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CONCEPTS, IDEAS, AND TERMS

1 Land hemisphere 2 Physiography 3 Infrastructure 4 Local functional specialization 5 The Isolated State

6 Model 7 Industrial Revolution 8 Nation-state 9 Nation

10 Centrifugal forces 11 Centripetal forces 12 Indo-European language family 13 Complementarity 14 Transferability 15 Intervening opportunity 16 Primate city 17 Metropolis 18 Central business district (CBD) 19 Supranationalism 20 Devolution 21 Four Motors of Europe 22 Regional state 23 Site 24 Situation 25 Conurbation 26 Landlocked location 27 Break-of-bulk 28 Entrepôt

29 Shatter belt 30 Balkanization 31 Exclave 32 Irredentism

REGIONS

STATES OF THE MAINLAND CORE THE CORE OFFSHORE: THE BRITISH ISLES THE CONTIGUOUS CORE IN THE SOUTH THE DISCONTINUOUS CORE IN THE NORTH THE EASTERN PERIPHERY

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● Why Europe is becoming the world’s home for the aged

● Europe’s unifying express hits several roadblocks

● Provinces behaving like countries rile national governments

● How Islam is changing Europe’s cultural geography

● Why the British are different

In This Chapter

IT IS APPROPRIATE to begin our investigation of theworld’s geographic realms in Europe because over the past five centuries Europe and Europeans have influenced and changed the rest of the world more than any other realm or people has done. European empires spanned the globe and transformed societies far and near. European colonial- ism propelled an early wave of globalization. Millions of Europeans migrated from their homelands to the Old World as well as the New, changing (and sometimes nearly oblit- erating) traditional communities and creating new societies from Australia to North America. Colonial power and eco- nomic incentive combined to impel the movement of mil- lions of imperial subjects from their ancestral homes to distant lands: Africans to the Americas, Indians to Africa, Chinese to Southeast Asia, Malays to South Africa’s Cape, Native Americans from east to west. In agriculture, indus- try, politics, and other spheres, Europe generated revolu- tions—and then exported those revolutions across the world, thereby consolidating the European advantage.

But throughout much of that 500-year period of Euro- pean hegemony, Europe also was a cauldron of conflict. Religious, territorial, and political disputes precipitated bit- ter wars that even spilled over into the colonies. And dur- ing the twentieth century, Europe twice plunged the world into war. The terrible, unprecedented toll of World War I (1914–1918) was not enough to stave off World War II (1939–1945), which drew in the United States and ended with the first-ever use of nuclear weapons in Japan. In the aftermath of that war, Europe’s weakened powers lost most of their colonial possessions and a new rivalry emerged: an ideological Cold War between the communist Soviet Union and the capitalist United States. This Cold War lowered an Iron Curtain across the heart of Europe, leaving most of the east under Soviet control and most of the west in the Amer- ican camp. Western Europe proved resilient, overcoming the destruction of war and the loss of colonial power to

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G E O G R A P H I C A L F E A T U R E S 41

regain economic strength. Meanwhile, the Soviet commu- nist experiment failed at home and abroad, and in 1990 the last vestiges of the Iron Curtain were lifted. Since then, a

massive effort has been underway to reintegrate and reuni- fy Europe from the Atlantic coast to the Russian border, the key geographic story of this chapter.

1. The European geographic realm lies on the western extremity of the Eurasian landmass.

2. Though territorially small, Europe is heavily popu- lated and is fragmented into 40 states.

3. Europe’s enduring world influence results mainly from advantages accrued over centuries of colonial and imperial domination.

4. European natural environments are highly varied, and Europe’s resource base is rich and diverse.

5. Europe’s geographic diversity, cultural as well as physical, created strong local identities, specializa- tions, and opportunities for trade and commerce.

6. European nation-states, based in durable and pow- erful core areas, survived the loss of colonies and evolved into modern democratic states.

7. Europe’s states are engaged in a historic effort to achieve multinational economic integration and, to a lesser degree, political coordination.

8. Europe’s relatively prosperous population is highly urbanized, rapidly aging, and in demographic decline partly offset by significant immigration.

9. Local demands for greater autonomy, and cultural challenges posed by immigration, are straining the European social fabric.

10. Despite Europe’s momentous unification efforts, east-west contrasts still mark the realm’s regional geography.

11. Relations between Europe and neighboring Russia are increasingly problematic.

Europe

MAJOR GEOGRAPHIC QUALITIES OF

Defining the Realm GEOGRAPHICAL FEATURES

As Figure 1-1 shows, Europe is a realm of peninsulas and islands on the western margin of the world’s largest land- mass, Eurasia. It is a realm of just under 600 million peo- ple and 40 countries, but it is territorially quite small. Yet despite its modest proportions it has had—and continues to have—a major impact on world affairs. For many cen- turies Europe has been a hearth of achievement, innova- tion, and invention.

Europe’s Eastern Border

The European realm is bounded on the west, north, and south by Atlantic, Arctic, and Mediterranean waters, respectively. But where is Europe’s eastern limit? Some scholars place it at the Ural Mountains, deep inside Rus- sia, thereby recognizing a “European” Russia and, pre- sumably, an “Asian” one as well. Our regional definition places Europe’s eastern boundary between Russia and its numerous European neighbors to the west. This defini- tion is based on several geographic factors including

European-Russian contrasts in territorial dimensions, population size, cultural properties, and historic aspects, all discernible on the maps in Chapters 1 and 2.

Resources

Europe’s peoples have benefited from a large and var- ied store of raw materials. Whenever the opportunity or need arose, the realm proved to contain what was required. Early on, these requirements included cul- tivable soils, rich fishing waters, and wild animals that could be domesticated; in addition, extensive forests provided wood for houses and boats. Later, coal and mineral ores propelled industrialization. More recent- ly, Europe proved to contain substantial deposits of oil and natural gas.

Climates

From the balmy shores of the Mediterranean Sea to the icy peaks of the Alps, and from the moist woodlands and moors of the Atlantic fringe to the semiarid prairies north

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42 C H A P T E R 1 ● E U R O P E

of the Black Sea, Europe presents an almost infinite range of natural environments (Fig. 1-2). Compare west- ern Europe and eastern North America in Figure G-7 (pp. 16–17) and you will see the moderating influence of the warm ocean current known as the North Atlantic Drift and its onshore windflow.

Human Diversity

The European realm is home to peoples of numerous cul- tural-linguistic stocks, including not only Latins, Ger- manics, and Slavs but also minorities such as Finns, Magyars (Hungarians), Basques, and Celts. This diver- sity of ancestries continues to be an asset as well as a lia- bility. It has generated not only interaction and exchange, but also conflict and war.

Locational Advantages

Europe also has outstanding locational advantages. Its relative location, at the heart of the land hemisphere, creates maximum efficiency for contact with much of the rest of the world (Fig. 1-3). A “peninsula of peninsulas,” Europe is nowhere far from the ocean and its avenues of seaborne trade and conquest. Hundreds of kilometers of navigable rivers, augmented by an unmatched system of canals, open the interior of Europe to its neighboring seas and to the shipping lanes of the world.

Also consider the scale of the maps of Europe in this chapter. Europe is a realm of moderate distances and close proximities. Short distances and large cul- tural differences make for intense interaction, the con- stant circulation of goods and ideas. That has been the hallmark of Europe’s geography for more than a millennium.

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tains, the Western Uplands, and the North European Lowland (Fig. 1-4.)

The Central Uplands form the heart of Europe. It is a region of hills and low plateaus loaded with raw materials whose farm villages grew into towns and cities when the Indus- trial Revolution transformed this realm.

The Alpine Mountains, a high- land region named after the Alps, extend from the Pyrenees on the French-Spanish border to the Balkan Mountains near the Black Sea, and include Italy’s Appennines and the Carpathians of eastern Europe.

The Western Uplands, geologi- cally older, lower, and more stable than the Alpine Mountains, extend from Scandinavia through western Britain and Ireland to the heart of the Iberian Peninsula in Spain.

The North European Lowland extends in a lengthy arc from south- eastern Britain and central France across Germany and Denmark into Poland and Ukraine, from where it con-

tinues well into Russia. Also known as the Great European Plain, this has been an avenue for human migration time after time, so that complex cultural and economic mosaics developed here together with a jigsaw-like political map. As Figure 1-4 shows, many of Europe’s major rivers and con- necting waterways serve this populous region, where a num- ber of Europe’s leading cities (London, Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Berlin, Warsaw) are located.

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LANDSCAPES AND OPPORTUNITIES

In the Introduction we noted the importance of physical geography in the definition of geographic realms. The nat- ural landscape with its array of landforms (such as moun- tains and plateaus) is a key element in the total physical geography— or physiography—of any part of the ter- restrial world. Other physiographic components include climate and the physical features that mark the natural landscape, such as vegetation, soils, and water bodies.

Europe’s area may be small, but its landscapes are var- ied and complex. Regionally, we identify four broad units: the Central Uplands, the southern Alpine Moun-

Many picturesque southern European towns and villages are not only many centuries old but are also located in the realm’s most dangerous tectonic zone (see Figs. G-3 and G-4 on pages 10 and 11). With hilly terrain, many older buildings, and narrow streets, this can be a lethal combination when earthquakes strike. In April 2009, an earthquake in central Italy devastated many historic mountain towns including L’Aquila (a 90-minute drive northeast of Rome), shown here during the ensuing search and rescue operation. Nearly 300 people lost their lives and more than 1500 sustained serious injuries. From Portugal to Greece, Mediterranean Europe’s scenic beauty comes with ever-present risk. © Marco DiLauro/Getty Images, Inc.

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44 C H A P T E R 1 ● E U R O P E

HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY

Modern Europe was peopled in the wake of the Pleis- tocene’s most recent glacial retreat and global warming— a gradual warming that caused tundra to give way to deciduous forest and ice-filled valleys to turn into grassy vales. On Mediterranean shores, Europe witnessed the rise of its first great civilizations, on the islands and penin- sulas of Greece and later in what is today Italy.

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Ancient Greece and Imperial Rome

Ancient Greece lay exposed to influences radiating from the advanced civilizations of Mesopotamia and the Nile Valley, and in their fragmented habitat the Greeks laid the foundations of European civilization. Their achieve- ments in political science, philosophy, the arts, and other spheres have endured for 25 centuries. But the ancient Greeks never managed to unify their domain, and their

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persistent conflicts proved fatal when the Romans chal- lenged them from the west. By 147 BC, the last of the sovereign Greek intercity leagues (alliances) had fallen to the Roman conquerors.

The center of civilization and power now shifted to Rome in present-day Italy. Borrowing from Greek cul- ture, the Romans created an empire that stretched from Britain to the Persian Gulf and from the Black Sea to Egypt; they made the Mediterranean Sea a Roman lake carrying armies to distant shores and goods to imperial Rome. With an urban population that probably exceed- ed 1 million, Rome was the first metropolitan-scale urban center in Europe.

The Romans founded numerous other cities through- out their empire and linked them to the capital through a vast system of overland and water routes, facilitating political control and enabling economic growth in their provinces. It was an unparalleled infrastructure, much of which long outlasted the empire itself.

Triumph and Collapse

Roman rule brought disparate, isolated peoples into the imperial political and economic sphere. By guiding (and often forcing) these groups to produce particular goods or materials, the Romans launched Europe down a road for which it would become famous: local functional spe- cialization. The workers on Elba, a Mediterranean island, mined iron ore. Those near Cartagena in Spain produced silver and lead. Certain farmers were taught irrigation to produce specialty crops. Others raised live- stock for meat or wool. The production of particular goods by particular people in particular places became and remained a hallmark of the realm.

The Romans also spread their language across the empire, setting the stage for the emergence of the Romance languages; they disseminated Christianity; and they established durable systems of education, administration, and commerce. But when their empire collapsed in the fifth century, disorder ensued, and mas- sive migrations soon brought Germanic and Slavic peo- ples to their present positions on the European stage. Capitalizing on Europe’s weakness, the Arab-Berber Moors from North Africa, energized by Islam, con- quered most of Iberia and penetrated France. Later the Ottoman Turks invaded eastern Europe and reached the outskirts of Vienna.

Rebirth and Royalty

Europe’s revival—its Renaissance—did not begin until the fifteenth century. After a thousand years of feudal tur- moil marking the “Dark” and “Middle” Ages, powerful

monarchies began to lay the foundations of modern states. The discovery of continents and riches across the oceans opened a new era of mercantilism, the competi- tive accumulation of wealth chiefly in the form of gold and silver. Best placed for this competition were the kingdoms of western Europe. Europe was on its way to colonial expansion and world domination.

THE REVOLUTIONS OF MODERNIZING EUROPE

Even as Europe’s rising powers reached for world dom- ination overseas, they fought with each other in Europe itself. Powerful monarchies and land-owning (“landed”) aristocracies had their status and privilege challenged by ever-wealthier merchants and businesspeople. Demands for political recognition grew; cities mushroomed with the development of industries; the markets for farm prod- ucts burgeoned; and Europe’s population, more or less stable at about 100 million since the sixteenth century, began to increase.

The Agrarian Revolution

We know Europe as the focus of the Industrial Revolu- tion, but before this momentous development occurred another revolution was already in progress: the agrari- an revolution. Port cities and capital cities thrived and expanded, and their growing markets created econom- ic opportunities for farmers. This led to revolutionary changes in land ownership and agricultural methods. Improved farm practices, better equipment, superior storage facilities, and more efficient transport to the urban markets marked a revolution in the countryside. The colonial merchants brought back new crops (the American potato soon became a European staple), and market prices rose, drawing more and more farmers into the economy.

Agricultural Market Model

The transformation of Europe’s farmlands reshaped its economic geography, producing new patterns of land use and market links. The economic geograph- er Johann Heinrich von Thünen (1783–1850), himself an estate farmer who had studied these changes for several decades, published his observations in 1826 in a pioneering work entitled The Isolated State, chronicling the geography of Europe’s agricultural transformation.

Von Thünen used information from his own farmstead to build what today we call a model (an idealized repre- sentation of reality that demonstrates its most important

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reality, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe had been industrializing in many spheres, long before the chain of events known as the Industrial Revolution began. From the textiles of England and Flanders to the iron farm implements of Saxony (in present-day Ger- many), from Scandinavian furniture to French linens, Europe had already entered a new era of local function- al specialization. It would therefore be more appropriate to call what happened next the period of Europe’s indus- trial intensification.

British Primacy

In the 1780s, the Scotsman James Watt and others devised a steam-driven engine, which was soon adopted for numerous industrial uses. At about the same time, coal (converted into carbon-rich coke) was recognized as a vastly superior substitute for charcoal in smelting iron. These momentous innovations had a rapid effect. The power loom revolutionized the weaving industry. Iron smelters, long dependent on Europe’s dwindling forests for fuel, could now be concentrated near coalfields.

46 C H A P T E R 1 ● E U R O P E

properties) of the location of produc- tive activities in Europe’s farmlands. Since a model is an abstraction that must always involve assumptions, von Thünen postulated a self-contained area (hence the “isolation”) with a sin- gle market center, surrounded by flat and uninterrupted land without impediments to cultivation or trans- portation. In such a situation, transport costs would be directly proportional to distance.

Location Theory

Von Thünen’s model revealed four zones or rings of land use encircling the market center (Fig. 1-5). Inner- most and directly adjacent to the mar- ket would lie a zone of intensive farming and dairying, yielding the most perishable and highest-priced products. Immediately beyond lay a zone of forest used for timber and fire- wood (still a priority in von Thünen’s time). Next there would be a ring of field crops, for example, grains or potatoes. A fourth zone would contain pastures and live- stock. Beyond lay wilderness, from where the costs of transport to market would become prohibitive.)

In many ways, von Thünen’s model was the first analysis in a field that would eventually become known as location theory. Von Thünen knew, of course, that the real Europe did not present the conditions postu- lated in his model. But it did demonstrate the econom- ic-geographic forces that shaped the new Europe, which is why it is still being discussed today. More than a cen- tury after the publication of The Isolated State, geog- raphers Samuel van Valkenburg and Colbert Held produced a map of twentieth-century European agri- cultural intensity, revealing a striking, ring-like con- centricity focused on the vast urbanized area lining the North Sea—now the dominant market for a realmwide, macroscale “Thünian” agricultural system (Fig. 1-5, inset map).

The Industrial Revolution

The term Industrial Revolution suggests that an agrar- ian Europe was suddenly swept up in wholesale indus- trialization that changed the realm in a few decades. In

FIGURE 1-5

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Engines could move locomotives as well as power looms. Ocean shipping entered a new age.

Britain had an enormous advantage, for the Industri- al Revolution occurred when British influence reigned worldwide and the significant innovations were achieved in Britain itself. The British controlled the flow of raw materials, they held a monopoly over products that were in global demand, and they alone possessed the skills necessary to make the machines that manufactured the products. Soon the fruits of the Industrial Revolution were being exported, and the modern industrial spatial organization of Europe began to take shape. In Britain, manufacturing regions developed near coalfields in the English Midlands, at Newcastle to the northeast, in southern Wales, and along Scotland’s Clyde River around Glasgow.

Resources and Industrial Development

In mainland Europe, a belt of major coalfields extends from west to east, roughly along the southern margins of the North European Lowland, due eastward from southern England across northern France and Belgium, Germany (the Ruhr), western Bohemia in the Czech Republic, Silesia in southern Poland, and the Donets Basin (Donbas) in eastern Ukraine. Iron ore is found in a broadly similar belt and together with coal pro- vides the key raw material for the manufacturing of steel. As in Britain, this cornerstone industry now spawned new concentrations of economic activity, which grew steadily as millions migrated in from the countryside to fill expanding employment opportuni- ties. Densely populated and heavily urbanized, these emerging agglomerations became the backbone of Europe’s world-scale population cluster (as shown in Fig. G-8).

