• Europe
Today
Economic geographies
Cultural geographies
Political geographies
© T. M. Whitmore
Last Time
• North Africa and Southwest Asia
Ancient lands, new countries
Political problems
• Europe
Geographical location
Physical environment
Population
© T. M. Whitmore
Economics in Europe – wealth
but great diversity
• Resources, development, and
settlement
• Wealth of Europe
Industrial revolution
Uneven development
• Economic and related problems
in Europe
© T. M. Whitmore
This region
remains
Europe’s
manufacturing
and economic
core.
GDP Per Capita
Note the rise of
Ireland.
The Cold War led to the division of
Germany and Berlin into east and
west. West Germany became
Western democracy with a market
economy and East Germany
became a communist state with a
command economy
Language and culture in Europe
• Indigenous language groups
•
•
•
Celtic
Germanic
Romance
Hellenic
External Influences
Slavic
Berber/Moor
Asian
Basque?
Religion - secularism
© T. M. Whitmore
Note that language
boundaries mostly but
not always correspond
to national boundaries.
This is the idea of the
nation-state.
Percentage who believe in God , 2005
Czechs and Estonians are
the least religious.
Romanians, Greeks and the
Portuguese are the most
religious.
Political geography (spatial
expression of political behavior)
– European examples
• Nation & State & Nation-state
• Boundaries
• Centripetal forces (forces that
tend to bind states together)
• Centrifugal forces (forces that
tend to split states apart)
© T. M. Whitmore
117 AD
450 AD
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the first political entity to unite a large proportion of
Europe. The Latin of the Romans evolved into today’s Romance languages.
Division of the empire into east and west was followed by invasion of Germanic
tribes who were displaced southwards by movement of the Turkic Huns into
central Europe.
998 AD
1092 AD
Europe in the Middle Ages circa 1000 AD consisted of small kingdoms and
larger empires. Note the shrinking Muslim presence in Spain and parallels
between these borders and current pressures for autonomy (eg. Basques,
Scotland).
1470 AD
1328 AD
The Late Middle Ages / Early Renaissance. Note the continued
Muslim presence in Spain and the advance of the Ottomans
and the British.
1648 AD
1812 AD
Europe during the modern era. Note the expansion of the British, French,
Russian and Ottoman empires.
European
colonial
empires
in 1754
and
1914.
Centripetal forces (forces that
tend to bind states together)
• External threats
• Common heritage
• Strong leader/military force
• Supra nationalism
© T. M. Whitmore
Centrifugal forces (forces that
tend to split states apart)
• Devolution
Local minority self-control
• Irredentism
Appeal to nation in adjacent state
• Balkanization
© T. M. Whitmore
At the same as the supranational
institutions of the EU are being
constructed, many culturally
distinct regions within states are
pressing for further autonomy
and devolution of political
powers.
Scotland, Wales and
Northern Ireland have
received some
devolved powers within
the UK, the latter after
a bloody 30-year
conflict between
Protestants and
Catholics.
Spain is particularly culturally
diverse and some political
powers were devolved to 17
autonomous communities
(left) in the constitution.
Nonetheless several
communities are pressing for
further autonomy or
independence, most
prominently the Basques.
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Spanish exclusively
Catalan
Basque
Galician
Asturian
Aragonese
Aranese
Language regions
The end World War I led to the fracturing of three European empires and the creation
of new nation-states largely based on ethno-cultural distinctions. However many
nations were not satisfied with these new boundaries.
The Iron Curtain
World War II led to the division of Europe between Soviet-dominated east and US-allied
west, with important long-term effects on the economic and political trajectories of
these areas. The fall of the USSR in 1991 led to the independence of many former
Soviet states in the culturally diverse “shatter belt” of Eastern Europe. This process is
known as balkanization.
1945
In the Balkans, the fall of the Soviet Union
in Yugoslavia led to a series of bloody civil
wars in Bosnia (1992-95), Croatia (199195) and Kosovo (1998-99). Yugoslavia is
now divided into six states, with Kosovo
likely to become independent in the future.
New states were
created largely along
ethnic lines (very
complicated in the
case of Bosnia) but
this process was
resisted by the Serbs
who were dominant
in the old Yugoslavia.