previously owed to their landlords into cash
rents.[263] The percentage of serfs amongst the peasantry declined from a high of 90 to closer to 50
per cent by the end of the period.[161] Landlords also became more conscious of common interests
with other landholders, and joined together to extort privileges from their governments. Partly at the
urging of landlords, governments attempted to legislate a return to the economic conditions that
existed before the Black Death.[263] Non-clergy became increasingly literate, and urban populations
began to imitate the nobility's interest in chivalry.[264]

Jewish communities were expelled from England in 1290, and from France in 1306. Although some
were allowed back into France, most were not, and many Jews emigrated eastwards, settling in
Poland and Hungary.[265] The Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, and dispersed to Turkey,
France, Italy, and Holland.[73] The rise of banking in Italy during the 13th century continued throughout
the 14th century, fuelled partly by the increasing warfare of the period and the needs of the papacy
to move money between kingdoms. Many of the banking firms loaned money to royalty, at great risk,
as some were bankrupted when kings defaulted on their loans. [266][AE]

State resurgence[edit]

Map of Europe in 1360

The Late Middle Ages witnessed the rise of strong, royalty-based nation states throughout Europe,
particularly in England,France, and the Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula: Aragon, Castile,
and Portugal. The long conflicts of the later Middle Ages strengthened royal control over their
kingdoms, and were extremely hard on the peasantry. Kings profited from warfare which extended
royal legislation throughout their kingdoms and increased the lands they directly controlled. [267]Paying
for the wars required that methods of taxation become more effective and efficient, and the rate of
taxation often increased.[268] The requirement to obtain the consent of those being taxed meant that
representative bodies such as theEnglish Parliament or the French Estates General gained power
and authority.[269]
Joan of Arc in a 15th-century depiction

Throughout the 14th century, French kings sought to expand their influence throughout the kingdom
at the expense of the territorial holdings of the nobility. [270] They ran into difficulties when attempting to
confiscate the holdings of the English kings in southern France, leading to the Hundred Years' War,
[271]
which lasted until 1453.[272] Early in the war the English under Edward III (r. 1327–77) and his
son Edward, the Black Prince (d. 1376),[AF] won the battles of Crécy and Poitiers, captured the city
of Calais, and won control of much of France.[AG] The resulting stresses almost caused the
disintegration of the French kingdom during the early years of the war.[275] In the early 15th century,
France once more came close to dissolving, but in the late 1420s the military successes of Joan of
Arc (d. 1431) led to the victory of the French kings over the English and the capture of the last of the
English possessions in southern France in 1453.[276] The price was high, as the population of France
at the end of the Wars was likely half what it had been at the start of the conflict. Conversely, the
Wars had a positive effect on English national identity, doing much to fuse the various local identities
into a national English ideal. The conflict with the French also helped create a national culture in
England that was separate from French culture, which had been the dominant cultural influence in
England before the outbreak of the Hundred Years' War. [277] The early Hundred Years' War also saw
the dominance of the English longbow,[278] and the appearance of cannon on the battlefield at Crécy
in 1346.[232]

In modern-day Germany, the Empire continued, but the elective nature of the imperial crown meant
that there was no enduring dynasty around which a strong state could form. [279] Further east, the
kingdoms of Poland, Hungary, and Bohemia grew powerful.[280] The Iberian Peninsula kingdoms
continued to gain land from the Muslim kingdoms of the peninsula; [280] Portugal concentrated on
expanding overseas during the 15th century, while the other kingdoms were riven by difficulties over
the royal succession and other concerns.[281][282] England, after losing the Hundred Years' War, went on
to suffer a long civil war known as the Wars of the Roses, which lasted into the 1490s,[282] and only
ended when Henry Tudor (r. 1485–1509 as Henry VII) became king and consolidated his hold on
England after his victory over Richard III(r. 1483–85) at Bosworth in 1485.[283] Scandinavia went
through a period of union under the Union of Kalmar in the late 14th and early 15th centuries, but
dissolved once more after the death of Margaret I of Denmark (r. in Denmark 1387–1412), who had
united Norway, Denmark, and Sweden. The major power around the Baltic Sea was the Hanseatic
League, a commercial confederation of city states that traded from Western Europe to Russia.
[284]
Scotland emerged from English domination under Robert the Bruce (r. 1306–29), who secured
papal recognition of his kingship in 1328.[285]

Collapse of Byzantium[edit]
Main articles: Decline of the Byzantine Empire, Byzantine Empire under the Angelos
dynasty, Byzantine Empire under the Palaiologos dynasty, Byzantine–Ottoman Wars andRise of the
Ottoman Empire

Although the Palaeologi emperors recaptured Constantinople from the Western Europeans in 1261,
they were never able to regain control of much of the former imperial lands. They usually controlled
only a small section of the Balkan Peninsula near Constantinople, the city itself, and some coastal
lands on the Black Sea and around the Aegean Sea. The former Byzantine lands in the Balkans
were divided between the new kingdom of Serbia, the Second Bulgarian Empire and the city-state
of Venice. The power of the Byzantine emperors was threatened by a new Turkish tribe,
the Ottomans, who established themselves in Anatolia in the 13th century and steadily
expanded throughout the 14th century. The Ottomans expanded into Europe, reducing Bulgaria to a
vassal state by 1366 and taking over Serbia after its defeat at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. Western
Europeans rallied to the plight of the Christians in the Balkans and declared a new crusade in 1396;
a great army was sent to the Balkans, where it was defeated at the Battle of Nicopolis.
[286]
Constantinople was finally captured by the Ottomans in 1453.[287]

Controversy within the Church[edit]

Guy of Boulogne crowning Pope Gregory XI in a miniature fromFroissart's Chroniques

The troubled 14th century saw the Avignon Papacy of 1305–78,[288] also called the "Babylonian
Captivity of the Papacy" (a reference to theBabylonian captivity of the Jews),[289] and then the Great
Schism that lasted from 1378 to 1418, when there were two, then later three, rival popes, each
supported by several states.[290] In the early years of the 15th century, after a century of turmoil,
ecclesiastical officials convened in Constance in 1414, and the following year the council deposed
one of the rival popes, leaving only two claimants. Further depositions followed, and in November
1417 the council elected Martin V (pope 1417–31) as pope.[291]

Besides the schism, the western church was riven by theological controversies, some of which
turned into heresies. John Wycliffe (d. 1384), an English theologian, was condemned as a heretic in
1415 for teaching that the laity should have access to the text of the Bible as well as holding views
on the Eucharist that were contrary to church doctrine.[292] Wycliffe's teachings influenced two of the
major heretical movements of the later Middle Ages—Lollardy in England and Hussitism in Bohemia.
[293]
The Bohemians were also influenced by the teaching of Jan Hus, who was burned at the stake in
1415 after being condemned as a heretic by the Council of Constance. The Hussite church, although
the target of a crusade, survived beyond the Middle Ages.[294] Other heresies were manufactured,
such as the accusations against the Knights Templar that resulted in their suppression in 1312, and
the division of their great wealth between the French King Philip IV (r. 1285–1314) and the
Hospitallers.[295]

The papacy refined the concept of transubstantiation further in the Late Middle Ages, stating that the
clergy alone was allowed to partake of the wine in the Eucharist. This further distanced the secular
laity from the clergy. The laity continued the practices of pilgrimages, veneration of relics, and belief
in the power of the Devil. Mystics such as Meister Eckhart (d. 1327) or Thomas à Kempis (d. 1471)
wrote works that taught the laity to focus on their inner spiritual life, which laid the groundwork for the
Protestant Reformation. Besides mysticism, belief in witches and witchcraft became widespread,
and by the late 15th century the Church had begun to lend credence to populist fears of witchcraft by
its condemnation of witches in 1484 and the publication in 1486 of the Malleus Maleficarum, the
most popular handbook for witch-hunters.[296]

Scholars, intellectuals, and exploration [edit]

The Later Middle Ages saw a reaction against scholasticism led by John Duns Scotus (d. 1308)
[AH]
and William of Ockham (d. c. 1348),[216] both of whom objected to the application of reason to faith.
Their efforts, along with others, led to an undermining of the prevailing Platonic idea of "universals".
Ockham's insistence that reason operates independently of faith allowed science to be separated
from theology and philosophy.[297] Legal studies were marked by the steady advance of Roman law
into areas of jurisprudence previously governed by customary law. The one exception to this trend
was England, where the common law remained pre-eminent. Countries also codified their laws; legal
codes were promulgated in countries as far apart as Castile, Poland, and Lithuania.[298]

Clerks studying astronomy andgeometry. France, early 15th century

Education remained mostly focused on the training of future clergy. The basic learning of the letters
and numbers remained the province of the family or a village priest, but the secondary subjects of
the trivium—grammar, rhetoric, logic—were studied in cathedral schools or in schools provided by
cities. Commercial secondary schools spread, and some Italian towns had more than one such
enterprise. Universities also spread throughout Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries. The rise of
vernacular literature increased, with Dante (d. 1321), Petrarch (d. 1374) and Giovanni Boccaccio (d.
1375) in 14th-century Italy, Geoffrey Chaucer (d. 1400) and William Langland (d. c. 1386) in
England, andFrançois Villon (d. 1464) and Christine de Pizan (d. c. 1430) in France. Much literature
remained religious in character, and although a great deal of it continued to be written in Latin, a new
demand developed for saints' lives and other devotional tracts in the vernacular languages. [298] This
was fed by the growth of the Devotio Moderna movement, most prominently in the formation of
the Brethren of the Common Life, but also in the works of German mystics such as Meister Eckhart
and Johannes Tauler (d. 1361).[299] Theatre also developed in the guise of miracle plays put on by the
Church.[298] At the end of the period, the development of the printing press in about 1450 led to the
establishment of publishing houses throughout Europe by 1500.[300] Lay literacy rates rose, but were
still low; one estimate gave a literacy rate of ten per cent of males and one per cent of females in
1500.[301]

Beginning in the early 15th century, the countries of the Iberian peninsula began to sponsor
exploration beyond the boundaries of Europe. Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal (d. 1460) sent
expeditions that discovered the Canary Islands, the Azores, and Cape Verde during his lifetime. After
his death, exploration continued; Bartolomeu Dias (d. 1500) went around the Cape of Good Hope in
1486 and Vasco da Gama (d. 1524) sailed around Africa to India in 1498.[302] The combined Spanish
monarchies of Castile and Aragon sponsored Christopher Columbus' (d. 1506) voyage of exploration
in 1492 that discovered the Americas.[303] The English crown under Henry VII sponsored the voyage
of John Cabot (d. 1498) in 1497, which landed on Cape Breton Island.[304]

Technological and military developments[edit]

One of the major developments in the military sphere during the Late Middle Ages was the
increasing use of infantry and light cavalry.[305] The English also employed longbowmen, but other
countries were unable to create similar forces that enjoyed the same military success. [306] Armour
continued to advance, spurred on by the increasing power of crossbows, and plate armour was
developed to help protect against the threat from crossbows as well as the hand-held guns that were
developed.[307] Pole arms reached new prominence with the development of the Flemish and Swiss
infantry armed with pikes and other long spears.[308]

In agriculture, one major advance was the increasing use of sheep with long-fibred wool, which
allowed a stronger thread to be spun. Also important was the replacement of the traditional distaff for
spinning wool with the spinning wheel, which tripled production over hand spinning.[309][AI] A less
technological refinement that still greatly affected daily life was the use of buttons as closures for
garments, which allowed for better fitting without having to lace clothing on the wearer. [311] Windmills
were refined with the creation of the tower mill, which allowed the upper part of the windmill to be
spun around to face whichever direction the wind was blowing. [312] The blast furnace appeared
around 1350 in Sweden, increasing the quantity of iron produced and improving its quality. [313] The
first patent law in 1447 in Venice protected the rights of inventors to their inventions.[314]

Late medieval art and architecture[edit]

February scene from the 15th-century illuminated manuscript Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry

The Late Middle Ages in Europe as a whole correspond to the Trecento and Early
Renaissance cultural periods in Italy, although Northern Europe and Spain continued to use Gothic
styles, increasingly elaborate in the 15th century, until almost the end of the period. International
Gothic was a courtly style that reached much of Europe in the decades around 1400, producing
masterpieces such as the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry.[315] All over Europe secular art
continued to increase in quantity and quality, and in the 15th century the mercantile classes of Italy
and Flanders became important patrons, commissioning small portraits of themselves in oils as well
as a growing range of luxury items such as jewellery,ivory caskets, cassone chests,
and maiolica pottery. These objects also included the Hispano-Moresque ware produced by
mostly Mudéjar potters in Spain. Although royalty owned huge collections of plate, little survives
except for the Royal Gold Cup.[316] Italian silk manufacture developed, so that western churches and
elites no longer needed to rely on imports from Byzantium or the Islamic world. In France and
Flanders tapestry weaving of sets like The Lady and the Unicorn became a major luxury industry.[317]

The large external sculptural schemes of Early Gothic churches gave way to more sculpture inside
the building, as tombs became more elaborate and other features such as pulpits were sometimes
lavishly carved, as in the Pulpit by Giovanni Pisano in Sant'Andrea. Painted or carved wooden
relief altarpieces became common, especially as churches created many side-chapels. Early
Netherlandish painting by artists such as Jan van Eyck(d. 1441) and Rogier van der Weyden (d.
1464) rivalled that of Italy, as did northern illuminated manuscripts, which in the 15th century began
to be collected on a large scale by secular elites, who also commissioned secular books, especially
histories. From about 1450 printed books rapidly became popular, though still expensive. There were
around 30,000 different editions of incunabula, or works printed before 1500,[318] by which time
illuminated manuscripts were commissioned only by royalty and a few others. Very small woodcuts,
nearly all religious, were affordable even by peasants in parts of Northern Europe from the middle of
the 15th century. More expensive engravings supplied a wealthier market with a variety of images.[319]

Modern perceptions[edit]
See also: Dark Ages (historiography)

Medieval illustration of thespherical Earth in a 14th-century copy of L'Image du monde

The medieval period is frequently caricatured as a "time of ignorance and superstition" that placed
"the word of religious authorities over personal experience and rational activity." [320] This is a legacy
from both the Renaissance and Enlightenment, when scholars contrasted their intellectual cultures
with those of the medieval period, to the detriment of the Middle Ages. Renaissance scholars saw
the Middle Ages as a period of decline from the high culture and civilisation of the Classical world;
Enlightenment scholars saw reason as superior to faith, and thus viewed the Middle Ages as a time
of ignorance and superstition.[13]

Others argue that reason was generally held in high regard during the Middle Ages. Science
historian Edward Grant writes, "If revolutionary rational thoughts were expressed [in the 18th
century], they were only made possible because of the long medieval tradition that established the
use of reason as one of the most important of human activities".[321] Also, contrary to common
belief, David Lindberg writes, "the late medieval scholar rarely experienced the coercive power of the
church and would have regarded himself as free (particularly in the natural sciences) to follow
reason and observation wherever they led".[322]

The caricature of the period is also reflected in some more specific notions. One misconception, first
propagated in the 19th century[323] and still very common, is that all people in the Middle Ages
believed that the Earth was flat.[323] This is untrue, as lecturers in the medieval universities commonly
argued that evidence showed the Earth was a sphere. [324] Lindberg and Ronald Numbers, another
scholar of the period, state that there "was scarcely a Christian scholar of the Middle Ages who did
not acknowledge [Earth's] sphericity and even know its approximate circumference". [325]Other
misconceptions such as "the Church prohibited autopsies and dissections during the Middle Ages",
"the rise of Christianity killed off ancient science", or "the medieval Christian church suppressed the
growth of natural philosophy", are all cited by Numbers as examples of widely popular myths that still
pass as historical truth, although they are not supported by current historical research. [326]

The American Civil War, widely known in the United States as simply the Civil
War as well as other sectional names, was fought from 1861 to 1865. Seven Southern slave
states individually declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate
States of America, known as the "Confederacy" or the "South". They grew to include eleven states,
and although they claimed thirteen states and additional western territories, the Confederacy was
never recognized by a foreign country. The states that did not declare secession were known as the
"Union" or the "North". The war had its origin in the fractious issue of slavery, especially the
extension of slavery into the western territories.[N 1] After four years of bloody combat that left over
600,000 Union and Confederate soldiers dead, and destroyed much of the South's infrastructure, the
Confederacy collapsed, slavery was abolished, and the difficult Reconstruction process of restoring
national unity and guaranteeing civil rights to the freed slaves began.

In the 1860 presidential election, Republicans, led by Abraham Lincoln, opposed the expansion of
slavery into US territories. Lincoln won, but before his inauguration on March 4, 1861, seven slave
states with cotton-based economies formed the Confederacy. The first six to secede had the highest
proportions of slaves in their populations, a total of 48.8% for the six.
[5]
Outgoing Democratic President James Buchanan and the incoming Republicans rejected
secession as illegal. Lincoln's inaugural address declared his administration would not initiate civil
war. Eight remaining slave states continued to reject calls for secession. Confederate forces seized
numerous federal forts within territory claimed by the Confederacy. A peace conference failed to find
a compromise, and both sides prepared for war. The Confederates assumed
that European countries were so dependent on "King Cotton" that they would intervene; none did
and none recognized the new Confederate States of America.

Hostilities began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces fired upon Fort Sumter, a key fort held
by Union troops in South Carolina. Lincoln called for every state to provide troops to retake the fort;
consequently, four more slave states joined the Confederacy, bringing their total to eleven. Lincoln
soon controlled the border states, after arresting state legislators and suspending habeas corpus,
[6]
ignoring the ruling of the Supreme Court's Chief Justice that such suspension was unconstitutional,
and established a naval blockade that crippled the southern economy. The Eastern Theater was
inconclusive in 1861–62. The autumn 1862 Confederate campaign into Maryland (a Union state)
ended with Confederate retreat at the Battle of Antietam, dissuading British intervention.[7] To the
west, by summer 1862 the Union destroyed the Confederate river navy, then much of their western
armies, and the Union siege of Vicksburg split the Confederacy in two at the Mississippi River. In
1863,Robert E. Lee's Confederate incursion north ended at the Battle of Gettysburg. Lincoln issued
the Emancipation Proclamation, which made ending slavery a war goal.[8] Western successes led
to Ulysses S. Grant's command of all Union armies in 1864. In the Western Theater, William T.
Sherman drove east to capture Atlanta and marched to the sea, destroying Confederate
infrastructure along the way. The Union marshaled the resources and manpower to attack the
Confederacy from all directions, leading to the protracted Siege of Petersburg. The besieged
Confederate army eventually abandoned Richmond, seeking to regroup at Appomattox Court
House, though there they found themselves surrounded by union forces. This led to Lee's surrender
to Grant on April 9, 1865. All Confederate generals surrendered by that summer.

The American Civil War was one of the earliest true industrial wars. Railroads, the telegraph,
steamships, and mass-produced weapons were employed extensively. The mobilization of civilian
factories, mines, shipyards, banks, transportation and food supplies all foreshadowed World War I. It
remains the deadliest war in American history, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 750,000
soldiers and an undetermined number of civilian casualties.[N 2] One estimate of the death toll is that
ten percent of all Northern males 20–45 years old, and 30 percent of all Southern white males aged
18–40 perished.[10] From 1861 to 1865 about 620,000 soldiers lost their lives.[11]

Causes of secession
Main articles: Origins of the American Civil War, Timeline of events leading to the American Civil
War and History of the United States

The causes of the Civil War were complex and have been controversial since the war began. The
issue has been further complicated by historical revisionists, who have tried to offer a variety of
reasons for the war.[12] Slavery was the central source of escalating political tension in the 1850s.
The Republican Party was determined to prevent any spread of slavery, and many Southern leaders
had threatened secession if the Republican candidate, Lincoln, won the 1860 election. After Lincoln
had won without carrying a single Southern state, many Southern whites felt that disunion had
become their only option, because they felt as if they were losing representation, which hampered
their ability to promote pro-slavery acts and policies.[13]

Slavery
Main article: Slavery in the United States

The slavery issue was primarily about whether the system of slavery was an anachronistic evil that
was incompatible with Republicanism in the United States, or a state-based property system
protected by the Constitution.[14] The strategy of the anti-slavery forces was containment — to stop
the expansion and thus put slavery on a path to gradual extinction. [15] To slave holding interests in the
South, this strategy was perceived as infringing upon their Constitutional rights. [16] Slavery was being
phased out of existence in the North and was fading in the border states and urban areas, but was
expanding in highly profitable cotton districts of the south.