Two centuries later, this east-west axis along the coalfield belt remains a major feature of Europe’s pop- ulation distribution map (Fig. 1-6). It should also be noted that while industrialization produced new cities, another set of manufacturing zones arose in and near many existing urban centers. London—already Europe’s leading urban focus and Britain’s richest domestic market—was typical of these developments. Many local industries were established here, taking advantage of the large supply of labor, the ready avail- ability of capital, and the proximity of so great a num- ber of potential buyers. Although the Industrial Revolution thrust other places into prominence, London did not lose its primacy: industries in and around the British capital multiplied.)

Consequences of Clustering

The industrial transformation of Europe, like the agrar- ian revolution, became the focus of geographic research. One of the leaders in this area was the eco- nomic geographer Alfred Weber (1868–1958), who published a spatial analysis of the process titled Con- cerning the Location of Industries (1909). Unlike von Thünen, Weber focused on activities that take place at particular points rather than over large areas. His model, therefore, represented the factors of industrial location, the clustering or dispersal of places of intense manu- facturing activity.

One of Weber’s most interesting conclusions has to do with what he called agglomerative (concentrating) and deglomerative (dispersive) forces. It is often advanta- geous for certain industries to cluster together, sharing equipment, transport facilities, labor skills, and other assets of urban areas. This is what made London (as well as Paris and other cities that were not situated on rich deposits of industrial raw materials) attractive to many manufacturing plants that could benefit from agglomer- ation and from the large markets that these cities anchored. As Weber found, however, excessive agglom- eration may lead to disadvantages such as competition for increasingly expensive space, congestion, overbur- dening of infrastructure, and environmental pollution. Manufacturers may then move away, and deglomerative forces will increase.

The Industrial Revolution spread eastward from Britain onto the European mainland throughout the middle and late nineteenth century (Fig. 1-7). Popula- tion skyrocketed, emigration mushroomed, and indus- trializing cities burst at the seams. European states already had acquired colonial empires before this rev- olution started; now colonialism gave Europe an unprecedented advantage in its dominance over the rest of the world.

Political Revolution and Evolution

Revolution in a third sphere—the political—had been going on in Europe even longer than the agrarian or industrial revolutions. Europe’s political revolution took many different forms and affected diverse peoples and countries, but in general it headed toward parliamentary representation and democracy.

Historical geographers point to the Peace (Treaty) of Westphalia in 1648 as a key step in the evolution of Europe’s state system, ending decades of war and rec- ognizing territories, boundaries, and the sovereignty of

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countries. This treaty’s stabilizing effect lasted until 1806, by which time revolutionary changes were again sweeping across Europe.

Most dramatic was the French Revolution (1789– 1795), but political transformation had come much ear- lier to the Netherlands, Britain, and the Scandinavian

countries. Other parts of Europe remained under the con- trol of authoritarian (dictatorial) regimes headed by mon- archs or despots. Europe’s patchy political revolution lasted into the twentieth century, and by then national- ism (national spirit, pride, patriotism) had become a pow- erful force in European politics.

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T H E R E V O L U T I O N S O F M O D E R N I Z I N G E U R O P E 49

A Fractured Map

As a geographic realm, Europe occupies only about 5 per- cent of the Earth’s land area; but that tiny area is frag- mented into some 40 countries—more than one-fifth of all the states in the world today. Therefore, when you look at Europe’s political map, the question that arises is how did so small a geographic realm come to be divided into so many political entities? Europe’s map is a legacy of its feu- dal and royal periods, when powerful kings, barons, dukes, and other rulers, rich enough to fund armies and power- ful enough to exact taxes and tribute from their domains, created bounded territories in which they reigned supreme. Royal marriages, alliances, and conquests actually sim- plified Europe’s political map. In the early nineteenth cen- tury there still were 39 German states; a unified Germany as we know it today did not emerge until the 1870s.

State and Nation

Europe’s political revolution produced a form of polit- ical-territorial organization known as the nation-state, a state embodied by its culturally distinctive popula-

tion. But what is a nation-state and what is not? The term nation has multiple meanings. In one sense it refers to a people with a single language, a common history, a similar ethnic background. In the sense of nationality it relates to legal membership in the state, that is, citizenship. Very few states today are so homo- geneous culturally that the culture is conterminous with the state. Europe’s prominent nation-states of a century ago—France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Italy—have become multicultural societies, their nations defined more by an intangible “national spir- it” and emotional commitment than by cultural or eth- nic homogeneity.

Division and Unity

Mercantilism and colonialism empowered the states of western Europe; the United Kingdom (Britain) was the superpower of its day. But all countries, even Europe’s nation-states in their heyday, are subject to divisive stress- es. Political geographers use the term centrifugal forces

IRELAND

UNITED KINGDOM

PORTUGAL

SPAIN

FRANCE SWITZ.

ITALY

AUSTRIA

ALBANIA

BULGARIA

GREECE TURKEY

ROMANIAHUNGARY

CZECH. REP.

SLO VAK

POLAND

UKRAINE

MOLDOVA

BELARUS

LITHUANIA RUSSIA

LATVIA

ESTONIA

GERMANY

DENMARK

SWEDEN

NORWAY

FINLAND

NETH.

BEL.

LUX.

R U S S I A

BOSNIA

CROATIA SLOVENIA

MACEDONIA

1840s

1850s 1870s

1880s1860s DONBASSILESIA

SAXONY

RUHR

MIDLANDS

Paris

London

SERBIA

MONTENEGRO KOSOVO

EUROPE: SPREAD OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

0 500 Kilometers250

250 500 Miles

8 9

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50 C H A P T E R 1 ● E U R O P E

to identify and measure the strength of such division, which may result from religious, racial, linguistic, polit- ical, economic, or regional factors.

Centrifugal forces are measured against centripetal forces, the binding, unifying glue of the state. Gener- al satisfaction with the system of government and administration, legal institutions, and other functions of the state (notably including its treatment of minori- ties) can ensure stability and continuity when cen- trifugal forces threaten. In the recent case of Yugoslavia, the centrifugal forces unleashed after the end of the Cold War exceeded the weak centripetal forces in that relatively young state, and it disintegrat- ed with dreadful consequences.

Europe’s political evolution continues, but overall it is going in a different direction. Today a growing majority of European states and their leaders recognize that closer association and regional coordination form the key to a more stable and secure future. A realmwide union is in the making, and it is not incon- ceivable that a European superstate may at some future time emerge from this process.

CONTEMPORARY EUROPE

If you were to arrive by air or ship in Europe for a visit, you would probably be impressed by the modernity of its infrastructure. Airports tend to be modern and spa- cious, and security operates smoothly. Public transport, from high-speed intercity trains to local buses, is effi- cient and seems to reach even the most remote places. Superhighways connect major cities, although Europe’s relatively compact, old, and densely-built-up urban areas tend to delay incoming automobiles and cause traffic jams that will look familiar. Ultramodern high- rise architecture and historic preservation give Europe a cultural landscape welding the future to the past. From nuclear power plants (France) and offshore oil platforms (Norway) to flood-control technology (Netherlands) and mega-ship construction (Finland), as well as in countless other enterprises, Europe is in the vanguard of the world. In 2008, eight of Europe’s national economies ranked among the top 20 in the world; collectively, Europe’s economies outrank even the United States.

Collectively—but that’s the problem. Europe does not have a long-term history of collective action. Europe has historically been a crucible of political rev- olution and evolution. Its nation-states, enriched and empowered by their colonial conquests, fought with

each other at home and abroad, dragging distant peo- ples into their wars and plunging the world into glob- al conflict twice during the twentieth century. After the end of World War II in the mid-1940s, Europeans saw their ravaged realm divided in the Cold War between Western and Soviet spheres. The countries on the west- ern side of the “Iron Curtain” embarked on a massive effort not only to recover, but also to put old divisions permanently behind them. Assisted by the United States, they moved far along the road to unification— especially in the economic arena. But, as we will see later in this chapter, Europe’s old fractiousness has not been overcome.

Language and Religion

It is worth remembering that Europe’s territory is just over 60 percent the size of the United States, but that the population of Europe’s 40 countries is about twice as large as America’s. This population of 594 million speaks numerous languages, almost all of which belong to the Indo-European language family (Figs. 1-8, G-10). But most of those languages are not mutually understandable; some, such as Finnish and Hungarian, are not even members of this Indo-European family. When the unification effort began, one major problem was to determine which languages to recognize as “offi- cial.” That problem still prevails, although English has become the realm’s unofficial lingua franca. During your visit to Europe, though, you would find that Eng- lish is more commonly usable in western Europe than farther east. Europe’s multilingualism remains a major barrier to integration.

Another centrifugal force confronting Europeans in- volves religion. Europe’s cultural heritage is steeped in Christian traditions, but sectarian strife between Catholics and Protestants that plunged parts of the realm into bitter and widespread conflict still divides commu- nities and, as until recently in Northern Ireland, can still arouse violence. Some political parties still carry the name “Christian,” for example, Germany’s Christian Democrats. But today, a new factor roils the religious landscape: the rise of Islam. In the east, this takes the form of new Islamic assertiveness in an old Muslim bas- tion: the (Turkish) Ottoman Empire left behind millions of converts from Bosnia to Bulgaria among whom many are demanding greater political power. In the west, this Islamic resurgence results from the relatively recent immigration of millions of Muslims from North Africa and other parts of the Islamic world. Here, as mosques overflow with the faithful, churches stand nearly empty

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C O N T E M P O R A R Y E U R O P E 51

40°

50°

60°

40°

50°

60°

Arctic Circle

20° 10° 10° 20° 30° 40° 50°

30°20°10°Longitude East of Greenwich 0°

Longitude West of Greenwich

0°

2525

25 25

4545

40 40

4 4

11 10

40 40

AT L A N T I C O C E A N

N o r t h S e a

Black Sea

A dr ia t ic

Sea

Mediterranean Sea

B a

l t i c

S e

PO RT

UG UE

GALICIAN

CATALAN

BRETON

DUTCH

CZECH SLOVAK

GREEK TURKISH

HUNGARIAN

BELARUSSIAN

LATVIAN

ESTONIAN

KARELIAN

SAA MI

R U

S S

I A

N O

R W

E G

I A N

DANISH

ICELANDIC

F I N

N I S

IR IS

H GA

ELI C

ENGLISH

I T A

L I A

BASQUE

ROMANIAN

YS IAN

S P A N I S H

GERMAN

P O L I S H

U K R A I N I A N

FAEROESE

SERBO-CROATIANPROVENÇAL

CATALAN

ENGLISH

SC OT

GA ELIC ENGLISH

LITHUANIAN

SLO VEN

MACEDONIAN

BULGARIAN

SAMOYEDIC SAAMI (LAPP)

ALSATIAN

CORSICAN- ITALIAN

SARDINIAN- ITALIAN

SA AM

K O M

WALLOON

SAAMI (LAPP)

F R E N C H

ALBANIAN

S W

E D

I S H

LANGUAGES OF EUROPE 600 Kilometers200 4000

100 300 Miles0 200

OTHER INDO-EUROPEAN BRANCHES CELTIC GROUP

BALTIC GROUP

HELLENIC

THRACIAN/ILLYRIAN GROUP

INDO-IRANIAN GROUP

BRITANNIC

32 Breton 33 Welsh

GAELISH

34 Irish Gaelic 35 Scots Gaelic

36 Latvian 37 Lithuanian

38 Greek

39 Albanian

40 Romani (dispersed)

URALIC LANGUAGE FAMILY

ALTAIC LANGUAGE FAMILY

OTHER LANGUAGES

FINNO-UGRIC GROUP

SAMOYEDIC GROUP

TURKIC GROUP

BASQUE

41 Finnish 42 Karelian 43 Saami

44 Estonian 45 Hungarian 46 Komi

47 Samoyedic

48 Turkish

49 Basque

MAJOR INDO-EUROPEAN BRANCHES GERMANIC GROUP

ROMANCE GROUP

SLAVIC GROUP

WESTERN GERMANIC

1 Dutch 2 German 3 Frysian 4 English

WEST SLAVONIC

21 Polish 22 Slovak 23 Czech 24 Lusatian

EAST SLAVONIC

25 Russian 26 Ukrainian 27 Belarussian

SOUTH SLAVONIC

28 Slovene 29 Serbo-Croatian 30 Macedonian 31 Bulgarian

NORTHERN GERMANIC

5 Danish 6 Swedish 7 Norwegian

10 Portuguese 11 Spanish 12 Catalan 13 Provençal 14 French 15 Italian

16 Rhaeto-Romansch 17 Romanian 18 Corsican-Italian 19 Sardinian-Italian 20 Walloon

8 Icelandic 9 Faeroese

Areas with significant concentrations of other languages (usually adjacent national languages)

Boundary between languages

After Murphy, 1998.

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52 C H A P T E R 1 ● E U R O P E

developed a system of production that focused on Rome, not primarily on regional exchange. Modern Europeans seized on the same opportunities to create a realmwide network of spatial interaction whose structure intensi- fied as time went on, linking places, communities, and countries in countless ways. The geographer Edward Ullman envisaged this process as operating on three principles:

• Complementarity When one area produces a sur- plus of a commodity required by another area, re- gional complementarity prevails. The mere existence of a particular resource or product is no guarantee of trade: it must be needed elsewhere. When two areas each require the other’s products, double comple- mentarity occurs. Europe exhibits countless exam- ples of this complementarity, from local communities to entire countries. Industrial Italy needs coal from western Europe; western Europe needs Italy’s farm products.

• Transferability The ease with which a commodity can be transported by producer to consumer defines its transferability. Distance and physical obstacles can raise the cost of a product to the point of unprof- itability. But Europe is small, distances are short, and Europeans have built the world’s most efficient transport system of roads, railroads, and canals link- ing navigable rivers.

• Intervening Opportunity The third of Ullman’s spatial interaction principles holds that potential trade between two places, even if they are in a position of strong complementarity and high transferability, will develop only in the absence of a closer, intervening source of supply. To use our earlier example, if Switzerland proved to contain large coal reserves close to the Italian border, Italy would avail itself of that opportunity, reducing or eliminating its imports from more distant western Europe.

A Highly Urbanized Realm

Such opportunities for spatial interaction and exchange contribute to an ever-increasing level of urbanization in Europe. Overall, about three of every four Europeans live in towns and cities, an average that is far exceeded in the west (see Data Table inside back cover) but not yet attained in much of the east. Large cities are production centers as well as marketplaces, and they also form the crucibles of their nations’ cultures. By several measures, European cities are more diverse than their American counterparts.

The geographer Mark Jefferson during the 1930s stud- ied the pivotal role of great cities in the development of

as secularism among Europeans is on the rise. Some scholars have gone so far as to describe Europe as hav- ing entered a “post-Christian” era.

For so small a realm, Europe’s cultural geography is sharply varied. The popular image of Europe tends to be formed by British pageantry, French countrysides, Ger- man cities—but go beyond this core, and you will find isolated Slavic communities in the mountains facing the Adriatic, Muslim towns in poverty-mired Albania, Roma (Gypsy) villages in the interior of Romania, farmers using traditional methods unchanged for centuries in rural Poland. That map of 40 countries does not begin to reflect the diversity of European cultures.

Spatial Interaction

If not culture, what does unify Europe? The answer lies in this realm’s outstanding opportunities for productive interaction. The ancient Romans realized it, but they

The French high-speed train TGV (Trés Grande Vitesse, meaning Very High Speed) symbolizes France’s modernization as does its global leadership in nuclear-power generation. The expanding TGV rail network, requiring the construction of elaborate viaducts and dedicated tracks, provides intercity passengers with an alternative to air travel. This train, seen as it speeds over the Ventabren Viaduct in Provence, left Calais on France’s north coast at 4:30 pm, stopped in Paris and Lyon, and reached Marseille on the Mediterranean, 1067 km (662 mi) away, three and a half hours later. The TGV is a project of the France’s state-run rail company, not a private initiative. © AP/Wide World Photos.

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C O N T E M P O R A R Y E U R O P E 53

national cultures. He postulated a “law” of the primate city, which stat- ed that “a country’s leading city is always disproportionately large and exceptionally expressive of national culture.” This obviously debatable “law” still has relevance: Paris per- sonifies France in countless ways; nothing in the United Kingdom rivals London; Athens anchors and domi- nates Greece. Europe’s primate cities have also grown disproportionately since the end of World War II, gain- ing rather than losing primacy in this still-urbanizing realm.

Cityscapes

Primate cities tend to be old, and in general the European cityscape looks quite different from the American. Seemingly haphazard inner-city street systems impede traffic; central cities may be picturesque, but they are also cramped. The urban layout of the London region (Fig. 1-9) reveals much about the internal spatial struc- ture of the European metropolis (the central city plus its suburban ring). Such a metropolitan area remains focused on the large city at its center, especially the downtown central business district (CBD), which is the oldest part of the urban agglomeration and contains the region’s largest concentration of business, government, and shopping facilities as well as its wealthiest and most prestigious residences. Wide residential sectors radiate outward from the CBD across the rest of the central city,

each one home to a particular income group. Beyond the central city lies a sizeable suburban ring, but residential densities are much higher here than in the United States because the European tradition is one of setting aside recreational spaces (in “greenbelts”) and living in apart- ments rather than in detached single-family houses. There also is a greater reliance on public transportation, which further concentrates the suburban development pattern. That has allowed many nonresidential activities

Leighton

Dunstable Luton

Hitchin

HarlowHertford

Welwyn Garden

City

St. Albans

Watford

Hemel Hempstead

High Wycombe

Chigwell Brentwood

South Benfleet Southend-

on-Sea

LONDON

Maidenhead Slough

Bracknell

Wokingham Chertsey Camberley

Fleet

Aldershot Godalming

Guildford

Leatherhead Caterham

Crawley Tunbridge Wells

Tunbridge

Maidstone

Chatham

Dartford Heathrow Airport

Gatwick Airport

Thames Barrier

Chestnut

Silvertown

Windsor Greenwich

The City

Bletchley METROPOLITAN LONDON Built-up area

Greenbelt

Road

Railroad

0 10 20 Kilometers5

Central Business District

5 10 Miles

If you were to be asked what city might be shown here, would Paris spring to mind? Most images of France’s capital show venerable landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower or the Arc de Triomphe or other landmarks of the Old City. But this is another Paris, the district called La Défense, where Paris shows its ultramodern face. This is where Paris escapes the height restrictions and architectural limitations of the historic center, where glass-boxed highrises reflect the vibrant global city this is, and where the landmark is the “Cube,” a huge open structure admired as well as reviled (as was the Eiffel Tower in its time). Set just slightly off the axis created by the Champs Elysées beyond, the Cube is the focus for the high-tech, financial, and service hub La Défense has become. Look in the distance and you will see the Arc de Triomphe appropriately (as some would see it) diminished, and the Eiffel Tower to its right, just a needle rising from the vast urban tapestry that is Paris today. © Pascal Crapet/Stone/Getty Images, Inc.

