标题: Europe's History [打印本页] 作者: choi 时间: 5-27-2013 12:07 标题: Europe's History Jeffrey Collins, Cockpit of the West; The ceaseless efforts by European nations to dominate their rivals shaped the modern world. Wall Street Journal, May 25, 2013 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB ... 85121917413226.html
(book review on Brendan Simms, Europe; The struggle for supremacy from 1453 to the present. Basic, 2013)
Quote: "Europe covers roughly 7% of the land mass of Earth, but by 1800 it ruled 35% of the globe and by 1914 a staggering 84%. This imperial predominance, however, is not the 'struggle for supremacy' that interests Ms. Simms. He is concerned with the ceaseless efforts of various European nations to dominate the Continent itself.
Silesia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silesia
(section 2 Etymology; In 1742, most of Silesia was seized [from Austria] by King Frederick the Great of Prussia in the War of the Austrian Succession)
Despite diligent search, I can't find the three seizures. It was Bohemian (part of Holy Roman Empire), then Prussian, and finally Polish.
(5) Nine Years' War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Years%27_War
(1688–1697; The War was the second of Louis XIV's three major wars; Louis XIV at last faced a powerful coalition aimed at curtailing his ambitions [and he lost])
(6) second Hundred Years' War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Hundred_Years%27_War
(c 1689-c 1815; The term appears to have been coined by J. R. Seeley in his influential work "The Expansion of England: Two Courses of Lectures" (1883)
(7) "The threat of a 'universal monarchy' advanced and receded like the tide across the centuries. In the 16th century it rose in the colossal Holy Roman Empire of Charles V, which encompassed the German lands, the Low Countries, Spain and Spain's American empire."
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_V,_Holy_Roman_Emperor
(1500-1558; ruler of the Holy Roman Empire from 1519 and, as Charles I, of the Spanish Empire from 1516 until his voluntary retirement and abdication in favor of his younger brother Ferdinand I as Holy Roman Emperor and his son Philip II as King of Spain in 1556; view the map)
(8) "Germany, he writes, 'was the semi-conductor linking the various parts of the European balance.'"
This is not semiconductor in electronics, but a (human) conductor of an orchestra.