Today Europe Economic geographies Cultural geographies
Political geographies Last Time North Africa and Southwest Asia Ancient lands, new countries
Political problems Europe Geographical location Physical environment Population Economics in Europe wealth but great diversity
Resources, development, and settlement Wealth of Europe Industrial revolution Uneven development Economic and related problems in Europe This region remains Europes 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 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) 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 todays 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 Centrifugal forces (forces that tend to split states apart)
Devolution Local minority self-control Irredentism Appeal to nation in adjacent state Balkanization 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. ETA attack 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 ( ), Croatia ( ) and Kosovo ( ). 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.