Western world

The Western world, also called the West or the Occident, is a loose grouping of countries and cultures rather than a region with fixed borders. It is usually taken to cover Europe, Northern America and Australasia, while it remains debated whether the former Soviet Union, Greece and Eastern Europe, and Latin America belong to it. The idea has roots in antiquity: Ancient Greece and Rome are widely seen as the birthplaces of Western civilization, and a geographic West began to take shape in the fourth century CE when Constantine divided the Roman Empire between a Greek East and a Latin West. The religious split of 1054 and the later crusades hardened that divide. Because the term shifts with context and perspective, it is best read as an evolving concept built on shared cultural, political and economic ties among many peoples.