Western world

The Western world or the West is a term referring to different nations, depending on the context, most often including at least part of Europe. There are many accepted definitions about what they all have in common. The Western world is also known as the Occident (from Latin: occidens "sunset, West", as contrasted with its pendant the Orient).

The concept of the Western part of the earth has its roots in Greco-Roman civilization in Europe, and the advent of Christianity. In the modern era, Western culture has been heavily influenced by the traditions of the Renaissance, Protestant Reformation, Age of Enlightenment—and shaped by the expansive colonialism of the 15th-20th centuries. Before the Cold War era, the traditional Western viewpoint identified Western Civilization with the Western Christian (Catholic-Protestant) countries and culture. Its political usage was temporarily changed by the antagonism during the Cold War in the mid-to-late 20th Century (1947–1991).

The term originally had a literal geographic meaning. It contrasted Europe with the linked cultures and civilizations of the Middle East and North Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia and the remote Far East, which early-modern Europeans saw as the East. Today this has little geographic relevance since the concept of the West has been expanded to include the former European colonies in the Americas, Russian Northern Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. In the contemporary cultural meaning, the phrase "Western world" includes Europe, as well as many countries of European colonial origin with substantial European ancestral populations in the Americas and Oceania.

Western World (disambiguation)

The Western world is a term referring to different nations depending on the context.

Western World may also refer to:

Ships

Other uses

See also

Western World (ship)

Western World was a British sailing ship, used on the New York-Liverpool route in the mid 1800s. She was wrecked on 22 October 1853 off the coast of New Jersey.

Design

Western World was a three-masted vessel, 180 feet (55 m) in length.

Wreck

On 22 October 1853, Western World, while departing New York carrying 300 passengers and a cargo of china, powder flasks, and consumer goods, ran aground in a heavy fog off Spring Lake, New Jersey. All of her passengers and crew were rescued. Attempts to save the vessel using the steam tug Achilles were unsuccessful, and Western World broke apart over the next few days, finally sinking completely on 26 October.

Discovery of the wreck

In the early 1960s, the wreck, originally known as the Spring Lake Wreck, was discovered by divers Charlie Stratton and Howard Rowland; in 1962 Ed Maliszewskire recovered the ship's capstan cover, identifying the wreck. In the early 1970s diver John Mattera recovered a small bell also with the name Western World and began to research the shipwreck. Finding a story in a hundred year old periodical detailing the mysterious Spring Lake wreck and set about to attach the correct name to the shipwreck.