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F R O M T H E F I E L D N O T E S

“After taking the train from Schiphol Airport to Rotterdam and checking into my downtown hotel, I took a train from the ‘Central Station’ (which was in the middle of one huge construction site) to what the Dutch call ‘Hoek van Holland’ (‘Corner of Holland’) on the North Sea coast, where huge ferries disembark thousands of travelers from England and elsewhere daily. A colleague had advised me to get off at Maassluis and walk the streets for a sense of the history as well as the modern changes going on here. Certainly the growing Islamic presence is transforming cultural landscapes in Europe, but not just in the cities. Even in small towns like this, the minarets of mosques rise between the spires of churches and, as is the case here, the local mosque is the centerpiece for a multipurpose Muslim cultural center that serves as a social (and political) center in ways that churches do not. A couple of generations ago, the people living in those apartments might have expected to overlook a church, but today their vista is quite different.” © H. J. de Blij.

Concept Caching

www.conceptcaching.com

54 C H A P T E R 1 ● E U R O P E

in a European Union (EU) where unemployment is already high, get involved in petty crime or the drug trade, are harassed by the police, and turn to their faith for solace and reassurance. Unlike most other immigrant groups, Muslim communities also tend to resist assimi- lation, making Islam the essence of their identity. In Britain alone there are more than 1500 mosques; and wherever they appear, local cultural landscapes are trans- formed (see photo below).

The Growing Multicultural Challenge

In truth, European governments have not done enough to foster the very integration they see Muslims reject- ing. The French assumed that their North African

to suburbanize as well, and today ultramodern outlying business centers increasingly compete with the CBD in many parts of urban Europe (see photo on page 53).

A Changing Population

When a population urbanizes, average family size declines, and so does the overall rate of natural increase. There was a time when Europe’s population was (in the terminology of population geographers) exploding, sending millions to the New World and the colonies and still growing at home. But today Europe’s indigenous population, unlike most of the rest of the world’s, is actually shrinking. To keep a pop- ulation from declining, the (statistically) average woman must bear 2.1 children. For Europe as a whole, that figure was 1.5 in 2008. But several large countries recorded 1.3, including Germany, Italy, and Poland. And two eastern European countries (Slovakia and Bosnia) even recorded 1.2—the lowest ever seen in any human population.

Such negative population growth poses serious chal- lenges for any nation. When the population pyramid becomes top-heavy, the number of workers whose taxes pay for the social services of the aged goes down, leading to reduced pensions and dwindling funds for health care. Governments that impose tax increases endanger the busi- ness climate; their options are limited. Europe, especially western Europe, is experiencing a population implosion that will be a formidable challenge in decades to come.

Immigrant Infusions

Meanwhile, immigration is partially offsetting the loss- es European countries face. Millions of Turkish Kurds (mainly to Germany), Algerians (France), Moroccans (Spain), West Africans (Britain), and Indonesians (Netherlands) are changing the social fabric of what once were nearly unicultural nation-states. As noted above, one key dimension of this change is the spread of Islam in Europe (mapped in Fig. 1-10). Muslim populations in eastern Europe (such as Albania’s, Kosovo’s, and Bosnia’s) are local, Slavic communities converted dur- ing the period of Ottoman rule. The Muslim sectors of western European countries, on the other hand, represent more recent immigrations.

The vast majority of these immigrants are intensely devout, politically aware, and culturally insular. They continue to arrive in a Europe where native populations are stagnant or declining, where religious institutions are weakening, where secularism is rapidly rising, where political positions often appear to be anti-Islamic, and where cultural norms are incompatible with Muslim tra- ditions. Many young men, unskilled and uncompetitive

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C O N T E M P O R A R Y E U R O P E 55

Adriatic Sea

A egean

Sea

NorwegianSea

Sea Irish

Black S ea

ATLANTICOCEAN

North Sea

Seine R.

Rhine R.

R hô

ne R

Danube R.

Dnieper R.

Baltic Sea

Mediterranean

Sea

Dniester R.

Po R.

Tagus R.

Ebro R.

Thames R. Elbe R.

Danu be R.Loire R.

Vistula R.

Western Dvina R .

S W

E D

E N

N O

R W

A Y

F I N

L A

N D

IREL AN

I C E L A N D

SDNALRE HTEN

BELGIUM

LUXEMBOURG

ANDORRA

GERMANY

FRANCE SWITZERLAND

MONACO

AUSTRIA

CZECH REP.

POLAND

SPAIN

TUNISIA MALTA CYPRUS

U K R A I N E

BELARUS

LITHUANIA

RUSSIA

LATVIA

ESTONIA R U S

S I A

T U R K E Y

DENMARKUNITED

KINGDOM

FaeroeIslands(Den.)

GREECE

BULGARIA

MACE- DONIA

ALBANIA

BOSNIA SERBIA

ROMANIA

MOLDOVA

SLO VEN

CROATIA

HUNGARY

SLOV AKIA

PO RT

U G

LIECHTENSTEIN

ALGERIA

MOROCCO

LIBYA

EGYPT

ITALY

MONTENEGRO

KOSOVO

30° 20° 10° 0° 10° 20° 30° 40° 50°

60°

50°

40°

10°

0°

20° 30°

40°

30°

50°

60°

Arctic Circle

Longitude East of Greenwich

EUROPE: MUSLIMS AS PERCENTAGE OF NATIONAL

POPULATION, 2010 Less than 1%

1–4%

4–7%

0 250 500 Kilometers

0 100 200 300 Miles

7–12%

12–25%

More than 25%

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56 C H A P T E R 1 ● E U R O P E

immigrants would aspire to assimilation as Muslim children went to public schools from their urban pub- lic-housing projects; instead, they got into disputes over the dress codes of Muslim girls. The Germans for decades would not award German citizenship to chil- dren of immigrant parents born on German soil. The British found their modest efforts at integration stymied by the Muslim practice of importing brides from Islamic countries, which had the effect of per- petuating segregation. In many European cities, the housing projects that form the living space of Muslim residents (by now many of them born and retired there) are dreadful, barren, impoverished environments unseen by Europeans whose images of Paris, Man- chester, or Frankfurt are far different.

The social and political implications of Europe’s demographic transformation are numerous and far-reach- ing. Long known for tolerance and openness, European societies are attempting to restrict immigration in various ways; political parties with anti-immigrant platforms are gaining ground. Multiculturalism poses a growing chal- lenge in a changing Europe.

EUROPE’S MODERN TRANSFORMATION

At the end of World War II, much of Europe lay shat- tered, its cities and towns devastated, its infrastructure wrecked, its economies ravaged. The Soviet Union had taken control over the bulk of eastern Europe, and com- munist parties seemed poised to dominate the political life of major western European countries.

In 1947, U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall proposed a European Recovery Program designed to help counter all this dislocation and to create stable political conditions in which democracy would survive. Over the next four years, the United States provided about $13 billion in assistance to Europe (about $100 billion in today’s money). Because the Soviet Union refused U.S. aid and forced its eastern European satel- lites to do the same, the Marshall Plan applied solely to 16 European countries, including defeated (West) Germany and Turkey.

European Unification

The Marshall Plan did far more than stimulate European economies. It confirmed European leaders’ conclusion that their countries needed a joint economic-administra- tive structure not only to coordinate the financial assis- tance, but also to ease the flow of resources and products

across Europe’s mosaic of boundaries, to lower restric- tive trade tariffs, and to seek ways to improve political cooperation.

Benelux Precedent

For all these needs Europe’s governments had some guidelines. While in exile in Britain, the leaders of three small countries—Belgium, the Netherlands, and Lux- embourg—had been discussing an association of this kind even before the end of the war. There, in 1944, they formulated and signed the Benelux Agreement, intend- ed to achieve total economic integration. When the Mar- shall Plan was launched, the Benelux precedent helped speed the creation of the Organization for European Eco- nomic Cooperation (OEEC), which was established to coordinate the investment of America’s aid (see the box entitled “Supranationalism in Europe”).

Supranationalism

Soon the economic steps led to greater political cooper- ation as well. In 1949, the participating governments cre- ated the Council of Europe, the beginnings of what was to become a European Parliament meeting in Strasbourg, France. Europe was embarked on still another political revolution, the formation of a multinational union involving a growing number of European states. Geo- graphers define supranationalism as the voluntary asso- ciation in economic, political, or cultural spheres of three or more independent states willing to yield some mea- sure of sovereignty for their mutual benefit. In later chap- ters we will encounter other supranational organizations, including the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), but none has reached the plateau achieved by the European Union (EU).

The EU’s administrative, economic, and even political framework has become so advanced that the organization now has a headquarters with many of the trappings of a cap- ital city. Early on, EU planners chose Brussels (already the national capital of Belgium, a member of Benelux) as the organization’s center of governance. But then, in order to avoid giving Brussels too much prominence, they chose Strasbourg, in the northeast corner of France, as the seat of the European Parliament, whose elected mem- bership represents all EU countries.

Policies and Priorities

In Europe, the key initiatives arose from the Marshall Plan and lay in the economic arena; political integration came more haltingly. Under the Treaty of Rome, six

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E U R O P E ’ S M O D E R N T R A N S F O R M A T I O N 57

countries joined to become the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1957, also called the “Common Market.” In 1973 the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Den- mark joined, and the renamed European Community (EC) had nine members. As Figure 1-11 shows, mem- bership reached 15 countries in 1995, after the organi- zation had been renamed yet one more time to become the European Union (EU). Since then, the number of member-states has climbed to 27.

The European Union is not just a paper organization for bankers and manufacturers. It has a major impact on the daily lives of its member-countries’ citizens in count- less ways. (You will see one of these ways when you arrive at an EU airport and find that EU-passport hold- ers move through inspection at a fast pace, while non- EU citizens wait in long immigration lines.) Taxes tend to be high in Europe, and those collected in the richer member-states are used to subsidize growth and devel- opment in the less prosperous ones. This is one of the

Supranationalism In Europe 1944 Benelux Agreement signed. 1947 Marshall Plan created (effective 1948–1952). 1948 Organization for European Economic Cooperation

(OEEC) established. 1949 Council of Europe created. 1951 European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) Agree-

ment signed (effective 1952). 1957 Treaty of Rome signed, establishing European Economic

Community (EEC) (effective 1958), also known as the Common Market and “The Six.” European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM) Treaty signed (effective 1958).

1959 European Free Trade Association (EFTA) Treaty signed (effective 1960).

1961 United Kingdom, Ireland, Denmark, and Norway apply for EEC membership.

1963 France vetoes United Kingdom EEC membership; Ire- land, Denmark, and Norway withdraw applications.

1965 EEC–ECSC–EURATOM Merger Treaty signed (effec- tive 1967).

1967 European Community (EC) inaugurated. 1968 All customs duties removed for intra-EC trade; com-

mon external tariff established. 1973 United Kingdom, Denmark, and Ireland admitted as

members of EC, creating “The Nine.” Norway rejects membership in the EC by referendum.

1979 First general elections for a European Parliament held; new 410-member legislature meets in Strasbourg. Euro- pean Monetary System established.

1981 Greece admitted as member of EC, creating “The Ten.” 1985 Greenland, acting independently of Denmark, with-

draws from EC. 1986 Spain and Portugal admitted as members of EC, creat-

ing “The Twelve.” Single European Act ratified, target- ing a functioning European Union in the 1990s.

1987 Turkey and Morocco make first application to join EC. Morocco is rejected; Turkey is told that discussions will continue.

1990 Charter of Paris signed by 34 members of the Confer- ence on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). Former East Germany, as part of newly reunified Ger- many, incorporated into EC.

1991 Maastricht meeting charts European Union (EU) course for the 1990s.

1993 Single European Market goes into effect. Modified European Union Treaty ratified, transforming EC into EU.

1995 Austria, Finland, and Sweden admitted into EU, creat- ing “The Fifteen.”

1999 European Monetary Union (EMU) goes into effect. 2001 Denmark’s voters reject EMU participation by 53 to

47 percent. 2002 The euro is introduced as historic national currencies

disappear in 12 countries. 2003 First draft of a European constitution is published to

mixed reviews from member-states. 2004 Historic expansion of EU from 15 to 25 countries with

the admission of Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia.

2005 Proposed EU Constitution is disapproved by voters in France and the Netherlands.

2007 Romania and Bulgaria are admitted, bringing total EU membership to 27 countries. Slovenia adopts the euro.

2008 Cyprus and Malta adopt the euro. 2009 Slovakia becomes the sixteenth adopter of the euro.

burdens of membership that is not universally popular in the EU, to say the least. But it has strengthened the economies of Portugal, Greece, and other national and regional economies to the betterment of the entire orga- nization. Some countries also object to the terms and rules of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which, according to critics, supports farmers far too much and, according to others, far too little. (France in partic- ular obstructs efforts to move the CAP closer to con- sensus, subsidizing its agricultural industry relentlessly while arguing that this protects its rural cultural heritage as well as its farmers.)

New Money

Ever since the first steps toward European unification were taken, EU planners dreamed of a time when the EU would have a single currency not only to symbolize

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58 C H A P T E R 1 ● E U R O P E

its strengthening unity but also to establish a joint counterweight to the mighty American dollar. A Euro- pean Monetary Union (EMU) became a powerful ob- jective of EU planners, but many observers thought it unlikely that member-states would in the end be willing to give up their historic marks, francs, guilders, liras, and escudos. Yet it happened. In 2002, twelve of the (then) 15 EU countries withdrew their currencies and began using the euro, with only the United King- dom (Britain), Denmark, and Sweden staying out (Fig. 1-11). Add nonmember Norway to this group, and not

M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a

North

Sea

ATLANTIC OCEAN

A R C T I C O C E A N

Black Sea

Baltic Sea

RUSSIA

CZECH REPUBLIC

SLOVAKIA

ROMANIA

MOLDOVAHUNGARY AUSTRIA

1995

SLOVENIA CROATIA

BOSNIA

ALBANIA

SERBIA

KOSOVO

MACE- DONIA

GREECE 1981

BULGARIAITALY

1990

PO RT

UG AL

LIECHTENSTEIN

BELGIUM

Arctic Circle

20° 10° 0° 10° 20° 30°

50°

40°

20° 30°10°0°

40°

50°

60°

MALTA

POLAND

UKRAIN E

BELARUS

SPAIN 1986

1986

FRANCE SWITZERLAND

LUXEMBOURG

GERMANY

UNITEDKINGDOM1973

IRELAND1973

NETHERLANDS

DENMARK 1973

NORWAY

SWEDEN 1995

FINLAND 1995

2004

2004 2004

2004

2007

2004

ESTONIA

LATVIA

LITHUANIA

ICELAND

RUSSI A

TURKE Y

CYPRU S

Longitude East of Greenwich

MONTENEGRO

EUROPEAN SUPRANATIONALISM

600 Kilometers2000 400

300 Miles1000 200

Later EC/EU members (joined 1973–2007)

Discussions in progress

No early prospects

Countries voting against membership

Original EEC members (joined 1958)

Euro adopters as of Jan. 1, 2009

a single Scandinavian country converted to the euro. On the other hand, Slovenia adopted the euro in 2007, Cyprus and Malta in 2008, and Slovakia became the sixteenth adopter in 2009.

Momentous Expansion

Expansion has always been an EU objective, and the sub- ject has always aroused passionate debate (see the Issue Box on p. 60 titled “Europe: How Desirable Is Econom-

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The Berlaymont building in Brussels, renovated for use by the European Commission and now known as the Berlaymont Commission Building, serves as the EU’s executive headquarters. The renovation itself (some would say true to EU form) was attended by years of chaos and scandal, cost overruns, and lengthy delays, and locals refer to it as the “Berlaymonster.” You might think that the EU flag and the national flags of the member–states would fly from the poles, but look carefully and you will see another pattern. Strange, n’est ce pas? © Associated Press.

E U R O P E ’ S M O D E R N T R A N S F O R M A T I O N 59

ic and Political Union?”). Will the incorporation of weak- er economies undermine the strength of the whole? Despite such misgivings, negotiations to expand the EU have long been in progress and still continue. In 2004 a momentous milestone was reached: ten new members were added, creating a greater European Union with 25 member-states. Geographically, these ten came in three groups: three Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania); five contiguous states in eastern Europe, extending from Poland and the Czech Republic through Slovakia, Hun- gary, and Slovenia; and two Mediterranean island-states, the ministate of Malta and the still-divided state of Cyprus. And in 2007, both Romania and Bulgaria were incorpo- rated, raising the number of members to 27 and extend- ing the EU to the shores of the Black Sea (Fig. 1–11).

