Western world: Encyclopedia II - Western world - Western countries

Western world - Western countries

To define what is typical of Western society and Western culture, it is necessary to understand its context. At different times and in different contexts, the definition of the West (also called the Occident) varies. It is not always clear which definition is being used.

Western world - Historical

The Hellenic division between Greeks and "barbarians" predates the division between East and West. The contrast was between Greek-speaking culture of mainland Greece, the Aegean, the Ionian coast and Magna Graecia in southern Italy, and the surrounding non-Greek cultures of the Persian Empire, Phoenicians and Egypt. The division can be traced back to the Trojan War, which is dated traditionally at 1194 BC - 1184 BC. Presuming it had a historical basis, the conflict was between Achaeans and the non-Greek Trojans in western Anatolia. The Greeks also considered the Persian Wars of the early 5th century BC a conflict of east versus west.

The Mediterranean basin was united by Romans, but distinctions remained between the Empire's mostly Latin-speaking western half and the more urbanized eastern half, where Greek was the lingua franca. In A.D. 292, the Roman Emperor, Diocletian, divided the Roman Empire into two regions, each administered by an Augustus and a Caesar (the Tetrarchy); the eastern part evolved into the Byzantine empire, a Christian theocracy where the emperor was also head of spiritual life ("caesaropapism"). At the same time, Roman rule in the western half crumbled under pressures from outside the empire.

The distinctions between the western and eastern parts of the Christian world remained through the Middle Ages, despite a nominal sense of Christian unity (the concept of "Christendom") brought about by the conquests of Christian lands by the Muslim Arabs and Turks. The Franks under Charlemagne established a western empire, which was recognized as the Holy Roman Empire by the Pope, offending the Byzantine Emperor. The Latin Rite church of western and central Europe headed by the Pope (the Patriarch of Rome) split with the eastern, Greek-speaking Patriarchates during the Great Schism. The extent of each expanded during the Middle Ages, as Scandinavia, Germany, Britain, and the other non-Christian lands of the northwest were converted by the Western Church, while Russia and much of Eastern Europe by the Eastern Church. "Latin" and "Frankish" Crusaders sacked the Byzantine capital Constantinople in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade as ruthlessly as they had the 'infidel' Muslims.

To date, a version of "Frank," "farang" is the Arabic (and curiously, Thai) word for foreigner.

Western world - Cold War

During the Cold War, a new definition emerged. The Earth was divided into three "worlds". The First World was composed of NATO members and other countries aligned with the United States. The Second World was the Eastern bloc in the Soviet sphere of influence, including the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries. The Third World consisted of countries unaligned with either, and important members include India, Yugoslavia and for a time the People's Republic of China, though some find it expedient to group the latter two under Second World because of their communist ideology.

There were a number of countries which did not fit comfortably into this neat definition of partition, including Switzerland, Sweden, and the Republic of Ireland, which chose to be neutral. Finland was under the Soviet Union's sphere of influence but remained neutral, was not communist, nor was it a member of the Warsaw Pact or Comecon. In 1955, when Austria again became a fully independent republic, it did so under the condition that it remained neutral, but as a country to the west of the Iron Curtain it was in the United States sphere of influence. Turkey was a member of NATO but was not usually regarded as either part of the First or Western worlds. Spain did not join NATO until 1982, towards the end of the Cold War and after the death of the authoritarian dictator Franco. The Western world became a synonym for the first world but included the West European exceptions mentioned earlier in this paragraph and excluded Turkey.

Greece and Portugal, like Turkey, were members in NATO, although they were not regarded as a part of the West until they won democracy and upgraded their economy to First World standarts during the Seventies. On the other hand, Australia and New Zealand and later also Israel and Cyprus did not become members in NATO but became a part of the "First World" because of their democracy, high living standards and European cultural roots.

Western world - Post-Cold War

After the end of the Cold War, the phrase "second world" fell into disuse, and "first world" came to refer to the democratic, wealthy, industrial, developed nations, most of which had been aligned with the U.S. The "third world" came to refer to the poor, unindustrialized developing nations. That is, the term "Western" is not so much a geographical definition as it is a cultural and economic one, therefore:

• Historians of Africa can speak of Western influences by the European countries that lie to its north, as well as by the Western country of South Africa at its southernmost tip.
• Australia and New Zealand are Anglo-Saxon, Western countries located to the south of East Asia.
• International companies founded in America may be considered foreign influences in Europe, but be said to be Western when their presence is seen (and sometimes criticized) in Asia.
• Economically, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, although located very far east, may still be considered Western or "first world" despite the fact that they remain culturally non-Western.

