Transcript Modern Europe

Modern Europe
As Europe moves toward
economic and political unity,
it’s facing lingering ethnic
tensions, nationalism, and
environmental crises.
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Turmoil in the Balkans
• Yugoslavia was a nation of many ethnic groups
distributed among six republics.
• When Serbia tried to dominate Yugoslavia, other
republics broke away. This sparked conflict.
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Roots of the Balkan Conflict
• The South Slavs
– Balkan conflict stemmed from different groups
wanting the same land in the 500s.
– The Slavs migrated to the region from Poland and
Russia.
– Each of South Slav groups (the Croats, Slovenes,
and the Serbs) formed their own kingdoms.
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• Foreign Rulers
– The Muslim Ottoman
Empire tried to conquer the
Balkan Peninsula in 1300s.
– The Ottomans defeated the
Serbian Empire in 1389 at
the Battle of Kosovo.
– Under Ottoman rule, the
Serbs remained Christian,
while the Bosnians
converted to Islam.
– Both the Serbs and the
Albanians lived in Kosovo,
but Serbs fled from the
Muslims.
– The Kosovo region became
the center of Albanian
culture.
The Ottoman Empire
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• Yugoslavia Is Formed
– Serbia broke free of the Ottoman Empire in 1878.
– Serbs wanted all South Slavs to be free from
foreign rule, and their efforts sparked WWI.
– A Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes was
formed in 1918, and it was named Yugoslavia
(“Land of the South Slavs”) in 1929 .
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• Communist Rule
– Germany and Italy invaded the Balkans during WWII.
– After the war, the Partisan leader Josip Broz Tito ruled
Yugoslavia.
– Tito encouraged all groups to see themselves as
Yugoslavs.
– The 1946 Yugoslav constitution created six republics
• Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro,
Serbia, Slovenia
– Serbia had two self-governing provinces:
• Kosovo, and Vojvodina
– Croatia and Bosnia were ethnically mixed, and
contained many Serbs.
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Ethnic Tension Boils Over
• Fear of Serbia
– Tito died in 1980 and Yugoslavia had no single,
central ruler.
– The presidency rotated between the republics
and provinces.
– Slobodan Milosevic is a Serbian who sought to
control Yugoslavia in 1990s.
– Milosevic proposed the creation of a Greater
Serbia, he wanted to expand the republic’s
borders to include all areas with Serbian
populations.
– Serbia blocked a Croatian from becoming the
Yugoslav president in 1991.
– Slovenia and Croatia declared independence,
and the Serbian-led Yugoslav army invaded
Slovenia and Croatia.
Milosevic
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• Fear of Serbia
– Slovenia quickly gained freedom in 1991.
– Croatia had large Serbian minority and the Serb-Croat
ethnic hatred fueled a violent war.
– The UN brokered peace in 1992.
• War in Bosnia
– Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence in
1992.
– Serbs wanted to get rid of Bosnian Muslims, and
Croats.
– Serbs used ethnic cleansing, or violent elimination of
an ethnic group, to kill over 200,000 people.
– Over 2 million people fled the Balkans.
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• War in Kosovo
– The Serbs, led by Milosevic, sought revenge for the
Battle of Kosovo.
– Kosovo was inhabited by Muslim Albanians, and
sought independence.
– Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) attacked Serbian
officials.
– Serbian government bombed the Albanians,
launched an ethnic cleansing against them.
– In 1999, NATO bombed Serbia in order to stop the
violence.
– Milosevic soon withdrew his troops from Kosovo.
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• An Uncertain Future
– In 2000, Yugoslavs elected
the reform leader Vojislav
Kostunica as president.
– Ethnic tensions remained
and local wars created
millions of refugees, and
poverty.
– In 2002 Montenegro
declared its independence.
– Kosovo declared its
independence in 2008.
Current map of the Balkans.
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Europe’s Pollution Problem
• Golden Poison
– In 2000, a Romanian gold mine leaked cyanide
into streams and the deadly poison flowed into
Hungary’s Tisza River.
– It killed 80% of the river’s fish, and almost all of
the area’s fishing jobs were lost.
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• Causes of Water Pollution
– Not all cities have sewage treatment plants, so
harmful substances can contaminate rivers, soil,
and crops.
– Rain washes the chemical fertilizers off fields and
into waterways.
– This causes algae and plants to grow faster than
fish can eat them, when the algae and plants die
the decay uses all the oxygen and also kills the fish.
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• Causes of Air Pollution
– Industrial factories put chemicals like sulfur in the
air.
– Breathing polluted air contributes to respiratory
diseases like asthma, bronchitis, and emphysema.
– Air pollution harms livestock, stunts plant growth,
and causes acid rain.
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• Cleaning up the Water
– Cleaning up requires cooperation between nations.
– The European Union passes environmental
protection laws that it’s members must obey.
• Cleaning Up the Air
– Individual countries passed
laws to make air safer to
breathe.
– In 1998 the EU nations agreed to reduce
car emissions by 2000.
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The European Union
• Europe has a long history of conflict and crisis.
• After World War II (1939–1945) European
nations hoped to rebuild their economies and
prevent new conflicts.
• In 1951, France and Germany moved toward
unification by signing a treaty giving control of
their coal and steel to the multinational
European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC).
• Later, Italy and Benelux also joined the ECSC.
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• The European Economic Community (EEC) or
Common Market formed in 1957.
• The EEC removed trade barriers, and set
common economic goals.
• People could live and work in any of the
member countries.
• The EEC merged with the ECSC in 1967 to form
the European Community (EC) and admitted
other countries in 1973.
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• In 1993 the Maastricht Treaty replaces EC with
European Union (EU)
• There were 15 member nations.
• EU members use a common euro currency
and some fear that this causes a loss of
individual national identities.
– There is no national currency picturing national
heroes.
– Workers can easily move from an area with low
income to one with higher wages.
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• Others feel euro increases business efficiency,
and international trade.
• Financial institutions began calculating
transactions in euros in 1999.
• Euros have been used in everyday life since
2002.
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Expanding the EU
• EU could expand to 28 countries, and 475 million people.
• It can be hard to manage a huge alliance.
• Some possible members are former Communist nations.
• There are variations in prosperity, and democracy. This
could create tensions within the EU.
• The European Union is
headquartered in
Brussels, Belgium.
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Bibliography
• Mcdougal Littell, World Geography. Houghton
Mifflin Company. 2012
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