Numerous structural implications arise from this, affecting all EU countries. A common agricultural poli- cy is now even more difficult to achieve, given the poor condition of farming in most of the new members. Also, some of the former EU’s poorer states, which were on the receiving end of the subsidy program that aided their development, now will have to pay up to support the much poorer new eastern members. And disputes over representation at EU’s Brussels headquarters arose quickly. Even before the newest members’ accession, Poland was demanding that the representative system favor medium-sized members (such as Poland and Spain) over larger ones such as Germany and France.

The Remaining Outsiders

This momentous expansion is having major geographic consequences for all of Europe, and not just the EU. As Figure 1-11 shows, following the admission of Romania and Bulgaria in 2007, two groups of countries and peo- ples are still left outside the Union:

1. States emerging from the former Yugoslavia plus Albania. In this cluster of western Balkan states, most of them troubled politically and economically, only Slovenia has achieved full membership. The remain- der rank among Europe’s poorest and most ethnical- ly fractured states, but they contain nearly 25 million people whose circumstances could worsen outside “the club.” Better, EU leaders reason, to move them toward membership by demanding political, social, and economic reforms, although the process will take many years. Discussions with Croatia began in 2005 and with newly independent Montenegro in 2006, but the aftermath of war and other problems are holding up Serbia’s invitation. Elsewhere, ethnically and polit- ically divided Bosnia seemed far from ready for negotiations, Albania was even less prepared, and un-

resolved issues continue to roil newly-independent Kosovo (see p. 95). Note that this area of least-pre- pared countries also is the most Islamic corner of Europe.

2. Ukraine and its neighbors. Four former Soviet republics in Europe’s “far east” could some day join the EU, (even Belarus, until recently the most disinterest- ed, may now be leaning in that direction). The govern- ment of Ukraine, however, has shown interest, although its electorate is strongly (and regionally) divided between a pro-EU west and a pro-Russian east. As we shall see later, Moldova views the EU as a potential sup- porter in a struggle against devolution along its eastern flank, and in 2006 a country not even on the map— Georgia, across the Black Sea from Ukraine—pro- claimed its interest in EU membership for similar reasons: to find an ally against Russian intervention in its internal affairs.

An Islamic EU Member?

We should take note of still another potential candidate for EU membership: Turkey. EU leaders would like to include a mainly Muslim country in what Islamic states

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60 C H A P T E R 1 ● E U R O P E

IN SUPPORT OF UNION

“As a public servant in the French government I have been personally affected by the events of the past half-century. I am in favor of European unification because Europe is a realm of comparatively small countries, all of which will ben- efit from economic and political union. Europe’s history is bedeviled by its fragmentation—its borders and barriers and favored cores and disadvantaged peripheries, its different economies and diverse currencies, its numerous languages and varied cultures. Now we have the opportunity and deter- mination to overcome these divisions and to create an enti- ty whose sum is greater than its parts, a supranational Europe that will benefit all of its members.

“In the process we will not only establish a common cur- rency, eliminate trade tariffs and customs barriers among our members, and enable citizens of one member-state to live and work in any of the others. We will also make European laws that will supersede the old “national” laws and create regulations that will be adhered to by all members on matters ranging from subsidies to help small farms survive to rules regarding environmental protection. In order to assist the poorer members of this European Union, the richer members will send billions of euros to the needy ones, paid for from the taxes levied on their citizens. This has already lifted Spain and Ireland from poverty to prosperity. But to ensure that “national” economies do not get out of line, there will be rules to govern their fiscal policies, including a debt limit of 3 percent of GDP.

“The EU will require sacrifices from people and govern- ments, but the rewards will make these worth it. Our Euro- pean Parliament, with representatives from all member- countries, is the harbinger of a truly united Europe. The Euro- pean Commission deals with the practical problems as we move toward unification, including the momentous EU enlargement of 2004. A half-century after the first significant steps were taken, the EU has 27 member-states including for- mer wartime enemies, reformed communist economies, and newly independent entities. Rather than struggling alone, these member-states will form part of an increasingly pros- perous and economically powerful whole.

“I hope that administrative coordination and economic union will be followed by political unification. The ultimate goal of this great movement should be the creation of a fed- eral United States of Europe, a worthy competitor and coun- tervailing force in a world dominated by another federation, the United States of America.”

IN OPPOSITION TO THE EUROPEAN UNION

“I am a taxi driver in Vienna, Austria, and here’s something to consider: the bureaucrats, not the workers, are the great proponents of this European Union plan. Let me ask you this: how many member-countries’ voters have had the chance to tell their governments whether they want to join the EU and submit to all those confounded regulations? It all happened before we realized the implications. At least the Norwegians had common sense: they stayed out of it, because they did- n’t want some international body to tell them what to do with their oil and gas and their fishing industry. But I can tell you this: if the workers of Europe had had the chance to vote on each step in this bureaucratic plot, we’d have ended it long ago.

“So what are we getting for it? Higher prices for every- thing, higher taxes to pay for those poor people in southern Italy and needy Portugal, costly environmental regulations,

and—here’s the worst of it—a flood of cheap labor and an uncontrolled influx of immigrants. Notice that this recent 2004 expansion wasn’t voted on by the Germans (they’re too small to matter much, but Germany is the largest EU

member), and do you know why? Because the German gov- ernment knew well and good that the people wouldn’t sup- port this ridiculous scheme. This whole European Union program is concocted by the elite, and we have to accept it whether we like it or not.

“Does make me wonder, though. Do these EU planners have any notion of the real Europe they’re dealing with? They talk about how those ‘young democracies’ joining in 2004 will have their democratic systems and their market reforms locked into place by being part of the Union, but I have friends who try to do business in Poland and Slovakia, and they tell me that there may be democracy, but all they expe- rience is corruption, from top to bottom. I’ll bet that those subsidies we’ll be paying for to help these ‘democracies’ get on their feet will wind up in Swiss bank accounts. By the way, the Swiss, you’ll notice, aren’t EU members either. Wonder why?

“A United States of Europe? Not as far as I am concerned. I am Austrian, and I am and will always be a nationalist as far as my country is concerned. I speak German, but already English is becoming the major EU language, though the Brits were smart enough not to join the euro. I’m afraid that these European Commission bureaucrats have their heads in the clouds, which is why they can’t see the real Europe they’re putting in a straitjacket.”

Europe: How Desirable Is Economic and Political Union?

Vote your opinion at www.wiley.com/college/deblij

Regional ISSUE

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E U R O P E ’ S M O D E R N T R A N S F O R M A T I O N 61

sometimes call the “Christian Club,” but Turkey needs progress on social standards, human rights, and econo- mic policies before its accession can be contemplated. Still, the fact that the EU has now reached deeply into eastern Europe, encompasses 27 members, has a com- mon currency and a parliament, is developing a consti- tution, and is even considering expansion beyond the realm’s borders constitutes a tremendous and historic achievement in this fragmented, fractious part of the world. The EU now has a combined population of just under 500 million constituting one of the world’s rich- est markets; its member-states account for more than 40 percent of the world’s exports.

It is remarkable that all this has been accomplished in little more than half a century. Some of the EU’s leaders want more than economic union: they envisage a United States of Europe, a political as well as an economic com- petitor for the United States. To others, such a “federal- ist” notion is an abomination not even to be mentioned (the British in general are especially wary of such an idea). Whatever happens, Europe is going through still another of its revolutionary changes, and when you study its evolv- ing map you are looking at history in the making.

Centrifugal Forces

For all its dramatic progress toward unification, Europe remains a realm of geographic contradictions. Europeans are well aware of their history of conflict, division, and repeated self-destruction. Will supranationalism finally overcome the centrifugal forces that have so long and so frequently afflicted this part of the world?

Devolutionary Pressures

Even as Europe’s states have been working to join forces in the EU, many of those same states are confronting severe centrifugal stresses. The term devolution has come into use to describe the powerful centrifugal forces whereby regions or peoples within a state, through nego- tiation or active rebellion, demand and gain political strength and sometimes autonomy at the expense of the center. Most states exhibit some level of internal region- alism, but the process of devolution is set into motion when a key centripetal binding force—the nationally accepted idea of what a country stands for—erodes to the point that a regional drive for autonomy, or for out- right secession, is launched. As Figure 1-12 shows, numerous European countries are affected by devolution.

States respond to devolutionary pressures in various ways, ranging from accommodation to suppression. One way to deal with these centrifugal forces is to give his-

toric regions (such as Scotland or Catalonia) certain rights and privileges formerly held exclusively by the national government. Another answer is for EU member- states to create new administrative divisions that will allow the state to meet some (or all) regional demands. The EU’s central administration in Brussels has its own ideas as to what such regions or provinces should look like; indeed, many of the new State maps you will see later in this chapter (Figs. 1-15, 1-17, 1-20, 1-21) often result from negotiations between the EU and the nation- al government. But not all EU members are satisfied with the wisdom of the administrators in Brussels.

In some instances, the devolutionary forces were just too strong for any accommodation. Even before they became members of the EU, the Czechs and Slovaks, who had both been part of a country called Czechoslo- vakia, peacefully decided in 1993 that it was better to separate in what became known as the “velvet divorce” (today you see them on the EU map as the Czech Repub- lic and Slovakia). Elsewhere, as we will see, devolu- tionary forces produced violent fragmentation, and the potential exists for more of this. So even as the EU is consolidating, the threat of disintegration still haunts parts of the realm.

The EU’s New Economic Geography

Up to this point in the chapter, we have on occasion made casual references to longstanding distinctions between western and eastern as well as northern and southern Europe. Certainly those old regional designations still have some validity: “Western Europe” remains the core of the EU; “Eastern Europe” still is, on average, the poor- er, lagging part of the realm; and the cultural landscapes of northern (Nordic) and southern (Mediterranean) Europe, though converging, still differ markedly. But the establishment and continuing growth of the European Union have generated a new economic landscape that today not only transcends the old but is fundamentally reshaping the realm’s regional geography (as we will see in the next section).

Engines of Growth

By investing heavily in new infrastructure and by smoothing the flows of money, labor, and products, Eu- ropean planners have dramatically reduced the divisive effects of their national boundaries. And by acknowl- edging demands for greater freedom of action by their provinces, States, departments, and other administrative

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62 C H A P T E R 1 ● E U R O P E

units of their countries, European leaders unleashed a wave of economic energy that transformed some of these units into powerful engines of growth. When we look at regions and states in the second part of this chapter, we will have to pay attention to these emerging powerhous- es, which tend to be focused on major cities.

Four of these growth centers are especially noteworthy, to the point that geographers refer to them as the Four Motors of Europe: (1) France’s southeastern Rhône- Alpes Region, centered on the country’s second-largest city, Lyon; (2) Lombardy in north-central Italy, focused

on the industrial city of Milan; (3) Catalonia in north- eastern Spain, anchored by the cultural and manufactur- ing center of Barcelona; and (4) Baden-Württemberg in southwestern Germany, headquartered by the high-tech city of Stuttgart. Often, the local governments in these sub- regions simply bypass the governments in their national capitals, dealing not only with each other but even with foreign governments as their business networks span the globe. In this they are imitated by other provinces, all seek- ing to foster their local economies and, in the process, strengthen their political position relative to the state.

BASQUEREGION

LITHUANIA

CRIME A

I T A

L Y

IRELAND

UNITEDKINGDOM

F R A N C E

S P A I N

CATALONIA

BELGIUM HTUOS LORYT

CZECH REPUBLIC

CROATIA

SLOVAKIA

MACED ONIA

U K R A I N E

MOLDOV A

POLISH AREA

DARGNINILAK )AISSUR(

R U S S I ASCOTLAND

BOSNIA

SLAVONI A

TRANS- KOMAR

WALES

"PADANIA"

SCANIA

FINNMARK (SAAMIA)

KOSOV O

UPPER SILESIA

POLAND

NREH TRO

DNAL ERI

FRYSLAN

SERBIA GALICIA

NETH.

ACISROC ).RF(

SARDINIA (IT.)

DENMARK

S W E D E N N O R W A Y

RUSS IAN

SPHE RE

DNIEST RIATRAN

S-

TRANS YLVAN

ROMAN IA

FAEROE (DEN.)

ISLANDS

NORT HERN

CYPR US

40°

50°

60°

40°

50°

60°

20°10°0°10°20° 30° 50°40°

0° 10° 20° 30°Longitude East of Greenwich

Mediterranean Sea

ATLANTICOCEAN

Black Sea

North Sea

ARCTIC OCEAN

B a l t i c S e a

EUROPE: FOCI OF DEVOLUTIONARY PRESSURES, 2010

200 300 400 500 Miles

800 Kilometers600400200

1000

Affected states

States not affected

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R E G I O N S O F T H E R E A L M : C O R E A N D P E R I P H E R Y 63

Regional States

As Europe’s internal political barriers to trade disappear, and regional transferability grows accordingly, the realm’s economic geography changes in important ways. Provinces, States, and other subnational political units on opposite sides of international boundaries can now cooperate in pursuit of shared economic goals. Such cross-border cooperation creates a new economic map that seems to ignore the older political one, creat- ing what the Japanese economist Kenichi Ohmae calls regional states, meaning regional economic states. Moreover, this can occur at every geographic scale—from small, start-up, localized cross-border investments to mas- sive growth engines such as the Four Motors—and it is further changing the realm’s economic landscape.

All these developments underscore how far-reaching and irreversible Europe’s current transformation is. Euro- pean leaders understood the need for it; the Marshall Plan jump-started it; good economic times sustained it; and the end of the Cold War galvanized it. But Europe’s ultimate supranational goals have not yet been attained. The prob- lems of the old Eastern Europe remain evident in the Data

Table at the end of this book. The sense of have and have- not, core and periphery, still pervades EU operations and negotiations. Many Europeans, perhaps a majority, feel that the EU project is a bureaucratic edifice constructed by leaders who are out of touch with grass-roots Europe. Thus Europe’s quest for enduring unity continues.

● New states are still forming in Europe, where the modern state originated; Kosovo is the latest, but cultural passions may yet endanger that project.

● A resurgence of Scotland’s independence movement may imperil the unity of the “United” Kingdom.

● Public support in Islamic Turkey in favor of joining the (mostly Christian) European Union has dropped from more than 70 to less than 30 percent.

● Belarus, quarreling with Russia, shows signs of tilt- ing toward the EU.

POINTS TO PONDER

Regions of the Realm: Core and Periphery Our objective in this and later regional discussions is to become familiar with the regional and national frameworks of the realms under investigation, and to discover how indi- vidual states fit into and function within the larger mosa- ic. Even (perhaps especially) in this era of globalization, and even in integrating Europe, the state still plays a key role in the process. Where these states are located, how they interact, and what their prospects may be in this changing world are among the key questions we will address.

Europe presents us with a particular challenge because of its numerous countries and territories, and because of the continuing changes affecting its geography. Readers of this book who reside in North America tend to be accus- tomed to a familiar and relatively stable map of two coun- tries, with the United States divided into 50 States and Canada into 10 provinces and 3 territories; the biggest change in decades came in 1999 when Canada created the Territory of Nunavut. In Europe, on the other hand, 15 new national names have appeared on the political map since 1990, some of them revivals of old entities such as Esto- nia and Lithuania, others new and less familiar (Mon- tenegro, Moldova). And the process appears far from over: Kosovo became nominally independent in 2008, and Bel- gium may yet fracture the way Czechoslovakia did.

And Europe displays something else North America does not: microstates that do not have the attributes of “complete” states but are on the map as tiny yet separate entities

M A J O R C I T I E S O F T H E R E A L M

City Population* (in millions)

Amsterdam, Netherlands 1.0 Athens, Greece 3.2 Barcelona, Spain 5.0 Berlin, Germany 3.4 Brussels, Belgium 1.7 Frankfurt, Germany 3.7 London, UK 8.6 Lyon, France 1.4 Madrid, Spain 5.7 Milan, Italy 4.0 Paris, France 9.9 Prague, Czech Republic 1.2 Rome, Italy 3.3 Stuttgart, Germany 2.6 Vienna, Austria 2.3 Warsaw, Poland 1.7

*Based on 2010 estimates.

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64 C H A P T E R 1 ● E U R O P E

30° 20° 10° 0° 10° 20° 30°

60°

50°

40°

0° 10° 20° 30°

40°

50°

Longitude East of Greenwich

Arctic Circle

Adriatic Sea

Aegean Sea

NorwegianSea

Sea Irish

Black Se a

ATLANTICOCEAN

North Sea

Seine R.

Rhine R.

Rh ôn

e R.

Danube R.

Dnieper R.

Baltic Sea

Mediterranean

Sea

Dniester R.

Po R.

Tagus R.

Ebro R.

Loire R.

Thames R. Elbe R.

Danu be R.

Vistula R.

Western Dvina R.

S W

E D

E N

N O

R W

A Y

F I N

L A

N D

IREL AN

ITALY

I C E L A N D

NETHERLANDS

BELGIUM

LUXEMBOURG

GERMANY

FRANCE SWITZERLAND AUSTRIA

CZECH REP.

POLAND

SPAIN

MOROCCO ALGERIA TUNISIA MALTA CYPRUS

U K R A I N E

BELARUS

LITHUANIA

RUSSIA

LATVIA

ESTONIA

R U S S I A

T U R K E Y

DENMARKUNITED

KINGDOM

FaeroeIslands(Den.)

GREECE

BULGARIA

MACE- DONIA

ALBANIA

BOSNIA SERBIA

KOSOVO

ROMANIA

MOLDOVA

SLO VEN

CROATIA

HUNGARY

SLOV AKIA

PO RT

U G

LIECHTENSTEIN

MONTENEGRO

EUROPE: MODERN CORE AND HISTORIC REGIONS

European Core Boundary

Western Europe

British Isles

Northern (Nordic) Europe

Mediterranean Europe

Eastern Europe

0 250 500 Kilometers

0 100 200 300 Miles

nonetheless, such as Monaco, San Marino, Andorra, and Liechtenstein. Add to these the Russian exclave (outlier) of Kaliningrad (on the Baltic Sea) and the British dependency of Gibraltar (at the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea), and Europe seems to have a bewildering political mosaic indeed. The good news is that no comparable part of any other world geographic realm is as complicated as this.

