Europe's borders over time: the map of Europe by year

Europe is the most densely bordered part of the world: about fifty states on a continent only slightly larger than the United States. Almost all of these borders are recent. Germany and Italy only became single states in the second half of the nineteenth century, half of today's European countries did not exist in 1900, and the last major redrawing happened in 1991–1992.

On the Panchronia globe you can watch the map of Europe change year by year. Below are twelve years that explain most of what happened; each link opens the map in that year.

The map of Europe in 12 years

Rome and the barbarian kingdoms

For four centuries Europe was divided into two parts: the Roman provinces south and west of the Rhine and the Danube, and the lands of the Germanic, Celtic and Sarmatian tribes beyond them. When the Western Empire fell in 476 (Fall of the Western Roman Empire), its place was taken by kingdoms founded by the newcomers, and some of their names are still on the map: the Franks gave theirs to France, the Angles to England, the Lombards to Lombardy.

Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Empire

By 800 the Frankish king Charlemagne ruled what is now France, the Low Countries, western Germany, Switzerland, Austria and northern Italy (Coronation of Charlemagne). His grandsons divided the empire in three under the Treaty of Verdun in 843. The western part became France and the eastern part Germany, and the middle strip, from the Netherlands through Lorraine and Burgundy to Italy, was fought over for the next thousand years.

The eastern kingdom became the core of the Holy Roman Empire (Coronation of Otto I in 962). It lasted until 1806, but was never a single state: by the seventeenth century it was a mosaic of hundreds of principalities, bishoprics and free cities.

The Middle Ages: new kingdoms in the East and North

Around the year 1000 Christianity brought new states onto the map: Poland (Baptism of Poland), Hungary (Stephen I, first king of Hungary), Denmark, Norway and Sweden. In the east, Kievan Rus' stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea, and the Byzantine Empire held the Balkans.

The thirteenth century changed the east of the map: the Mongols reached Hungary and Poland (Mongols in Europe: Legnica and Mohi), and the Golden Horde ruled the Russian principalities for two and a half centuries. On the Baltic, the Teutonic Order and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania grew; the union of Poland and Lithuania (Union of Krewo, then the Union of Lublin) created one of the largest states in Europe. In Spain, the Christian kingdoms pushed south until the Fall of Granada in 1492.

Empires and the balance of power: 1500–1815

From the sixteenth century the map of Europe was shaped by a few great dynasties. The Habsburgs ruled Austria, Bohemia, Hungary, Spain and the Netherlands at once. The Ottomans, after the Fall of Constantinople and the Battle of Mohács, reached the walls of Vienna twice (Siege of Vienna and the Battle of Vienna of 1683). Russia grew from Moscow to the Baltic and the Black Sea, defeating Sweden at the Battle of Poltava.

The Thirty Years' War ended with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which recognised the independence of the Dutch Republic and Switzerland and left Germany divided for two more centuries. At the end of the eighteenth century Russia, Prussia and Austria divided Poland among themselves in three partitions, and it disappeared from the map until 1918.

Napoleon Bonaparte redrew the map more than anyone before him: he abolished the Holy Roman Empire (End of the Holy Roman Empire), created a Duchy of Warsaw and kingdoms for his brothers. After his defeat, the Congress of Vienna of 1814–1815 restored most of the old monarchies and created a balance of power that lasted, with a few wars, for a century.

Nation states: 1815–1914

The nineteenth century was the age of nation states. Greece won independence from the Ottomans (Greek War of Independence), and Belgium from the Netherlands (Belgian Revolution). Italy was united in 1861 (Unification of Italy), and Germany in 1871 after the Franco-Prussian War (Unification of Germany). In the Balkans, Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria emerged as the Ottoman Empire retreated, recognised at the Congress of Berlin of 1878.

The twentieth century: three redrawings

After the First World War. Four empires collapsed: Russian, German, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman. The Treaty of Versailles and the treaties that followed created or restored Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Austria, Hungary, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

After the Second World War. Poland was moved about 200 km to the west, Germany was divided into two states, and Europe was split by the Iron Curtain into a Soviet bloc and the West. The Berlin Wall went up in 1961.

After the Cold War. The Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 led to German reunification in 1990. In 1991 the Soviet Union broke up into fifteen states, and the Yugoslav Wars split Yugoslavia; Czechoslovakia divided peacefully in 1993. The Maastricht Treaty created the European Union, whose internal borders became almost invisible.

The border data on the globe comes from the Cliopatria dataset and ends in 2012; later changes, such as the borders of Ukraine after 2014, are not shown.

Questions