An 1863 photo ofGordon, distributed in the North during the war.[17]

Despite compromises in 1820 and 1850, the slavery issues exploded in the 1850s. Causes include
controversy over admitting Missouri as a slave state in 1820, the acquisition of Texas as a slave
state in 1845 and the status of slavery in western territories won as a result of the Mexican–
American Warand the resulting Compromise of 1850.[18] Following the U.S. victory over Mexico,
Northerners attempted to exclude slavery from conquered territories in the Wilmot Proviso; although
it passed the House, it failed in the Senate. Northern (and British) readers recoiled in anger at the
horrors of slavery as described in the novel and play Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) by abolitionist Harriet
Beecher Stowe.[19][20] Irreconcilable disagreements over slavery ended the Whig and Know
Nothing political parties, and later split the Democratic Party between North and South, while the
new Republican Party angered slavery interests by demanding an end to its expansion. Most
observers believed that without expansion slavery would eventually die out; Lincoln argued this in
1845 and 1858.[21][22]

Meanwhile, the South of the 1850s saw an increasing number of slaves leave the border
states through sale, manumission and escape. During this same period, slave-holding border states
had more free African-Americans and European immigrants than the lower South, which increased
Southern fears that slavery was threatened with rapid extinction in this area. [23] With tobacco and
cotton wearing out the soil, the South believed it needed to expand slavery. [24] Some advocates for
the Southern states argued in favor of reopening the international slave trade to populate territory
that was to be newly opened to slavery.[25] Southern demands for a slave code to ensure slavery in
the territories repeatedly split the Democratic Party between North and South by widening margins.[26]
[N 3]

To settle the dispute over slavery expansion, Abolitionists and proslavery elements sent their
partisans into Kansas, both using ballots and bullets. In the 1850s, a miniature civil war in Bleeding
Kansas led pro-South Presidents Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan to attempt a forced
admission of Kansas as a slave state through vote fraud. [31] The 1857 Congressional rejection of the
pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution was the first multi-party solid-North vote, and that solid vote was
anti-slavery to support the democratic majority voting in the Kansas Territory. [32] Violence on behalf of
Southern honor reached the floor of the Senate in 1856 when a Southern Congressman, Preston
Brooks, physically assaulted Republican Senator Charles Sumner when he ridiculed prominent
slaveholders as pimps for slavery.[33]

The earlier political party structure failed to make accommodation among sectional differences.
Disagreements over slavery caused the Whig and "Know-Nothing" parties to collapse. In 1860, the
last national political party, the Democratic Party, split along sectional lines. Anti-slavery Northerners
mobilized in 1860 behind moderate Abraham Lincoln because he was most likely to carry the
doubtful western states. In 1857, the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision ended the Congressional
compromise for Popular Sovereignty in Kansas. According to the court, slavery in the territories was
a property right of any settler, regardless of the majority there. Chief Justice Taney's decision said
that slaves were "... so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to
respect". The decision overturned the Missouri Compromise, which banned slavery in territory north
of the 36°30' parallel.[34]

Members of slave-owning planter aristocracydominated society and politics in the South.

Republicans denounced the Dred Scott decision and promised to overturn it; Abraham Lincoln
warned that the next Dred Scottdecision could threaten the Northern states with slavery. The
Republican party platform called slavery "a national evil", and Lincoln believed it would die a natural
death if it were contained.[35] The Democrat Stephen A. Douglas developed the Freeport Doctrine to
appeal to North and South. Douglas argued, Congress could not decide either for or against slavery
before a territory was settled. Nonetheless, the anti-slavery majority in Kansas could stop slavery
with its own local laws if their police laws did not protect slavery introduction. [36] Most 1850 political
battles followed the arguments of Lincoln and Douglas, focusing on the issue of slavery expansion in
the territories.[21]

But political debate was cut short throughout the South with Northern abolitionist John Brown's 1859
raid at Harpers Ferry Armory in an attempt to incite slave insurrections. The Southern political
defense of slavery transformed into widespread expansion of local militias for armed defense of their
"peculiar" domestic institution.[37] Lincoln's assessment of the political issue for the 1860 elections
was that, "This question of Slavery was more important than any other; indeed, so much more
important has it become that no other national question can even get a hearing just at present." [N
4]
The Republicans gained majorities in both House and Senate for the first time since the 1856
elections, they were to be seated in numbers that Lincoln might use to govern, a national
parliamentary majority even before pro-slavery House and Senate seats were vacated. [40] Meanwhile,
Southern Vice President, Alexander Stephens, in the Cornerstone Speech, declared the new
confederate "Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar
institutions—African slavery as it exists among us—the proper status of the negro in our form of
civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution." [41] The
Republican administration enacted the Confiscation Acts that set conditions for emancipation of
slaves prior to the official proclamation of emancipation.[42]Likewise, Lincoln had previously
condemned slavery and called for its "extinction."[43]
Considering the relative weight given to causes of the Civil War by contemporary actors, historians
such as Chandra Manning argue that both Union and Confederate fighting soldiers believed that
slavery caused the Civil War. Union men mainly believed the war was to emancipate the slaves.
Confederates fought to protect southern society, and slavery as an integral part of it. [44] Addressing
the causes, Eric Foner would relate a historical context with multidimensional political, social and
economic variables. The several causes united in the moment by a consolidating nationalism. A
social movement that was individualist, egalitarian and perfectionist grew to a political democratic
majority attacking slavery, and slavery's defense in the Southern pre-industrial traditional society
brought the two sides to war.[45]

States' rights
Main article: States' rights

Marais des Cygnes massacre of anti-slavery Kansans. May 19, 1858.

Everyone agreed that states had certain rights—but did those rights carry over when a citizen left
that state? The Southern position was that citizens of every state had the right to take their property
anywhere in the U.S. and not have it taken away—specifically they could bring their slaves
anywhere and they would remain slaves. Northerners rejected this "right" because it would violate
the right of a free state to outlaw slavery within its borders. Republicans committed to ending the
expansion of slavery were among those opposed to any such right to bring slaves and slavery into
the free states and territories. The Dred Scott Supreme Court decision of 1857 bolstered the
Southern case within territories, and angered the North. [46]

Secondly, the South argued that each state had the right to secede—leave the Union—at any time,
that the Constitution was a "compact" or agreement among the states. Northerners (including
President Buchanan) rejected that notion as opposed to the will of the Founding Fathers who said
they were setting up a "perpetual union".[46] Historian James McPherson writes concerning states'
rights and other non-slavery explanations:

“ While one or more of these interpretations remain popular among the Sons of
Confederate Veterans and other Southern heritage groups, few professional historians ”
now subscribe to them. Of all these interpretations, the state's-rights argument is
perhaps the weakest. It fails to ask the question, state's rights for what purpose?
 State's rights, or sovereignty, was always more a means than an end, an instrument to
achieve a certain goal more than a principle.[47]

Sectionalism

Status of the states, 1861.

States that seceded before April 15, 1861
States that seceded after April 15, 1861
Union states that permitted slavery
Union states that banned slavery
Territories

Sectionalism refers to the different economies, social structure, customs and political values of the
North and South.[48][49] It increased steadily between 1800 and 1860 as the North, which phased
slavery out of existence, industrialized, urbanized and built prosperous farms, while the deep South
concentrated on plantation agriculture based on slave labor, together with subsistence farming for
the poor whites. The South expanded into rich new lands in the Southwest (from Alabama to Texas).
[50]

However, slavery declined in the border states and could barely survive in cities and industrial areas
(it was fading out in cities such as Baltimore, Louisville, and St. Louis), so a South based on slavery
was rural and non-industrial. On the other hand, as the demand for cotton grew, the price of slaves
soared. Historians have debated whether economic differences between the industrial Northeast and
the agricultural South helped cause the war. Most historians now disagree with the economic
determinism of historian Charles Beard in the 1920s and emphasize that Northern and Southern
economies were largely complementary. While socially different, the sections economically benefited
each other.[51][52]

Fears of slave revolts and abolitionist propaganda made the South militantly hostile to abolitionism. [53]
[54]
Southerners complained that it was the North that was changing, and was prone to new "isms",
while the South remained true to historic republican values of the Founding Fathers (many of whom
owned slaves, including Washington, Jefferson, and Madison). Lincoln said that Republicans were
following the tradition of the framers of the Constitution (including the Northwest Ordinance and
the Missouri Compromise) by preventing expansion of slavery.[55]

In the 1840s and 50s, the issue of accepting slavery (in the guise of rejecting slave-owning bishops
and missionaries) split the nation's largest religious denominations
(the Methodist,Baptist and Presbyterian churches) into separate Northern and Southern
denominations.[56] Industrialization meant that seven European immigrants out of eight settled in the
North. The movement of twice as many whites leaving the South for the North as vice versa
contributed to the South's defensive-aggressive political behavior. [57]

Protectionism
Main articles: King Cotton, Protectionism in the United States and Infant industry

New Orleans the largest cotton exporting port for New England and Great Britain textile mills, shipping Mississippi
River Valley goods from North, South and Border states.

Historically, southern slave-holding states, because of their low cost manual labor, had little
perceived need for mechanization, and supported having the right to sell cotton and purchase
manufactured goods from any nation. Northern states, which had heavily invested in their still-
nascent manufacturing, could not compete with the full-fledged industries of Europe in offering high
prices for cotton imported from the South and low prices for manufactured exports in return. Thus,
northern manufacturing interests supported tariffs and protectionism while southern planters
demanded free trade.[58]

The Democrats in Congress, controlled by Southerners, wrote the tariff laws in the 1830s, 1840s,
and 1850s, and kept reducing rates so that the 1857 rates were the lowest since 1816. The South
had no complaints but the low rates angered Northern industrialists and factory workers, especially
in Pennsylvania, who demanded protection for their growing iron industry. The Whigs and
Republicans complained because they favored high tariffs to stimulate industrial growth, and
Republicans called for an increase in tariffs in the 1860 election. The increases were finally enacted
in 1861 after Southerners resigned their seats in Congress.[59][60]
Historians in the 1920s emphasized the tariff issue but since the 1950s they have minimized it,
noting that few Southerners in 1860–61 said it was of central importance to them. Some secessionist
documents do mention the tariff issue, though not nearly as often as the preservation of slavery.

Slave power and free soil

Main article: Slave Power

"A Ride for Liberty" (1862). An unassisted family of fugitive slaves charges for the safety of Union lines.

Antislavery forces in the North identified the "Slave Power" as a direct threat to republican values.
They argued that rich slave owners were using political power to take control of the Presidency,
Congress and the Supreme Court, thus threatening the rights of the citizens of the North. [N 5][61]

"Free soil" was a Northern demand that the new lands opening up in the west be available to
independent yeoman farmers and not be bought out by rich slave owners who would buy up the best
land and work it with slaves, forcing the white farmers onto marginal lands. This was the basis of
the Free Soil Party of 1848, and a main theme of the Republican Party.[62] Free Soilers and
Republicans demanded a homestead lawthat would give government land to settlers; it was
defeated by Southerners who feared it would attract to the west European immigrants and poor
Southern whites.[63]

Territorial crisis
Further information: Slave and free states

Between 1803 and 1854, the United States achieved a vast expansion of territory through purchase,
negotiation, and conquest. Of the states carved out of these territories by 1845, all had entered the
union as slave states: Louisiana, Missouri, Arkansas, Florida and Texas, as well as the southern
portions of Alabama and Mississippi. These were balanced by new free states created within the
U.S.' original boundary east of the Mississippi River, and the free state of Iowa in 1846. With the
conquest of northern Mexico, including California in 1848, slaveholding interests looked forward to
the institution flourishing in much of these lands as well. Southerners also anticipated garnering
slaves and slave states in Cuba and Central America.[64][65] Northern free soil interests vigorously
sought to curtail any further expansion of slave soil. It was these territorial disputes that the
proslavery and antislavery forces collided over.[66] The Compromise of 1850 over California, tried
again to reach some political settlement on these issues.

The existence of slavery in the southern states was far less politically polarizing than the explosive
question of the territorial expansion of the institution westward. [67] Moreover, Americans were
informed by two well-established readings of the Constitution regarding human bondage: first, that
the slave states had complete autonomy over the institution within their boundaries, and second, that
the domestic slave trade – trade among the states – was immune to federal interference. [68][69] The
only feasible strategy available to attack slavery was to restrict its expansion into the new territories.
[70]
Slaveholding interests fully grasped the danger that this strategy posed to them. [71] Both the South
and the North drew the same conclusion: "The power to decide the question of slavery for the
territories was the power to determine the future of slavery itself."[72][73]

Sen. Stephen Douglas, author of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854

Sen. John J. Crittenden, author of the Crittenden Compromise bill of 1860

By 1860, four doctrines had emerged to answer the question of federal control in the territories, and
they all claimed they were sanctioned by the Constitution, implicitly or explicitly. Two of the
"conservative" doctrines emphasized the written text and historical precedents of the founding
document (specifically, the Northwest Ordinance and the Missouri Compromise), while the other two
doctrines developed arguments that transcended the Constitution.[74]

The first of these "conservative" theories, represented by the Constitutional Union Party, argued that
the historical designation of free and slave apportionments in territories (as done in the Missouri
Compromise) should become a Constitutional mandate. TheCrittenden Compromise of 1860 was an
expression of this view.[75]

The second doctrine of Congressional preeminence, championed by Abraham Lincoln and

the Republican Party, insisted that the Constitution did not bind legislators to a policy of balance –
that slavery could be excluded altogether (as done in the Northwest Ordinance) in a territory at the
discretion of Congress[76] – with one caveat: the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment must
apply. In other words, Congress could restrict human bondage, but never establish it. The Wilmot
Provisoannounced this position in 1846.[77]

Of the two doctrines that rejected federal authority, one was articulated by northern Democrat of
Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas, and the other by southern Democratic Senator Jefferson
Davis of Mississippi and Vice-President John C. Breckinridgeof Kentucky.[78]

Douglas proclaimed the doctrine of territorial or "popular" sovereignty, which declared that the
settlers in a territory had the same rights as states in the Union to establish or disestablish slavery –
a purely local matter. Congress, having created the territory, was barred, according to Douglas, from
exercising any authority in domestic matters. To do so would violate historic traditions of self-
government, implicit in the US Constitution.[79] The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 legislated this
doctrine.[80] In Kansas Territory, years of pro and anti-slavery violence and political conflict erupted;
the congressional House of Representatives voted to admit Kansas as a free state in early 1860, but
its admission in the Senate was delayed until after the 1860 elections, when southern senators
began to leave.[81]

The fourth in this quartet is the theory of state sovereignty ("states' rights"),[82] also known as the
"Calhoun doctrine",[83] named after the South Carolinian political theorist and statesman John C.
Calhoun.[84] Rejecting the arguments for federal authority or self-government, state sovereignty would
empower states to promote the expansion of slavery as part of the Federal Union under the US
Constitution – and not merely as an argument for secession. The basic premise was that all authority
regarding matters of slavery in the territories resided in each state. The role of the federal
government was merely to enable the implementation of state laws when residents of the states
entered the territories.[85] The Calhoun doctrine asserted that the federal government in the territories
was only the agent of the several sovereign states, and hence incapable of forbidding the bringing
into any territory of anything that was legal property in any state. State sovereignty, in other words,
gave the laws of the slaveholding states extra-jurisdictional effect.[86]
"States' rights" was an ideology formulated and applied as a means of advancing slave state
interests through federal authority.[87] As historian Thomas L. Krannawitter points out, the "Southern
demand for federal slave protection represented a demand for an unprecedented expansion of
federal power."[88][89]

By 1860, these four doctrines comprised the major ideologies presented to the American public on
the matters of slavery, the territories and the US Constitution.[90]

National elections
Beginning in the American Revolution and accelerating after the War of 1812, the people of the
United States grew in their sense of country as an important example to the world of a national
republic of political liberty and personal rights. Previous regional independence movements such as
the Greek revolt in the Ottoman Empire, division and redivision in the Latin American political map,
and the British-French Crimean triumph leading to an interest in redrawing Europe along cultural
differences, all conspired to make for a time of upheaval and uncertainty about the basis of the
nation-state. In the world of 19th century self-made Americans, growing in prosperity, population and
expanding westward, "freedom" could mean personal liberty or property rights. The unresolved
difference would cause failure—first in their political institutions, then in their civil life together.

Nationalism and honor

Abraham Lincoln
16th U.S. President (1861–1865)

Nationalism was a powerful force in the early 19th century, with famous spokesmen such as Andrew
Jackson and Daniel Webster. While practically all Northerners supported the Union, Southerners
were split between those loyal to the entire United States (called "unionists") and those loyal
primarily to the southern region and then the Confederacy.[91] C. Vann Woodward said of the latter
group, "A great slave society ... had grown up and miraculously flourished in the heart of a
thoroughly bourgeois and partly puritanical republic. It had renounced its bourgeois origins and
elaborated and painfully rationalized its institutional, legal, metaphysical, and religious defenses ...
When the crisis came it chose to fight. It proved to be the death struggle of a society, which went
down in ruins."[92] Perceived insults to Southern collective honor included the enormous popularity
of Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)[93] and the actions of abolitionist John Brown in trying to incite a slave
rebellion in 1859.[94]

While the South moved toward a Southern nationalism, leaders in the North were also becoming
more nationally minded, and rejected any notion of splitting the Union. The Republican national
electoral platform of 1860 warned that Republicans regarded disunion as treason and would not
tolerate it: "We denounce those threats of disunion ... as denying the vital principles of a free
government, and as an avowal of contemplated treason, which it is the imperative duty of an
indignant people sternly to rebuke and forever silence." [95] The South ignored the warnings:
Southerners did not realize how ardently the North would fight to hold the Union together. [96]

Lincoln's election
Main article: United States presidential election, 1860

The election of Lincoln in November 1860 was the final trigger for secession. [97] Efforts at
compromise, including the "Corwin Amendment" and the "Crittenden Compromise", failed. Southern
leaders feared that Lincoln would stop the expansion of slavery and put it on a course toward
extinction. The slave states, which had already become a minority in the House of Representatives,
were now facing a future as a perpetual minority in the Senate and Electoral College against an
increasingly powerful North. Before Lincoln took office in March 1861, seven slave states had
declared their secession and joined to form the Confederacy.

Secession and war begins

The first published imprint of secession

Resolves and developments

Secession of South Carolina
See also: Antebellum South Carolina

South Carolina did more to advance nullification and secession than any other Southern state. South
Carolina adopted the "Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession
of South Carolina from the Federal Union" on December 24, 1860. It argued for states' rights for
slave owners in the South, but contained a complaint about states' rights in the North in the form of
opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act, claiming that Northern states were not fulfilling their federal
obligations under the Constitution.

Secession winter

Before Lincoln took office, seven states had declared their secession from the Union. They
established a Southern government, the Confederate States of America on February 4, 1861. [98] They
took control of federal forts and other properties within their boundaries with little resistance from
outgoing President James Buchanan, whose term ended on March 4, 1861. Buchanan said that
the Dred Scott decision was proof that the South had no reason for secession, and that the Union
"... was intended to be perpetual," but that, "The power by force of arms to compel a State to remain
in the Union," was not among the "... enumerated powers granted to Congress."[99] One quarter of the
U.S. Army—the entire garrison in Texas—was surrendered in February 1861 to state forces by its
commanding general, David E. Twiggs, who then joined the Confederacy.
As Southerners resigned their seats in the Senate and the House, Republicans were able to pass
bills for projects that had been blocked by Southern Senators before the war, including the Morrill
Tariff, land grant colleges (the Morill Act), a Homestead Act, a transcontinental railroad (thePacific
Railway Acts),[100] the National Banking Act and the authorization of United States Notes by the Legal
Tender Act of 1862. The Revenue Act of 1861 introduced the income tax to help finance the war.

States align
Confederate states
Main article: Confederate States of America

Jefferson Davis, President of Confederacy (1861–1865)

Seven Deep South cotton states seceded by February 1861, starting with South
Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, andTexas. These seven states formed
the Confederate States of America (February 4, 1861), with Jefferson Davis as president, and
a governmental structure closely modeled on the U.S. Constitution.

Following the attack on Fort Sumter, President Lincoln called for a volunteer army from each state.
Within two months, an additional four Southern slave states declared their secession and joined the
Confederacy: Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee. The northwestern portion of
Virginia subsequently seceded from Virginia, joining the Union as the new state of West Virginia on
June 20, 1863. By the end of 1861, Missouri andKentucky were effectively under Union control, with
Confederate state governments in exile.

Among the ordinances of secession passed by the individual states, those of three – Texas,
Alabama, and Virginia – specifically mentioned the plight of the 'slaveholding states' at the hands of
northern abolitionists. The rest make no mention of the slavery issue, and are often brief
announcements of the dissolution of ties by the legislatures.[101] However, at least four states – South
Carolina,[102] Mississippi,[103] Georgia,[104] and Texas[105] – also passed lengthy and detailed explanations
of their causes for secession, all of which laid the blame squarely on the influence over the northern
states of the movement to abolish slavery, something regarded as a Constitutional right by the
slaveholding states.[106]

Union states
Main article: Union (American Civil War)

Twenty-three states remained loyal to the

Union: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland
, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota,Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New
York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin. During the
war, Nevada and West Virginia joined as new states of the Union. Tennessee and Louisiana were
returned to Union military control early in the war.

