<Li> Bosnia and Herzegovina </Li> <Tr> <Td> a . </Td> <Td_colspan="2"> ^ The deposition of Romulus Augustulus in 476 is the most commonly cited end date for the Western Roman Empire . Other suggested dates include the death of Julius Nepos and the abolition of the title of "Western Roman Emperor" in 480 and the reorganization of Italy and abolition of separate Western Roman administrative institutions under Justinian I in 554 . </Td> </Tr> <P> In historiography, the Western Roman Empire consists of the western provinces of the Roman Empire at any one time during which they were administered by a separate independent Imperial court, coequal with (or only nominally subordinate to) that administering the eastern half . Both "Western Roman Empire" and "Eastern Roman Empire" (or "Byzantine Empire") are modern terms describing de facto independent entities; however, at no point did the Romans consider the Empire split into two, but rather considered it a single state governed by two separate Imperial courts out of administrative expediency, a system of government known as a diarchy . </P> <P> The view that the Empire was impossible to govern by one emperor was established by Diocletian following the disastrous civil wars and disintegration of the Crisis of the 3rd century, and was instituted in Roman law by his introduction of the Tetrarchy in AD 285, a form of government which was legally to endure in one form or another for centuries . There being more than one emperor at a time was not an unknown concept in the empire, as there had been multiple points in the past where more than one emperor ruled jointly . The Western Court was periodically abolished and recreated for the next two centuries until final abolition by Zeno in 480, by which time there was little effective central control left in the area legally administered by the Western Court . </P>

Who reunited western europe for the first time since the roman empire