The history of Western Europe from the fall of the Roman Empire (478 AD) until the end of the Second World War (1945) saw a process of discontinuity, deconstruction and loss turn, through the various reengagements and regroupings of the former barbarian invaders, into increasingly self-defined and viable national groupings. Over the centuries of the Dark Ages and early medieval period, these would consolidate further into ever-more closely defined nation states. The Renaissance, Reformation and Age of Discovery carried the process further and through colonialism and mercantilism saw the restitution of concepts of empire spread globally. The tremendous pressures of growing national rivalry would eventually ignite the huge struggles of the First and Second World Wars, and see the new world order of the Cold War and Post-Colonialism. Throughout modern history the memory of the Roman Empire as a source of unity and economic strength has remained a social and political ideal, confronted by an equally perennial centrifugal pull into forms of defiant, often aggressive, national association. The resultant tension is a recurring theme of history.
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