When people talk about colonization, they usually picture European empires taking over Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Yet Europe itself has been conquered and ruled by foreign powers more times than almost any other region on Earth. At various points, nearly every modern European country lived under someone else’s flag, sometimes for centuries. This article maps out who ruled whom, in plain words, using documented history.
The short answer
Very few European countries escaped foreign rule entirely. Britain was a Roman province for almost four centuries, Spain was ruled by Muslim dynasties for nearly 800 years, the Balkans spent centuries under the Ottoman Empire, Poland was erased from the map by three neighbors, Ireland was England’s first colony, Malta and Cyprus were British colonies until the 1960s, and the Baltic states were occupied by the Soviet Union for fifty years. Today’s map of Europe is, in historical terms, brand new.
The Roman Empire: the first great colonizer of Europe
Rome conquered most of Europe long before anyone spoke of European empires overseas. Julius Caesar took Gaul, modern France, between 58 and 51 BC. Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, the Balkans, and much of central Europe all became Roman provinces. The conquest of Britain began in AD 43, when the emperor Claudius sent four legions across the Channel, and Britain remained a Roman province into the early fifth century, around four hundred years of foreign rule [1]. Roman roads, law, and language spread across the continent, and several modern European languages, including Italian, Spanish, French, and Portuguese, grew directly out of the Roman occupation.
Muslim rule in Spain and the Mediterranean
Between 711 and 1492, most of the Iberian Peninsula, today’s Spain and Portugal, was ruled by Muslim dynasties based in Damascus, and later in Cordoba [2]. This period, called Al-Andalus in Arabic sources, lasted almost 800 years, far longer than any modern European nation has existed. Muslim rule also covered Sicily and Malta for more than two centuries in the medieval period. Spain’s famous Reconquista, the Christian reconquest, was only completed in 1492, the same year Columbus sailed west.
The Ottoman Empire and the Balkans
From the 1300s onward, the Ottoman Empire swallowed the Balkans. The Ottomans took Adrianople in 1362, defeated Serbia after the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, absorbed Bulgaria in 1396, and captured Constantinople, the Byzantine capital, in 1453 [3]. Bosnia fell in 1463, Herzegovina in 1482, and Montenegro by 1499, leaving most of the Balkans under Ottoman rule for generations [3]. Bulgaria’s historians still call the period from 1396 to 1878 the “Turkish yoke,” nearly five centuries of foreign domination that ended only in the nineteenth century [4]. Greece, Serbia, Romania, and Albania also spent between roughly three and five hundred years under Ottoman rule before winning independence in the 1800s and early 1900s.
Spain and Austria: empires ruling their neighbors
Spain once ruled large parts of Europe. The Spanish Netherlands, covering most of today’s Belgium and Luxembourg plus parts of the north, was governed by Spanish kings from 1556 until 1714, when it passed to the Austrian Habsburgs, who held it until the French revolutionary wars [5]. Portugal was ruled by Spanish kings during the Iberian Union from 1580 to 1640, a sixty-year period in which the two global empires were combined under one crown [6]. Austria’s Habsburgs, meanwhile, ruled Hungary, Bohemia, Croatia, and parts of Italy for centuries, often as a patchwork of dynastic possessions rather than a single nation.
Britain: Europe’s overseas empire began at home
Britain’s reputation as a colonizer rests on its overseas empire, but its first colony was on its own doorstep. England invaded Ireland in 1169, and Ireland remained under English, then British, rule for more than seven centuries before the south became independent in 1922 [9]. Britain also held European island colonies well into the modern era: Malta was a British colony from 1800 until independence in September 1964 [7], Cyprus came under British control in 1878 and remained so until 1960, and Gibraltar has been British since the early eighteenth century [8]. All three are geographically European, and all three show that European colonization was never only an overseas affair.
Russia and the Soviet Union: conquest from the east
Russia expanded westward as much as any European empire expanded outward. In the late 1700s, Russia, Prussia, and Austria carved up Poland in three partitions, in 1772, 1793, and 1795, erasing the Polish-Lithuanian state from the map entirely [10]. Poland vanished for 123 years and only returned in 1918, after the First World War [10]. The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, independent between 1918 and 1940, were occupied and annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940 under the secret protocol of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany, were invaded by Germany in 1941, and were reoccupied by the Soviets in 1944 [11]. More than 200,000 people were deported from the Baltics under Soviet rule, and the three countries did not restore independence until 1991 [11]. Finland followed a different path into the Russian Empire, spending more than six centuries under Swedish rule before being ceded to Russia in 1809, where it existed as an autonomous grand duchy until declaring independence in 1917 [12].
