Instruction: Please list Europe’s major influence on modern history from the
perspectives of its history, sea, mountains, rivers, climate, geographical determinism
and agriculture.
案例分析：

Generally, however we define its place on the globe, Europe has undoubtedly
shaped much of modern world history--
Partly because of its overseas expansion;
Partly because of what it borrowed from other parts of the world;
Partly because of its decisive economic and cultural influence on the emergence of an
increasingly global civilization.

[Europe and history]
Europe is of course only one of many important cultural spheres in human history.
Its economy, political systems, religious traditions, and social institutions are not the
sole historical path to modernity.
People in other regions often challenged or rejected European forms of
“modernization” as they have built their own modern societies.
Much of the modern global economy emerged in the international trade that Europe’s
imperial powers controlled and expanded after the sixteenth century.
Idea and people have meanwhile flowed constantly into Europe from other parts of
the world, so that European societies remain a vital center for cross-cultural
exchanges and conflicts.

[the Mediterranean Sea]
Europe is indeed one of several peninsulas jutting off from Asia, like the Arabian and
Indian peninsulas.
Populations became mixed by migration, and various historic empires — the
Carthaginian( 迦 太 基 人 ), Roman, Byzantines, Arabic, Spanish, Venetian, and
Ottoman（土耳其人）—have used the Mediterranean to govern their component parts.

[the mountains]
The Pyrenees close off Spain from the south, as the Alps do Italy; the Balkan
Mountains are difficult to penetrate.

[the rivers]
The European rivers are worth particular attention. Most are navigable, and give
access to the sea. With their valleys, they provided areas where intensive local
development could take place.
London—Thames（泰晤士河）
Paris—Seine（塞纳河）
Vienna & Budapest--Danube（多瑙河）
Warsaw—Vistula (维斯图拉河，维斯瓦河)

[the climate]
Climate depends on Latitude, ocean currents, and winds that bring or withhold
rainfall.
The parts of Europe near the sea have less extreme temperatures .
Europe is the only continent that has no actual desert.
Europe is also for the most part a region of fertile soil.
Europe has been one of the most favored places on the globe for human habitation.

[Agriculture]
The state of agriculture obviously depends on natural conditions, but it has also
depended historically on the invention of the plow, the planting of appropriate crops,
the rotation of fields to prevent soil exhaustion, and the availability of livestock from
which manure could be obtained as fertilizer.
Human beings have always developed their institutions and cultures through a
complex relation with the natural world, and maps remind us that all human activities
take place in geographical space.
At a rate of 30 miles a day, it would take 3 weeks to travel from London to Venice, but
today, we travel at supersonic speed, and measure communication in nanoseconds, or
one-billionth of a second. The barriers of geographical space virtually disappeared.
Yet human beings remain profoundly dependent on their natural environments, and
human history remains firmly embedded in the geography of the planet earth.