Renaissance

Civilization is a rather subjective term, but for the sake of perspective, we will speak of it anyway, by measuring the advancement of cultural and technological output, compared to what came before, and what came afterwards. In this sense, by the end of the Crusades, Western Europe was still a less civilized region than, say, the Byzantium Empire, or other parts of the Islamic world. Even Muslim Granada, was in many ways more advanced than its neighbours in Christian Spain.

From the 12th century onwards, a decisive change started to take place. Europe began moving ahead in all fields,: art, literature, science, technology, science, industry, and, significantly, the development of firearms and ocean-going vessels. In the 12th and 13th centuries, Western Christianity was no real match for the might of the Islamic World. Yet by the 16th century, a few hundred mercenary-explorers with firearms, brought down the empires of Peru and Mexico. By that time it was European ships which crossed the seas. European art, long inferior to that of her Byzantine neighbours, brought forth Michelangelo, Leonardo and Giotto. The reformation brought diversity to religion and freer thought, forcing perhaps the most significant ideological break with the Middle Ages.

Nation states made the medieval struggle between Emperor and Pope seem irrelevant. Science showed the existence of new worlds by the use of both the microscope and the telescope. It was from this time onwards that Europe begun to move decisively ahead of much of the world, as a civilization.