The Nordic unions: Denmark, Sweden, and their neighbors
The Nordic countries also ruled one another. Norway was joined with Denmark in the Denmark-Norway union from the 1500s until 1814, when it was transferred to Sweden, remaining there until 1905 [13]. Finland was an integrated part of Sweden for over six hundred years before Russia took it [12]. Iceland was ruled by Denmark until it became fully independent in 1944. These were unions and annexes rather than overseas colonies, but for the people ruled from Copenhagen or Stockholm, the experience of foreign government was real.
What the record reveals
Three patterns stand out in the documented history. First, conquest flowed in every direction: Rome from the south, Muslims from the south, Ottomans from the southeast, Spain and Austria across western Europe, Britain at its doorstep, and Russia from the east. No region of Europe was purely a colonizer or purely colonized. Second, durations were enormous. Muslim rule in Spain lasted almost 800 years, Ottoman rule in Bulgaria nearly 500, and British rule in Ireland more than 700. Modern nations like Germany and Italy, unified only in the nineteenth century, are younger than the foreign rule their neighbors endured. Third, the modern map is recent. Poland reappeared in 1918, the Baltic states in 1991, and Ireland only fully in 1949, meaning many Europeans alive today were born when these countries did not exist as independent states.
Myths and facts, clearly separated
The following claims are common beliefs. Each is a myth. After each is what the documented record actually shows.
Myth: “European nations are ancient, with natural and permanent borders.” Documented fact: Poland was erased for 123 years, the Baltic states were occupied for fifty, and Germany and Italy unified only in the 1800s [10, 11].
Myth: “Colonization was something Europeans did to others, not to each other.” Documented fact: Ireland, Malta, Cyprus, Gibraltar, Finland, Norway, and the Balkans were all ruled by European powers on European soil [7, 9, 12, 13].
Myth: “The Balkans have always been divided and unstable.” Documented fact: For roughly five centuries, most of the Balkans was governed by a single empire, the Ottomans, from 1389 to 1878 in Bulgaria’s case [3, 4].
Myth: “Small countries were always free.” Documented fact: Finland spent over six centuries under Sweden, then more than a century under Russia, and Norway spent centuries under Denmark [12, 13].
Myth: “Russia only expanded into Asia.” Documented fact: Russia co-partitioned Poland, absorbed Finland, and occupied the three Baltic states, expanding deep into Europe [10, 11, 12].
Myth: “Once independent, always independent.” Documented fact: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania won independence in 1918, lost it in 1940, and had to fight for it again in 1991 [11].
Why this history matters today
Understanding that almost every European country has been ruled by another helps explain the modern world. It explains why countries like Poland and the Baltic states invest so heavily in NATO and the European Union, having lost sovereignty twice in living memory [11]. It explains long-running disputes over Gibraltar and Cyprus, whose status still reflects colonial-era decisions [8]. It explains Ireland’s complex relationship with Britain, rooted in more than seven centuries of English rule [9]. And it offers a useful perspective for readers in Africa and Asia: the European powers that colonized their continents were themselves, not long ago, the colonized. The experience of foreign rule shaped European nationalism, European law, and European memory just as deeply as it shaped the rest of the world.
The bottom line
The documented answer is that colonization within Europe was the rule, not the exception. Rome ruled Britain for four centuries, Muslim dynasties ruled Spain for eight, the Ottomans ruled the Balkans for five, Britain ruled Ireland for seven, Russia and its neighbors erased Poland for more than a century, and the Soviet Union occupied the Baltics for fifty years [1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 9, 10, 11]. The idea of a continent of ancient, untouched nations is a modern myth. Europe’s current map, like everyone else’s, was drawn by conquest, and for most of history its people knew exactly what it meant to live under a foreign flag.
Disclaimer: This article presents documented historical events, but history is always subject to interpretation, and dates can vary slightly between sources. If you have feedback, spot a possible error, or want to suggest a correction, please contact us. We welcome reader input and will review all serious correction requests.
References
- [1] Roman Britain, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- [2] Spain: Muslim Spain, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- [3] Balkans, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- [4] Bulgaria: Ottoman rule, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- [5] Spanish Netherlands, Wikipedia
- [6] Iberian Union, Wikipedia
- [7] Malta: Modern history, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- [8] British Empire, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- [9] Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland, Trinity College Dublin
- [10] Partitions of Poland, Wikipedia
- [11] Baltic states, Wikipedia
- [12] Grand Duchy of Finland, Wikipedia
- [13] Denmark-Norway, Wikipedia