The territories of Colorado, Dakota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Washington fought
on the Union side. Several slave-holding Native American tribes supported the Confederacy, giving
the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) a small, bloody civil war.[107][108][109]

Border states
Main article: Border states (American Civil War)

The border states in the Union were West Virginia (which separated from Virginia and became a new
state), and four of the five northernmost slave states (Maryland, Delaware,Missouri, and Kentucky).

Maryland had numerous anti-Lincoln officials who tolerated anti-army rioting in Baltimore and the
burning of bridges, both aimed at hindering the passage of troops to the South. (Maryland's
legislature voted to stay in the Union, but also rejected hostilities with the South, voting to close
Maryland's rail lines to prevent them from being used for war.[110]) Lincoln responded by
establishing martial law, and unilaterally suspending habeas corpus, in Maryland, along with sending
in militia units from the North.[111] Lincoln rapidly took control of Maryland and the District of Columbia,
by seizing many prominent figures, including arresting 1/3 of the members of the Maryland General
Assembly on the day it reconvened.[112][113] All were held without trial, ignoring a ruling by the Chief
Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Roger Taney, a Maryland native, that only Congress (and not the
president) could suspend habeas corpus, (Ex parte Merryman). Indeed, federal troops imprisoned a
prominent Baltimore newspaper editor, Frank Key Howard, Francis Scott Key's grandson, after he
criticized Lincoln in an editorial for ignoring the Supreme Court Chief Justice's ruling. [114]
The Union: blue, yellow (slave);
The Confederacy: brown
*territories in light shades; control of Confederate territories disputed

In Missouri, an elected convention on secession voted decisively to remain within the Union. When
pro-Confederate Governor Claiborne F. Jackson called out the state militia, it was attacked by
federal forces under General Nathaniel Lyon, who chased the governor and the rest of the State
Guard to the southwestern corner of the state. (See also: Missouri secession). In the resulting
vacuum, the convention on secession reconvened and took power as the Unionist provisional
government of Missouri.[115]

Kentucky did not secede; for a time, it declared itself neutral. When Confederate forces entered the
state in September 1861, neutrality ended and the state reaffirmed its Union status, while trying to
maintain slavery. During a brief invasion by Confederate forces, Confederate sympathizers
organized a secession convention, inaugurated a governor, and gained recognition from the
Confederacy. The rebel government soon went into exile and never controlled Kentucky. [116]

After Virginia's secession, a Unionist government in Wheeling asked 48 counties to vote on an

ordinance to create a new state on October 24, 1861. A voter turnout of 34% approved the statehood
bill (96% approving).[117] The inclusion of 24 secessionist counties[118] in the state and the ensuing
guerrilla war engaged about 40,000 Federal troops for much of the war. [119][120] Congress
admitted West Virginia to the Union on June 20, 1863. West Virginia provided about 20,000–22,000
soldiers to both the Confederacy and the Union. [121]

A Unionist secession attempt occurred in East Tennessee, but was suppressed by the Confederacy,
which arrested over 3,000 men suspected of being loyal to the Union. They were held without trial. [122]

Beginning the war

For more details on this topic, see Battle of Fort Sumter.

Lincoln's victory in the presidential election of 1860 triggered South Carolina's declaration of
secession from the Union in December, and six more states did so by February 1861. A pre-war
February Peace Conference of 1861 met in Washington, Lincoln sneaking into town to stay in the
Conference's hotel its last three days. The attempt failed at resolving the crisis, but the remaining
eight slave states rejected pleas to join the Confederacy following a two-to-one no-vote in Virginia's
First Secessionist Convention on April 4, 1861.[123]

Lincoln's policy

Since December, secessionists with and without state forces had seized Federal Court Houses, U.S.
Treasury mints and post offices. Southern governors ordered militia mobilization, seized most of the
federal forts and cannon within their boundaries and U.S. armories of infantry weapons. The
governors in big-state Republican strongholds of Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania
quietly began buying weapons and training militia units themselves. [124] President Buchanan
protested seizure of Federal property, but made no military response apart from a failed attempt on
January 9, 1861 to resupply Fort Sumter using the ship Star of the West, which was fired upon by
South Carolina forces and turned back before it reached the fort.[123]

Merchant Star of the West intended to resupply Ft. Sumter. Lincoln's policy to hold federal property was unlike
Buchanan's

On March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln was sworn in as President. In his inaugural address, he argued
that the Constitution was a more perfect union than the earlier Articles of Confederation and
Perpetual Union, that it was a binding contract, and called any secession "legally void". [125] He had no
intent to invade Southern states, nor did he intend to end slavery where it existed, but said that he
would use force to maintain possession of federal property. The government would make no move to
recover post offices, and if resisted, mail delivery would end at state lines. Where popular conditions
did not allow peaceful enforcement of Federal law, U.S. Marshals and Judges would be withdrawn.
No mention was made of bullion lost from U.S. mints in Louisiana, Georgia and North Carolina. In
Lincoln's Inaugural, U.S. policy would only collect import duties at its ports, there could be no serious
injury to justify revolution in the politics of four years. His speech closed with a plea for restoration of
the bonds of union.[126]

The South sent delegations to Washington and offered to pay for the federal properties and enter
into a peace treaty with the United States. Lincoln rejected any negotiations with Confederate agents
because he claimed the Confederacy was not a legitimate government, and that making any treaty
with it would be tantamount to recognition of it as a sovereign government. [127] Secretary of
State William Seward who at that time saw himself as the real governor or "prime minister" behind
the throne of the inexperienced Lincoln, engaged in unauthorized and indirect negotiations that
failed.[127] President Lincoln was determined to hold all remaining Union-occupied forts in the
Confederacy, Fort Monroe in Virginia, in Florida, Fort Pickens, Fort Jefferson, and Fort Taylor, and in
the cockpit of secession, Charleston, South Carolina's Fort Sumter.

Battle of Fort Sumter

Main article: Battle of Fort Sumter
Mass meeting April 20, 1861 to support the Government at Washington's equestrian statue inUnion Square NYC

Ft. Sumter was located in the middle of the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, where the U.S.
forts garrison had withdrawn to avoid incidents with local militias in the streets of the city. Unlike
Buchanan who allowed commanders to relinquish possession to avoid bloodshed, Lincoln required
Maj. Anderson to hold on until fired upon. Jefferson Davis ordered the surrender of the fort.
Anderson gave a conditional reply that the Confederate government rejected, and Davis ordered P.
G. T. Beauregard to attack the fort before a relief expedition could arrive. Troops under Beauregard
bombarded Fort Sumter on April 12–13, forcing its capitulation. On April 15, Lincoln's Secretary of
War then called on Governors for 75,000 volunteers to recapture the fort and other federal property.
[128]

Northerners rallied behind Lincoln's call for all the states to send troops to recapture the forts and to
preserve the Union,[129]citing presidential powers given by the Militia Acts of 1792. With the scale of
the rebellion apparently small so far, Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers for 90 days.[130] Several
Northern governors began to move forces the next day, and Secessionists seizedLiberty
Arsenal in Liberty, Missouri the next week.[124] Two weeks later, on May 3, 1861, Lincoln called for an
additional 42,034 volunteers for a period of three years.[131]

Four states in the middle and upper South had repeatedly rejected Confederate overtures, but
now Virginia, Tennessee,Arkansas, and North Carolina refused to send forces against their
neighbors, declared their secession, and joined the Confederacy. To reward Virginia, the
Confederate capital was moved to Richmond.[132]

The War
See also: List of American Civil War battles and Military leadership in the American Civil War

The Civil War was a contest marked by the ferocity and frequency of battle. Over four years, 237
named battles were fought, and many more minor actions and skirmishes. In the scales of world
military history, both sides fighting were characterized by their bitter intensity and high casualties.
"The American Civil War was to prove one of the most ferocious wars ever fought". Without
geographic objectives, the only target for each side was the enemy's soldier. [133]

Mobilization
As the first seven states began organizing a Confederacy in Montgomery, the entire US army
numbered 16,000. However, Northern governors had begun to mobilize their militias. [134] The
Confederate Congress authorized the new nation up to 100,000 troops sent by governors as early
as February. After Fort Sumter, Lincoln called out 75,000 three-month volunteers, by May Jefferson
Davis was pushing for 100,000 men under arms for one year or the duration, and that was answered
in kind by the U.S. Congress.[135]

In the first year of the war, both sides had far more volunteers than they could effectively train and
equip. After the initial enthusiasm faded, reliance on the cohort of young men who came of age
every year and wanted to join was not enough. Both sides used a draft law—conscription—as a
device to encourage or force volunteering; relatively few were actually drafted and served. The
Confederacy passed a draft law in April 1862 for young men aged 18 to 35; overseers of slaves,
government officials, and clergymen were exempt.[136] The U.S. Congress followed in July, authorizing
a militia draft within a state when it could not meet its quota with volunteers.
European immigrants joined the Union Army in large numbers, including 177,000 born in Germany
and 144,000 born in Ireland.[137]

Union soldiers before Marye's Heights,Second Fredericksburg

Confederate dead overrun at Marye's Heights, reoccupied next day May 4, 1863.

When the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect in January 1863, ex-slaves were energetically
recruited by the states, and used to meet the state quotas. States and local communities offered
higher and higher cash bonuses for white volunteers. Congress tightened the law in March 1863.
Men selected in the draft could provide substitutes or, until mid-1864, pay commutation money. Many
eligibles pooled their money to cover the cost of anyone drafted. Families used the substitute
provision to select which man should go into the army and which should stay home. There was much
evasion and overt resistance to the draft, especially in Catholic areas. The great draft riot in New
York City in July 1863 involved Irish immigrants who had been signed up as citizens to swell the vote
of the city's Democratic political machine, not realizing it made them liable for the draft.[138] Of the
168,649 men procured for the Union through the draft, 117,986 were substitutes, leaving only 50,663
who had their personal services conscripted.[139]

North and South, the draft laws were highly unpopular. An estimated 120,000 men evaded
conscription in the North, many of them fleeing to Canada, and another 280,000 Northern soldiers
deserted during the war,[140][141] along with at least 100,000 Southerners, or about 10% all together.
[142]
However, desertion was a common event in the 19th century; in the peacetime Army about 15%
of the soldiers deserted every year.[143] In the South, many men deserted temporarily to take care of
their families,[144] then returned to their units.[145] In the North, "bounty jumpers" enlisted to get the
generous bonus, deserted, then went back to a second recruiting station under a different name to
sign up again for a second bonus; 141 were caught and executed. [146]

Rioters attacking a building during the New York anti-draft riots of 1863

From a tiny frontier force in 1860, in a few years the Union and Confederates armies had grown into
the "largest and most efficient armies in the world." European observers at the time dismissed them
as amateur and unprofessional, but British historian John Keegan's assessment is that each
outmatched the French, Prussian and Russian armies of the time, and but for the Atlantic, would
have threatened any of them with defeat.[147]

Motivation

Perman and Taylor (2010) say that historians are of two minds on why millions of men seemed so
eager to fight, suffer and die over four years:
"Some historians emphasize that Civil War soldiers were driven by political ideology, holding
firm beliefs about the importance of liberty, Union, or state rights, or about the need to protect
or to destroy slavery. Others point to less overtly political reasons to fight, such as the
defense of one's home and family, or the honor and brotherhood to be preserved when
fighting alongside other men. Most historians agree that no matter what a soldier thought
about when he went into the war, the experience of combat affected him profoundly and
sometimes altered his reasons for continuing the fight." [148]
Prisoners
Main article: American Civil War prison camps
At the start of the civil war a system of paroles operated. Captives agreed not to fight until they
were officially exchanged. Meanwhile they were held in camps run by their own army where they
were paid but not allowed to perform any military duties.[149] The system of exchanges collapsed
in 1863 when the Confederacy refused to exchange black prisoners. After that about 56,000 of
the 409,000 POWs died in prisons during the War, accounting for nearly 10% of the conflict's
fatalities.[150]

Naval war
The small U.S. Navy of 1861 was rapidly enlarged to 6,000 officers and 45,000 men in 1865,
with 671 vessels, having a tonnage of 510,396. [151][152] Its mission was to blockade Confederate
ports, take control of the river system, defend against Confederate raiders on the high seas, and
be ready for a possible war with the British Royal Navy.[153] Meanwhile, the main riverine war was
fought in the West, where a series of major rivers gave access to the Confederate heartland, if
the U.S. Navy could take control. In the East, the Navy supplied and moved army forces about,
and occasionally shelled Confederate installations.

Union blockade
Main article: Union blockade

General Scott's "Anaconda Plan" 1861. Tightening naval blockade, rebels out of Missouri along Mississippi
River, Kentucky Unionists sit on the fence, idled cotton industry illustrated in Georgia

By early 1861, General Winfield Scott had devised the Anaconda Plan to win the war with as
little bloodshed as possible.[154] Scott argued that a Union blockade of the main ports would
weaken the Confederate economy. Lincoln adopted parts of the plan, but he overruled Scott's
caution about 90-day volunteers. Public opinion however demanded an immediate attack by the
army to capture Richmond.[155]
In April 1861, Lincoln announced the Union blockade of all Southern ports; commercial ships
could not get insurance and regular traffic ended. The South blundered in embargoing cotton
exports in 1861 before the blockade was effective; by the time they realized the mistake it was
too late. "King Cotton" was dead, as the South could export less than 10% of its cotton. The
blockade shut down the ten Confederate seaports with railheads that moved almost all the
cotton, especially New Orleans, Mobile, and Charleston. By June 1861, warships were stationed
off the principal Southern ports, and a year later nearly 300 ships were in service. [156]

Modern navy evolves

The Civil War prompted the industrial revolution and subsequently many naval innovations
emerged during this time, most notably the advent of the ironclad warship. It began when the
Confederacy, knowing they had to meet or match the Union's naval superiority, responded to the
Union blockade by building or converting more than 130 vessels, including twenty-six ironclads
and floating batteries.[157] Only half of these saw active service. Many were equipped with ram
bows, creating "ram fever" among Union squadrons wherever they threatened. But in the face of
overwhelming Union superiority and the Union's own ironclad warships, they were unsuccessful.
[158]

The Confederacy experimented with a submarine, which did not work well,[159] and with building
an ironclad ship, the CSS Virginia, which was based on rebuilding a sunken Union ship,
the Merrimac. On its first foray on March 8, 1862, the Virginia decimated the Union's wooden
fleet, but the next day the first Union ironclad, the USS Monitor, arrived to challenge it.
The Battle of the Ironclads was a draw, but it marks the worldwide transition to ironclad
warships.[160]

The Confederacy lost the Virginia when the ship was scuttled to prevent capture, and the Union
built many copies of the Monitor. Lacking the technology to build effective warships, the
Confederacy attempted to obtain warships from Britain. [161]

Blockade runners
Main article: Blockade runners of the American Civil War

British investors built small, fast, steam-driven blockade runners that traded arms and luxuries
brought in from Britain through Bermuda, Cuba, and the Bahamas in return for high-priced
cotton. The ships were so small that only a small amount of cotton went out. When the Union
Navy seized a blockade runner, the ship and cargo were condemned as a Prize of war and sold
with the proceeds given to the Navy sailors; the captured crewmen were mostly British and they
were simply released.[162] The Southern economy nearly collapsed during the war. There were
multiple reasons for this: the severe deterioration of food supplies, especially in cities, the failure
of Southern railroads, the loss of control of the main rivers, foraging by Northern armies, and the
seizure of animals and crops by Confederate armies. Historians agree that the blockade was a
major factor in ruining the Confederate economy. However, Wise argues that they provided just
enough of a lifeline to allow Lee to continue fighting for additional months, thanks to fresh
supplies of 400,000 rifles, lead, blankets, and boots that the homefront economy could no longer
supply.[163]

Gunline of nine Union ironclads. South Atlantic Blockading Squadron off Charleston. Continuous blockade of
all major ports was sustained by North's overwhelming war production

Economic impact

Surdam argues that the blockade was a powerful weapon that eventually ruined the Southern
economy, at the cost of few lives in combat. Practically, the entire Confederate cotton crop was
useless (although was sold to Union traders), costing the Confederacy its main source of
income. Critical imports were scarce and the coastal trade was largely ended as well. [164] The
measure of the blockade's success was not the few ships that slipped through, but the
thousands that never tried it. Merchant ships owned in Europe could not get insurance and were
too slow to evade the blockade; they simply stopped calling at Confederate ports. [165]

To fight an offensive war the Confederacy purchased ships from Britain, converted them to
warships, and raided American merchants ships in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Insurance
rates skyrocketed and the American flag virtually disappeared from international waters.
However, the same ships were reflagged with European flags and continued unmolested.
[158]
After the war, the U.S. demanded that Britain pay for the damage done, and Britain paid the
U.S. $15 million in 1871.[166]

Rivers

The 1862 Union strategy called for simultaneous advances along four axes. McClellan would
lead the main thrust in Virginia towards Richmond. Ohio forces were to advance through
Kentucky into Tennessee, the Missouri Department would drive south along the Mississippi
River, and the westernmost attack would originate from Kansas. [167]
 Clashes on the rivers were melees of ironclads, cottonclads gunboats and rams, complicated by torpedoes
and fire rafts

Ulysses Grant used river transport and Andrew Foote's gunboats of the Western Flotilla to
threaten the Confederacy's "Gibraltar of the West" at Columbus, Kentucky. Grant was rebuffed
at Belmont, but cut off Columbus. The Confederates, lacking their own gunboats, were forced to
retreat and the Union took control of western Kentucky in March 1862. [168]

In addition to ocean-going warships coming up the Mississippi, the Union Navy used
timberclads, tinclads, and armored gunboats. Shipyards at Cairo, Illinois, and St. Louis built new
boats or modified steamboats for action.[169] They took control of the Red, Tennessee,
Cumberland, Mississippi, and Ohio rivers after victories at Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, and
supplied Grant's forces as he moved into Tennessee. At Shiloh, (Pittsburg Landing) in
Tennessee in April 1862, the Confederates made a surprise attack that pushed Union forces
against the river as night fell. Overnight, the Navy landed additional reinforcements, and Grant
counter-attacked. Grant and the Union won a decisive victory – the first battle with the high
casualty rates that would repeat over and over.[170] Memphis fell to Union forces and became a
key base for further advances south along the Mississippi River. In April 1862, US Naval forces
under Farragut ran past Confederate defenses south of New Orleans. Confederates abandoned
the city, which gave the Union a critical anchor in the deep South. [171]

Naval forces assisted Grant in his long, complex campaign that resulted in the surrender of
Vicksburg in July 1863, and full Union control of the Mississippi soon after. [172]

Eastern theater
For more details on this topic, see Eastern Theater of the American Civil War.

Because of the fierce resistance of a few initial Confederate forces at Manassas, Virginia, in July
1861, a march by Union troops under the command of Maj. Gen. Irvin McDowell on the
Confederate forces there was halted in the First Battle of Bull Run, or First Manassas.
[173]
McDowell's troops were forced back to Washington, D.C., by the Confederates under the
command of Generals Joseph E. Johnston and P. G. T. Beauregard. It was in this battle that
Confederate General Thomas Jackson received the nickname of "Stonewall" because he stood
like a stone wall against Union troops.[174]

The Battle of Antietam, the Civil War's deadliest one-day fight. Union troops committed piecemeal had little
effect

Confederate ironclads at Norfolk and New Orleans dispersed blockade, until Union ironclads could defeat
them

Alarmed at the loss, and in an attempt to prevent more slave states from leaving the Union,
the U.S. Congress passed the Crittenden-Johnson Resolution on July 25 of that year, which
stated that the war was being fought to preserve the Union and not to end slavery.

Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan took command of the Union Army of the Potomac on July 26 (he
was briefly general-in-chief of all the Union armies, but was subsequently relieved of that post in
favor of Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck), and the war began in earnest in 1862. Upon the strong
urging of President Lincoln to begin offensive operations, McClellan attacked Virginia in the
spring of 1862 by way of thepeninsula between the York River and James River, southeast of
Richmond. Although McClellan's army reached the gates of Richmond in the Peninsula
Campaign,[175][176][177] Johnston halted his advance at the Battle of Seven Pines, then
General Robert E. Lee and top subordinates James Longstreet and Stonewall Jackson defeated
McClellan in the Seven Days Battles and forced his retreat.[178] TheNorthern Virginia Campaign,
which included the Second Battle of Bull Run, ended in yet another victory for the South.
[179]
McClellan resisted General-in-Chief Halleck's orders to send reinforcements to John
Pope's Union Army of Virginia, which made it easier for Lee's Confederates to defeat twice the
number of combined enemy troops.
Emboldened by Second Bull Run, the Confederacy made its first invasion of the North. General
Lee led 45,000 men of the Army of Northern Virginia across the Potomac River into Maryland on
September 5. Lincoln then restored Pope's troops to McClellan. McClellan and Lee fought at
the Battle of Antietam near Sharpsburg, Maryland, on September 17, 1862, the bloodiest single
day in United States military history.[178][180] Lee's army, checked at last, returned to Virginia before
McClellan could destroy it. Antietam is considered a Union victory because it halted Lee's
invasion of the North and provided an opportunity for Lincoln to announce his Emancipation
Proclamation.[181]

When the cautious McClellan failed to follow up on Antietam, he was replaced by Maj.
Gen. Ambrose Burnside. Burnside was soon defeated at the Battle of Fredericksburg[182] on
December 13, 1862, when over 12,000 Union soldiers were killed or wounded during repeated
futile frontal assaults against Marye's Heights. After the battle, Burnside was replaced by Maj.
Gen. Joseph Hooker.

