Occident" and was taken to comprise all the cultures that succeeded to
the heritage of ancient Greece and Rome, as contrasted with "the
Orient," which consisted chiefly of Islam, India, and the "Far East."
Since the end of World War II, "East" and "West" have often been used
to distinguish Communist from non-Communist countries: in "East-
West trade," a shipment of goods from Prague to Tokyo is a shipment
from East to West.

There is another East-West distinction which is less well known today:
the distinction between the eastern and western parts of the Christian
church, which in the early centuries of the Christian era paralleled the
distinction between the eastern and western parts of the Roman Empire.
Although there were differences between the Eastern church and the
Western church from an early time, it was only in 1054 that they split
apart. Their separation coincided with the Western movement to make
the Bishop of Rome the sole head of the church, to emancipate the clergy
from the control of emperor, kings, and feudal lords, and sharply to dif-
ferentiate the church as a political and legal entity from secular polities.
This movement, culminating in what was called the Gregorian Refor-
mation and the Investiture Struggle ( 1075-1122), ¹ gave rise to the for-
mation of the first modern Western legal system, the "new canon law"
(jus novum) of the Roman Catholic Church, and eventually to new sec-
ular legal systems as well -- royal, urban, and others. The term
"Western," in the phrase "Western legal tradition," refers to the peoples
whose legal tradition stems from these events. In the eleventh and
twelfth centuries, these were the peoples of western Europe, from
England to Hungary and from Denmark to Sicily; countries such as
Russia and Greece, which remained in the Eastern Orthodox church, as
well as large parts of Spain, which were Muslim, were excluded at that
time. In later times not only were Russia and Greece and all of Spain
westernized, but also North and South America and various other parts
of the world as well.

The West, then, is not to be found by recourse to a compass. Geo-
graphical boundaries help to locate it, but they shift from time to time.
The West is, rather, a cultural term, but with a very strong diachronic
dimension. It is not, however, simply an idea; it is a community. It im-
plies both a historical structure and a structured history. For many cen-
turies it could be identified very simply as the people of Western
Christendom. Indeed, from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries the
community of those people was manifested in their common allegiance
to a single spiritual authority, the Church of Rome.

As a historical culture, a civilization, the West is to be distinguished
not only from the East but also from "pre-Western" cultures to which it
"returned" in various periods of "renaissance." Such returns and revivals
are characteristics of the West. They are not to be confused with the

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