How can we make it easier to refer to these countries and territories locationally? In the old days, Europe divid- ed rather easily into Western, Northern (Nordic), Medi-

terranean (Southern), and Eastern, and its countries could conveniently be grouped into these regions. Some of this historical geography lingers in cultural landscapes and still has residual relevance. But in the era of the Euro- pean Union and globalization, that regionalization scheme has become outdated—except as a very gener- al designation (it helps to know that Moldova lies in the east, Gibraltar in the south, Luxembourg in the west). So the “historic regions” shown in Fig. 1-13 are not regions in the functional sense.

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S T A T E S O F T H E M A I N L A N D C O R E 65

Core and Periphery

In the Introduction, we encountered the core-periphery phenomenon (pp. 28–30) that presents itself at all levels of spatial generalization. Europe is no exception, and the original Common Market still anchors what has become a core area for the entire European realm (Fig. 1-13). The British Isles form part of this Core, but the British—whose EU membership was delayed by a French veto and who never adopted the euro—still are not the full-fledged mem- bers the Germans, the French, and the Irish are. It is there- fore appropriate to consider the United Kingdom as a geographically distinct component of the European Core.

In the discussion that follows, we will focus first on countries such as Germany and France that lie entirely within the Core region we have delimited. Next, we dis- cuss countries with significant regions inside as well as outside the Core, for example Sweden, Spain, and Italy. Finally, our attention focuses on Europe’s Periphery.

STATES OF THE MAINLAND CORE

Not counting the microstate of Liechtenstein, eight states form the Mainland Core of Europe: dominant Germany and France, the three Benelux countries, the two land- locked mountain states of Switzerland and Austria, and the Czech Republic (Fig. 1-14). This is the European region sometimes still referred to as Western Europe, and its most populous country (Germany) also has Europe’s largest economy.

Reunited Germany

Twice during the twentieth century Germany plunged Europe and the world into war, until, in 1945, the defeat- ed and devastated German state was divided into two parts, West and East (see the delimitation in red on Fig. 1-15). Its eastern boundaries were also changed, leaving the industrial district of Silesia in newly defined Poland, that of Saxony in communist-ruled and Soviet-controlled East Germany, and the Ruhr in West Germany (see Fig. 1-14). Aware that these were the industrial centers that had enabled Nazi Germany to seek world domination through war, the victorious allies laid out this new boundary frame- work to make sure this would never happen again.

In the aftermath of World War II, Soviet and Allied administration of East and West Germany differed. Sovi- et rule in East Germany was established on the Russian- communist model and, given the extreme hardships the USSR had suffered at German hands during the war, harshly punitive. The American-led authority in West

Germany was less strict and aimed more at rehabilitation. When the Marshall Plan was instituted, West Germany was included, and its economy recovered rapidly. Mean- while, West Germany was reorganized politically into a modern federal state on democratic foundations.

Revival

West Germany’s economy thrived. Between 1949 and 1964 its gross national income (GNI) tripled while in- dustrial output rose 60 percent. It absorbed millions of German-speaking refugees from eastern Europe (and many escapees from communist East Germany as well). Since unemployment was virtually nonexistent, hun- dreds of thousands of Turkish Kurds and other foreign workers arrived to take jobs Germans could not fill or did not want.

Simultaneously, West Germany’s political leaders par- ticipated enthusiastically in the OEEC and in the nego- tiations that led to the six-member Common Market. Geography worked in West Germany’s favor: it had com- mon borders with all but one of the EEC member-states. Its transport infrastructure, rapidly rebuilt, was second to none in the realm. More than compensating for its loss of Saxony and Silesia were the expanding Ruhr (in the hinterland of the Dutch port of Rotterdam) and the newly emerging industrial complexes centered on Hamburg in the north, Frankfurt (the leading financial hub as well) in the center, and Stuttgart in the south. West Germany exported huge quantities of iron, steel, motor vehicles, machinery, textiles, and farm products. To this day, Ger- many has the largest export economy by value in the world.

Setback and Shock

No economy grows without setbacks and slowdowns, however, and Germany experienced such problems in the 1970s and 1980s, when energy shortages, declining com- petitiveness on world markets, lagging modernization (notably in the aging Ruhr), and social dilemmas involv- ing rising unemployment, an aging population, high tax- ation, and a backlash against foreign resident workers plagued West German society. And then, quite sudden- ly, the collapse of the communist Soviet Union opened the door to reunification with East Germany.

Germany Restored

In 1990, West Germany had a population of about 62 mil- lion and East Germany 17 million. Communist misrule in the East had yielded outdated factories, crumbling infra- structures, polluted environments, drab cities, inefficient

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66 C H A P T E R 1 ● E U R O P E

farming, and inadequate legal and other institutions. Reunification was more a rescue than a merger, and the cost to West Germany was enormous. When the West German government imposed sales-tax increases and an income-tax surcharge on its citizens, many Westerners doubted the wis- dom of reunification. It was projected that it would take decades to reconstruct Virginia-sized East Germany: ten years later, exports from the former East still contributed only about 7 percent of the national total. Regional dis- parity would afflict Germany for a very long time to come.

The Federal Republic

Before reunification, West Germany functioned as a fed- eral state consisting of ten States or Länder (Fig. 1-15). East Germany had been divided under communist rule

into 15 districts including East Berlin. Upon reunification, East Germany was reorganized into six new States based on traditional provinces within its borders. Figure 1-15 makes a key point: regional disparity in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) per person* remains a serious problem between the former East and West. Note that five of former East Germany’s six States (Berlin being the sole exception) are in the lowest income category, while most of the ten former West German States rank in the two higher income categories. In the first decade of this cen- tury, Germany’s economy was stagnant, raising unem-

Adriatic Sea

Mediterranean Sea

Tyrrhenian Sea

English Cha nnel S

tra it

of Do

ve r

Warta R.Elbe R.

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Em s

R .

W eser R.

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Barcelona

Brussels

0° 5°

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50° 50°

45°

10° 15°

15° 5°

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DENMARK

I T A L Y

LUX.

P y r e n e e s

SAN MARINO

PARIS BASIN

ALSACE

SAAR

SAX ON

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A l p

Longitude West of Greenwich Sardinia

(Italy)

ANDORRA

Luxembourg

R U H R

Amsterdam

Rotterdam Utrecht

NETH.

Lille Calais

Cherbourg Le Havre Rouen

Nantes

St. Nazaire

Brest

Le Mans

Tours

La Rochelle

Bordeaux

Limoges

Bilbao

Zaragoza

Toulouse

St. Etienne

Lyon

Dijon

F R A N C E

Grenoble

Marseille Nice MONACO

Geneva

Orléans

Bourges

Strasbourg

Metz

Essen

Cologne Bonn

Wiesbaden

Wuppertal Düsseldorf

Frankfurt

Mannheim

Stuttgart

Basel

Lucerne

Lausanne

Turin

Genoa

Milan

SWITZ.

Zürich LIECHTENSTEIN

Munich

Bologna

Florence

Rome

Venice

Corsica (Fr.)

Bastia

Ajaccio

Nuremberg

Innsbruck

Salzburg

Linz

AUSTRIA

SLOVENIA Ljubljana

Klagenfurt

CROATIA

Zagreb

HUNG.

Graz

Vienna

Brno

Wroclaw

CZECH RE PUBLIC

Chemnitz

Magdeburg

Halle Leipzig

DresdenGERMANY

Hannover

Emden

Bremen

Hamburg

Lübeck

Kiel

Wismar Rostock

Stralsund

Poznan

Gdansk

POLAND

Paris LORRAIN

Prague

Berlin

The Hague

Karlsruhe

Bielefeld

Aachen

ZEELAND

Montpellier

Bern

Trieste

Antwerp Maas- tricht

Reims

S P A I N

Longitude East of Greenwich

UNITED KINGDOM

Under 50,000

50,000–250,000

250,000–1,000,000

1,000,000–5,000,000

Over 5,000,000

POPULATION

National capitals are underlined

Railroad

Road

Canal

European Core Boundary

0 200 300 400 Kilometers

50 100 150 200 Miles0

100

EUROPE´S MAINLAND CORE

*Gross domestic product (GDP) is the total value of all goods and services produced in a country (or subnational entity) by that politi- cal unit’s economy during a given calendar year. GDP per capita is that total divided by the resident population.

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S T A T E S O F T H E M A I N L A N D C O R E 67

ployment and slowing former East Germany’s recovery. Nonetheless, the gap continues to narrow, and with 81.9 million inhabitants including over 7 million foreigners and more than 4 million ethnic Germans born outside the country, Germany is again exerting its dominance over a mainland Europe in which it has no peer.

France

German dominance in the European Union is a constant concern in the other leading Mainland Core country. The French and the Germans have been rivals in Europe for centuries. France (population: 62.6 million) is an old state, by most measures the oldest in this region. Ger-

many is a young country, created in 1871 after a loose association of German-speaking states had fought a suc- cessful war against . . . the French.

Territorially, France is much larger than Germany, and the map suggests that France has a superior relative lo- cation, with coastlines on the Mediterranean Sea, the Atlantic Ocean, and, at Calais, even a window on the North Sea. But France does not have any good natural harbors, and oceangoing ships cannot navigate its rivers and other waterways far inland.

The map of the Mainland Core region (Fig. 1-14) reveals a significant demographic contrast between France and Germany. France has one dominant city, Paris, at the heart of the Paris Basin, France’s core area.

STATES (LÄNDER) OF REUNIFIED GERMANY

Under 50,000

50,000–250,000

250,000–1,000,000

1,000,000–5,000,000

Over 5,000,000

Over 26,000

22,000–26,000

Below 22,000

City populationGDP PER CAPITA, IN EUROS, 2005

0 100 Kilometers

50 Miles0

Railroads

Roads

National capitals are underlined Data source: Eurostat, 2008 Former

East German Border

9° 13° 17°

53°

49°

13°9°5°

49°

Longitude East of Greenwich S W I T Z E R L A N D

A U S T R I A

P O L A N D

F R A N C E

D E N M A R K

L U X E M B O U R G

B E L G I U M

N E T H E R L A N D S

LIECHTENSTEIN

C Z E C H R E P U B L I C

SCHLESW IG– HOLSTE IN

MECKLENBURG– WESTERN POMERAN IA

BREMEN

NORTH RHINE– WESTPHAL IA

B A V A R I A

B A D E N –

W Ü R T T E M B E R G

RHINELAND– PALATINATE

SAARLAND

H E S S E T H Ü R I N G I A

L O W E R S A X O N Y

SAXONY–ANHALT

S A X O N Y

B R A N D E N B U R G

HAMBURG

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B a l t i c S e a

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Elbe R.

Rhine R. Ruhr R.

Maas R .

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el R .

M euse R.

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Rhine R.

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Berlin

Prague

Brussels

Luxembourg

Hamburg

Hannover

Leipzig Wroclaw

Poznan

Dresden

Düsseldorf

Cologne Bonn

Frankfurt

Stuttgart

Zürich

Munich

Linz

Salzburg

Aachen

Essen

Mannheim

Kiel

Lübeck Wismar Rostock

Stralsund

Wiesbaden

Chemnitz

Schwerin

Potsdam

Saarbrücken

Mainz

Basel

Karlsruhe

Strasbourg

Nancy

Liège

Reims

Bielefeld Magdeburg

Emden

Halle

Erfurt

Nuremberg

Wuppertal

UtrechtThe Hague

Bremen

Szczecin

Rotterdam

Amsterdam

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68 C H A P T E R 1 ● E U R O P E

IF THE GREATNESS of a city were to be measured solely by its number of inhabitants, Paris (9.9 million) would not even rank in the world’s top 20. But if greatness is mea- sured by a city’s historic heritage, cultural content, and international influence, Paris has no peer. Old Paris, near the Île de la Cité that housed the original village where Paris began (Fig. 1-16A) and carries the eight-century-old Notre Dame Cathedral, contains an unparalleled assem- blage of architectural and artistic landmarks old and new. The Arc de Triomphe, erected by Napoleon in 1806 (though not completed until 1836), commemorates the emperor’s victories and stands as a monument to French neoclassical architecture, overlooking one of the world’s most famous streets, the Champs Elysées, which leads to the grandest of city squares, the Place de la Concorde, and on to the magnificent palace-turned-museum, the Louvre.

Even the Eiffel Tower, built for the 1889 International Exposition over the objections of Parisians who regarded it as ugly and unsafe, became a treasure. From its beau- tiful Seine River bridges to its palaces and parks, Paris embodies French culture and tradition. It is perhaps the ultimate primate city in the world.

As the capital of a globe-girdling empire, Paris was the hearth from which radiated the cultural forces of Fran- cophone assimilation, transforming much of North, West, and Equatorial Africa, Madagascar, Indochina, and many smaller colonies into societies on the French model. Distant cities such as Dakar, Abidjan, Brazzaville, and Saigon acquired a Parisian atmosphere. France, meanwhile, spent heavily to keep Paris, especially Old Paris, well maintained—not just as a relic of history, but as a functioning, vibrant center, an example to which other cities can aspire.

Today, Old Paris is ringed by a new and different Paris. Stand on top of the Arc de Triomphe and turn around from the Champs Elysées, and the tree-lined avenue gives way to La Défense, an ultramodern high-rise complex that is one of Europe’s leading business districts (see photo, p. 53). But from atop the Eiffel Tower you can see as far as 80 kilometers (50 mi) and discern a Paris visitors rarely experience: grimy, aging industrial quarters, and poor, crowded neighborhoods where discontent and unem- ployment fester—and where Muslim immigrants cluster in a world apart from the splendor of the old city.

AMONG THE REALM’S GREAT CITIES . . . Paris

Se in

e Ri

ve r

Seine River

PARIS

Boulogne- Billancourt

Île de la Cité

Montreuil

Vincennes

Charenton

Ivry-sur- Seine

Aubervilliers Clichy

St-Denis

Neuilly- sur-Seine

Bobigny

Champs-Élyssés

Asnières sur-Seine

Bois de Boulogne

Bois de Vincennes

Arc de Triomphe

Eiffel Tower

Notre Dame Cathedral

Louvre

Place de la Concorde

La Défense

CBD

0 2 Miles

3 Kilometers

Built-up area

Greenbelt or park

Road

Railroad

Canal

Airport

Point of interest

�

Key to city map symbols

it occupies) and its situation (its location relative to sur- rounding areas of productive capacity, other cities and towns, barriers to access and movement, and other aspects of the greater regional framework in which it lies).

The site of the original settlement at Paris lay on an island in the Seine River, a defensible place where the river was often crossed. This island, the Île de la Cité, was a Roman outpost 2000 years ago; for centuries its security ensured continuity. Eventually the island became overcrowded, and the city expanded along the banks of the river (Fig. 1-16A).

Soon the settlement’s advantageous situation stimu- lated its growth and prosperity. Its fertile agricultural hin- terland thrived, and, as an enlarging market, Paris’s focality increased steadily. The Seine River is joined near

No other city in France comes close to Paris in terms of population or centrality: Paris has 9.9 million residents, whereas its closest rival, Lyon, has only 1.4 million. Ger- many has no city to match Paris, but it does have a num- ber of cities with populations between 1 and 5 million, and is much more highly urbanized overall (89 percent) than France (77 percent).

Paris: Site and Situation

Why should Paris, without major raw materials nearby, have grown so large? Whenever geographers investigate the evolution of a city, they focus on two important loca- tional qualities: its site (the physical attributes of the place23

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S T A T E S O F T H E M A I N L A N D C O R E 69

Paris by several navigable tributaries (the Oise, Marne, and Yonne). When canals extended these waterways even farther, Paris was linked to the Loire Valley, the Rhône- Saône Basin, Lorraine (an industrial area in the north- east), and the northern border with Belgium. When Napoleon reorganized France and built a radial system of roads—followed later by railroads—that focused on Paris from all parts of the country, the city’s primacy was assured (Fig. 1-16B). The only disadvantage in Paris’s situation lies in its seaward access: oceangoing ships can sail up the Seine River only as far as Rouen.

Modern France

Paris, in accordance with Weber’s agglomeration prin- ciple, grew into one of Europe’s greatest cities. French industrial development was less spectacular, but north- ern French agriculture remained Europe’s most produc- tive and varied, exploiting the country’s wide range of soils and climates and enjoying state subsidies and pro- tections. Today France’s economic geography is marked by new high-tech industries. It is a leading producer of high-speed trains, aircraft, fiber-optic Communications systems, and space-related technologies. It also is the world leader in nuclear power, which currently supplies more than 80 percent of its electricity and thereby reduces its dependence on foreign oil imports.

Napoleon’s Legacy

When Napoleon reorganized France in the early 1800s, he broke up the country’s large traditional subregions and established more than 80 small départements (additions and subdivisions later increased this number to 96). Each département had representation in Paris, but the power was concentrated in the capital, not in the individual départements. France became a highly cen- tralized state and remained so for nearly two centuries (see inset map, Fig. 1-17). Only the island département of Corsica produced a rebel movement, whose violent opposition to French rule continued for decades and even touched the mainland. In 2003 the voters in Cor- sica rejected an offer of special status for their island, including limited autonomy. They want more, and trou- ble lies ahead.

Decentralizing the State

Today, France is decentralizing. A new subnational framework of 22 historically significant provinces, groupings of départements called regions (Fig. 1-17), has been established to accommodate the devolution- ary forces felt throughout Europe and, indeed, through- out the world. These regions, though still represented in the Paris government, have substantial autonomy in

SITE

Seine River

O ise

River

To Se

Marne R iver

Sei ne R

iver

Le Bourget Airport

Charles DeGaulle Airport

Orly Airport

Île de la Cité

Sein e R

Marne R.