Hooker, too, proved unable to defeat Lee's army; despite outnumbering the Confederates by
more than two to one, he was humiliated in the Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863.[183] Gen.
Stonewall Jackson was mortally wounded by his own men during the battle and subsequently
died of complications. Gen. Hooker was replaced by Maj. Gen. George Meade during Lee's
second invasion of the North, in June. Meade defeated Lee at the Battle of Gettysburg (July 1 to
3, 1863).[184] This was the bloodiest battle of the war, and has been called the war's turning
point. Pickett's Charge on July 3 is often considered the high-water mark of the
Confederacy because it signaled the collapse of serious Confederate threats of victory. Lee's
army suffered 28,000 casualties (versus Meade's 23,000).[185] However, Lincoln was angry that
Meade failed to intercept Lee's retreat, and after Meade's inconclusive fall campaign, Lincoln
turned to the Western Theater for new leadership. At the same time, the Confederate stronghold
of Vicksburg surrendered, giving the Union control of the Mississippi River, permanently isolating
the western Confederacy, and producing the new leader Lincoln needed, Ulysses S. Grant.

Western theater
For more details on this topic, see Western Theater of the American Civil War.

While the Confederate forces had numerous successes in the Eastern Theater, they were
defeated many times in the West. They were driven from Missouri early in the war as a result of
the Battle of Pea Ridge.[186] Leonidas Polk's invasion of Columbus, Kentucky ended Kentucky's
policy of neutrality and turned that state against the Confederacy. Nashvilleand
central Tennessee fell to the Union early in 1862, leading to attrition of local food supplies and
livestock and a breakdown in social organization.
 The Battle of Chickamauga, the highest two-day losses. Confederate victory held off Union offensive for two
months.

New Orleans captured. Union ironclads forced passage, sank Confederate fleet, destroyed batteries, held
docks for Army.

The Mississippi was opened to Union traffic to the southern border of Tennessee with the taking
ofIsland No. 10 and New Madrid, Missouri, and then Memphis, Tennessee. In April 1862,
the Union Navycaptured New Orleans,[187] which allowed Union forces to begin moving up the
Mississippi. Only the fortress city of Vicksburg, Mississippi, prevented Union control of the entire
river.

General Braxton Bragg's second Confederate invasion of Kentucky ended with a meaningless
victory over Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell at the Battle of Perryville, although Bragg was forced to
end his attempt at invading Kentucky and retreat due to lack of support for the Confederacy in
that state.[188] Bragg was narrowly defeated by Maj. Gen. William Rosecrans at the Battle of
Stones River in Tennessee.[189]

The one clear Confederate victory in the West was the Battle of Chickamauga. Bragg, reinforced
by Lt. Gen. James Longstreet's corps (from Lee's army in the east), defeated Rosecrans,
despite the heroic defensive stand of Maj. Gen. George Henry Thomas. Rosecrans retreated
to Chattanooga, which Bragg then besieged.

The Union's key strategist and tactician in the West was Ulysses S. Grant, who won victories at
Forts Henry and Donelson (by which the Union seized control of
the Tennessee andCumberland Rivers); the Battle of Shiloh;[190] and the Battle of Vicksburg,
[191]
which cemented Union control of the Mississippi River and is considered one of the turning
points of the war. Grant marched to the relief of Rosecrans and defeated Bragg at the Third
Battle of Chattanooga,[192] driving Confederate forces out of Tennessee and opening a route to
Atlanta and the heart of the Confederacy.

Trans-Mississippi
For more details on Missouri in the Civil War, see Trans-Mississippi Theater of the American
Civil War.

Quantrill's Raid captured a hotel in free-state Kansas for a day in a town of 2,000, burned 185 buildings,
killed 182 men and boys[194]

Nathaniel Lyon secured St. Louis docks and arsenal, led Union forces to expel Missouri Confederate forces
and government[193]

Extensive guerrilla warfare characterized the trans-Mississippi region, as the Confederacy

lacked the troops and the logistics to support regular armies that could challenge Union control.
[195]
Roving Confederate bands such as Quantrill's Raiders terrorized the countryside, striking
both military installations and civilian settlements.[196] The "Sons of Liberty" and "Order of the
American Knights" attacked pro-Union people, elected officeholders, and unarmed uniformed
soldiers. These partisans could not be entirely driven out of the state of Missouri until an entire
regular Union infantry division was engaged.

By 1864, these violent activities harmed the nationwide anti-war movement organizing against
the re-election of Lincoln. Missouri not only stayed in the Union, Lincoln took 70 percent of the
vote for re-election.[194]

Numerous small-scale military actions south and west of Missouri sought to control Indian
Territory andNew Mexico Territory for the Union. The Union repulsed Confederate incursions into
New Mexico in 1862, and the exiled Arizona government withdrew into Texas. In the Indian
Territory, civil war broke out inside the tribes. About 12,000 Indian warriors fought for the
Confederacy, and smaller numbers for the Union.[197] The most prominent Cherokee was
Brigadier General Stand Watie, the last Confederate general to surrender.[198]

After the fall of Vicksburg in July 1863, General Kirby Smith in Texas was informed by Jefferson
Davis that he could expect no further help from east of the Mississippi River. Although he lacked
resources to beat Union armies, he built up a formidable arsenal at Tyler, along with his own
Kirby Smithdom economy, a virtual "independent fiefdom" in Texas, including railroad
construction and international smuggling. The Union in turn did not directly engage him. [199] Its
1864 Red River Campaign to take Shreveport, Louisiana was a failure and Texas remained in
Confederate hands throughout the war.

End of war
Conquest of Virginia

At the beginning of 1864, Lincoln made Grant commander of all Union armies. Grant made his
headquarters with the Army of the Potomac, and put Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman in
command of most of the western armies. Grant understood the concept of total war and
believed, along with Lincoln and Sherman, that only the utter defeat of Confederate forces and
their economic base would end the war.[200] This was total war not in killing civilians but rather in
destroying homes, farms, and railroads. Grant devised a coordinated strategy that would strike
at the entire Confederacy from multiple directions. Generals George Meade and Benjamin
Butler were ordered to move against Lee near Richmond, General Franz Sigel (and later Philip
Sheridan) were to attack the Shenandoah Valley, General Sherman was to capture Atlanta and
march to the sea (the Atlantic Ocean), Generals George Crook and William W. Averell were to
operate against railroad supply lines in West Virginia, and Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks was to
capture Mobile, Alabama.

These dead are from Ewell's May 1864 attack at Spotsylvania, delaying Grant's advance on Richmond in
theWilderness
 The Peacemakers on the River Queen, March 1865. Sherman, Grant, Lincoln, and Porterpictured
discussing plans for the last weeks of the Civil War

Grant's army set out on the Overland Campaign with the goal of drawing Lee into a defense of
Richmond, where they would attempt to pin down and destroy the Confederate army. The Union
army first attempted to maneuver past Lee and fought several battles, notably at
the Wilderness,Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor. These battles resulted in heavy losses on both
sides, and forced Lee's Confederates to fall back repeatedly.[201] An attempt to outflank Lee from
the south failed under Butler, who was trapped inside the Bermuda Hundred river bend. Each
battle resulted in setbacks for the Union that mirrored what they had suffered under prior
generals, though unlike those prior generals, Grant fought on rather than retreat. Grant was
tenacious and kept pressing Lee's Army of Northern Virginia back to Richmond. [202] While Lee
was preparing for an attack on Richmond, Grant unexpectedly turned south to cross the James
River and began the protractedSiege of Petersburg, where the two armies engaged in trench
warfare for over nine months.

Grant finally found a commander, General Philip Sheridan, aggressive enough to prevail in
theValley Campaigns of 1864. Sheridan was initially repelled at the Battle of New Market by
former U.S. Vice President and Confederate Gen. John C. Breckinridge. The Battle of New
Market was the Confederacy's last major victory of the war. After redoubling his efforts, Sheridan
defeated Maj. Gen. Jubal A. Early in a series of battles, including a final decisive defeat at
theBattle of Cedar Creek. Sheridan then proceeded to destroy the agricultural base of
the Shenandoah Valley, a strategy similar to the tactics Sherman later employed in Georgia.[203]

Meanwhile, Sherman maneuvered from Chattanooga to Atlanta, defeating Confederate

Generals Joseph E. Johnston and John Bell Hood along the way. The fall of Atlanta on
September 2, 1864, guaranteed the reelection of Lincoln as president. [204] Hood left the Atlanta
area to swing around and menace Sherman's supply lines and invade Tennessee in
the Franklin-Nashville Campaign.[205] Union Maj. Gen. John Schofield defeated Hood at the Battle
of Franklin, and George H. Thomas dealt Hood a massive defeat at the Battle of Nashville,
effectively destroying Hood's army.
Leaving Atlanta, and his base of supplies, Sherman's army marched with an unknown
destination, laying waste to about 20% of the farms in Georgia in his "March to the Sea". He
reached the Atlantic Ocean at Savannah, Georgia in December 1864. Sherman's army was
followed by thousands of freed slaves; there were no major battles along the March. Sherman
turned north through South Carolina and North Carolina to approach the Confederate Virginia
lines from the south, increasing the pressure on Lee's army. [206]

Lee's army, thinned by desertion and casualties, was now much smaller than Grant's. One last
Confederate attempt to break the Union hold on Petersburg failed at the decisiveBattle of Five
Forks (sometimes called "the Waterloo of the Confederacy") on April 1. This meant that the
Union now controlled the entire parameter surrounding Richmond-Petersburg, completely
cutting it off from the Confederacy. Realizing that the capital was now lost, Lee decided to
evacuate his army. The Confederate capital fell to the Union XXV Corps, composed of black
troops. The remaining Confederate units fled west and after a defeat at Sayler's Creek.[207]

Confederacy surrenders

Map of Confederate territory losses year by year

Main article: Conclusion of the American Civil War

Initially, Lee was not intending to surrender, but rather to regroup at the village of Appomattox
Court House, where supplies were to be waiting, and to continue the war. Grant chased Lee,
and got in front of him, so that when Lee's army reached Appomattox Court House, they were
surrounded. After an initial battle, Lee decided that the fight was now hopeless, and so he
surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia on April 9, 1865, at the McLean House.[208] In an
untraditional gesture and as a sign of Grant's respect and anticipation of peacefully restoring
Confederate states to the Union, Lee was permitted to keep his sword and his horse, Traveller.
On April 14, 1865, President Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth, a Southern sympathizer.
Lincoln died early the next morning, and Andrew Johnson became the president. Meanwhile,
Confederate forces across the South surrendered as news of Lee's surrender reached them.
[209]
President Johnson officially declared a virtual end to the insurrection on May 9, 1865;
Confederate President Jefferson Davis was captured the following day.[1] On June 23, 1865,
Cherokee leaderStand Watie was the last Confederate General to surrender his forces. [210]

Diplomacy
Main articles: Britain in the American Civil War and France in the American Civil War

Europe in the 1860s was more fragmented than it had been since before the American
Revolution. France was in a weakened state while Britain was still shocked by its own poor
performance in the Crimean War.[211] France was unable or unwilling to support either side
without Britain, where popular support remained with the Union though elite opinion was more
varied. They were further distracted by Germany and Italy, who were experiencing unification
troubles, and by Russia, who was almost unflinching in their support for the Union. [211][212]

Though the Confederacy hoped that Britain and France would join them against the Union, this
was never likely, and so they instead tried to bring Britain and France in as mediators. [211][212] The
Union, under Lincoln and Secretary of State William H. Seward worked to block this, and
threatened war if any country officially recognized the existence of the Confederate States of
America. In 1861, Southerners voluntarily embargoed cotton shipments, hoping to start an
economic depression in Europe that would force Britain to enter the war to get cotton, but this
did not work.[213] Worse, Europe developed other cotton suppliers, which they found superior,
hindering the South's recovery after the war.

Crewmembers of USS Wissahickon by the ship's 11-inch (280 mm) Dahlgren gun, circa 1863

Cotton diplomacy proved a failure as Europe had a surplus of cotton, while the 1860–62 crop
failures in Europe made the North's grain exports of critical importance. It also helped to turn
European opinion further away from the Confederacy. It was said that "King Corn was more
powerful than King Cotton", as U.S. grain went from a quarter of the British import trade to
almost half.[213]When Britain did face a cotton shortage, it was temporary, being replaced by
increased cultivation in Egypt and India. Meanwhile, the war created employment for arms
makers, ironworkers, and British ships to transport weapons.[214]

Charles Francis Adams proved particularly adept as minister to Britain for the U.S. and Britain
was reluctant to boldly challenge the blockade. The Confederacy purchased several warships
from commercial ship builders in Britain (CSS Alabama, CSS Shenandoah, CSS
Tennessee, CSS Tallahassee, CSS Florida and some others). The most famous,
the CSS Alabama, did considerable damage and led to serious postwar disputes. However,
public opinion against slavery created a political liability for European politicians, especially in
Britain (which had abolished slavery in her colonies in 1834).[215]

War loomed in late 1861 between the U.S. and Britain over the Trent Affair, involving the U.S.
Navy's boarding of a British mail steamer to seize two Confederate diplomats. However, London
and Washington were able to smooth over the problem after Lincoln released the two. In 1862,
the British considered mediation—though even such an offer would have risked war with the
U.S. Lord Palmerston reportedly read Uncle Tom's Cabin three times when deciding on this.[215]

The Union victory in the Battle of Antietam caused them to delay this decision.
The Emancipation Proclamation over time would reinforce the political liability of supporting the
Confederacy. Despite sympathy for the Confederacy, France's own seizure of Mexico ultimately
deterred them from war with the Union. Confederate offers late in the war to end slavery in
return for diplomatic recognition were not seriously considered by London or Paris. After 1863,
the Polish revolt against Russia further distracted the European powers, and ensured that they
would remain neutral.[216]

Victory and aftermath

Results
The causes of the war, the reasons for its outcome, and even the name of the war itself are
subjects of lingering contention today. The North and West grew rich while the once-rich South
became poor for a century. The national political power of the slaveowners and rich southerners
ended. Historians are less sure about the results of the postwar Reconstruction, especially
regarding the second class citizenship of the Freedmen and their poverty. The Freedmen did
indeed get their freedom, their citizenship, and control of their lives, their families and their
churches.

Historians have debated whether the Confederacy could have won the war. Most scholars, such
as James McPherson, argue that Confederate victory was at least possible.[217]McPherson
argues that the North's advantage in population and resources made Northern victory likely but
not guaranteed. He also argues that if the Confederacy had fought using unconventional tactics,
they would have more easily been able to hold out long enough to exhaust the Union. [218]

Comparison of Union and CSA, 1860–1864[219]

 Year Union CSA

1860 22,100,000 (71%) 9,100,000 (29%)

Population

1864 28,800,000 (90%)[N 6] 3,000,000 (10%)[220]

Free 1860 21,700,000 (81%) 5,600,000 (19%)

1860 400,000 (11%) 3,500,000 (89%)

Slave

1864 negligible 1,900,000[N 7]

Soldiers 1860–64 2,100,000 (67%) 1,064,000 (33%)

1860 21,800 (71%) 8,800 (29%)

Railroad miles

1864 29,100 (98%)[221] negligible

 1860 90% 10%

Manufactures

1864 98% negligible

1860 97% 3%

Arms production

1864 98% negligible

Cotton bales 1860 negligible 4,500,000

1864 300,000 negligible

1860 30% 70%

Exports

1864 98% negligible

Confederates did not need to invade and hold enemy territory to win, but only needed to fight a
defensive war to convince the North that the cost of winning was too high. The North needed to
conquer and hold vast stretches of enemy territory and defeat Confederate armies to win.
[218]
Lincoln was not a military dictator, and could only continue to fight the war as long as the
American public supported a continuation of the war. The Confederacy sought to win
independence by out-lasting Lincoln; however, after Atlanta fell and Lincoln defeated McClellan
in the election of 1864, all hope for a political victory for the South ended. At that point, Lincoln
had secured the support of the Republicans, War Democrats, the border states, emancipated
slaves, and the neutrality of Britain and France. By defeating the Democrats and McClellan, he
also defeated the Copperheadsand their peace platform.[222]

Many scholars argue that the Union held an insurmountable long-term advantage over the
Confederacy in industrial strength and population. Confederate actions, they argue, only delayed
defeat.[223][224] Civil War historian Shelby Foote expressed this view succinctly: "I think that the
North fought that war with one hand behind its back ... If there had been more Southern
victories, and a lot more, the North simply would have brought that other hand out from behind
its back. I don't think the South ever had a chance to win that War." [225]

A minority view among historians is that the Confederacy lost because, as E. Merton Coulter put
it,"people did not will hard enough and long enough to win." [226][227] The black Marxist historian
Armstead Robinson agrees, pointing to a class conflict in the Confederates army between the
slave owners and the larger number of non-owners. He argues that the non-owner soldiers grew
embittered about fighting to preserve slavery, and fought less enthusiastically. He attributes the
major Confederate defeats in 1863 at Vicksburg and Missionary Ridge to this class conflict.
[228]
However, most historians reject the argument.[229] James M. McPherson, after reading
thousands of letters written by Confederate soldiers, found strong patriotism that continued to
the end; they truly believed they were fighting for freedom and liberty. Even as the Confederacy
was visibly collapsing in 1864-5, he says most Confederate soldiers were fighting hard.
[230]
Historian Gary Gallagher cites General Sherman who in early 1864 commented, "The devils
seem to have a determination that cannot but be admired." Despite their loss of slaves and
wealth, with starvation looming, Sherman continued, "yet I see no sign of let up – some few
deserters – plenty tired of war, but the masses determined to fight it out." [231]

Also important were Lincoln's eloquence in rationalizing the national purpose and his skill in
keeping the border states committed to the Union cause. Although Lincoln's approach to
emancipation was slow, the Emancipation Proclamation was an effective use of the President's
war powers.[232] The Confederate government failed in its attempt to get Europe involved in the
war militarily, particularly Britain and France. Southern leaders needed to get European powers
to help break up the blockade the Union had created around the Southern ports and cities.

Lincoln's naval blockade was 95% effective at stopping trade goods; as a result, imports and
exports to the South declined significantly. The abundance of European cotton and Britain's
hostility to the institution of slavery, along with Lincoln's Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico naval
blockades, severely decreased any chance that either Britain or France would enter the war.
Costs
The war produced about 1,030,000 casualties (3% of the population), including about 620,000
soldier deaths—two-thirds by disease, and 50,000 civilians.[233] Binghamton University historian J.
David Hacker believes the number of soldier deaths was approximately 750,000, 20% higher
than traditionally estimated, and possibly as high as 850,000. [234][235] The war accounted for
roughly as many American deaths as all American deaths in other U.S. wars combined. [236]

One in thirteen veterans were amputees

Remains of both sides were reinterred

National cemetery inAndersonville GA

Based on 1860 census figures, 8% of all white males aged 13 to 43 died in the war, including
6% in the North and 18% in the South.[237][238] About 56,000 soldiers died in prison camps during
the War.[239]An estimated 60,000 men lost limbs in the war.[240]

Confederate death toll estimates vary considerably. Union army dead, amounting to 15% of the
over two million who served, was broken down as follows:[2]

 110,070 killed in action (67,000) or dead of wounds (43,000).

 199,790 dead of disease (75% of which was due to the war, the remainder would have
occurred in civilian life anyway)
 24,866 dead in Confederate prison camps

 9,058 killed by accidents or drowning

 15,741 other/unknown deaths

 359,528 total dead

Black troops accounted for 10% of the Union death toll, they amounted to 15% of disease
deaths but less than 3% of those killed in battle.[2]

Losses can be viewed as high considering that the defeat of Mexico in 1846–48 resulted in
fewer than 2,000 soldiers killed in battle. One reason for the high number of battle deaths during
the war was the use of Napoleonic tactics, such as charging. With the advent of more accurate
rifled barrels, Minié balls and (near the end of the war for the Union army) repeating firearms
such as the Spencer Repeating Rifle and the Henry Repeating Rifle, soldiers were mowed down
when standing in lines in the open. This led to the adoption oftrench warfare, a style of fighting
that defined the better part of World War I.

The wealth amassed in slaves and slavery for the Confederacy's 3.5 million blacks effectively
ended when Union armies arrived; they were nearly all freed by the Emancipation Proclamation.
Slaves in the border states and those located in some former Confederate territory occupied
before the Emancipation Proclamation were freed by state action or (on December 18, 1865) by
the Thirteenth Amendment.

