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During the early 16th century, explorers like Christopher Columbus, Hernán Cortés and others opened up new continents to settlement and conquest by people from Western nations. Thus the term "Western" came to encompass nations and former colonies such as the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc. populated mostly by immigrants from Europe and their descendants.
Japan in 1955 (immediately after its occupation by the US) would be considered by most to be part of the West - while Japan in 1750 would not. Similarly, North America in 1850 would be considered part of the West while it would not be in 1450, or even 1500 - before substantial colonization had occurred.During the Cold War, a new definition emerged. The Earth was divided into three "worlds", numbered " 1st, 2nd and 3rd". The first was composed of NATO members and other countries aligned with the United States. The second world was the Eastern bloc in the Communist sphere of influence, such as the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China, etc. The third world consisted of countries unaligned with either. Hence, the Western world became a synonym for the first world.
After the end of the Cold War, the phrase "second world" fell into disuse, and "first world" came to refer to the democratic, wealthy, industrial, developed nations, most of which had been aligned with the US. The "third world" came to refer to the poor, unindustrialized developing nations. That is, the term "Western" is not so much a geographical definition as it is a cultural and economic one, therefore:
Nowadays, people differ in their definitions of the West, and different definitions overlap only partly. There are certainly non-Western developed nations, not all Western countries are members of NATO, etc.
In 1993, Samuel P. Huntington published the article " The Clash of Civilizations?" in Foreign Affairs, which was later expanded into a book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, in 1996. Huntington's thesis was that the world can be understood as being made up of several civilizations, and that conflicts between civilizations will be the primary tensions of the post-cold-war world, replacing the ideological conflicts (i.e capitalism vs. communism) that characterized the cold-war world. According to Huntington's thesis, the primarily Roman Catholic and Protestant countries of western and central Europe, together with the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, constitute the "Euro-Atlantic" civilization, which share a common system of values, shaped by the historic influence of the Renaissance, Reformation, and Enlightenment. Huntington and his followers understood "The West" to be roughly synonymous with the Euro-Atlantic civilization, although countries with roots in other civilizations, such as Greece, Turkey, or Japan, may choose to ally themselves with the West as a result of having absorbed "Western" ideas and values into their societies. Huntington's thesis was influential, but was by no means universally accepted; its supporters say that it explains modern conflicts, such as those in the former Yugoslavia; the thesis' detractors fear that by equating values like democracy with "Western civilization", it reinforces racist and/or xenophobic notions about "non-Western" societies, as well as blatantly ignoring non-Western democracies (for example India, which holds nearly half of all the people in the world who live under a democratic system).
In Huntington's thesis, the historically Eastern Orthodox nations of southeastern and eastern Europe constitute a distinct "Euro-Asiatic civilization"; although European and Christian, these nations were not, in Huntington's view, shaped by the cultural influences of the Renaissance, Reformation, and Enlightenment, and were not "Western" in the same sense as the Euro-Atlantic civilization. Huntington also considered Latin America to be a separate civilization from the West.
In the Near East or Middle East, (both terms relative to Europe as being in the west), the distinction between Western Europe and Eastern Europe is of less importance; countries that western Europeans might think of as part of Eastern Europe, i.e. Russia, might be counted as Western in the Middle East, in the sense of being both European and Christian.
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