Aube R.

Yonne R.

English Channel

Aisne R .

Loire R.

Seine R.

Eure R.

Oise R .

SITUATION

Le Havre

St.-Quentin

Reims

Compiègne Beauvais

Troyes

Orléans

PARIS

Le Mans

Rouen

Évreux

Fontainebleau Chartres

Amiens

Melun

Meaux St.–Denis

Dieppe

Arras

Argenteuil

Creil

Auxerre

Alençon

Dreux

Soissons

Cambrai

Blois

Versailles

Clichy Boulogne- Billancourt

Pontoise

Mantes- la-Jolie

Vernon

Laon

BELGIUM

P A R I S

B A S I N

SITE AND SITUATION OF PARIS, FRANCE Forests, Parks

Built-up area

12th Century Wall

Wall of 1840s

Roads

Railroads

A B

10 Kilometers86420

5 Miles43210

80 Kilometers400

50 Miles250

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70 C H A P T E R 1 ● E U R O P E

such spheres as taxation, borrowing, and development spending. The cities that anchor them benefit because they are the seats of governing regional councils that can attract investment, not only within France but also from abroad.

Lyon, France’s second city and headquarters of the region named Rhône-Alpes, has become a focus for growth industries and multinational firms. This region is evolving into a self-standing economic powerhouse that is becoming a driving force in the European econ- omy; indeed, it is one of the Four Motors of Europe

(see p. 62) with its own international business con- nections to countries as far away as China and Chile.

France has one of the world’s most productive and diversified economies, based in one of humanity’s rich- est cultures and vigorously promoted and protected (notably its heavily subsidized agricultural sector). And although France and Germany agree on many aspects of EU integration, they tend to differ on important issues. Old, historically centralized France is less eager than young, federal Germany to push political integration in supranational Europe.

Marseille

Nice

Strasbourg

Toulouse

Bordeaux

Nantes

Rennes Le Mans

Tours

Le Havre Rouen Reims

Nancy

Dijon

Clermont- Ferrand

St.-Étienne Grenoble

Montpellier

Toulon

Paris

S P A I N ANDORRA

ITALY

SWITZERLAND

LUXEMBOURG

G E R M A N Y

B E L G I U M

NETHERLANDS

U N I T E D

K I N G D O M

NORD-PAS DE CALAIS

PICARDIE HAUTE–

NORMANDIE

BASSE– NORMANDIE

CHAMPAGNE– ARDENNE

LORRAINE

ALSACE

FRANCHE– COMTÉ

ÎLE–DE– FRANCE

CENTRE

BOURGOGNE

PAYS DE LA LOIRE

BRETAGNE

POITOU– CHARENTES

LIMOUSIN

AUVERGNE RHÔNE– ALPES

AQUITAINE M IDI–

PYRÉNÉES

LANGUEDOC– ROUSSILLON

PROVENCE– ALPES–

CÔTE D’AZUR MONACO

4° 0° 4°

44°

48°

0° 4°

48°

Longitude East of GreenwichLongitude West of Greenwich

Orléans

Lausanne

Bern

Basel

Karlsruhe

Mannheim

Charleroi

Antwerp Aachen

The Hague Utrecht

Biarritz

Brussels

London

Geneva

Cherbourg

St. Malo Brest

St. Nazaire

La Rochelle

Bayonne

Limoges

Bourges

Calais

Lille

Rotterdam

Maastricht

Liège

Luxembourg

Metz

Lyon

N o r t h

S e a

E n g l i s h

C h a n n e l

B a y o f

B i s c a y

AT L A N T I C O C E A N

M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a

L. Geneva

Garonne R.

Dordogne R.

Loire R.

R hô

ne R

. Sa

ôn e

Aube R.

arne R.

Seine R.

Oise R.

CORSE (CORSICA)

42°

9°

Mediterranean Sea

Ajaccio

Bastia

DÉPARTEMENTS

REGIONS OF FRANCE

500

200 300 Kilometers

150 Miles

Under 50,000

50,000–250,000

250,000–1,000,000

1,000,000–5,000,000

Over 5,000,000

22,000–26,000

Under 22,000

Railroad

City population

Over 26,000

100

1000

National capitals are underlined

GDP PER CAPITA, IN EUROS, 2005

Data Source: Eurostat, 2008

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S T A T E S O F T H E M A I N L A N D C O R E 71

Benelux

Three small countries are crowded into the northwest cor- ner of the Mainland Core—the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg—and are collectively referred to by their first syllables (Be-Ne-Lux). Their total population, 27.7 million, reminds us that this is one of the most densely peopled cor- ners of our planet. They are also a highly productive trio: both the Netherlands and Belgium rank among the top 20 economies of the world, and tiny Luxembourg has the world’s highest per-capita gross national income. The sea- faring Dutch had a thriving agricultural economy and a rich colonial empire; the Belgians forged ahead during the Industrial Revolution; and Luxembourg came into its own after the Second World War as a financial center for the evolving European Union and, indeed, the world.

The Netherlands, one of Europe’s oldest democracies and a constitutional monarchy today, has for centuries been expanding its living space—not by warring with its neighbors but by wresting land from the sea. Its greatest project so far, the draining and reclaiming of almost the entire Zuider Zee (Southern Sea), began in 1932 and con- tinues. In the southwestern province of Zeeland, islands are being connected by dikes and the water is being pumped out, adding still more polders (as the Dutch call inhabited land claimed from the sea lying behind dikes and below sea level) to the national territory. Among the technologies in which the Dutch lead the world, not sur- prisingly, is the engineering of coastal systems to con- trol the sea and protect against storms.

The regional geography of this highly urbanized coun- try (16.5 million) is noted for the Randstad, a roughly tri- angular urban core area anchored by Amsterdam, the constitutional capital, Rotterdam, Europe’s largest port, and The Hague, the seat of government. This conurbation, as geographers call large urban areas when two or more cities merge spatially, now forms a ring-shaped complex that surrounds a still-rural center (in Dutch, rand means edge or margin; stad means city).

The economic geography of the Netherlands, like that of the other states in this region, is heavily dominated by services, finance, and trade; manufacturing contributes about 15 percent of the value of the GDP annually, and farming, once a mainstay, less than 3 percent. Amster- dam’s airport, Schiphol, is regularly recognized as Europe’s best; Rotterdam, one of the world’s busiest ports, is also rated as the most efficient.

Belgium also has a thriving economy and a major port, Antwerp. But Belgium is a much younger state than the Netherlands, becoming independent within its present borders as recently as 1830. With 10.7 million people, Belgium’s regional geography is dominated by a cultur- al fault line that cuts diagonally across the country, sep-

arating a Flemish-speaking majority (58 percent) centered on Flanders in the northwest from a French-speaking minority in southeastern Wallonia (31 percent). Brussels, the mainly French-speaking capital, lies like a cultural island in the Flemish-speaking sector; but the city also is one of Belgium’s greatest assets because it serves as the headquarters, and in many ways as the functional capi- tal, of the European Union. Still, devolution is a looming problem for Belgium, with political parties espousing Flemish separatism roiling the social landscape.

Luxembourg, one of Europe’s many ministates, lies landlocked between Germany, Belgium, and France, with a Grand Duke as head of state (its official name is the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg), a territory of only 2600 square kilometers (1000 sq mi), and a population of just half a mil- lion. Luxembourg has translated sovereignty, relative loca- tion, and stability into a haven for financial, service, and

No country has a more appropriate name than the Netherlands: most of its land, and the majority of its population, exists below sea level. Over centuries of increasingly sophisticated engineering, the Dutch created a system of artificial levees, dikes, pumps (originally windmill-driven), drainage canals, and locks that kept the water out. But that system failed disastrously in February 1953 when a storm with hurricane-force winds breached the dikes of numerous polders, flooding 162,000 hectares (400,000 acres) of southwestern Holland, killing more than 1800 people, drowning tens of thousands of livestock, and causing incalculable property damage. In response, the government imposed a “disaster tax” and, drawing on Marshall Plan funds and national reserves, began a comprehensive project to prevent future calamities of this kind. What you see here is part of this gigantic Delta Plan, consisting of a system of storm-surge barriers containing 61 enormous sluices normally open but closed when a threat arises. The Delta Plan shortens the Dutch North Sea coastline by 720 kilometers (450 mi), mainly by closing off the channels between the islands of the province of Zeeland (see Fig. 1-14). © AP/Wide World Photos.

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72 C H A P T E R 1 ● E U R O P E

information-technology industries. In 2007 there were more than 160 banks in this tiny country and nearly 14,000 hold- ing companies (corporations that hold controlling stock in other businesses in Europe and worldwide). With its unmatched per-capita income (U.S. $64,400 in 2007) Lux- embourg is in some ways the greatest beneficiary of the advent of the European Union. And in no country in Europe is support for the EU stronger than it is here.

The Alpine States

Switzerland, Austria, and the microstate of Liechtenstein on their border share an absence of coasts and the mountainous topography of the Alps—and little else (Fig. 1-14). Austria speaks one language; the Swiss speak German in their north, French in the west, Italian in the southeast, and even a bit of Rhaeto-Romansch in the remote central highlands (Fig. 1-8). Austria has a large primate city; multicultural Switzerland does not. Austria has a substantial range of domestic raw materi- als; Switzerland does not. Austria is twice the size of Switzerland and has a larger population, but far more trade crosses the Swiss Alps between western and Mediterranean Europe than crosses Austria.).

Switzerland, not Austria, is in most ways the leading state in the Alpine subregion of the Mainland Core. Moun- tainous terrain and landlocked location can constitute cru- cial barriers to economic development, tending to inhibit the dissemination of ideas and innovations, obstruct circu- lation, constrain farming, and divide cultures. That is why Switzerland is such an important lesson in human geogra- phy. Through the skillful maximization of their opportu- nities (including the transfer needs of their neighbors), the Swiss have transformed their seemingly restrictive envi- ronment into a prosperous state. They used the waters cas- cading from their mountains to generate hydroelectric power to develop highly specialized industries. Swiss farm- ers perfected ways to optimize the productivity of moun- tain pastures and valley soils. Swiss leaders converted their country’s isolation into stability, security, and neutrality, making it a world banking giant, a global magnet for money. Zürich, in the German sector, is the financial cen- ter; Geneva, in the French sector, is one of the world’s most internationalized cities. The Swiss feel that they do not need to join the EU—and they have not done so.

Austria, which joined the EU in 1995, is a remnant of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and has a historical geog- raphy that is far more reminiscent of unstable eastern Europe than that of Switzerland. Even Austria’s physi- cal geography seems to demand that the country look eastward: it is at its widest, lowest, and most productive in the east, where the Danube links it to Hungary, its old ally in the anti-Muslim wars of the past.

Vienna, by far the Alpine subregion’s largest city, also lies on the country’s eastern perimeter. One of the world’s most expressive primate cities with magnificent archi- tecture and monumental art, Vienna today is the Mainland Core’s easternmost city, but Vienna’s relative location changed dramatically with EU enlargement in 2004 and 2007. Peripheral to the EU and a vanguard of the Core until 2004, Vienna found itself in a far more central posi- tion when the EU border moved eastward. But many Austrians had their doubts about their neighbors to the east becoming EU members of potentially equal stand- ing, and in Austria public support for the European Union has fallen to the lowest level of any member-state.

The Czech Republic

The Czech Republic, product of the 1993 Czech-Slovak “velvet divorce,” centers on the historic province of Bohemia, the mountain-encircled national core area that focuses on the capital, Prague. This is a classic primate city, its cultural landscape faithful to Czech traditions; but it is also an important industrial center. The surrounding mountains contain many valleys with small towns that specialize, Swiss-style, in fabricating high-quality goods. In the old Eastern Europe, even during the communist period, the Czechs always were leaders in technology and engineering; their products could be found on markets in foreign countries near and far.

Bohemia always was cosmopolitan and Western in its exposure, outlook, development, and linkages; Prague lies in the basin of the Elbe River, its traditional outlet through northern Germany to the North Sea. Today, the Czech Republic (10.4 million) is reclaiming its position at the center of European action.

THE CORE OFFSHORE: THE BRITISH ISLES

As Figure 1-13 shows, two countries form the maritime portion of the European core area: the United Kingdom and Ireland (Fig. 1-18). These countries lie on two major islands, surrounded by a constellation of tiny ones. The larger island, a mere 34 kilometers (21 mi) off the main- land at the closest point, is called Britain; its smaller neighbor to the west is Ireland.

States and Peoples

The names attached to these islands and the countries they encompass are the source of some confusion. They still are called the British Isles, even though British dominance over

deblij_c01_038-097hr.qxd 25-08-2009 17:16 Page 72

most of Ireland ended in 1921. The state that occupies Britain and the northeastern corner of Ireland is officially called the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland—United Kingdom for short and UK by abbrevia- tion. But this country often is referred to simply as Britain, and its people are known as the British. The state of Ireland officially is known as the Republic of Ireland (Eire in Irish Gaelic), but it does not include the entire island of Ireland.

How convenient it would be if physical and political geography coincided! Unfortunately, the two do not. During the long British occupation of Ireland, which is overwhelmingly Catholic, many Protestants from north- ern Britain settled in northeastern Ireland. In 1921, when British domination ended, the Irish were set free—except in that corner in the north, where London kept control to protect the area’s Protestant settlers. That is why the

Galway

Limerick

Cork Waterford

Londonderry

I R E L A N D (EIRE/

HIBERNIA)

NORTHERN IRELAND

Shetland Islands

Orkney Islands

Aberdeen

Edinburgh

Barrow

Carlisle

Newcastle- upon-Tyne

Middlesbrough

Kingston- upon-Hull

YorkLeeds Bradford

Bolton Manchester Sheffield

Nottingham Leicester

SalfordLiverpool

Derby

Birmingham Coventry

Oxford

Northampton

Norwich

Ipswich Cambridge

Dover

Brighton

Portsmouth

Southampton Bournemouth

Le Havre Rouen Amiens

Lille

Antwerp

Rotterdam

ENGLAND

Bergen

Stavanger

N O R W A Y

Sc o t

t i s h

H i gh

la nd

H IG

H LA

N D

BR IT

AI N

P e

n n

i n e

F R A N C E

B E L G I U M

NETHERLANDS

W A L E S (CYMRU/ CAMBRIA)

U N I T E D

K I N G D O M

50°

55°

15°

60°

5° 0° 5°

60°

55°

50°

L O W L A N D B R ITA I N

M I D L A N D S

London

Dublin

Brussels

The Hague

Amsterdam

STATFJORD BRENT

ALWYN

FRIGG

PIPER

FORTIES

COD

PLACID

INDEFATIGABLE

LEMAN BANK

Scot t is

h Lo

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EKOFISK

DAN

Paris

Calais

Leith

Belfast

Faeroe Islands (Den.)

Outer Hebrides

Inverness

Dundee

Glasgow

Exeter

Plymouth

BristolCardiffSwansea

Isle of

Man

SCOTLAND (ALBA/

CALEDONIA)

0°5°10° Longitude West of Greenwich

A T

L A

N T

I C

O C

E A

S t G e

o r g e ' s

C h a n

n e l

Fir th

of C

ly de

North Channel

I r i s h S e a

Eng l i s h Ch

anne l

N o r t h

S e a

St ra

it of

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na l

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Grand Canal

Royal Canal

Tr en

t R .

Severn R.

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Avo n R

Tha me

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Sh an

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annel

The Wash

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THE BRITISH ISLES

Railroad

Road

Canal

Gas pipeline

Oil pipeline

Gasfield

Oilfield

Under 50,000

50,000–250,000

250,000–1,000,000

1,000,000–5,000,000

Over 5,000,000

POPULATION

National capitals are underlined

Area of Catholic majority in N. Ireland Area with a majority of Welsh speakers European Core Boundary

250 Kilometers

150 Miles25

0 100 150 200

50 75 100 125

Maritime Boundaries

T H E C O R E O F F S H O R E : T H E B R I T I S H I S L E S 73

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74 C H A P T E R 1 ● E U R O P E

country to this day is officially known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Roots of Devolution

Northern Ireland (Fig. 1-18) was home not only to Protestants from Britain, but also to a substantial popu- lation of Irish Catholics who found themselves on the wrong side of the border when Ireland was liberated. Ever since, conflict has intermittently engulfed Northern Ireland and spilled over into Britain and even, in the form of terrorism, into nearby mainland Europe.

Although all of Britain lies in the United Kingdom, political divisions exist here as well. England is the largest of these units, the center of power from which the rest of the region was originally brought under uni- fied control. The English conquered Wales in the Mid-

dle Ages, and Scotland’s link to England, cemented when a Scottish king ascended the English throne in 1603, was ratified by the Act of Union of 1707. Thus England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland became the United Kingdom.

A Discrete Region

The British Isles form a distinct entity in Europe for sev- eral reasons. Britain’s insularity provided centuries of security from turbulent mainland Europe, protecting the evolving British nation as it achieved a system of par- liamentary government that had no peer in the Western world. Having united the Welsh, Scots, and Irish, the British set out to forge what would become the world’s largest colonial empire. An era of mercantilism and domestic manufacturing (the latter based on water

SAIL WESTWARD UP the meandering Thames River toward the heart of London, and be prepared to be disappointed. Lon- don does not overpower or overwhelm with spectacular skylines or beckoning beauty. It is, rather, an amalgam of towns—Chelsea, Chiswick, Dulwich, Hampstead, Isling- ton—each with its own social character and urban land- scape. Some of these towns come into view from the same river the Romans sailed 2000 years ago: Silvertown and its waterfront urban renewal; Greenwich with its famed Observatory; Thamesmead, the model modern commuter community. Others somehow retain their identity in the vast metropolis that remains (Fig. 1-9), in many ways Europe’s most civilized and cosmopolitan city. And each contributes to the whole in its own way: every part of Lon- don, it seems, has its memories of empire, its memorials to heroes, its monuments to wartime courage.