The war destroyed much of the wealth that had existed in the South. All accumulated investment
Confederate bonds was forfeit; most banks and railroads were bankrupt. Income per person in
the South dropped to less than 40% of that of the North, a condition that lasted until well into the
20th century. Southern influence in the US federal government, previously considerable, was
greatly diminished until the latter half of the 20th century.[241] The full restoration of the Union was
the work of a highly contentious postwar era known asReconstruction.

Emancipation
Issue of Slavery During the War

While not all Southerners saw themselves as fighting to preserve slavery, most of the officers
and over a third of the rank and file in Lee's army had close family ties to slavery. To
Northerners, in contrast, the motivation was primarily to preserve the Union, not to abolish
slavery.[242] Abraham Lincoln consistently made preserving the Union the central goal of the war,
though he increasingly saw slavery as a crucial issue and made ending it an additional goal.
[243]
Lincoln's decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation angered bothPeace
Democrats ("Copperheads") and War Democrats, but energized most Republicans.[244] By
warning that free blacks would flood the North, Democrats made gains in the 1862 elections, but
they did not gain control of Congress. The Republicans' counterargument that slavery was the
mainstay of the enemy steadily gained support, with the Democrats losing decisively in the 1863
elections in the northern state of Ohio when they tried to resurrect anti-black sentiment. [245]

Emancipation Proclamation
Main article: Emancipation Proclamation

The Emancipation Proclamation enabled African-Americans, both free blacks and escaped
slaves, to join the Union Army.[N 8] About 190,000 volunteered, further enhancing the numerical
advantage the Union armies enjoyed over the Confederates, who did not dare emulate the
equivalent manpower source for fear of fundamentally undermining the legitimacy of slavery. [N 9]

During the Civil War, sentiment concerning slaves, enslavement and emancipation in the United
States was divided. In 1861, Lincoln worried that premature attempts at emancipation would
mean the loss of the border states, and that "to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the
whole game."[251] Copperheads and some War Democratsopposed emancipation, although the
latter eventually accepted it as part of total war needed to save the Union.[252]

Contrabands — fugitive slaves — cooks, laundresses, laborers, teamsters, railroad repair crews — fled to
the Union Army, but were not officially freed until 1863 Emancipation Proclamation

In 1863, the Union army accepted Freedmen. Here are Black and White teen-aged soldiers.
At first, Lincoln reversed attempts at emancipation by Secretary of War Simon Cameron and
GeneralsJohn C. Frémont (in Missouri) and David Hunter (in South Carolina, Georgia and
Florida) to keep the loyalty of the border states and the War Democrats. Lincoln warned the
border states that a more radical type of emancipation would happen if his gradual plan based
on compensated emancipation and voluntary colonization was rejected. [253] But only the District of
Columbia accepted Lincoln's gradual plan, which was enacted by Congress. When Lincoln told
his cabinet about his proposed emancipation proclamation, Seward advised Lincoln to wait for a
victory before issuing it, as to do otherwise would seem like "our last shriek on the retreat".
[254]
Lincoln laid the groundwork for public support in an open letter published letter to abolitionist
Horace Greeley's newspaper.[255]

In September 1862, the Battle of Antietam provided this opportunity, and the subsequent War
Governors' Conference added support for the proclamation.[256] Lincoln issued his
preliminaryEmancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, and his final Emancipation
Proclamation on January 1, 1863. In his letter to Albert G. Hodges, Lincoln explained his belief
that "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong ... And yet I have never understood that the
Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and
feeling ... I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled
me."[257]

Lincoln's moderate approach succeeded in inducing border states, War Democrats and
emancipated slaves to fight for the Union. The Union-controlled border states (Kentucky,
Missouri, Maryland, Delaware and West Virginia) and Union controlled regions around New
Orleans, Norfolk and elsewhere, were not covered by the Emancipation Proclamation. All
abolished slavery on their own, except Kentucky and Delaware.[258]

Since the Emancipation Proclamation was based on the President's war powers, it only included
territory held by Confederates at the time. However, the Proclamation became a symbol of the
Union's growing commitment to add emancipation to the Union's definition of liberty. [259] The
Emancipation Proclamation greatly reduced the Confederacy's hope of getting aid from Britain or
France.[260] By late 1864, Lincoln was playing a leading role in getting Congress to vote for
the Thirteenth Amendment, which made emancipation universal and permanent. [261]

Texas v. White
In Texas v. White, 74 U.S. 700 (1869) the United States Supreme Court ruled that Texas had
remained a state ever since it first joined the Union, despite claims that it joined theConfederate
States of America; the court further held that the Constitution did not permit states to
unilaterally secede from the United States, and that the ordinances of secession, and all the acts
of the legislatures within seceding states intended to give effect to such ordinances, were
"absolutely null", under the constitution.[262]
Reconstruction
Main article: Reconstruction Era of the United States

Northern teachers traveled into the South to provide education and training for the newly freed population.

Reconstruction began during the war, with the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863
and continued to 1877.[263] It comprised multiple complex methods to resolve the war, the most
important of which were the three "Reconstruction Amendments" to the Constitution, which
remain in effect to the present time: the 13th (1865), the 14th (1868) and the 15th (1870). From
the Union perspective, the goals of Reconstruction were to guarantee the Union victory on the
battlefield by reuniting the Union; to guarantee a "republican form of governmentfor the ex-
Confederate states; and to permanently end slavery—and prevent semi-slavery status. [264]

President Johnson took a lenient approach and saw the achievement of the main war goals as
realized in 1865, when each ex-rebel state repudiated secession and ratified the Thirteenth
Amendment. Radical Republicans demanded strong proof that Confederate nationalism was
dead and the slaves were truly free. They came to the fore after the 1866 elections and undid
much of Johnson's work. They used the Army to dissolve Southern state governments and hold
new elections with Freedmen voting. The result was a Republican coalition that took power in
ten states for varying lengths of time, staying in power with the help of U.S. Army units and black
voters. Grant was elected president in 1868 and continued the Radical policies. Meanwhile
the Freedmen's Bureau, started by Lincoln in 1865 to help the freed slaves, played a major role
in helping the blacks and arranging work for them. In opposition paramilitary groups such as the
first Ku Klux Klan used violence to thwart these efforts.[265]

The "Liberal Republicans" argued the war goals had been achieved and Reconstruction should
end. They ran a ticket in 1872 but were decisively defeated as Grant was reelected. In 1874,
Democrats took control of Congress and opposed any more reconstruction. The disputed 1876
elections were resolved by the Compromise of 1877, which put RepublicanRutherford B.
Hayes in the White House. He pulled out the last federal troops and the last Republican state
governments in the South collapsed, marking the end of Civil War and Reconstruction. [266]

Memory and historiography

 Monument to the Grand Army of the Republic, a Union veteran organization

Cherokee Confederates reunion in New Orleans, 1903

The Civil War is one of the central events in America's collective memory. There are innumerable
statues, commemorations, books and archival collections. The memory includes the home front,
military affairs, the treatment of soldiers, both living and dead, in the war's aftermath, depictions
of the war in literature and art, evaluations of heroes and villains, and considerations of the
moral and political lessons of the war.[267]The last theme includes moral evaluations of racism and
slavery, heroism in combat and behind the lines, and the issues of democracy and minority
rights, as well as the notion of an "Empire of Liberty" influencing the world.[268]

Deeply religious Southerners saw the hand of God in history, which demonstrated His wrath at
their sinfulness, or His rewards for their suffering. Historian Wilson Fallin has examined the
sermons of white and black Baptist preachers after the War. Southern white preachers said:
God had chastised them and given them a special mission – to maintain orthodoxy, strict
biblicism, personal piety, and traditional race relations. Slavery, they insisted, had not been
sinful. Rather, emancipation was a historical tragedy and the end of Reconstruction was a
clear sign of God's favor.

In sharp contrast, Black preachers interpreted the Civil War as:

God's gift of freedom. They appreciated opportunities to exercise their independence, to
worship in their own way, to affirm their worth and dignity, and to proclaim the fatherhood of
God and the brotherhood of man. Most of all, they could form their own churches,
associations, and conventions. These institutions offered self-help and racial uplift, and
provided places where the gospel of liberation could be proclaimed. As a result, black
preachers continued to insist that God would protect and help him; God would be their rock
in a stormy land.[269]
Lost Cause
Memory of the war in the white South crystallized in the myth of the "Lost Cause",
shaping regional identity and race relations for generations.[270] Alan T. Nolan notes that
 the Lost Cause was expressly "a rationalization, a cover-up to vindicate the name and
fame" of those in rebellion. Some claims revolve around the insignificance of slavery.
Some appeals highlight cultural differences North and South. The military conflict by
Confederate actors is idealized. In any case, secession was said to be lawful. [271] The two
important political legacies flowed from the adoption of the Lost Cause analysis were
that it facilitated the reunification of the North and the South, and it excused the “virulent
racism” of the 19th century, sacrificing African-American progress to a white man’s
reunification. But the Lost Cause legacy to history is “a caricature of the truth. This
caricature wholly misrepresents and distorts the facts of the matter” in every instance. [272]

Beginning in 1961 the U.S. Post Office releasedCommemorative stamps for five famous battles,
each issued on the 100th anniversary of the respective battle.

Beardian historiography
The most influential interpretation of the Civil War was the Beardian approach presented
by Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard in The Rise of American Civilization (1927). It
was highly influential among historians and the general public until the civil rights era of
the 1950s. The Beards downplayed slavery, abolitionism, and issues of morality. They
ignored constitutional issues of states' rights and even ignored American nationalism as
the force that finally led to victory in the war. Indeed the ferocious combat itself was
passed over as merely an ephemeral event. Much more important was the calculus of
class conflict. The Beards announced that the Civil War was really a:
Social cataclysm in which the capitalists, laborers, and farmers of the North and West drove
from power in the national government the planting aristocracy of the South." [273]

The Beards themselves abandoned their interpretation by the 1940s and it became
defunct among historians in the 1950s, when scholars shifted to an emphasis on
slavery. However, Beardian themes still echo among Lost Cause writers.[274]

Civil War commemoration

Main article: Commemoration of the American Civil War

See also: Commemoration of the American Civil War on postage stamps

 Grand Army of the Republic (Union)

United Confederate Veterans

The American Civil War has been commemorated in many capacities ranging from
the reenactment of battles, to statues and memorial halls erected, to films being
produced, to stamps and coins with Civil War themes being issued, all of which
helped to shape public memory. This varied advent occurred in greater proportions
on the 100th and 150th anniversary. [275] Hollywood's take on the war has been
especially influential in shaping public memory, as seen in such film classics
as Birth of a Nation (1915),Gone with the Wind (1939), and Lincoln (2012).

World War II
World War II (WWII or WW2), also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted
from 1939 to 1945, though related conflicts began earlier. It involved the vast majority of the world's
nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances:
the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, and directly involved more than
100 million people, from more than 30 different countries. In a state of "total war", the major
participants threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort,
erasing the distinction between civilian and militaryresources. Marked by mass deaths of civilians,
including the Holocaust (during which approximately 11 million people were killed) [1][2] and
the strategic bombing of industrial and population centres (during which approximately one million
people were killed, including the use of two nuclear weapons in combat),[3] it resulted in an
estimated 50 million to 85 million fatalities. These made World War II the deadliest conflict in human
history.[4]
The Empire of Japan aimed to dominate Asia and the Pacific and was already at war with
the Republic of China in 1937,[5] but the world war is generally said to have begun on 1 September
1939[6] with the invasion of Poland by Germany and subsequent declarations of war on Germany
by France and the United Kingdom. From late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns
and treaties, Germany formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan, conquering or subduing much
of continental Europe. Following the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Germany and the Soviet Union
partitioned between themselves and annexed territories of their European neighbours, including
Poland, Finland and the Baltic states. The United Kingdom and the other members of the British
Commonwealth were the only major Allied forces continuing the fight against the Axis, with battles
taking place in North Africa and the Horn of Africa as well as the long-running Battle of the Atlantic. In
June 1941, the European Axis powers launched an invasion of the Soviet Union, giving a start to
the largest land theatre of war in history, which tied down the major part of the Axis' military forces
for the rest of the war. In December 1941, Japan attacked the United States andEuropean
territories in the Pacific Ocean, and quickly conquered much of the Western Pacific.
The Axis advance was stopped in 1942 when Japan lost the critical Battle of Midway, near Hawaii,
and Germany was defeated in North Africa and then, decisively, at Stalingrad in the Soviet Union. In
1943, with a series of German defeats on the Eastern Front, the Allied invasion of Italy which
brought about that nation's surrender, and Allied victories in the Pacific, the Axis lost the initiative and
undertook strategic retreat on all fronts. In 1944, the Western Allies invaded France, while the Soviet
Union regained all of its territorial losses and invaded Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945
the Japanese began suffering major reverses in mainland Asia in South Central China and Burma,
while the Allies defeated the Japanese Navy and captured key Western Pacific islands.
The war in Europe ended with an invasion of Germany by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union
culminating in the capture of Berlin by Soviet and Polish troops and the subsequent German
unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945. Following the Potsdam Declaration by the Allies on 26 July
1945, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima andNagasaki on
6 August and 9 August respectively. With an invasion of the Japanese archipelago imminent, the
possibility of additional atomic bombings, and the Soviet Union's declaration of war on
Japan and invasion of Manchuria, Japan surrenderedon 15 August 1945. Thus ended the war in
Asia, cementing the total victory of the Allies over the Axis.
World War II altered the political alignment and social structure of the world. The United
Nations (UN) was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts.
The great powers that were the victors of the war—the United States, the Soviet Union, China, the
United Kingdom, and France—became the permanent members of the United Nations Security
Council.[7] The Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage
for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 46 years. Meanwhile, the influence of European great
powers started to decline, while the decolonisation of Asia and Africa began. Most countries whose
industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery. Political integration, especially in
Europe, emerged as an effort to stabilise postwar relations and co-operate more effectively in the
Cold War.[8]

Chronology
See also: Timeline of World War II

The start of the war in Europe is generally held to be 1 September 1939, [9][10] beginning with
the German invasion of Poland; Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. The
dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7
July 1937,[11] or even the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931.[12][13]

Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in
Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously and the two wars merged in 1941. This article uses
the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian
invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935.[14] The British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning
of the Second World War as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces of
Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to September 1939.[15]

The exact date of the war's end is also not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the
time that the war ended with the armistice of 14 August 1945 (V-J Day), rather than the formal
surrender of Japan (2 September 1945); it is even claimed in some European histories that it ended
on V-E Day (8 May 1945).[citation needed] A peace treaty with Japan was signed in 1951 to formally tie up
any loose ends such as compensation to be paid to Allied prisoners of war who had been victims of
atrocities.[16] A treaty regarding Germany's future allowed the reunification of East and West
Germany to take place in 1990 and resolved other post-World War II issues.[17]

Background
Main article: Causes of World War II

World War I had radically altered the political map, with the defeat of the Central Powers—
including Austria-Hungary, Germany and the Ottoman Empire—and the 1917 Bolshevikseizure of
power in Russia. Meanwhile, existing victorious Allies such as France, Belgium, Italy, Greece and
Romania gained territories, whereas new states were created out of the collapse of Austria-Hungary
and the Ottoman and Russian Empires.

To prevent the outbreak of a future world war, the League of Nations was formally created during
the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. The organisation's primary goal was to prevent armed conflict
through collective security, military and naval disarmament, and settling international disputes
through peaceful negotiations and arbitration.

Despite strong pacifist sentiment after World War I,[18] its aftermath still
caused irredentist and revanchist nationalism to become important in several European states.
Irredentism and revanchism were strong in Germany because of the significant territorial, colonial,
and financial losses incurred by the Treaty of Versailles. Under the treaty, Germany lost around 13
percent of its home territory and all of its overseas colonies, while German annexation of other
states was prohibited, reparations were imposed, and limits were placed on the size and capability of
the country's armed forces.[19] Meanwhile, the Russian Civil War had led to the creation of the Soviet
Union.[20]

The German Empire was dissolved in the German Revolution of 1918–1919, and a democratic
government, later known as the Weimar Republic, was created. The interwar period saw strife
between supporters of the new republic and hardline opponents on both the right and left. Although
Italy as an Entente ally made some territorial gains, Italian nationalists were angered that
the promises made by Britain and France to secure Italian entrance into the war were not fulfilled
with the peace settlement. From 1922 to 1925, the Fascistmovement led by Benito Mussolini seized
power in Italy with a nationalist, totalitarian, and class collaborationist agenda that abolished
representative democracy, repressed socialist, left-wing and liberal forces, and pursued an
aggressive foreign policy aimed at forcefully forging Italy as a world power, promising the creation of
a "New Roman Empire".[21]

The League of Nations assembly, held in Geneva, Switzerland, 1930

In Germany, the Weimar Republic's legitimacy was challenged by right-wing elements such as
the Freikorps and the Nazi party, resulting in events such as the Kapp Putsch and the Beer Hall
Putsch. With the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, domestic support for Nazism and its
leader Adolf Hitler rose and, in 1933, he was appointed Chancellor of Germany. In the aftermath of
the Reichstag fire, Hitler created a totalitarian single-party state led by the Nazis.[22]

The Kuomintang (KMT) party in China launched a unification campaign against regional
warlords and nominally unified China in the mid-1920s, but was soon embroiled in a civil war against
its former Chinese communist allies.[23] In 1931, an increasingly militaristic Japanese Empire, which
had long sought influence in China[24] as the first step of what its government saw as the
country's right to rule Asia, used theMukden Incident as a pretext to launch an invasion of
Manchuria and establish the puppet state of Manchukuo.[25]

Too weak to resist Japan, China appealed to the League of Nations for help. Japan withdrew from
the League of Nations after beingcondemned for its incursion into Manchuria. The two nations then
fought several battles, in Shanghai, Rehe and Hebei, until the Tanggu Truce was signed in 1933.
Thereafter, Chinese volunteer forces continued the resistance to Japanese aggression in Manchuria,
and Chahar and Suiyuan.[26]

Adolf Hitler at a German National Socialist political rally in Weimar, October 1930
Adolf Hitler, after an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the German government in 1923, eventually
became the Chancellor of Germany in 1933. He abolished democracy, espousing a radical, racially
motivated revision of the world order, and soon began a massive rearmament campaign.[27] It was at
this time that multiple political scientists began to predict that a second Great War might take place.
[28]
Meanwhile, France, to secure its alliance, allowed Italy a free hand in Ethiopia, which Italy desired
as a colonial possession. The situation was aggravated in early 1935 when the Territory of the Saar
Basin was legally reunited with Germany and Hitler repudiated the Treaty of Versailles, accelerated
his rearmament programme and introduced conscription.[29]

Hoping to contain Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Italy formed the Stresa Front; however,
in June 1935, the United Kingdom made an independent naval agreement with Germany, easing
prior restrictions. The Soviet Union, concerned due to Germany's goals of capturing vast areas of
eastern Europe, wrote a treaty of mutual assistance with France. Before taking effect though,
the Franco-Soviet pactwas required to go through the bureaucracy of the League of Nations, which
rendered it essentially toothless.[30] The United States, concerned with events in Europe and Asia,
passed the Neutrality Act in August.[31] In October, Italy invaded Ethiopia through Italian
Somaliland and Eritrea;[32] Germany was the only major European nation to support the invasion. Italy
subsequently dropped its objections to Germany's goal of absorbingAustria.[33]

Hitler defied the Versailles and Locarno treaties by remilitarising the Rhineland in March 1936. He
received little response from other European powers.[34] When the Spanish Civil War broke out in
July, Hitler and Mussolini supported the fascist and authoritarian Nationalist forces in their civil war
against the Soviet-supported Spanish Republic. Both sides used the conflict to test new weapons
and methods of warfare,[35] with the Nationalists winning the war in early 1939. In October 1936,
Germany and Italy formed the Rome–Berlin Axis. A month later, Germany and Japan signed
the Anti-Comintern Pact, which Italy would join in the following year. In China, after the Xi'an
Incident, the Kuomintang and communist forces agreed on a ceasefire to present a united front to
oppose Japan.[36]

Pre-war events
Italian invasion of Ethiopia (1935)
Main article: Second Italo-Abyssinian War

Italian soldiers recruited in 1935, on their way to fight the Second Italo-Abyssinian War
The Second Italo–Abyssinian War was a brief colonial war that began in October 1935 and ended in
May 1936. The war began with the invasion of the Ethiopian Empire (also known as Abyssinia) by
the armed forces of the Kingdom of Italy (Regno d'Italia), which was launched from Italian
Somaliland and Eritrea.[32] The war resulted in the military occupation of Ethiopia and
its annexation into the newly created colony of Italian East Africa (Africa Orientale Italiana, or AOI); in
addition, it exposed the weakness of the League of Nations as a force to preserve peace. Both Italy
and Ethiopia were member nations, but the League did nothing when the former clearly violated the
League's ownArticle X.[37]

Spanish Civil War (1936–39)

Main article: Spanish Civil War

The bombing of Guernica in 1937, sparked Europe-wide fears that the next war would be based on bombing of cities
with very high civilian casualties

During the Spanish Civil War, Hitler and Mussolini lent military support to the Nationalist rebels, led
by General Francisco Franco. The Soviet Union supported the existing government, the Spanish
Republic. Over 30,000 foreign volunteers, known as the International Brigades, also fought against
the Nationalists. Both Germany and the USSR used this proxy war as an opportunity to test in
combat their most advanced weapons and tactics. The bombing of Guernica by the German Condor
Legion in April 1937 heightened widespread concerns that the next major war would include
extensive terror bombing attacks on civilians.[38][39] The Nationalists won the civil war in April 1939;
Franco, now dictator, bargained with both sides during the Second World War, but never concluded
any major agreements. He did send volunteers to fight on the eastern front under German command
but Spain remained neutral and did not allow either side to use its territory. [40]

Japanese invasion of China (1937)

Main article: Second Sino-Japanese War
Japanese Imperial Army soldiers during the Battle of Shanghai, 1937

In July 1937, Japan captured the former Chinese imperial capital of Beijing after instigating theMarco
Polo Bridge Incident, which culminated in the Japanese campaign to invade all of China. [41]The
Soviets quickly signed a non-aggression pact with China to lend materiel support, effectively ending
China's prior co-operation with Germany. Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek deployed his best
army to defend Shanghai, but, after three months of fighting, Shanghai fell. The Japanese continued
to push the Chinese forces back, capturing the capital Nanking in December 1937. After the fall of
Nanking, tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians and disarmed
combatants were murdered by the Japanese.[42][43]

In March 1938, Nationalist Chinese force got their first major victory at Taierzhuang but then
city Xuzhou was taken by Japanese in May.[44]In June 1938, Chinese forces stalled the Japanese
advance by flooding the Yellow River; this manoeuvre bought time for the Chinese to prepare their
defences at Wuhan, but the city was taken by October.[45] Japanese military victories did not bring
about the collapse of Chinese resistance that Japan had hoped to achieve; instead the Chinese
government relocated inland to Chongqing and continued the war.[46][47]

Japanese invasion of the Soviet Union and Mongolia (1938)

See also: Nanshin-ron and Soviet–Japanese border conflicts

Japanese forces in Manchuoko had sporadic border clashes with the Soviet Union, culminating in
the Japanese defeat at Khalkin Gol. After this, Japan and the Soviet Union signed aNeutrality Pact in
April 1941, and Japan turned its focus to the South Pacific.