Nowadays, people differ in their definitions of the West, and different definitions overlap only partly. There are certainly non-Western developed nations, not all Western countries are members of NATO, etc.

Western world - Further definitions

As the term "Western world" does not have a strict international definition, Governments do not use the term in legislation of international treaties and instead rely on other definitions. If the term is used in academic articles it tends to be reserved for use in articles about those areas and times where the Western Roman Empire had a direct influence.

The term "Western world" is often interchangeable with the term First World stressing the difference between First World and the Third World or developing countries. The term "The North" has in some contexts replaced earlier usage of the term "the west", particularly in the critical sense, as a more robust demarcation than "west" and "east". The North provides some absolute geographical indicators for the location of wealthy countries, most of which are physically situated in the Northern Hemisphere, although, as most countries are located in the northern hemisphere in general, some have considered this distinction to be equally unhelpful. The thirty countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which include: the EU , Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, Canada, the United States, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Turkey, South Korea and Japan, generally include what used to be called the "first world" or the "developed world", although the OECD includes a few countries, namely Turkey and Mexico, that are not wealthy industrial countries. The existence of "The North" implies the existence of "The South", and the socio-economic divide between North and South. Although Israel, Cyprus and Taiwan are not members of the OECD, they might also be regarded as "west" or "north" countries, because their high living standards and their social, economical and political structure are quite similar to those of the OECD member countries.

The "West" may also be used as a cultural and social reference to "Western society". In this context South America may be considered part of the West, particularly in writings on high art and literature. [1] [2]

The "West" may also be used pejoratively by those especially critical of the influence of the West and its history of imperialism and colonialism.

Ethnocentric definitions of the term Western world are definitions constructed around one of the Western cultures. The British writer Rudyard Kipling wrote about this contrast: East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet, expressing that somebody from the West can never understand the Asian cultures as the latter differ too much from the Western cultures.

In the Near East or Middle East, (both terms relative to Europe as being in the west), the distinction between Western Europe and Eastern Europe is of less importance; countries that western Europeans might think of as part of Eastern Europe, i.e. Russia, might be counted as Western in the Middle East, in the sense of being both European and Christian. People from the West are known by many in the East and Middle East as "Westerners".

In 1993, Samuel P. Huntington published the article "The Clash of Civilizations?" in Foreign Affairs, which was later expanded into a book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, in 1996. Huntington's thesis was that the world can be understood as being made up of several civilizations, and that conflicts between civilizations will be the primary tensions of the post-cold-war world, replacing the ideological conflicts (i.e capitalism vs. communism) that characterized the cold-war world. According to Huntington's thesis, the primarily Roman Catholic and Protestant countries of western and central Europe, together with the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, constitute the "Euro-Atlantic" civilization, which share a common system of values, shaped by the historic influence of the Renaissance, Reformation, and Enlightenment. Huntington and his followers understood "The West" to be roughly synonymous with the Euro-Atlantic civilization, although countries with roots in other civilizations, such as Greece, Turkey, or Japan, may choose to ally themselves with the West as a result of having absorbed "Western" ideas and values into their societies. Huntington's thesis was influential, but was by no means universally accepted; its supporters say that it explains modern conflicts, such as those in the former Yugoslavia; the thesis' detractors fear that by equating values like democracy with "Western civilization", it reinforces racist and/or xenophobic notions about "non-Western" societies, as well as blatantly ignoring non-Western democracies (for example India, which holds roughly a third of all the people in the world who live under a democratic system, although this could be argued to be a legacy of British influence).

In Huntington's thesis, the historically Eastern Orthodox nations of southeastern and eastern Europe constitute a distinct "Euro-Asiatic civilization"; although European and Christian, these nations were not, in Huntington's view, shaped by the cultural influences of the Renaissance, Reformation, and Enlightenment, and were not "Western" in the same sense as the Euro-Atlantic civilization. Although it's true that Renaissance didn't happen in the Orthodox Eastern Europe (partly due to Ottoman domination in the Balkans and the Mongol domination in Russia) it also be noted that Renaissance and Reformation wasn't effective in the predominantly Catholic Hungary becuse of the Ottoman domination there. Reformation didn't happen in the Orthodox eastern Europe because they were not Catholics since the Reformation movement was targeted against the Roman Catholic Church. It must also be noted that the Enlightenment did very much happen in Russia through the reforms of Peter the Great. Huntington also considered Latin America to be a separate civilization from the West.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Western countries", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki