Talk:History of Europe

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[edit] What is European history?

What is European history? I mean does this subject really exist? What dous the history of Crete have in common with that of the Faroe Islands? Aaker 16:15, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

by the same logic there's no History of the world, History of North America, etc. You talk about Crete, the Minoan civilization was an early one and very important in general. --Leladax 21:12, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestion

The European Library gives free and centralised access to Europe's national libraries. I guess that this source could (should?) be used in developing this wiki. Maybe even include their mini searchbox here.Fleurstigter 10:20, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Today I have added a link to The European Library.Fleurstigter 10:20, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge a few

It would be far more appropriate and more logical to include the sections on colonization and the Renaissance in the early modern-section, since they both occurred during this period, not before it.

Peter Isotalo 18:53, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Important!

No, no, no. This page is all wrong. I'm going to blank it so we can start over. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Maxman280 (talk • contribs) 21:11, 16 April 2007 (UTC).

I don't know if there's any dutch specialist, but on nl: we made a far better article than there is here. 86.94.202.45 20:27, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
That article is 137 kb. I don't think most people like articles like that...They're in violation of WP:SIZE...It does seem more fleshy, and more balanced (though I'm basically just guessing at that fact from the images and some headings with common roots; I can't read Dutch.) ...This article does need some serious work. Geuiwogbil 21:00, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Restructuring

I took it upon myself to completely restructure the article. Let me know what you think. Sdornan 18:18, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Not too shabby.. However, there should really be a separate section for the High Middle Ages. Bunching them together with the Late Middle Ages is not really useful, though I understand the reason for doing so with the limited material that we have in the article right now.
Peter Isotalo 15:00, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The Jews

Hi I wanted to recomend an edit for this page. The Jews were not the only ethnicity that were bankers during 14th century Europe. Please look into this topic and make the approiate changes if you will.

Thank you —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.186.232.96 (talk) 00:37, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Contents, pictures, timeline

I've reordered the article a bit, putting in stub sections for things that I think would be good to fill out (e.g. Byzantine Empire, Industrial Revolution); adding different title pictures and placing the old ones uniformly; created a new timeline alongside the contents, and restyled and shortened the introduction. I hope this is helpful. Lots more to be done, but it's a good article. Wikidea 00:40, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Just to add, that the contents as are there now, follow a roughly even time period pattern:
  1. Prehistoric period - up to 500 BC (or foundation of Rome 753BC)
  2. Classical world - up to 500 AD (or the sacking of Rome 476 AD)
  3. Dark Ages - up to 1000 (or the Great Schism of 1054)
  4. High feudalism - up to 1500 (or the Renaissance, c.a. 1439)
  5. Europe's awakening - up to 1750 (or the Watt Steam engine in 1775)
  6. Revolution and nationalism - up to 1900 (or the First World War 1914)
  7. War and peace - up to 1991 (or the fall of the Iron Curtain)
Wikidea 11:35, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
I had this on my watchlist- it was rather embarassing for an article about the History of Europe. Unfortunately, I am deeply involved in other editing work and I can't fix everything. Glad to see someone taking this project on! Monsieurdl mon talk-mon contribs

12:35, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Introduction

The introduction seems to have been rewritten without sources and with questionable NPOV -- anyone know what the purpose of this was?Martin Turner (talk) 13:23, 25 December 2007 (UTC) example: "Renaissance was followed by the reformation of the church, as German priest Martin Luther nailed Papal authority with his protests."Martin Turner (talk) 13:25, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

I've checked through, and the last version of the 'old' introduction was http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_Europe&oldid=179664534 I don't really understand what the purpose of the change was, since it deletes references to the key periods (dark ages, middle ages, enlightenment, etc), introduces details such as pentarchy which may well be too detailed for the main article, and adds value judgements.