European occupations and agreements

Further information: Anschluss, Appeasement, Munich Agreement, German occupation of
Czechoslovakia and Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact
Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler,Mussolini, and Ciano pictured just before signing the Munich Agreement, 29 September
1938

In Europe, Germany and Italy were becoming more bold. In March 1938, Germany annexed Austria,
again provoking little response from other European powers.[48] Encouraged, Hitler began pressing
German claims on the Sudetenland, an area of Czechoslovakia with a predominantly ethnic
German population; and soon Britain and France followed the counsel of prime minister Neville
Chamberlain and conceded this territory to Germany in the Munich Agreement, which was made
against the wishes of the Czechoslovak government, in exchange for a promise of no further
territorial demands.[49] Soon afterwards, Germany and Italy forced Czechoslovakia to cede additional
territory to Hungary and Poland.[50]

Although all of Germany's stated demands had been satisfied by the agreement, privately Hitler was
furious that British interference had prevented him from seizing all of Czechoslovakia in one
operation. In subsequent speeches Hitler attacked British and Jewish "war-mongers" and in January
1939 secretly ordered a major build-up of the German navy to challenge British naval supremacy. In
March 1939, Germany invaded the remainder of Czechoslovakia and subsequently split it into the
German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and a pro-Germanclient state, the Slovak Republic.
[51]
Hitler also delivered an ultimatum to Lithuania, forcing the concession of the Klaipėda Region.

German Foreign MinisterRibbentrop signing the Nazi–Soviet non-aggression pact. Standing behind him
are Molotov and the Soviet leaderJoseph Stalin, 1939

Alarmed, and with Hitler making further demands on the Free City of Danzig, France and
Britainguaranteed their support for Polish independence; when Italy conquered Albania in April 1939,
the same guarantee was extended to Romania and Greece.[52] Shortly after the Franco-British pledge
to Poland, Germany and Italy formalised their own alliance with the Pact of Steel.[53] Hitler accused
Britain and Poland of trying to "encircle" Germany and renounced the Anglo-German Naval
Agreement and theGerman–Polish Non-Aggression Pact.

In August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact,[54] a non-
aggression treaty with a secret protocol. The parties gave each other rights to "spheres of influence"
(western Poland and Lithuania for Germany; eastern Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia
and Bessarabia for the USSR). It also raised the question of continuing Polish independence. [55] The
agreement was crucial to Hitler because it assured that Germany would not have to face the
prospect of a two-front war, as it had in World War I, after it defeated Poland.

The situation reached a general crisis in late August as German troops continued to mobilise against
the Polish border. In a private meeting with the Italian foreign minister, Count Ciano, Hitler asserted
that Poland was a "doubtful neutral" that needed to either yield to his demands or be "liquidated" to
prevent it from drawing off German troops in the future "unavoidable" war with the Western
democracies. He did not believe Britain or France would intervene in the conflict. [56] On 23 August
Hitler ordered the attack to proceed on 26 August, but upon hearing that Britain had concluded a
formal mutual assistance pact with Poland and that Italy would maintain neutrality, he decided to
delay it.[57] In response to British pleas for direct negotiations, Germany demanded on 29 August that
a Polish plenipotentiary immediately travel to Berlin to negotiate the handover of Danzig and
the Polish Corridor to Germany as well as to agree to safeguard the German minority in Poland. The
Poles refused to comply with this request and on the evening of 31 August Germany declared that it
considered its proposals rejected.[58]

Course of the war

Further information: Diplomatic history of World War II

War breaks out in Europe (1939–40)

Main articles: Invasion of Poland, Occupation of Poland (1939–45), Nazi crimes against the Polish
nation, Soviet invasion of Poland and Soviet repressions of Polish citizens (1939–46)

Soldiers of the German Wehrmachttearing down the border crossing between Poland and the Free City of Danzig, 1
September 1939

On 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland under the false pretext that the Poles had carried
out a series of sabotage operationsagainst German targets.[59] Two days later, on 3 September,
France and United Kingdom, followed by the fully independent Dominions[60] of the British
Commonwealth[61]—Australia (3 September), Canada (10 September), New Zealand (3 September),
and South Africa (6 September)—declared war on Germany. However, initially the alliance
provided limited direct military support to Poland, consisting of a small French attack into the
Saarland.[62] The Western Allies also began a naval blockade of Germany, which aimed to damage
the country's economy and war effort.[63] Germany responded by ordering U-boat warfare against
Allied merchant and war ships, which was to later escalate in the Battle of the Atlantic.

German Panzer I tanks near the city of Bydgoszcz, during the Invasion of Poland, September 1939

On 17 September 1939, after signing a cease-fire with Japan, the Soviets also invaded Poland from
the east.[64] The Polish army was defeated and Warsaw surrendered to the Germans on 27
September, with final pockets of resistance surrendering on 6 October. Poland's territory was divided
between Germany and the Soviet Union, with Lithuania and Slovakia also receiving small shares.
After the surrender of Poland's armed forces, Polish resistance established an Underground State, a
partisan Home Army, and continued to fight alongside the Allies on all fronts in Europe and North
Africa, throughout the entire course of the war.[65]

About 100,000 Polish military personnel were evacuated to Romania and the Baltic countries; many
of these soldiers later fought against the Germans in other theatres of the war. [66] Poland's Enigma
codebreakers were also evacuated to France.[67]

On 6 October Hitler made a public peace overture to the United Kingdom and France, but said that
the future of Poland was to be determined exclusively by Germany and the Soviet Union.
Chamberlain rejected this on 12 October, saying "Past experience has shown that no reliance can
be placed upon the promises of the present German Government." [58] After this rejection Hitler
ordered an immediate offensive against France,[68] but bad weather forced repeated postponements
until the spring of 1940.[69][70][71]

After signing the German-Soviet treaty governing Lithuania, the Soviet Union forced the Baltic
countries to allow it to station Soviet troops in their countries under pacts of "mutual assistance." [72][73]
[74]
Finland rejected territorial demands, prompting a Soviet invasion in November 1939. [75] The
resulting Winter War ended in March 1940 with Finnish concessions.[76] The United Kingdom and
France treating the Soviet attack on Finland as tantamount to its entering the war on the side of the
Germans, responded to the Soviet invasion by supporting the USSR's expulsion from the League of
Nations.[74]

Western Europe (1940–41)

Map of the French Maginot Line

View of London after the German"Blitz", 29 December 1940

In April 1940, Germany invaded Denmark and Norway to protect shipments of iron ore from Sweden,
which the Allies wereattempting to cut off by unilaterally mining neutral Norwegian waters.
[77]
Denmark capitulated after a few hours, and despite Allied support, during which the important
harbour of Narvik temporarily was recaptured by the British, Norway was conquered within two
months.[78] British discontent over the Norwegian campaign led to the replacement of the British
Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, with Winston Churchill on 10 May 1940.[79]

Germany launched an offensive against France and, for reasons of military strategy, also attacked
the neutral nations ofBelgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg on 10 May 1940.[80] That same
day the United Kingdom occupied the Danish possessions of Iceland, Greenland and the Faroes to
preempt a possible German invasion of the islands.[81] TheNetherlands and Belgium were overrun
using blitzkrieg tactics in a few days and weeks, respectively.[82] The French-fortified Maginot
Line and the main body the Allied forces which had moved into Belgium were circumvented by a
flanking movement through the thickly wooded Ardennes region,[83] mistakenly perceived by Allied
planners as an impenetrable natural barrier against armoured vehicles. [84] As a result, the bulk of the
Allied armies found themselves trapped in an encirclement and were beaten. The majority were
taken prisoner, whilst over 300,000, mostly British and French, wereevacuated from the continent at
Dunkirk by early June, although abandoning almost all of their equipment.[85]

On 10 June, Italy invaded France, declaring war on both France and the United Kingdom.[86] Paris fell
to the Germans on 14 June and eight days later France surrendered and was soon divided
into German and Italian occupation zones,[87] and an unoccupied rump state under theVichy Regime,
which, though officially neutral, was generally aligned with Germany. France kept its fleet but the
British feared the Germans would seize it, so on 3 July, the British attacked it.[88]

In June 1940, the Soviet Union forcibly annexed Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania,[73] and then annexed
the disputed Romanian region ofBessarabia. Meanwhile, Nazi-Soviet political rapprochement and
economic co-operation[89][90] gradually stalled,[91][92] and both states began preparations for war.[93]

On 19 July, Hitler again publicly offered to end the war, saying he had no desire to destroy the British
Empire. The United Kingdom rejected this, with Lord Halifax responding "there was in his speech no
suggestion that peace must be based on justice, no word of recognition that the other nations of
Europe had any right to self-determination ..."[94]

Following this, Germany began an air superiority campaign over the United Kingdom (the Battle of
Britain) to prepare for an invasion.[95] The campaign failed, and the invasion plans were cancelled by
September.[95] Frustrated, and in part in response to repeated British air raids against Berlin,
Germany began a strategic bombing offensive against British cities known as the Blitz.[96] However,
the air attacks largely failed to disrupt the British war effort.

German Luftwaffe, Heinkel He 111bombers during the Battle of Britain

Using newly captured French ports, the German Navy enjoyed success against an over-
extended Royal Navy, using U-boats against British shipping in the Atlantic.[97] The British scored a
significant victory on 27 May 1941 by sinking the German battleship Bismarck.[98] Perhaps most
importantly, during the Battle of Britain the Royal Air Force had successfully resisted the Luftwaffe's
assault, and the German bombing campaign largely ended in May 1941.[99]

Throughout this period, the neutral United States took measures to assist China and the Western
Allies. In November 1939, the AmericanNeutrality Act was amended to allow "cash and
carry" purchases by the Allies.[100] In 1940, following the German capture of Paris, the size of
the United States Navy was significantly increased. In September, the United States further agreed
to a trade of American destroyers for British bases.[101] Still, a large majority of the American public
continued to oppose any direct military intervention into the conflict well into 1941. [102]

Although Roosevelt had promised to keep the United States out of the war, he nevertheless took
concrete steps to prepare for that eventuality. In December 1940 he accused Hitler of planning world
conquest and ruled out negotiations as useless, calling for the US to become an "arsenal for
democracy" and promoted the passage of Lend-Lease aid to support the British war effort.[94] In
January 1941 secret high level staff talks with the British began for the purposes of determining how
to defeat Germany should the US enter the war. They decided on a number of offensive policies,
including an air offensive, the "early elimination" of Italy, raids, support of resistance groups, and the
capture of positions to launch an offensive against Germany.[103]

At the end of September 1940, the Tripartite Pact united Japan, Italy and Germany to formalise
the Axis Powers. The Tripartite Pact stipulated that any country, with the exception of the Soviet
Union, not in the war which attacked any Axis Power would be forced to go to war against all three.
[104]
The Axis expanded in November 1940 when Hungary, Slovakia and Romania joined the Tripartite
Pact.[105] Romania would make a major contribution (as did Hungary) to the Axis war against the
USSR, partially to recapture territory ceded to the USSR, partially to pursue its leader Ion
Antonescu's desire to combat communism.[106]

Mediterranean (1940–41)

Australian troops of the British Commonwealth Forces man a front-line trench during the Siege of Tobruk;North
African Campaign, August 1941

Italy began operations in the Mediterranean, initiating a siege of Malta in June, conquering British
Somaliland in August, and making an incursion into British-held Egypt in September 1940. In
October 1940, Italy started the Greco-Italian War due to Mussolini's jealousy of Hitler's success but
within days was repulsed and pushed back into Albania, where a stalemate soon occurred. [107] The
United Kingdom responded to Greek requests for assistance by sending troops to Crete and
providing air support to Greece. Hitler decided that when the weather improved he would take action
against Greece to assist the Italians and prevent the British from gaining a foothold in the Balkans, to
strike against the British naval dominance of the Mediterranean, and to secure his hold on Romanian
oil.[108]

In December 1940, British Commonwealth forces began counter-offensives against Italian forces in
Egypt and Italian East Africa.[109] The offensive in North Africa was highly successful and by early
February 1941 Italy had lost control of eastern Libya and large numbers of Italian troops had been
taken prisoner. The Italian Navy also suffered significant defeats, with the Royal Navy putting three
Italian battleships out of commission by a carrier attack at Taranto, and neutralising several more
warships at the Battle of Cape Matapan.[110]

The Germans soon intervened to assist Italy. Hitler sent German forces to Libya in February, and by
the end of March they had launched an offensive which drove back the Commonwealth forces which
had been weakened to support Greece.[111] In under a month, Commonwealth forces were pushed
back into Egypt with the exception of the besieged port of Tobruk.[112] The Commonwealth attempted
to dislodge Axis forces in May and again in June, but failed on both occasions.[113]

By late March 1941, following Bulgaria's signing of the Tripartite Pact, the Germans were in position
to intervene in Greece. Plans were changed, however, due to developments in
neighbouring Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav government had signed the Tripartite Pact on 25 March,
only to be overthrown two days later by a British-encouraged coup. Hitler viewed the new regime as
hostile and immediately decided to eliminate it. On 6 April Germany simultaneously invaded
both Yugoslavia and Greece, making rapid progress and forcing both nations to surrender within the
month. The British were driven from the Balkans after Germany conquered the Greek island of
Crete by the end of May.[114] Although the Axis victory was swift, bitter partisan warfare subsequently
broke out against the Axis occupation of Yugoslavia, which continued until the end of the war.

The Allies did have some successes during this time. In the Middle East, Commonwealth forces
first quashed an uprising in Iraq which had been supported by German aircraft from bases within
Vichy-controlled Syria,[115] then, with the assistance of the Free French, invaded Syria and Lebanon to
prevent further such occurrences.[116]

Axis attack on the USSR (1941)

Further information: Operation Barbarossa, Einsatzgruppen, World War II casualties of the Soviet
Union and Nazi crimes against Soviet POWs
Animation of the WWII European Theatre

Soviet civilians in Leningrad leaving destroyed houses, after a German bombardment of the city; Battle of Leningrad,
10 December 1942

With the situation in Europe and Asia relatively stable, Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union made
preparations. With the Soviets wary of mounting tensions with Germany and the Japanese planning
to take advantage of the European War by seizing resource-rich European possessions in Southeast
Asia, the two powers signed the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact in April 1941.[117] By contrast, the
Germans were steadily making preparations for an attack on the Soviet Union, massing forces on
the Soviet border.[118]

Hitler believed that Britain's refusal to end the war was based on the hope that the United States and
the Soviet Union would enter the war against Germany sooner or later. [119] He therefore decided to try
to strengthen Germany's relations with the Soviets, or failing that, to attack and eliminate them as a
factor. In November 1940 negotiations took place to determine if the Soviet Union would join the
Tripartite Pact. The Soviets showed some interest, but asked for concessions from Finland, Bulgaria,
Turkey, and Japan that Germany considered unacceptable. On 18 December 1940 Hitler issued the
directive to prepare for an invasion of the Soviet Union.

On 22 June 1941, Germany, supported by Italy and Romania, invaded the Soviet Union in Operation
Barbarossa, with Germany accusing the Soviets of plotting against them. They were joined shortly
by Finland and Hungary.[120] The primary targets of this surprise offensive[121] were the Baltic region,
Moscow and Ukraine, with the ultimate goal of ending the 1941 campaign near the Arkhangelsk-
Astrakhan line, from the Caspian to the White Seas. Hitler's objectives were to eliminate the Soviet
Union as a military power, exterminate Communism, generate Lebensraum ("living space")
[122]
by dispossessing the native population[123] and guarantee access to the strategic resources
needed to defeat Germany's remaining rivals.[124]

Although the Red Army was preparing for strategic counter-offensives before the war,
[125]
Barbarossa forced the Soviet supreme commandto adopt a strategic defence. During the
summer, the Axis made significant gains into Soviet territory, inflicting immense losses in both
personnel and materiel. By the middle of August, however, the German Army High
Command decided to suspend the offensive of a considerably depleted Army Group Centre, and to
divert the 2nd Panzer Group to reinforce troops advancing towards central Ukraine and Leningrad.
[126]
The Kiev offensive was overwhelmingly successful, resulting in encirclement and elimination of
four Soviet armies, and made further advance into Crimea and industrially developed Eastern
Ukraine (the First Battle of Kharkov) possible.[127]

The diversion of three quarters of the Axis troops and the majority of their air forces from France and
the central Mediterranean to theEastern Front[128] prompted Britain to reconsider its grand strategy.
[129]
In July, the UK and the Soviet Union formed a military alliance against Germany[130] The British
and Soviets invaded Iran to secure the Persian Corridor and Iran's oil fields.[131] In August, the United
Kingdom and the United States jointly issued the Atlantic Charter.[132]

By October Axis operational objectives in Ukraine and the Baltic region were achieved, with only the
sieges of Leningrad[133] and Sevastopol continuing.[134] A major offensive against Moscow was
renewed; after two months of fierce battles in increasingly harsh weather the German army almost
reached the outer suburbs of Moscow, where the exhausted troops [135] were forced to suspend their
offensive.[136] Large territorial gains were made by Axis forces, but their campaign had failed to
achieve its main objectives: two key cities remained in Soviet hands, the Soviet capability to
resist was not broken, and the Soviet Union retained a considerable part of its military potential.
The blitzkrieg phase of the war in Europe had ended.[137]

By early December, freshly mobilised reserves[138] allowed the Soviets to achieve numerical parity
with Axis troops.[139] This, as well as intelligence data which established that a minimal number of
Soviet troops in the East would be sufficient to deter any attack by the Japanese Kwantung Army,
[140]
allowed the Soviets to begin a massive counter-offensivethat started on 5 December all along the
front and pushed German troops 100–250 kilometres (62–155 mi) west.[141]

War breaks out in the Pacific (1941)

Mitsubishi A6M2, "Zero" fighters on the Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft carrier Shōkaku, just before the attack
on Pearl Harbor

In 1939 the United States had renounced its trade treaty with Japan and beginning with an aviation
gasoline ban in July 1940 Japan had become subject to increasing economic pressure. [94] During this
time, Japan launched its first attack against Changsha, a strategically important Chinese city, but
was repulsed by late September.[142] Despite several offensives by both sides, the war between China
and Japan was stalemated by 1940. To increase pressure on China by blocking supply routes, and
to better position Japanese forces in the event of a war with the Western powers, Japan
had occupied northern Indochina.[143] Afterwards, the United States embargoed iron, steel and
mechanical parts against Japan.[144] Other sanctions soon followed.

