From the coronation of Charlemagne in 800 to the signing of the Treaty
of Lisbon in 2007, an accessible history of the people, ideas,
institutions, and events that have shaped Europe during the last 1,200
years This fascinating history for beginners provides a coherent map of
the jumbled history of Europe and the European idea that has led up to
this point. A continent of countless disparate peoples, races, and
nations, governed by different ideas, philosophies, religions, and
attitudes, Europe nonetheless has a common thread of history running
through it, stitching the lands and peoples of its past and present into
one fabric and held together by the continent's great institutions: the
Church of Rome, the Holy Roman Empire, the European Union, individual
monarchies, trade organizations, and social movements. However, people
have always harbored aspirations to make this vast territory one. The
Romans came close and a few centuries later, the foundations for a great
European state were laid with the creation of the Holy Roman Empire.
Napoleon overreached himself in attempting to create a European-wide
Empire--as did Adolf Hitler. Now, Europe is as close as it ever has been
to being one entity, yet Europeans still cling to national
independence.