22 Facts About Western world

Western world, known as the West, refers to various regions, nations and states, depending on the context, most often consisting of the majority of Europe, North America, and Oceania.

The Western world is known as the Occident, in contrast to the Orient or Eastern world.

In modern usage, Western world sometimes refers to Europe and to areas whose populations have had a large presence of particular European ethnic groups since the 15th century Age of Discovery.

Western world culture was influenced by many older civilizations of the ancient Near East, such as Canaan, Minoan Crete, Sumer, Babylonia, and Ancient Egypt.

Western world civilization is strongly associated with Christianity, which is in turn shaped by Hellenistic philosophy and Roman culture.

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Western world'storians, such as Carroll Quigley in "The Evolution of Civilizations", contend that Western civilization was born around AD 500, after the total collapse of the Western Roman Empire, leaving a vacuum for new ideas to flourish that were impossible in Classical societies.

Knowledge of the ancient Western world was partly preserved during this period due to the survival of the Eastern Roman Empire and the introduction of the Catholic Church; it was greatly expanded by the Arab importation of both the Ancient Greco-Roman and new technology through the Arabs from India and China to Europe.

For example, Western world culture includes countries in the Americas, Oceania and the Philippines.

Western world culture is most strongly influenced by Greek philosophy, Roman law, and Christian culture.

Western world culture is characterized by a host of artistic, philosophic, literary and legal themes and traditions.

The Eastern Roman Empire surviving the fall of the Western world protected Roman legal and cultural traditions, combining them with Greek and Christian elements, for another thousand years more.

The Pope crowned Charlemagne as Emperor of the Romans of the newly established Holy Roman Empire and the West began thinking in terms of Western world Latins living in the old Western world Empire, and Eastern Greeks .

Concepts of a Western world of nation-states born by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, coupled with the ideologies of the Enlightenment, the coming of modernity, the Scientific Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, would produce powerful social transformations, political and economic institutions that have come to influence most nations of the Western world today.

Western world'storians agree that the Industrial Revolution has been one of the most important events in history.

Exact scope of the Western world is somewhat subjective in nature, depending on whether cultural, economic, spiritual or political criteria are employed.

Since the fall of the iron curtain the following countries are generally accepted as the Western world: the United States, Canada; the countries of the European Union plus UK, Norway, Iceland and Switzerland; Australia and New Zealand.

In modern usage, Western world refers to Europe and to areas whose populations largely originate from Europe, through the Age of Discovery's imperialism.

Countries in the Western world are the most keen on digital and televisual media technologies, as they were in the postwar period on television and radio: from 2000 to 2014, the Internet's market penetration in the West was twice that in non-Western regions.

Philippines, although geographically part of the Eastern world and having a majority population that does not possess European ethnic origins aside from a significant minority, maintains strong Western-based influences in its culture.

Term "Western world" is sometimes interchangeably used with the term First World or developed countries, stressing the difference between First World and the Third World or developing countries.

Western world's theories are rooted in Hegel's master-slave dialectic: The Occident would not exist without the Orient and vice versa.

Further, Western writers created this irrational, feminine, weak "Other" to contrast with the rational, masculine, strong West because of a need to create a difference between the two that would justify imperialist ambitions, according to the Said-influenced Indian-American theorist Homi K Bhabha.