Europe Economy

Last week we discussed the geography of Europe, and I was very surprised at the progression of the discussion. I anticipated something along the lines of, "This island is England. South of England is France. West of France is Spain." I was expecting a discussion of the strict geographical layout of the European nations, but was instead subjected to many other different ways to look at geography, ways that I would have never thought of to analyze geography. Language is a prime example, as language can unify various regions as a cultural factor. Southwestern Europe is united through the Romance languages, but is very different from Slavic-speaking Eastern Europe.

Economic advancement is a way of organizing Europe geographically that is actually quite common, but I did not realize this until just now. Western Europe has historically been more economically sound than the "backwards" eastern European nations, and has been reflected in such conflicts as World War I and the spread of communism. However, I would never have thought of this as a means to geographically organize Europe.

Several interesting points were raised during last week's discussion. The first is the issue of who is included in "Europe." This is interesting because geographical boundaries alone cannot determine this, as cultural factors create problems. Russia is considered European, but most of its geographic landmass is located in Asia, for example. Also, Hungary speaks an Asiatic language, which, as an aside, is also something I was not aware of before this discussion. Southeastern Europe also poses a problem because it historically has had a lot of Asiatic influence. Another interesting point is that Europe actually has distinct gene pools that some use to determine European identity. For example, Poland, Ukraine, and Russia have a different gene pool than Spain and Portugal. If there was one unifying theme of last week's discussion, it seemed to be that cultural boundaries often blur geographic ones. Europe is a large continent comprising many different cultural identities, and for this, defining geographical borders is difficult. But, as I learned in last week's discussion, there are several methods used to do so.