In August of that year, Chinese communists launched an offensive in Central China; in retaliation,
Japan instituted harsh measures in occupied areas to reduce human and material resources for the
communists.[145] Continued antipathy between Chinese communist and nationalist forces culminated
in armed clashes in January 1941, effectively ending their co-operation.[146] In March, the Japanese
11th army attacked the headquarters of the Chinese 19th army but was repulsed during Battle of
Shanggao.[147] In September, Japan attempted to take the city of Changsha again and clashed with
Chinese nationalist forces.[148]

German successes in Europe encouraged Japan to increase pressure on European governments

in Southeast Asia. The Dutch government agreed to provide Japan some oil supplies from the Dutch
East Indies, but negotiations for additional access to their resources ended in failure in June 1941.
[149]
In July 1941 Japan sent troops to southern Indochina, thus threatening British and Dutch
possessions in the Far East. The United States, United Kingdom and other Western governments
reacted to this move with a freeze on Japanese assets and a total oil embargo. [150][151]

Since early 1941 the United States and Japan had been engaged in negotiations in an attempt to
improve their strained relations and end the war in China. During these negotiations Japan
advanced a number of proposals which were dismissed by the Americans as inadequate. [152] At the
same time the US, Britain, and the Netherlands engaged in secret discussions for the joint defence
of their territories, in the event of a Japanese attack against any of them. [153] Roosevelt reinforced the
Philippines (an American possession since 1898) and warned Japan that the US would react to
Japanese attacks against any "neighboring countries".[153]

USS Arizona during the Japanese surprise air attack on the American pacific fleet, 7 December 1941

Frustrated at the lack of progress and feeling the pinch of the American-British-Dutch sanctions,
Japan prepared for war. On 20 November it presented an interim proposal as its final offer. It called
for the end of American aid to China and the supply of oil and other resources to Japan. In exchange
they promised not to launch any attacks in Southeast Asia and to withdraw their forces from their
threatening positions in southern Indochina.[152] The American counter-proposal of 26 November
required that Japan evacuate all of China without conditions and conclude non-aggression pacts
with all Pacific powers.[154] That meant Japan was essentially forced to choose between abandoning
its ambitions in China, or seizing the natural resources it needed in the Dutch East Indies by force;
[155]
the Japanese military did not consider the former an option, and many officers considered the oil
embargo an unspoken declaration of war.[156]

Japan planned to rapidly seize European colonies in Asia to create a large defensive perimeter
stretching into the Central Pacific; the Japanese would then be free to exploit the resources of
Southeast Asia while exhausting the over-stretched Allies by fighting a defensive war. [157] To prevent
American intervention while securing the perimeter it was further planned to neutralise the United
States Pacific Fleetand the American military presence in the Philippines from the outset. [158] On 7
December (8 December in Asian time zones), 1941, Japan attacked British and American holdings
with near-simultaneous offensives against Southeast Asia and the Central Pacific.[159] These included
an attack on the American fleet at Pearl Harbor, landings in Thailand and Malaya[159] and the battle of
Hong Kong.

These attacks led the United States, Britain, China, Australia and several other states to formally
declare war on Japan, whereas the Soviet Union, being heavily involved in large-scale hostilities with
European Axis countries, preferred to maintain its neutrality agreement with Japan. [160] Germany,
followed by the other Axis states, declared war on the United States in solidarity with Japan, citing as
justification the American attacks on German submarines and merchant ships that had been ordered
by Roosevelt.[120]

Axis advance stalls (1942–43)

Seated at the Casablanca Conference; US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British PM Winston Churchill,
January 1943

In January 1942, the United States, Britain, Soviet Union, China, and 22 smaller or exiled
governments issued the Declaration by United Nations, thereby affirming the Atlantic Charter,[161] and
agreeing to not to sign separate peace with the Axis powers.

During 1942 Allied officials debated on the appropriate grand strategy to pursue. All agreed that
defeating Germany was the primary objective. The Americans favoured a straightforward, large-
scale attack on Germany through France. The Soviets were also demanding a second front. The
British, on the other hand, argued that military operations should target peripheral areas to throw a
"ring" around Germany which would wear out German strength, lead to increasing demoralisation,
and bolster resistance forces. Germany itself would be subject to a heavy bombing campaign. An
offensive against Germany would then be launched primarily by Allied armour without using large-
scale armies.[162] Eventually, the British persuaded the Americans that a landing in France was
infeasible in 1942 and they should instead focus on driving the Axis out of North Africa. [163]

At the Casablanca Conference in early 1943 the Allies issued a declaration declaring that they would
not negotiate with their enemies and demanded their unconditional surrender. The British and
Americans agreed to continue to press the initiative in the Mediterranean by invading Sicily to fully
secure the Mediterranean supply routes.[164] Although the British argued for further operations in the
Balkans to bring Turkey into the war, in May 1943 the Americans extracted a British commitment to
limit Allied operations in the Mediterranean to an invasion of the Italian mainland and to invade
France in 1944.[165]

Pacific (1942–43)
Map of Japanese military advances, until mid-1942

By the end of April 1942, Japan and its ally Thailand had almost fully conquered Burma, Malaya, the
Dutch East Indies,Singapore, and Rabaul, inflicting severe losses on Allied troops and taking a large
number of prisoners.[166] Despite stubborn resistance at Corregidor, the US possession of the
Philippines was eventually captured in May 1942, forcing its government into exile.[167] On 16 April, in
Burma 7,000 British soldiers were encircled by the Japanese 33rd Division during the Battle of
Yenangyaung and rescued by the Chinese 38th Division.[168] Japanese forces also achieved naval
victories in the South China Sea, Java Sea and Indian Ocean,[169] and bombed the Allied naval
base at Darwin, Australia. The only real Allied success against Japan was a Chinese victory at
Changsha in early January 1942.[170]These easy victories over unprepared opponents left Japan
overconfident, as well as overextended.[171]

In early May 1942, Japan initiated operations to capture Port Moresby by amphibious assault and
thus sever communications and supply lines between the United States and Australia. The Allies,
however, prevented the invasion by intercepting and defeating the Japanese naval forces in
the Battle of the Coral Sea.[172] Japan's next plan, motivated by the earlier Doolittle Raid, was to
seize Midway Atoll and lure American carriers into battle to be eliminated; as a diversion, Japan
would also send forces to occupy the Aleutian Islands in Alaska.[173] In early June, Japan put its
operations into action but the Americans, having broken Japanese naval codes in late May, were
fully aware of the plans and force dispositions and used this knowledge to achieve a decisive victory
at Midway over the Imperial Japanese Navy.[174]
US Marines during the Guadalcanal Campaign, in the Pacific theatre, 1942

With its capacity for aggressive action greatly diminished as a result of the Midway battle, Japan
chose to focus on a belated attempt to capture Port Moresby by an overland campaign in
the Territory of Papua.[175] The Americans planned a counter-attack against Japanese positions in the
southern Solomon Islands, primarily Guadalcanal, as a first step towards capturing Rabaul, the main
Japanese base in Southeast Asia.[176]

Both plans started in July, but by mid-September, the Battle for Guadalcanal took priority for the
Japanese, and troops in New Guinea were ordered to withdraw from the Port Moresby area to
the northern part of the island, where they faced Australian and United States troops in the Battle of
Buna-Gona.[177] Guadalcanal soon became a focal point for both sides with heavy commitments of
troops and ships in the battle for Guadalcanal. By the start of 1943, the Japanese were defeated on
the island and withdrew their troops.[178] In Burma, Commonwealth forces mounted two operations.
The first, an offensive into the Arakan region in late 1942, went disastrously, forcing a retreat back to
India by May 1943.[179] The second was the insertion of irregular forces behind Japanese front-lines in
February which, by the end of April, had achieved mixed results.[180]

Eastern Front (1942–43)

Red Army soldiers on the counterattack, during the Battle of Stalingrad, February 1943

Despite considerable losses, in early 1942 Germany and its allies stopped a major Soviet offensive
in Central and Southern Russia, keeping most territorial gains they had achieved during the previous
year.[181] In May the Germans defeated Soviet offensives in the Kerch Peninsula and at Kharkiv,
[182]
and then launched their main summer offensive against southern Russia in June 1942, to seize
the oil fields of the Caucasus and occupy Kuban steppe, while maintaining positions on the northern
and central areas of the front. The Germans split Army Group South into two groups: Army Group
A struck lower Don River whileArmy Group B struck south-east to the Caucasus, towards Volga
River.[183] The Soviets decided to make their stand at Stalingrad, which was in the path of the
advancing German armies.

By mid-November, the Germans had nearly taken Stalingrad in bitter street fighting when the Soviets
began their second winter counter-offensive, starting with an encirclement of German forces at
Stalingrad[184] and an assault on the Rzhev salient near Moscow, though the latter failed disastrously.
[185]
By early February 1943, the German Army had taken tremendous losses; German troops at
Stalingrad had been forced to surrender,[186] and the front-line had been pushed back beyond its
position before the summer offensive. In mid-February, after the Soviet push had tapered off, the
Germans launched another attack on Kharkiv, creating a salient in their front line around the Russian
city of Kursk.[187]

Western Europe/Atlantic & Mediterranean (1942–43)

An American B-17 bombing raid, by the 8th Air Force, on the Focke Wulf factory in Germany, 9 October 1943

Exploiting poor American naval command decisions, the German navy ravaged Allied shipping off
the American Atlantic coast.[188] By November 1941, Commonwealth forces had launched a counter-
offensive, Operation Crusader, in North Africa, and reclaimed all the gains the Germans and Italians
had made.[189] In North Africa, the Germans launched an offensive in January, pushing the British
back to positions at the Gazala Line by early February,[190] followed by a temporary lull in combat
which Germany used to prepare for their upcoming offensives.[191] Concerns the Japanese might use
bases in Vichy-held Madagascar caused the British to invade the island in early May 1942.[192] An
Axis offensive in Libya forced an Allied retreat deep inside Egypt until Axis forces were stopped at El
Alamein.[193] On the Continent, raids of Allied commandos on strategic targets, culminating in the
disastrous Dieppe Raid,[194] demonstrated the Western Allies' inability to launch an invasion of
continental Europe without much better preparation, equipment, and operational security. [195]

In August 1942, the Allies succeeded in repelling a second attack against El Alamein[196] and, at a
high cost, managed to deliver desperately needed supplies to the besieged Malta.[197] A few months
later, the Allies commenced an attack of their own in Egypt, dislodging the Axis forces and beginning
a drive west across Libya.[198] This attack was followed up shortly after by Anglo-American landings in
French North Africa, which resulted in the region joining the Allies.[199] Hitler responded to the French
colony's defection by ordering the occupation of Vichy France;[199] although Vichy forces did not resist
this violation of the armistice, they managed to scuttle their fleet to prevent its capture by German
forces.[200] The now pincered Axis forces in Africa withdrew into Tunisia, which was conquered by the
Allies in May 1943.[201]

In early 1943 the British and Americans began the "Combined Bomber Offensive", a strategic
bombing campaign against Germany. The goals were to disrupt the German war economy, reduce
German morale, and "de-house" the German civilian population.[202]

Allies gain momentum (1943–44)

US Navy Douglas SBD Dauntlessflies patrol over the USS Washingtonand USS Lexington during the Gilbert and
Marshall Islands campaign, 1943

Following the Guadalcanal Campaign, the Allies initiated several operations against Japan in the
Pacific. In May 1943, Allied forces were sent to eliminate Japanese forces from the Aleutians,[203] and
soon after began major operations to isolate Rabaul by capturing surrounding islands, and to breach
the Japanese Central Pacific perimeter at the Gilbert and Marshall Islands.[204] By the end of March
1944, the Allies had completed both of these objectives, and additionally neutralised the major
Japanese base at Truk in the Caroline Islands. In April, the Allies then launched an operation
to retake Western New Guinea.[205]

In the Soviet Union, both the Germans and the Soviets spent the spring and early summer of 1943
making preparations for large offensives in Central Russia. On 4 July 1943, Germany attacked
Soviet forces around the Kursk Bulge. Within a week, German forces had exhausted themselves
against the Soviets' deeply echeloned and well-constructed defences [206] and, for the first time in the
war, Hitler cancelled the operation before it had achieved tactical or operational success. [207] This
decision was partially affected by the Western Allies' invasion of Sicily launched on 9 July which,
combined with previous Italian failures, resulted in the ousting and arrest of Mussolini later that
month.[208]Also, in July 1943 the British firebombed Hamburg killing over 40,000 people.
Red Army troops following T-34tanks, in a counter-offensive on German positions, at the Battle of Kursk, August 1943

On 12 July 1943, the Soviets launched their own counter-offensives, thereby dispelling any hopes of
the German Army for victory or even stalemate in the east. The Soviet victory at Kursk marked the
end of German superiority,[209] giving the Soviet Union the initiative on the Eastern Front.[210][211] The
Germans attempted to stabilise their eastern front along the hastily fortifiedPanther-Wotan line,
however, the Soviets broke through it at Smolensk and by the Lower Dnieper Offensives.[212]

On 3 September 1943, the Western Allies invaded the Italian mainland, following an Italian armistice
with the Allies.[213] Germany responded by disarming Italian forces, seizing military control of Italian
areas,[214] and creating a series of defensive lines.[215] German special forces then rescued Mussolini,
who then soon established a new client state in German occupied Italy named the Italian Social
Republic,[216]causing an Italian civil war. The Western Allies fought through several lines until reaching
the main German defensive line in mid-November.[217]

German operations in the Atlantic also suffered. By May 1943, as Allied counter-measures became
increasingly effective, the resulting sizeable German submarine losses forced a temporary halt of the
German Atlantic naval campaign.[218] In November 1943, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill
met withChiang Kai-shek in Cairo and then with Joseph Stalin in Tehran.[219] The former conference
determined the post-war return of Japanese territory,[220] while the latter included agreement that the
Western Allies would invade Europe in 1944 and that the Soviet Union would declare war on Japan
within three months of Germany's defeat.[221]

Ruins of the Benedictinemonastery, during the Battle of Monte Cassino; Italian Campaign, May 1944

From November 1943, during the seven-week Battle of Changde, the Chinese forced Japan to fight
a costly war of attrition, while awaiting Allied relief.[222][223][224] In January 1944, the Allies launched
a series of attacks in Italy against the line at Monte Cassino and attempted to outflank it
with landings at Anzio.[225] By the end of January, a major Soviet offensive expelled German
forces from the Leningrad region,[226]ending the longest and most lethal siege in history.

The following Soviet offensive was halted on the pre-war Estonian border by the German Army
Group North aided by Estonians hoping to re-establish national independence. This delay slowed
subsequent Soviet operations in the Baltic Sea region.[227] By late May 1944, the Soviets
had liberated Crimea, largely expelled Axis forces from Ukraine, and made incursions into Romania,
which were repulsed by the Axis troops.[228] The Allied offensives in Italy had succeeded and, at the
expense of allowing several German divisions to retreat, on 4 June, Rome was captured. [229]

The Allies experienced mixed fortunes in mainland Asia. In March 1944, the Japanese launched the
first of two invasions, an operation against British positions in Assam, India,[230] and soon besieged
Commonwealth positions at Imphal and Kohima.[231] In May 1944, British forces mounted a counter-
offensive that drove Japanese troops back to Burma,[231] and Chinese forces that had invaded
northern Burma in late 1943 besieged Japanese troops inMyitkyina.[232] The second Japanese
invasion of China attempted to destroy China's main fighting forces, secure railways between
Japanese-held territory and capture Allied airfields.[233] By June, the Japanese had conquered the
province of Henan and begun a renewed attack against Changsha in the Hunan province.[234]

Allies close in (1944)

American troops approachingOmaha Beach, during the Invasion of Normandy on D-Day, 6 June 1944

On 6 June 1944 (known as D-Day), after three years of Soviet pressure,[235] the Western
Allies invaded northern France. After reassigning several Allied divisions from Italy, they also
attacked southern France.[236] These landings were successful, and led to the defeat of theGerman
Army units in France. Paris was liberated by the local resistance assisted by the Free French
Forces on 25 August[237] and the Western Allies continued to push back German forces in Western
Europe during the latter part of the year. An attempt to advance into northern Germany spearheaded
by a major airborne operation in the Netherlands ended with a failure.[238] After that, the Western
Allies slowly pushed into Germany, unsuccessfully trying to cross the Rur river in a large offensive. In
Italy the Allied advance also slowed down, when they ran into the last major German defensive line.

On 22 June, the Soviets launched a strategic offensive in Belarus (known as "Operation Bagration")
that resulted in the almost complete destruction of the German Army Group Centre.[239] Soon after
that, another Soviet strategic offensive forced German troops from Western Ukraine and Eastern
Poland. The successful advance of Soviet troops prompted resistance forces in Poland to initiate
several uprisings. Though, the largest of these in Warsaw, where German soldiers massacred
200,000 civilians, as well as a national Slovak Uprising in the south did not receive Soviet support,
and were put down by German forces.[240] The Red Army's strategic offensive in eastern Romania cut
off and destroyed the considerable German troops there and triggered a successful coup d'état in
Romania and in Bulgaria, followed by those countries' shift to the Allied side. [241]

German SS soldiers from theDirlewanger Brigade, tasked with suppressing partisan uprisings against Nazi
occupation, August 1944

In September 1944, Soviet Red Army troops advanced into Yugoslavia and forced the rapid
withdrawal of the German Army Groups E and Fin Greece, Albania and Yugoslavia to rescue them
from being cut off.[242] By this point, the Communist-led Partisans under Marshal Josip Broz Tito, who
had led an increasingly successful guerrilla campaign against the occupation since 1941, controlled
much of the territory of Yugoslavia and were engaged in delaying efforts against the German forces
further south. In northern Serbia, the Red Army, with limited support from Bulgarian forces, assisted
the Partisans in a joint liberation of the capital city of Belgrade on 20 October. A few days later, the
Soviets launched a massive assault against German-occupied Hungary that lasted until the fall of
Budapest in February 1945.[243] In contrast with impressive Soviet victories in the Balkans, the bitter
Finnish resistance to the Soviet offensive in the Karelian Isthmus denied the Soviets occupation of
Finland and led to the signing of Soviet-Finnish armistice on relatively mild conditions,[244][245] with a
subsequent shift to the Allied side by Finland.