Along the banks of the Thames, London displays the heritage of state and empire: the Tower and the Tower Bridge, the Houses of Parliament (officially known as the Palace of Westminster), the Royal Festival Hall. Step ashore, and you find London to be a memorable mix of the historic and (often architecturally ugly) modern, of the obsolete and the efficient, of the poor and the prosper- ous. Public transportation, by world standards, is excel- lent, even though facilities are aging rapidly; traffic, however, often is chaotic, gridlocked by narrow streets. Recreational and cultural amenities are second to none. London seems to stand with one foot in the twenty-first century and the other in the nineteenth. Its airports are ultramodern. But the Eurostar TGV train from Paris had to wait for decades until upgraded tracks were finally opened in 2007 to allow it to operate at its normal high-

speed between the Channel Tunnel and London’s St. Pan- cras Station; the extension of such a rail network into other parts of Britain remained only a dream in 2010.

London remains one of the world’s most livable metropolises for its size (8.6 million) largely because of farsighted urban planning that created and maintained, around the central city, a so-called Greenbelt set aside for recreation, farming, and other nonresidential, noncom- mercial uses (Fig. 1-9). Although London’s growth erod- ed this Greenbelt, in places leaving only “green wedges,” the design preserved crucial open space in and around the city, channeling suburbanization toward a zone at least 40 kilometers (25 mi) from the center. The map reveals the design’s continuing impact.

AMONG THE REALM’S GREAT CITIES . . . London

LONDON

Greenwich

Chiswick

Hampstead

Wimbledon

Stepney

Dulwich

Paddington

Barking

Lambeth

Islington

Kensington

Chelsea

The City Houses of Parliament

Greenwich Observatory

The Tower and Tower Bridge

Royal Festival Hall

CBD

0 3 Miles

5 Kilometers

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T H E C O R E O F F S H O R E : T H E B R I T I S H I S L E S 75

power from streams flowing off the Pennines, Britain’s mountain backbone) foreshadowed the momentous Industrial Revolution, which transformed Britain—and much of the world. British cities became synonyms for specialized products as the smokestacks of factories rose like forests over the urban scene. London on the Thames River anchored an English core area that mushroomed into the headquarters of a global political, financial, and cultural empire. As recently as World War II, the narrow English Channel ensured the United Kingdom’s impreg- nability against German invasion, giving the British time to organize their war machine. When the United Kingdom emerged from that conflict as a leading power among the victorious allies, it seemed that its superpower role in the postwar era was assured.

End of Empire

Two unanticipated developments changed that prospect: the worldwide collapse of colonial empires and the rapid resurgence of the European mainland. Always ambivalent about the EC and EU, and with its first membership appli- cation vetoed by the French in 1963, Britain (admitted in 1973) has worked to restrain moves toward tighter inte- gration. When most member-states adopted the new euro in favor of their national currencies, the British kept their pound sterling and delayed their participation in the EMU. As for a federalized Europe, to Britain this is out of the question. In this as in other respects, Britain’s his- toric, insular standoffishness continues.

The United Kingdom

As we have noted, the British Isles as a region consists of two political entities: the United Kingdom and Ireland. The UK, with an area about the size of Oregon and a population of 61.8 million, is by European standards quite a large country. Based on a combination of phys- iographic, historical, cultural, economic, and political cri- teria, the United Kingdom can be divided into four subregions (numbered in Fig. 1-18):

1. England So dominant is this subregion of the Unit- ed Kingdom that the entire country is sometimes referred to by this name. Small wonder: England is anchored by the huge London metropolitan area, which by itself contains more than one-seventh of the UK’s total population. Indeed, along with New York and Tokyo, London is regarded as one of the three leading “world cities” of the current era of global- ization, with financial, high-technology, communica- tions, engineering, and related industries reflecting the momentum of its long-term growth and agglomera-

tion. To the north and west, England was the hearth of the Industrial Revolution, its cities synonymous with manufactures of matchless variety. Today obso- lescence, economic stagnation, and social problems trouble this part of the subregion.

2. Wales This nearly rectangular, rugged territory was a refuge for ancient Celtic peoples, and in its western counties more than half the inhabitants still speak Welsh. Because of the high-quality coal reserves in its southern tier, Wales too was engulfed by the Indus- trial Revolution, and Cardiff, the capital, was once the world’s leading coal exporter. But the fortunes of Wales also declined, and many Welsh emigrated. Among the 3 million who remained, however, the flame of Welsh nationalism survived, and in 1997 the voters approved the establishment of a Welsh Assem- bly to administer public services in Wales, a first devolutionary step.

3. Scotland Nearly twice as large as the Netherlands and with a population about the size of Denmark’s, Scotland is a major component of the United King- dom. As Figure 1-18 suggests, most of Scotland’s more than 5 million people live in the Scottish Low- lands anchored by Edinburgh, the capital, in the east and Glasgow in the west. Attracted there by the labor demands of the Industrial Revolution (coal and iron reserves lay in the area), the Scots developed a world- class shipbuilding industry. Decline and obsolescence were followed by high-tech development, notably in the hinterland of Glasgow, and Scottish participation in the exploitation of oil and gas reserves under the North Sea (Fig. 1-18), which transformed the eastern ports of Aberdeen and Leith (Edinburgh). But many Scots feel that they are disadvantaged within the UK and should play a major role in the EU. Therefore, when the British government put the option of a Scot- tish parliament before the voters in 1997, 74 percent approved. Many Scots still hope that sovereignty lies in their future, and in local elections in 2007 the inde- pendence-minded Scottish National Party won more seats in the parliament than any of the other parties.

4. Northern Ireland Prospects of devolution in Scot- land pale before the devastation caused by political and sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland. With a pop- ulation of 1.8 million occupying the northeastern one- sixth of the island of Ireland, this area represents the troubled legacy of British colonial rule. A declining majority, now about 53 percent of the people in North- ern Ireland, trace their ancestry to Scotland or England and are Protestants; a growing minority, currently around 46 percent, are Roman Catholics, who share their Catholicism with virtually the entire population

deblij_c01_038-097hr.qxd 25-08-2009 17:16 Page 75

“The Troubles” between Protestants and Catholics, pro- and anti- British factions that have torn Northern Ireland apart for decades at a cost of more 3000 lives, are etched in the cultural landscape. The so-called “Peace Wall” across West Belfast, shown here separating Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods, is a tragic monument to the failure of accommodation and compromise, a physical manifestation of the emotional divide that still runs deep—despite the political compromise engineered by former Prime Minister Tony Blair and his negotiators. In May 2007, a Northern Ireland Assembly began functioning again, after hard- line Catholic and Protestant political parties were persuaded to join in the effort. But what an analyst said to the author back in 2005 still is the view across the cityscape you see here: “Good fences make good neighbors . . . the Peace Wall will have to stay up for a few more decades yet.” © Barry Chin/The Boston Globe/Redux.

76 C H A P T E R 1 ● E U R O P E

of the Irish Republic on the other side of the border. Although Figure 1-18 suggests that there are major- ity areas of Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ire- land, no clear separation exists; mostly they live in clusters throughout the territory, including walled-off neighborhoods in the major cities of Belfast and Lon- donderry (see photo above). Partition is no solution to a conflict that has raged for four decades at a cost of thousands of lives; Catholics accuse London as well as the local Protestant-dominated administration of discrimination, whereas Protestants accuse Ca- tholics of seeking union with the Republic of Ireland. The persistent mediation efforts of former Prime Minister Tony Blair were crucial in the creation of a Northern Ireland Assembly to which powers will be devolved from London. After its first launch failed in 2003, forcing the British government to resume direct rule, a second try succeeded in 2007 when all parties agreed to cooperate, and the Assembly began func- tioning again.

Republic of Ireland

What Northern Ireland has been missing through its con- flicts is evident to the south, in the Irish Republic itself. Here participation in the EU, adoption of the euro, busi- ness-friendly tax policies, comparatively low wages, an English-speaking workforce, and an advantageous rela- tive location combined to produce, around the turn of this century, the highest rate of economic growth in the entire European Union. This booming, service-based economy, accompanied by burgeoning cities and towns, fast-rising real estate prices, mushrooming industrial parks, and bustling traffic, transformed a country long known for emigration into a magnet for industrial workers, pro- ducing new social challenges for a closely knit, long-iso- lated society. Among these immigrants were thousands of people of Irish descent returning from foreign places to take jobs at home, workers from elsewhere in the European Union (including large numbers of Poles), and job-seekers from African and Caribbean countries.

The Republic of Ireland fought itself free from British colonial rule just three generations ago. Its cool, moist climate had earlier led to the adoption of the American potato as the staple crop, but excessive rain and a blight in the late 1840s, coupled with colonial mismanagement, caused famine and cost over a million lives. Another 2 million Irish emigrants left for North American and other shores.

Hard-won independence in 1921 did not bring eco- nomic prosperity, and Ireland stagnated into the 1990s, when its newfound advantages boosted the economy to the point that Ireland became known as the Celtic Tiger. But toward the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century Ireland’s overheated economy began to struggle as the real estate market declined, service industries found more favorable conditions in eastern Europe, and unemployment rose. Coupled with the global recession that began in 2008, this triggered another of Ireland’s many waves of emigration: not only did Poles return to their homeland, but some Irish workers themselves looked eastward for jobs lacking at home. By 2009, Ire- land’s first economic boom had faded.

THE CONTIGUOUS CORE IN THE SOUTH

As Figures 1-13 and 1-19 show, the northern sectors of two major southern states form parts of the European Core: northern Italy and northern Spain. Italy and Spain are two of the four countries that constitute southernmost Europe, and in both important urbanized and industrial- ized subregions have become integral parts of Europe’s core area.

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T H E C O N T I G U O U S C O R E I N T H E S O U T H 77

Portugal, on the western flank of the Iberian Penin- sula, remains outside the European core, far less urban- ized, much more agrarian, and not strongly integrated into it. The fourth national entity in this southern domain is the island ministate of Malta, south of Sicily, a his- torically important crossroads with a population of about 400,000 and a booming tourist industry.

Italy

Centrally located in Mediterranean Europe, most pop- ulous of the realm’s southern states, best connected to the European Core, and economically most advanced is Italy (59.8 million), a charter member of Europe’s Common Market.

Administratively, Italy is organized into 20 internal regions, many with historic roots dating back centuries (Fig. 1-20). Several of these regions have become pow- erful economic entities centered on major cities, such as Lombardy (Milan) and Piedmont (Turin); others are historic hearths of Italian culture, including Tuscany

(Florence) and Veneto (Venice). These regions in the northern half of Italy stand in strong social, economic, and political contrast to such southern regions as Cal- abria (the “toe” of the Italian “boot”) and Italy’s two major Mediterranean islands, Sicily and Sardinia. Not surprisingly, Italy is often described as two countries— a progressive north and a stagnant south or Mezzo- giorno. The urbanized, industrialized north is part of Europe’s Core; the low-income south typifies the Periphery.

North of the Ancona Line

North and south are bound by the ancient headquarters, Rome, which lies astride the narrow transition zone between Italy’s contrasting halves. This clear manifesta- tion of Europe’s Core-Periphery contrast is referred to in Italy as the Ancona Line, named after the city on the Adriatic coast where it reaches the other side of the penin- sula (Fig. 1-20, blue line). Whereas Rome remains Italy’s capital and cultural focus, the functional core area of Italy has shifted northward into Lombardy in the basin of the

14°20’

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Valletta MALTA Sliema

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Malta

0 3 6 9 Kilometers

2 4 Miles0

A d r i a t i c S e a

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Ionian Sea

Ty r r h e n i a n S e a

M e d i t e r r a n e a n

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R hô

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Tiber R.

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Loire R .

Dordogne R.

G aronne R.

Ebro

Duero R. Douro R.

Ta gu

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Tag us R.

Turia R.

Júcar R.Gu adiana R.

Guadalquivir R.

Strait ofGibraltar

45°

40°

35°

5° 10°

ALGARVE

A N D A L U S I A

CA TAL

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LI CI

Cantabrian Mts.

Pyrenees

Ba l ea

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Longitude East of Greenwich

15°

Marrakech MOROCCO

Rabat

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Cádiz

Oran

Algiers

Constantine

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ALGER IA

TUNISIA

Minorca

Majorca

Qerqenah Islands

Ibiza

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HUNGARY

tsepaduB AUSTRIA

GERMANY

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Reggio di Calabria

Catania

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Sicily

Sardinia (It.)

Cagliari

Sassari

oiccajA

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Corsica (Fr.)

MONACO Marseille

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Milan

Genoa

Turin

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SWITZERLAND LIECH.Bern

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Toulouse

ANDORRA

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Madrid Barcelona

Palma

ValenciaS P A I N

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Cartagena

Almería

Murcia Granada

GIBRALTAR (U.K.)

Málaga

Huelva

Seville Córdoba

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Braga

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20°15°10°5°0°5°10°

Meseta Central

CEUTA (Sp.)

Tunis

BOSNIA

Algeciras

Alp s

LIBYA

Zürich

I b e r i a n P e n i n s u l a

MONTENEGRO

MELILLA(Sp.) MALTA

CORE AND PERIPHERY IN THE SOUTH

Under 50,000

50,000–250,000

250,000–1,000,000

1,000,000–5,000,000

Over 5,000,000

Road Railroad

European Core Boundary

National capitals are underlined

POPULATION

0 10050 250 Kilometers

50 100 150 Miles

200150

deblij_c01_038-097hr.qxd 25-08-2009 17:16 Page 77

78 C H A P T E R 1 ● E U R O P E

45°

40°

35° 15°

15°10°

Longitude East of Greenwich

45°

40°

SICILY

Bologna

H U N G A RY A U S T R I A

SLOVENIA

SLOVAKIA

CROATIA

BOSNIA

G E R M A N Y

S W I T Z E R L A N D

FRANCE

MALTA

Naples

Milan

Genoa

Nice

Grenoble Brescia

Bari

Turin

Zürich

Palermo

Florence

Salerno

Podgorica

Cagliari

Sassari

Livorno

Bastia

Ajaccio

Innsbruck

Salzburg

Geneva

Parma

Udine

Split

LecceTaranto

Reggio di Calabria

Messina

Catania

Bolzano

Perugia

Venice

Graz

Trieste

Catanzano

SARDINIA

CALABRIA

BASILICATA

APULIA (PUGLIA)

CAMPANIA

MOLISE

LAZIO (LATIUM)

ABRUZZI

TUSCANY

UMBRIA

L I G U R I A EM ILIA-ROMAGNA

VENETO

PIEDMONT

LOMBARDY

VALLE D’AOSTA

TRENTINO- ALTO ADIGE

FRIULI- VENEZIA GIULIA

SAN MARINO

VATICAN CITY

Corsica (Fr.)

MONACO

Rome

Bern

Ljubljana Zagreb

SarajevoAncona MARCHE (MARCHES)

Verona

Budapest

MONTENEGRO

Brindisi

Ligurian Sea

Lake Geneva

Lake Constance

Tyrrhenian Sea

Adriatic Sea

Mediterranean Sea

Ionian Sea

Gulf of Taranto

Gulf of Venice

Agri R.

Arno

Tiber R

Po R.

Dan ube

D an

ube

Ancona Line

E Z

Z O

G I

O R

N O

REGIONS OF ITALY

250,000–1,000,000

1,000,000–3,000,000

Over 3,000,000

50,000–250,000

16,000–22,000

Under 16,000

City population GDP PER CAPITA, IN EUROS, 2005

22,000–26,000

Over 26,000

National capitals are underlined

0 50 100 150 Kilometers

50 75 100 Miles0

Railroad

Road

European Core Boundary

Data Source: Eurostat, 2008

Po River. Here lies southern Europe’s leading manufac- turing complex, in which a large skilled labor force and ample hydroelectric power from Alpine and Appennine slopes combine with a host of imported raw materials to produce a wide range of machinery and precision equip- ment. The Milan–Turin–Genoa triangle exports appli- ances, instruments, automobiles, ships, and many specialized products. Meanwhile, the Po Basin, lying on the margins of southern Europe’s dominant Mediter- ranean climatic regime (with its hot, dry summers), enjoys

a more even pattern of rainfall distribution throughout the year, making it a productive agricultural zone as well.

Metropolitan Milan embodies the new, modern Italy. Not only is Milan (at 4.0 million) Italy’s largest city and leading manufacturing center—making Lombardy one of Europe’s Four Motors—but it also is the country’s finan- cial and service-industry headquarters. Today the Milan area, a cornerstone of the European Core, has just 7 per- cent of Italy’s population but accounts for fully one-third of the entire country’s national income.

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T H E C O N T I G U O U S C O R E I N T H E S O U T H 79

FROM A HIGH VANTAGE point, Rome seems to consist of an endless sea of tiled roofs, above which rise numer- ous white, ochre, and gray domes of various sizes; in the distance, the urban perimeter is marked by high-rises fad- ing in the urban haze. This historic city lives amid its past as perhaps no other as busy traffic encircles the Colosse- um, the Forum, the Pantheon, and other legacies of Europe’s greatest empire.

Founded about 3000 years ago at an island crossing point on the Tiber River about 25 kilometers (15 mi) from the sea, Rome had a high, defensible site. A millennium later, with a population some scholars estimate as high as 1 million, it was the capital of a Roman domain that extended from Britain to the head of the Persian Gulf and from the shores of the Black Sea to North Africa. Rome’s emperors endowed the city with magnificent, marble-faced, columned public buildings, baths, stadiums, obelisks, arch- es, and statuary; when Rome became a Christian city, the domes of churches and chapels added to its luster.

