However, following British defeats by the Japanese in World War II, the post-war decline of the British Empire, and entry of Britain into the European Economic Community in 1973, the two nations re-calibrated defence and trade relations with the rest of the world. Fearing a land invasion would cost one million American lives, the U.S. used a new weapon against Japan, the atomic bomb, developed after years of work by an international team including Germans, in the United States. Turner, John Constable, Caspar David Friedrich, Ivan Aivazovsky, Thomas Cole, and William Blake. In 1938, Hitler annexed Austria in an attempt to unite all German-speakers under his rule. The last pagan land in Europe was converted to Christianity with the conversion of the Baltic peoples in the High Middle Ages, bringing them into Western civilization as well. Towards Wilno, Minsk, Warsaw go!". Norman adventurers established a kingdom in Sicily and southern Italy by conquest, and a Norman expedition on behalf of their duke led to the Norman Conquest of England. The bat and ball sport of cricket was first played in England during the 16th century and was exported around the globe via the British Empire. During this time, the Dutch began their colonisation of the Indonesian archipelago, which became the Dutch East Indies in the early 19th century, and gained port cities in Sri Lanka and Malaysia and India. [citation needed] In 1979, an Islamic revolution in Iran overthrew the pro-Western Shah and established an anti-Western Shiite Islamic theocracy. Racism and discrimination largely disappeared in the post-war years, and dual-income families became the norm. By the early 8th century, Iberia and Sicily had fallen to the Muslims. It was famous for its rare quasi-democratic political system, praised by philosophers such as Erasmus; and, during the Counter-Reformation, was known for near-unparalleled religious tolerance, with peacefully coexisting Catholic, Jewish, Eastern Orthodox, Protestant and Muslim communities. Despite all this, France's strong sense of nationhood among other things kept the country together. Japan began taking aggressive actions towards China. As princes, kings and emperors chose sides in religious debates and sought national unity, religious wars erupted throughout Europe, especially in the Holy Roman Empire. India remained an integral part of the British Empire, with Queen Victoria being crowned Empress of India. From here, Norseman attempted their short-lived European colony in North America, five centuries before Columbus.[13]. Although it remained mostly Protestant, Catholics especially, as well as Jews and Orthodox Christians, increased in number. In 1982, Thatcher dispatched a British fleet to the Falkland Islands which successfully repelled an Argentine invasion of the British Territory, demonstrating that Britain could still project power across the globe.[52]. Emperor Charles V was able to arrange the Peace of Augsburg between the warring Catholic and Protestant nobility. Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese explorer working for the Spanish Crown (under the Crown of Castile), led an expedition in 1519–1522 which became the first to sail from the Atlantic Ocean into the Pacific Ocean and the first to cross the Pacific. Other powers to arrive in the Americas were the Swedes, Dutch, English, and French. However, by 1914, only a dozen U.S. states had given women this right, although women were treated more and more as equals of men before the law in many countries. "The Coherence of the Arabic-Latin Translation Program in Toledo in the Twelfth Century,", James J. Sheehan, "Art and Its Publics, c. 1800,", harvnb error: no target: CITEREFHodges1993 (, D. Smith, Head of State, MaCleay Press 2005, p.18. In 1410, the last of the Greenland Norseman abandoned their colony to the ice. Following the Fall of Singapore in 1941, Australia turned to the United States for military aid against the Japanese Empire and Australia and New Zealand joined the United States in the ANZUS military alliance in the early 1950s and contributed troops to anti-communist conflicts in South-East Asia in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Western inventors and industrialists transformed the West in the late 19th century and early 20th century. [72], Absolutism and the Enlightenment: 1500–1800, Rise of the English-speaking world: 1815–1870, Industrial Revolution in the English-speaking world, Great powers and the First World War: 1870–1918, Second World War and its aftermath: 1939–1950, British Empire and Commonwealth 1945–1980. The country has rejoined the Commonwealth of Nations. It also had the mightiest army in Europe. Relations between the major powers in Western society: the nobility, monarchy and clergy, sometimes produced conflict.