By the start of July, Commonwealth forces in Southeast Asia had repelled the Japanese sieges in
Assam, pushing the Japanese back to theChindwin River[246] while the Chinese captured Myitkyina. In
China, the Japanese were having greater successes, having finally captured Changsha in mid-June
and the city of Hengyang by early August.[247] Soon after, they further invaded the province of
Guangxi, winning major engagements against Chinese forces at Guilin and Liuzhou by the end of
November[248] and successfully linking up their forces in China and Indochina by the middle of
December.[249]

In the Pacific, American forces continued to press back the Japanese perimeter. In mid-June 1944
they began their offensive against the Mariana and Palau islands, and decisively defeated Japanese
forces in the Battle of the Philippine Sea. These defeats led to the resignation of the Japanese Prime
Minister, Hideki Tōjō, and provided the United States with air bases to launch intensive heavy
bomber attacks on the Japanese home islands. In late October, American forces invaded the Filipino
island of Leyte; soon after, Allied naval forces scored another large victory during the Battle of Leyte
Gulf, one of the largest naval battles in history.[250]

Axis collapse, Allied victory (1944–45)

Yalta Conference held in February 1945, with Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin

On 16 December 1944, Germany attempted its last desperate measure for success on the Western
Front by using most of its remaining reserves to launch a massive counter-offensive in the
Ardennes to attempt to split the Western Allies, encircle large portions of Western Allied troops and
capture their primary supply port at Antwerp to prompt a political settlement.[251] By January, the
offensive had been repulsed with no strategic objectives fulfilled.[251] In Italy, the Western Allies
remained stalemated at the German defensive line. In mid-January 1945, the Soviets and Poles
attacked in Poland, pushing from the Vistula to the Oder river in Germany, and overran East Prussia.
[252]
On 4 February, US, British, and Soviet leaders met for the Yalta Conference. They agreed on the
occupation of post-war Germany, and on when the Soviet Union would join the war against Japan. [253]

In February, the Soviets invaded Silesia and Pomerania, while Western Allies entered Western
Germany and closed to the Rhine river. By March, the Western Allies crossed the
Rhine north and south of the Ruhr, encircling the German Army Group B,[254] while the Soviets
advanced to Vienna. In early April, the Western Allies finally pushed forward in Italy and swept
across Western Germany, while Soviet and Polish forces stormed Berlin in late April. The American
and Soviet forces linked up on Elbe river on 25 April. On 30 April 1945, the Reichstagwas captured,
signalling the military defeat of the Third Reich.[255]

Several changes in leadership occurred during this period. On 12 April, President Roosevelt died
and was succeeded by Harry Truman. Benito Mussolini was killed by Italian partisans on 28 April.
[256]
Two days later, Hitler committed suicide, and was succeeded by Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz.[257]
The German Reichstag after its capture by the Allies, 3 June 1945

German forces surrendered in Italy on 29 April. Total and unconditional surrender was signed on 7
May, to be effective by the end of 8 May.[258] German Army Group Centre resisted in Prague until 11
May.[259]

In the Pacific theatre, American forces accompanied by the forces of the Philippine
Commonwealth advanced in the Philippines, clearing Leyte by the end of April 1945. They landed on
Luzon in January 1945 and captured Manila in March following a battle which reduced the city to
ruins. Fighting continued on Luzon, Mindanao, and other islands of the Philippines until the end of
the war.[260] On the night of 9–10 March, B-29 bombers of the US Army Air Forces struck
Tokyo with incendiary bombs, which killed 100,000 people within a few hours. Over the next five
months, American bombers firebombed 66 other Japanese cities, causing the destruction of untold
numbers of buildings and the deaths of between 350,000–500,000 Japanese civilians. [261]

Japanese foreign affairs ministerMamoru Shigemitsu signs theJapanese Instrument of Surrender on board
the USS Missouri, 2 September 1945

In May 1945, Australian troops landed in Borneo, over-running the oilfields there. British, American,
and Chinese forces defeated the Japanese in northern Burma in March, and the British pushed on to
reach Rangoon by 3 May.[262] Chinese forces started to counterattack in Battle of West Hunan that
occurred between 6 April and 7 June 1945. American forces also moved towards Japan, taking Iwo
Jima by March, and Okinawa by the end of June.[263] At the same time American bombers were
destroying Japanese cities, American submarines cut off Japanese imports, drastically reducing
Japan's ability to supply its overseas forces.[264]

On 11 July, Allied leaders met in Potsdam, Germany. They confirmed earlier agreements about
Germany,[265] and reiterated the demand for unconditional surrender of all Japanese forces by Japan,
specifically stating that "the alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction". [266] During this
conference, the United Kingdom held its general election, and Clement Attlee replaced Churchill as
Prime Minister.[267]

As Japan continued to ignore the Potsdam terms issued to them on 27 July, the United
States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August.
Like the Japanese cities previously bombed by American airmen, the US and its allies justified the
atomic bombings as military necessity to avoid invading the Japanese home islands which would
cost the lives of between 250,000–500,000 Allied troops and millions of Japanese troops and
civilians.[268] Between the two bombings, the Soviets, pursuant to the Yalta agreement, invaded
Japanese-held Manchuria, and quickly defeated the Kwantung Army, which was the largest
Japanese fighting force.[269][270] The Red Army also captured Sakhalin Island and the Kuril Islands. On
15 August 1945, Japan surrendered, with the surrender documents finally signed aboard the deck of
the American battleship USS Missouri on 2 September 1945, ending the war.[271]

Aftermath
Main articles: Aftermath of World War II and Consequences of Nazism

Ruins of Warsaw in January 1945, after the deliberate destruction of the city by the occupying German forces
Post-war Soviet territorial expansion; resulted in Central European border changes, the creation of a Communist
Bloc, and start of the Cold War

The Allies established occupation administrations in Austria and Germany. The former became a
neutral state, non-aligned with any political bloc. The latter was divided into western and eastern
occupation zones controlled by the Western Allies and the USSR, accordingly.
Adenazification program in Germany led to the prosecution of Nazi war criminals and the removal of
ex-Nazis from power, although this policy moved towards amnesty and re-integration of ex-Nazis
into West German society.[272]

Germany lost a quarter of its pre-war (1937) territory. Among the eastern
territories, Silesia, Neumark and most of Pomerania were taken over by Poland, East Prussia was
divided between Poland and the USSR, followed by the expulsion of the 9 million Germans from
these provinces, as well as the expulsion of 3 million Germans from the Sudetenland in
Czechoslovakia to Germany. By the 1950s, every fifth West German was a refugee from the east.
The Soviet Union also took over the Polish provinces east of the Curzon line, from which 2 million
Poles were expelled;[273] north-east Romania,[274][275] parts of eastern Finland,[276] and the three Baltic
states were also incorporated into the USSR.[277][278]

In an effort to maintain peace,[279] the Allies formed the United Nations, which officially came into
existence on 24 October 1945,[280] and adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948,
as a common standard for all member nations.[281] The great powers that were the victors of the war
—the United States, Soviet Union, China, Britain, and France—formed the permanent members of
the UN's Security Council.[7] The five permanent members remain so to the present, although there
have been two seat changes, between the Republic of China and the People's Republic of China in
1971, and between the Soviet Union and its successor state, the Russian Federation, following
the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The alliance between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union
had begun to deteriorate even before the war was over.[282]

Germany had been de facto divided, and two independent states, the Federal Republic of
Germany and the German Democratic Republic[283] were created within the borders of Allied and
Soviet occupation zones, accordingly. The rest of Europe was also divided into Western and
Soviet spheres of influence.[284] Most eastern and central European countries fell into the Soviet
sphere, which led to establishment of Communist-led regimes, with full or partial support of the
Soviet occupation authorities. As a result, Poland, Hungary, East Germany,
[285]
Czechoslovakia, Romania, andAlbania[286] became Soviet satellite states.
Communist Yugoslavia conducted a fully independent policy, causing tension with the USSR. [287]

Post-war division of the world was formalised by two international military alliances, the United
States-led NATO and the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact;[288] the long period of political tensions and military
competition between them, the Cold War, would be accompanied by an unprecedentedarms
race and proxy wars.[289]

In Asia, the United States led the occupation of Japan and administrated Japan's former islands in
the Western Pacific, while the Soviets annexedSakhalin and the Kuril Islands.[290] Korea,
formerly under Japanese rule, was divided and occupied by the US in the South and the Soviet
Union in the North between 1945 and 1948. Separate republics emerged on both sides of the 38th
parallel in 1948, each claiming to be the legitimate government for all of Korea, which led ultimately
to the Korean War.[291]

In China, nationalist and communist forces resumed the civil war in June 1946. Communist forces
were victorious and established the People's Republic of China on the mainland, while nationalist
forces retreated to Taiwan in 1949.[292] In the Middle East, the Arab rejection of the United Nations
Partition Plan for Palestine and the creation of Israel marked the escalation of the Arab-Israeli
conflict. While European colonial powers attempted to retain some or all of their colonial empires,
their losses of prestige and resources during the war rendered this unsuccessful, leading
to decolonisation.[293][294]

The global economy suffered heavily from the war, although participating nations were affected
differently. The US emerged much richer than any other nation; it had a baby boomand by 1950 its
gross domestic product per person was much higher than that of any of the other powers and it
dominated the world economy.[295] The UK and US pursued a policy of industrial disarmament in
Western Germany in the years 1945–1948.[296] Due to international trade interdependencies this led
to European economic stagnation and delayed European recovery for several years. [297][298]

Recovery began with the mid-1948 currency reform in Western Germany, and was sped up by the
liberalisation of European economic policy that the Marshall Plan (1948–1951) both directly and
indirectly caused.[299][300] The post-1948 West German recovery has been called the German economic
miracle.[301] Italy also experienced an economic boom[302]and the French economy rebounded.[303] By
contrast, the United Kingdom was in a state of economic ruin, [304] and although it received a quarter of
the total Marshall Plan assistance, more than any other European country, [305] continued relative
economic decline for decades.[306]

The Soviet Union, despite enormous human and material losses, also experienced rapid increase in
production in the immediate post-war era.[307] Japan experienced incredibly rapid economic growth,
becoming one of the most powerful economies in the world by the 1980s. [308] China returned to its
pre-war industrial production by 1952.[309]

Impact
Casualties and war crimes
Main articles: World War II casualties, War crimes during World War II, War crimes in occupied
Poland during World War II, German war crimes, War crimes of the Wehrmacht,Japanese war
crimes, Allied war crimes during World War II and Soviet war crimes

World War II deaths

Estimates for the total casualties of the war vary, because many deaths went unrecorded. Most
suggest that some 75 million people died in the war, including about 20 million military personnel and
40 million civilians.[310][311][312] Many of the civilians died because of
deliberate genocide, massacres, mass-bombing,disease, and starvation.

The Soviet Union lost around 27 million people during the war,[313] including 8.7 million military and 19
million civilian deaths. The largest portion of military dead were 5.7 million ethnic Russians, followed
by 1.3 million ethnic Ukrainians.[314] A quarter of the people in the Soviet Union were wounded or
killed.[315]Germany sustained 5.3 million military losses, mostly on the Eastern Front and during the
final battles in Germany.[316]
Of the total deaths in World War II, approximately 85 percent—mostly Soviet and Chinese—were on
the Allied side and 15 percent on the Axis side. Many of these deaths were caused by war
crimes committed by German and Japanese forces in occupied territories. An estimated 11[317] to 17
million[318] civilians died as a direct or indirect result of Nazi ideological policies, including the
systematic genocide of around 6 millionJews during the Holocaust, along with a further 5 to 6 million
ethnic Poles and other Slavs (includingUkrainians and Belarusians)[319]—Roma, homosexuals, and
other ethnic and minority groups.[318]

Chinese civilians being buried alive by soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army, during the Nanking Massacre,
December 1937

Roughly 7.5 million civilians died in China under Japanese occupation. [320] Hundreds of thousands
(varying estimates) of ethnic Serbs, along with gypsies and Jews, were murdered by the Axis-
aligned Croatian Ustaše in Yugoslavia,[321] with retribution-related killings of Croatian civilians just
after the war ended.

The best-known Japanese atrocity was the Nanking Massacre, in which several hundred thousand
Chinese civilians were raped and murdered.[322] Between 3 million to more than 10 million civilians,
mostly Chinese, were killed by the Japanese occupation forces.[323]Mitsuyoshi Himeta reported 2.7
million casualties occurred during the Sankō Sakusen. General Yasuji Okamura implemented the
policy in Heipei and Shantung.[324]

Axis forces employed biological and chemical weapons. The Imperial Japanese Army used a variety
of such weapons during their invasion and occupation of China (see Unit 731)[325][326] and in early
conflicts against the Soviets.[327] Both the Germans and Japanese tested such weapons against
civilians[328] and, sometimes on prisoners of war.[329]

The Soviet Union was responsible for the Katyn massacre of 22,000 Polish officers,[330] and the
imprisonment or execution of thousands of political prisoners by the NKVD,[331] in the Baltic states,
and eastern Poland annexed by the Red Army.

The mass-bombing of civilian areas, notably the cities of Warsaw, Rotterdam and London; including
the aerial targeting of hospitals and fleeing refugees[332] by the German Luftwaffe, along with the
bombing of Tokyo, and German cities of Dresden, Hamburg and Cologne by the Western Allies may
be considered as war crimes. The latter resulted in the destruction of more than 160 cities and the
deaths of more than 600,000 German civilians.[333] However, no positive or
specific customaryinternational humanitarian law with respect to aerial warfare existed before or
during World War II.[334]

Concentration camps, slave labour, and genocide

Further information: Genocide, The Holocaust, Nazi concentration camps, Extermination
camp, Forced labour under German rule during World War II, Kidnapping of children by Nazi
Germany and Nazi human experimentation

Female SS camp guards remove bodies from lorries and carry them to a mass grave, inside the GermanBergen-
Belsen concentration camp, 1945

The German Government led by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party was responsible for the Holocaust,
the killing of approximately 6 million Jews (overwhelmingly Ashkenazim), as well as 2.7 million
ethnic Poles,[335] and 4 million others who were deemed "unworthy of life" (including
thedisabled and mentally ill, Soviet prisoners of war, homosexuals, Freemasons, Jehovah's
Witnesses, and Romani) as part of a programme of deliberate extermination. About 12 million, most
of whom were Eastern Europeans, were employed in the German war economy as forced labourers.
[336]

In addition to Nazi concentration camps, the Soviet gulags (labour camps) led to the death of
citizens of occupied countries such as Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, as well as
German prisoners of war (POWs) and even Soviet citizens who had been or were thought to be
supporters of the Nazis.[337] Sixty percent of Soviet POWs of the Germans died during the war.
[338]
Richard Overy gives the number of 5.7 million Soviet POWs. Of those, 57 percent died or were
killed, a total of 3.6 million.[339] Soviet ex-POWs and repatriated civilians were treated with great
suspicion as potential Nazi collaborators, and some of them were sent to the Gulag upon being
checked by the NKVD.[340]
Prisoner identity photograph taken by the German SS of a fourteen year old Polish girl, sent as forced labour
toAuschwitz, December 1942

Japanese prisoner-of-war camps, many of which were used as labour camps, also had high death
rates. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East found the death rate of Western prisoners
was 27.1 percent (for American POWs, 37 percent),[341] seven times that of POWs under the
Germans and Italians.[342] While 37,583 prisoners from the UK, 28,500 from the Netherlands, and
14,473 from United States were released after the surrender of Japan, the number for the Chinese
was only 56.[343]

According to historian Zhifen Ju, at least five million Chinese civilians from northern China and
Manchukuo were enslaved between 1935 and 1941 by the East Asia Development Board, or Kōain,
for work in mines and war industries. After 1942, the number reached 10 million. [344]The US Library of
Congress estimates that in Java, between 4 and 10 million romusha (Japanese: "manual laborers"),
were forced to work by the Japanese military. About 270,000 of these Javanese labourers were sent
to other Japanese-held areas in South East Asia, and only 52,000 were repatriated to Java. [345]

On 19 February 1942, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, interning about 100,000 Japanese
living on the West Coast. Canada had a similar program.[346][347] In addition, 14,000 German and Italian
citizens who had been assessed as being security risks were also interned. [348]

In accordance with the Allied agreement made at the Yalta Conference millions of POWs and
civilians were used as forced labour by the Soviet Union.[349] In Hungary's case,Hungarians were
forced to work for the Soviet Union until 1955.[350]

Occupation
Main articles: German-occupied Europe, Lebensraum, Untermensch, Collaboration with the Axis
Powers during World War II, Resistance during World War II and Nazi plunder

Blindfolded Polish citizens just before execution by German soldiers inPalmiry, 1940
In Europe, occupation came under two forms. In Western, Northern and Central Europe (France,
Norway, Denmark, the Low Countries, and the annexed portions of Czechoslovakia) Germany
established economic policies through which it collected roughly 69.5 billion reichmarks(27.8 billion
US Dollars) by the end of the war, this figure does not include the sizeable plunder of industrial
products, military equipment, raw materials and other goods.[351] Thus, the income from occupied
nations was over 40 percent of the income Germany collected from taxation, a figure which
increased to nearly 40 percent of total German income as the war went on. [352]

In the East, the much hoped for bounties of Lebensraum were never attained as fluctuating front-
lines and Soviet scorched earth policies denied resources to the German invaders.[353] Unlike in the
West, the Nazi racial policy encouraged excessive brutality against what it considered to be the
"inferior people" of Slavic descent; most German advances were thus followed by mass executions.
[354]
Althoughresistance groups did form in most occupied territories, they did not significantly hamper
German operations in either the East[355] or the West[356] until late 1943.

In Asia, Japan termed nations under its occupation as being part of the Greater East Asia Co-
Prosperity Sphere, essentially a Japanese hegemony which it claimed was for purposes of liberating
colonised peoples.[357] Although Japanese forces were originally welcomed as liberators from
European domination in some territories, their excessive brutality turned local public opinions against
them within weeks.[358] During Japan's initial conquest it captured 4,000,000 barrels (640,000 m3) of
oil (~5.5×105 tonnes) left behind by retreating Allied forces, and by 1943 was able to get production
in the Dutch East Indies up to 50 million barrels (~6.8×10 6 t), 76 percent of its 1940 output rate.[358]

Home fronts and production

Main articles: Military production during World War II and Home front during World War II

Allied to Axis GDP ratio

In Europe, before the outbreak of the war, the Allies had significant advantages in both population
and economics. In 1938, the Western Allies (United Kingdom, France, Poland and British Dominions)
had a 30 percent larger population and a 30 percent higher gross domestic product than the
European Axis (Germany and Italy); if colonies are included, it then gives the Allies more than a 5:1
advantage in population and nearly 2:1 advantage in GDP.[359] In Asia at the same time, China had
roughly six times the population of Japan, but only an 89 percent higher GDP; this is reduced to
three times the population and only a 38 percent higher GDP if Japanese colonies are included. [359]

Though the Allies' economic and population advantages were largely mitigated during the initial rapid
blitzkrieg attacks of Germany and Japan, they became the decisive factor by 1942, after the United
States and Soviet Union joined the Allies, as the war largely settled into one of attrition.[360] While the
Allies' ability to out-produce the Axis is often attributed to the Allies having more access to natural
resources, other factors, such as Germany and Japan's reluctance to employ women in the labour
force,[361] Allied strategic bombing,[362] and Germany's late shift to a war economy[363] contributed
significantly. Additionally, neither Germany nor Japan planned to fight a protracted war, and were not
equipped to do so.[364] To improve their production, Germany and Japan used millions of slave
labourers;[365] Germany used about 12 million people, mostly from Eastern Europe, [336] while Japan
used more than 18 million people in Far East Asia.[344][345]

Advances in technology and warfare

Main article: Technology during World War II

Nuclear "gadget" being raised to the top of the detonation tower, atAlamogordo Bombing Range; Trinity nuclear test,
July 1945

Aircraft were used for reconnaissance, as fighters, bombers, and ground-support, and each role was
advanced considerably. Innovation included airlift (the capability to quickly move limited high-priority
supplies, equipment, and personnel);[366] and of strategic bombing (the bombing of enemy industrial
and population centres to destroy the enemy's ability to wage war). [367] Anti-aircraft weaponry also
advanced, including defences such as radar and surface-to-air artillery, such as the German 88 mm
gun. The use of the jet aircraft was pioneered and, though late introduction meant it had little impact,
it led to jets becoming standard in worldwide air forces.[368]

Advances were made in nearly every aspect of naval warfare, most notably with aircraft carriers and
submarines. Although aeronauticalwarfare had relatively little success at the start of the war, actions
at Taranto, Pearl Harbor, and the Coral Sea established the carrier as the dominant capital ship in
place of the battleship.[369][370][371]

A V-2 rocket launched from a fixed site in Peenemünde, 1943

In the Atlantic, escort carriers proved to be a vital part of Allied convoys, increasing the effective
protection radius and helping to close the Mid-Atlantic gap.[372] Carriers were also more economical
than battleships due to the relatively low cost of aircraft[373] and their not requiring to be as heavily
armoured.[374] Submarines, which had proved to be an effective weapon during the First World
War[375] were anticipated by all sides to be important in the second. The British focused development
on anti-submarine weaponry and tactics, such as sonar and convoys, while Germany focused on
improving its offensive capability, with designs such as the Type VII submarine and wolfpack tactics.
[376]
Gradually, improving Allied technologies such as the Leigh light, hedgehog, squid, andhoming
torpedoes proved victorious.

Land warfare changed from the static front lines of World War I to increased mobility and combined
arms. The tank, which had been used predominantly for infantry support in the First World War, had
evolved into the primary weapon.[377] In the late 1930s, tank design was considerably more advanced
than it had been during World War I,[378] and advances continued throughout the war with increases in
speed, armour and firepower.

At the start of the war, most commanders thought enemy tanks should be met by tanks with superior
specifications.[379] This idea was challenged by the poor performance of the relatively light early tank
guns against armour, and German doctrine of avoiding tank-versus-tank combat. This, along with
Germany's use of combined arms, were among the key elements of their highly successful blitzkrieg
tactics across Poland and France.[377] Many means of destroying tanks, including indirect
artillery, anti-tank guns (both towed and self-propelled), mines, short-ranged infantry antitank
weapons, and other tanks were utilised.[379] Even with large-scale mechanisation, infantry remained
the backbone of all forces,[380] and throughout the war, most infantry were equipped similarly to World
War I.[381]

The portable machine gun spread, a notable example being the German MG34, and
various submachine guns which were suited to close combat in urban and jungle settings.
[381]
The assault rifle, a late war development incorporating many features of the rifle and submachine
gun, became the standard postwar infantry weapon for most armed forces. [382][383]

Most major belligerents attempted to solve the problems of complexity and security involved in using
large codebooks for cryptography by designing ciphering machines, the most well known being the
German Enigma machine.[384] Development of SIGINT (signals intelligence)
and cryptanalysis enabled the countering process of decryption. Notable examples were the Allied
decryption of Japanese naval codes[385] and British Ultra, a pioneering method for decoding Enigma
benefiting from information given to Britain by the Polish Cipher Bureau, which had been decoding
early versions of Enigma before the war.[386] Another aspect of military intelligence was the use
of deception, which the Allies used to great effect, such as in operations Mincemeat and Bodyguard.
[385][387]
Other technological and engineering feats achieved during, or as a result of, the war include
the world's first programmable computers (Z3, Colossus, and ENIAC), guided missiles and modern
rockets, the Manhattan Project's development of nuclear weapons, operations research and the
development ofartificial harbours and oil pipelines under the English Channel.[388]