I'm proposing to revert to the 22 December branch for the introduction. Comments or views on this, or perhaps the person who did the edit would explain the rationale.Martin Turner (talk) 13:45, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

I think that the edits by Wikidea have been needed for a very, very long time. The entire state of this article before he started editing it was rather pathetic considering the subject, full of errors in grammar and spelling, lacking sources, and very bland and severely lacking in general. For the article History of Europe you need to put in a lot of work to really make it what it should be, and a quibble over the introduction would be counter-productive until this article can actually be peer reviewed.
I am very surprised no one objected to the countless amount of inaccuracies and unsourced sections before- and just now, when someone comes to put a lot of effort into fixing what should be fixed, there is a problem? I say let it be for now and we should be praising Wikidea for his concerted efforts rather than hindering him over an introduction. Monsieurdl mon talk-mon contribs

15:07, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Hello Martin, the purpose of it was that the original introduction was CRAP! It was crap and too long. You try summarising the history of europe in two paragraphs. You can't. You need to gloss over a few things. None of the dark/middle ages, enlightenment that you mention are left out. But they are glossed over. If you want to adjust my rhetorical exuberance (i.e. "nailing Christianity", which I hope you realise is just a comical turn of phrase and no more) then please do just that. It's better than it was before. I'm glad you're showing concern, but in my experience on these big articles, where a lot is trying to be covered, people always want endlessly to pore over the first three sentences, the introductory section, because they can't be arsed to read the rest of the content, which is where help is really necessary. I would suggest, and request, that if anyone feels like changing something, go for one of the contents' sections that I've left with bullet points to be elaborated on. Don't revert, because not only is it lazy, it's useless, because I'll revert it straight back. I would also suggest, that a peer review is something you get done when there's a complete article. Writing stuff is a more important first step than peer reviewing. The best way to move forward is for ALL of us to pick up a book, and fill in the blank spaces, with appropriate references. Wikidea 20:09, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
In addition, I'd just like to say what I would do with this article if I had loads of time. Under the main sections, there's room for an overview of what follows in the subsections (e.g. '3' is 'Dark ages', and the subsections are '3.1 The shadows of Rome' and so on). Ideally I think that the main section should be a sketch of what is to follow in detail with source based references. If I were a kid at school, wanting to do something about the history of europe, I probably wouldn't want to look at every section - but if I added up 3,4,5,6,7 etc - and left out 3.1,3.2,3.3,4.1,4.2... etc - then I would have a preliminary picture of what the history of europe was. Do you see what I'm getting at? The serious detail of course must necessarily be in the 'main article's, but by the same token, if I were a 15 year old doing a history project on the 'dark ages' reading all of that section, I should be able to get some kind depth and at the same time a sense of overall structure plus pointers for further reading. I think that's the kind of ambitious benchmark that good articles on Wikipedia should set themselves. Wikidea 20:30, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
Well, I won't more than point out of the irony of what you've written -- why did you not edit the previous, rather than writing a new one? However, getting into an edit war is pointless. In many ways, the most important section of a history of Europe article _is_ the introduction, because a history of Europe must reference the main articles on each period. Nonetheless, can I ask how you came up with the section headings you are proposing? I thought the old section headings were, if open to discussion, fine, whereas headings such as "War and Peace" make no sense to me — particularly as the term "War and Peace" is taken from a novel describing the Napoleonic war. A good starting point might be something on the lines of "The Times Atlas of World History", which, because of its primary focus on maps, divides European history in an outline fashion. For example, it references the period you are calling "War and Peace" as "The European Civil War 1875-1989".Martin Turner (talk) 01:57, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Timeline and pictures

Do you all like the timeline and the new pictures by the way? I put in the link for the atlas of european maps in the ==see also== section. I thought the scanned old maps looked much nicer than the blotchy computer generated maps, and have made it so there's a big one at the start of each major section (not that the computer generated maps aren't really useful in themselves too!) Wikidea 21:33, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

To remind us of the state of the article before, here's a link for an old version, and note, the old contents had way to much on nothing in the prehistoric period, nothing specific on greece, no dark ages separately, time periods erratic (500BC-500AD; 500AD-1400AD; 1400AD-1792AD; 1792-1815AD; 1815AD-2007) etc etc.Wikidea 21:55, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Enlightenment?

The section of this article currently entitled "Enlightenment" barely touches on the eighteenth century at all. Could anyone suggest a different title? Or even better, actually add some stuff about the Enlightenment. Jamrifis (talk) 12:09, 24 March 2008 (UTC)