It is almost inconceivable that such a city could collapse, but that is what happened after the center of Roman power shifted eastward to Constantinople (now Istanbul). By the end of the sixth century, Rome probably had fewer than 50,000 inhabitants, and in the thirteenth, a mere 30,000. Papal rule and a Renaissance revival lay ahead, but in 1870, when Rome became the capital of newly united Italy, it still had a population of only 200,000.

Now began a growth cycle that eclipsed all previous records. As Italy’s political, religious, and cultural focus (though not an industrial center to match), Rome grew to 1 million by 1930, to 2 million by 1960, and subse- quently to 3.3 million where it has leveled off today. The religious enclave of Vatican City, Roman Catholicism’s headquarters, makes Rome a twin capital; the Vatican

functions as an independent entity and has a global influ- ence that Italy cannot equal.

Rome today remains a city whose economy is dominated by service industries: national and local government, finance and banking, insurance, retailing, and tourism employ three- quarters of the labor force. The new city sprawls far beyond the old, walled, traffic-choked center where the Roman past and the Italian future come face to face.

AMONG THE REALM’S GREAT CITIES . . . Rome

ROME

Tor di Quinto

Della Vittoria

Aurelio

Gianicolense

Prenestino Labinaco

Collatino

Monte Sacro Alto

Monte Sacro

Trieste

Pietralata

San Paolo Fuori le Mura

VATICAN CITY

Monte Mario

Tib e r

River

Aniene River

Colosseum Forum

Pantheon

Catacombs

St. Peter’s Basilica

Universal Exposition of Rome

CBD

0 1 Mile

2 Kilometers

The Mezzogiorno

As in Germany, the lowest-income regions of Italy lie concentrated in one part of the country: the Mezzo- giorno in the south. But Italy’s north-south disparity continues to grow, which has led to taxpayers’ revolts over the subsidies the state pays to the poorer southern regions (a separatist movement has even espoused an independent Padania in the north). In truth, the south receives the bulk of Italy’s illegal immigrants, whether from Africa across the Mediterranean or from the states of former Yugoslavia and Albania across the Adriatic, and it is these workers, willing to work for low wages, who move north to take jobs in the factories of Milan

and Turin. Italian southerners tend to stay where they were born. Sicily and the Mezzogiorno underscore the problems of a periphery.

Spain

At the western end of southern Europe lies the Iberian Peninsula, separated from France and western Europe by the rugged Pyrenees and from North Africa by the nar- row Strait of Gibraltar (Fig. 1-19). Spain (population: 46.7 million) occupies most of this compact Mediter- ranean landmass, and peripheral Portugal lies in its southwestern corner. Three additional tiny entities also

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mark Spain’s political map (see the box titled “Gibral- tar, Ceuta, and Melilla”).

Imperial Romans, Muslim Moors, and Catholic kings left their imprints on Iberia; the boundary between Spain and Portugal dates from the twelfth century. A golden age of colonialism was followed by dictatorial rule (Spain’s Franco and Portugal’s Salazar still evoke strong emotions) and by economic stagnation.

Democracy replaced dictatorship, and both countries benefited enormously from their admission to the Euro- pean Union in 1986. Spain followed the leads of Ger- many and France and decentralized its administrative structure in response to devolutionary pressures. These pressures were especially strong in Catalonia, the Basque country, and Galicia, and in response the Madrid government created so-called Autonomous Communities (ACs) for all 17 of its regions (Fig. 1-21). Every AC has its own parliament and administration that control planning, public works, cultural affairs, education, environmental policy, and even, to some extent, international commerce. Each AC can negotiate

80 C H A P T E R 1 ● E U R O P E

AUTONOMOUS COMMUNITIES OF SPAIN

GDP PER CAPITA, IN EUROS, 2005

Over 26,000

Road Railroad European CoreBoundary

22,000–26,000

16,000–22,000

Under 16,000

City population

Under 50,000

50,000–250,000

250,000–1,000,000

1,000,000–5,000,000

Over 5,000,000

National capitals are underlinedData Source: Eurostat, 2008

0 300 Kilometers

150 Miles0 50 100

100 200

8°

8° 4° 0° 4°44°

40°

36°

4°Longitude West of Greenwich

Mediterranean Sea

Ba le

ar ic

Se a

Bay of Biscay

Strait of Gibraltar

AT L A N T I C O C E A N

Alboran Sea

Guadalquivir R.G ua

di an

a R.

Ta gu

s R .

Douro R.

Duero R.

Tagus R.

Ebro R.

GALICIA

CASTILE-LEON

ARAGON

CATALONIA

CASTILE-LA MANCHA

ANDALUSIA

MURCIA

VALENCIA

LA RIOJA

NAVARRE

BASQUE COUNTRY

B A L E A R I C I S L A N D S

EXTREMADURA

MADRID

CANTABRIAASTURIAS

F R A N C E

ANDORRA

PORTUGAL

M O R O C C O

Majorca

Minorca

Iviza

La Coruña

Santiago

Orense

Ponferrada

Benavente

Tordesillas

Medina del Campo

Verin

Oviedo

Avilés Santander

Burgos

Pamplona Vitoria

Logroño

Toledo

Mérida

Cádiz Algeciras

MotrilSan Fernando

Huelva

Faro

Porto Aveiro

Coimbra

Almeria

Granada

Córdoba

CarmonaSeville

Cascais

Málaga

Murcia

Valencia

AlbaceteCiudadReal

Aranjuez Palma de

Majorca

Valladolid

Ávila

Salamanca Barcelona

Léida Badalona

Narbonne

Madrid

Lisbon

GIBRALTAR (U.K.)

Ceuta (Sp.)

Penon De Velez De La Gomera (Sp.)

Penon De Alhucemas (Sp.)

Perejil (Sp.)

Melilla (Sp.)

Islas Chafarinas (Sp.)

Alicante

Cartagena

Gijón Bilbao San Sebastián

Montpellier

Segovia

S PA I N

NEUTRAL ZONE Gibraltar

Airport

Gibraltar Harbor

Strait of Gibraltar

Bay of

Gibraltar

(Bahia de

Algeciras)

Europa Point

Water Catchment

421 m

426 m

The Rock

Algeciras

A lb

o ra

n S

e a

GIBRALTAR 0 1.5 Km

0 1 Mile

F R A N C E

S PA I N

Bay of Biscay

Pamplona

San SebastiánBilbao

ALAVA

VIZCAYA

NAVARRE

MAULEON

BAYONNE

GUIPUZCOA

Vitoria

BASQUE REGION

0 100 Kilometers

0 50 Mile

Basque Country as defined Basque Country claimed by ETA

its own degree of autonomy with the central govern- ment in the capital. Some Spanish observers feel that devolution has gone too far and that a federal system (such as Germany’s) would have been preferable, but now there is no turning back.

Even so, the AC framework has not totally defused the most violent of the secessionist-minded movements, pro- pelled by a small minority of Basques. On the other hand, relations between Madrid and Catalonia have improved. Centered on the prosperous, productive coastal city of Barcelona, the AC named Catalonia is Spain’s leading industrial area and has become one of Europe’s Four Motors. Catalonia is endowed with its own distinctive language and culture that find vivid expression in Barcelona’s urban landscape.

As Catalans like to remind visitors to their corner of Spain, most of the country’s industrial raw materials are found in the northwest, but most of its major industrial development has occurred in the northeast, where inno- vations and skills propel a high-technology-driven regional economy. In recent years, Catalonia—with

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Gibraltar, Ceuta, and Melilla

T H E C O N T I G U O U S C O R E I N T H E S O U T H 81

6 percent of Spain’s territory and 16 percent of its population—has annually produced 25 percent of all Spanish exports and nearly 40 percent of its industrial exports. Such economic strength translates into political power, and in Spain the issue of Catalonian separatism is never far from the surface.

As Figure 1-21 shows, Spain’s capital and largest city, Madrid, lies near the geographic center of the state. It also lies within an economic-geographic transition zone. In terms of people’s annual income, Spain’s north is far more affluent than its south, a direct result of the country’s dis- tribution of resources, climate (the south suffers from drought and poorer soils), and overall development opportunities. The most prosperous ACs are Barcelona- centered Catalonia and Madrid; between them, the con- tiguous group of ACs extending from the Basque Country to Aragon rank next. In the ACs of northern Spain, economies tend to do better in the east, where tourism and winegrowing (especially in La Rioja, a famous name in Spanish wine) are among the mainstays, than in the west, where industrial obsolescence, dwindling raw-material sources, the decline of the fishing industry, and emigra- tion plague local economies. Spain’s southernmost ACs have long been the least developed economically and are symptomatic of Europe’s Periphery.

ALTHOUGH SPAIN AND the United Kingdom are both EU members committed to cooperative resolution of territo- rial problems, the two countries are embroiled in a dispute over a sliver of land at the southern tip of Iberia: legendary Gibraltar (see lower inset map, Fig. 1-21). “The Rock” was ceded by Spain to the British in perpetuity in 1713 (though not the neck of the peninsula linking it to the mainland, which the British later occupied) and has been a British colony ever since. Its 30,000-odd residents are used to British institutions, legal rules, and schools. Successive Spanish governments have demanded that Gibraltar be returned to Madrid’s rule, but the colony’s residents are against it. And under their 1969 constitution, Gibraltari- ans have the right to vote on any transfer of sovereignty.

Now the British and Spanish governments are trying to reach an agreement under which they would share the administration of Gibraltar for an indefinite time; since both are EU members, little would have to change. The advantages would be many: the economic slowdown caused by the ongoing dispute would ease, border checks

would be lifted, EU benefits would flow. But Gibraltari- ans have their doubts and want to put the issue to a ref- erendum. Spain will not accept the idea of a referendum, and the matter is far from resolved.

Spain’s refusal to allow, and abide by, a referendum in Gibraltar stands in marked contrast to its demand for a referendum in its own outposts, two small African exclaves on the coast of Morocco, Ceuta and Melilla (Fig. 1-21). Morocco has been demanding the return of these two small cities, but Spain has refused on the grounds that the local residents do not want this. The matter has long simmered quietly but came to international attention in 2002 when a small detachment of Moroccan soldiers seized the island of Perejil, an uninhabited Spanish pos- session off the Moroccan coast also wanted by Moroc- co. In the diplomatic tensions that followed, the entire question of Spain’s holdings in North Africa (and its anti- Moroccan stance in the larger matter of Western Sahara [an issue discussed in Chapter 7]) exposed some contra- dictions Madrid had preferred to conceal.

F R O M T H E F I E L D N O T E S

“Catalonian nationalism is visible both obviously and subtly in Barcelona’s urban landscape. Walking toward the Catalonian Parliament, I noticed that the flags of Spain (left) and Catalonia (right) flew from slightly diverging flagpoles above the entrance to the historic building. Is there a message here?” © H. J. de Blij.

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82 C H A P T E R 1 ● E U R O P E

Portugal and Malta

Portugal (10.6 million), a comparatively poor country that has benefited enormously from its admission to the EU, occupies the southwestern corner of the Iberian Peninsula. Since one rule of EU membership is that the richer members assist the poorer ones, Portugal shows the results in a massive renovation project in its capital, Lisbon, as well as in the modernization of surface trans- port routes.

Unlike Spain, which has major population clusters on its interior plateau as well as its coastal lowlands, the Por- tuguese are concentrated along and near the Atlantic coast. Lisbon and the second city, Porto, are coastal cities. The best farmlands lie in the moister western and northern zones of the country; but the farms are small and inefficient, and although Portugal remains dominantly rural, it must import as much as half of its foodstuffs. Exporting textiles, wines, corks, and fish, and running up an annual deficit, the indebted Portuguese economy remains a far cry from those of other European countries of similar dimensions—typi- cal of the European Periphery rather than the Core.

Southernmost Europe also contains the ministate of Malta, located in the central Mediterranean Sea just south of Sicily. Malta is a small archipelago of three inhabited and two uninhabited islands with a popula- tion of just over 400,000 (Fig. 1-19, inset map). An ancient crossroads and culturally rich with Arab, Phoenician, Italian, and British infusions, Malta became a British dependency and served British ship- ping and its military. It suffered terribly during World War II bombings, but despite limited natural resources recovered strongly during the postwar era. Today Malta has a booming tourist industry and a relatively high standard of living, and was one of the ten new mem- ber-states to join the European Union as part of the his- toric expansion of 2004.

THE DISCONTINUOUS CORE IN THE NORTH

Take another look at Figure G-11, and it is clear that the countries of northern Europe have national incomes and standards of living that are representative of the Euro- pean Core. But consider the implications of Figures 1-13 and 1-22, and it is obvious that most of northern Norway, Sweden, and Finland form part of the European Periph- ery, not the Core.

The six countries of this northern domain of Europe (sometimes called Nordic Europe or Norden) have a com- bined population of only 26.4 million, which is less than half of Italy’s. Nothing here compares to Italy’s north or Spain’s Catalonia, but the core areas of the three Scandinavian coun-

tries (Sweden, Norway, and Denmark) make up in pros- perity and external linkages what they lack in dimensions. It is not even unreasonable to include the North Sea in the European Core because much of Europe’s domestic ener- gy resources have come from its oil- and gasfields.

As Figure 1-22 shows, national core areas here are coastal, low-latitude (insofar as possible), and centered on the capital cities. The language map (Fig. 1-8) re- minds us why Estonia is part of this northern cluster of countries even though it is not a component of the Euro- pean Core. The north’s remoteness, isolation, and envi- ronmental severity also have had positive, binding effects for this domain. The countries of the Scandina- vian Peninsula lay removed from the wars of mainland Europe (although Norway was overrun by Nazi Germany during World War II). The three major languages— Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish—are mutually intelli- gible, and in terms of religion there is overwhelming adherence to the same Lutheran church in the three Scan- dinavian countries as well as Iceland and Finland. Furthermore, democratic and representative govern- ments emerged early, and individual rights and social welfare have long been carefully protected. Women par- ticipate more fully in government and politics here than in any other part of the world.

Sweden is the largest Nordic country in terms of both population (9.2 million) and territory. Most Swedes live south of 60° North latitude (which passes through Uppsala just north of the capital, Stockholm), in what is climatically the most moderate part of the country (Fig. 1-22). Here lie the primate city, core area, and the main industrial districts; here, too, are the main agricultural areas that benefit from the lower relief, better soils, and milder climate.

Sweden long exported raw or semifinished materials to industrial countries, but today the Swedes are making finished products themselves, including automobiles, electronics, stainless steel, furniture, and glassware. Much of this production is based on local resources, including a major iron ore reserve at Kiruna in the far north (there is a steel mill at Luleå). Swedish manufac- turing, in contrast to that of several western European countries, is based in dozens of small and medium-sized towns specializing in particular products. Energy-poor Sweden was a pioneer in the development of nuclear power, but a national debate over the risks involved has reversed that course.

Norway does not need a nuclear power industry to sup- ply its energy needs. It has found its economic opportuni- ties on, in, and beneath the sea. Norway’s fishing industry, now augmented by highly efficient fish farms, long has been a cornerstone of the economy, and its merchant marine spans the world. But since the 1970s, Norway’s economic life has been transformed by the bounty of oil and natural gas discovered in its sector of the North Sea.

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T H E D I S C O N T I N U O U S C O R E I N T H E N O R T H 83

With its limited patches of cultivable soil, high relief, extensive forests, frigid north, and spectacularly fjord- ed coastline, Norway has nothing to compare to Swe- den’s agricultural or industrial development. Its cities, from the capital Oslo and the North Sea port of Bergen to the historic national focus of Trondheim as well as Arctic Hammerfest, lie on the coast and have difficult overland connections. The isolated northern province of Finnmark has even become the scene of an autonomy

movement among the reindeer-herding indigenous Saami (Fig. 1-12). The distribution of Norway’s popu- lation of 4.8 million has been described as a necklace, its beads linked by the thinnest of strands. But this has not constrained national development. Norway in the mid-2000s had the second-lowest unemployment rate in Europe (after tiny Luxembourg). In terms of income per capita, Norway is one of the richest countries in the world.

15°

65°

15°20°

20°

65°

Arctic Circle

65°

60°

55°

5° 10° 15°

20° 25°

65°

70° 35°30°25°20°15°10°

70°

5°0° Arctic Circle

Longitude East of Greenwich

RUSSI A

Pskov utraT

avraN

grubsreteP.tS Tallinn

Helsinki

ESTONIA

unräP

ögnaH

ukruT

LATVIAagiR

VyborgithaL

erepmaT

äylksävyJ

FINLAND oipouK

Outokum pu

Kajaani ikämnatO

Vaasa

Umeå

Oulu

Kemi RUSS

IARovaniem i

ksnamruM

tsefremmaH

kivraN

ødoB

Kiruna

Luleå

Sundsvall

SWEDEN

Gävle

Uppsala Västerås

Stockholm

Norrköping

Örebro Karlstad

gnipökniL

Jönköping

Borås Gotland

Öland

Bornholm

grobgnisleH

Malmö

grobetöG

Ålborg

Fredrikstad

Kristiansand

neikS

olsO

ramaH

Haugesund

Stavanger

Bergen

remmahelliL

dnuselÅ

NORWAY

miehdnorT

Isafjördhur

senragroB

iryerukA

Siglufjördhur

Husavik

kívajkyeR

ICELAND

DENMARK srednaR suhraÅ

eljeV

grejbsE

negahnepoC

Odense

Kiel

Hamburg Rostock

Bremen GERMANY nilreB

SDNALREHTE N

eugaHehT

POLAND

ksnadG

nanzoP

U .K .

DROJFTATS

FRIGG

FORTIES

COD

EKOFISK

DAN

øsmorT

HEIDRUN

madretsmA

ShetlandIslands(U.K.)

aguuM

SCANIA

Drammen

AT L A N T I C O C E A N

No rw

eg ia

Se a

S k a g e

r r a k

K a

t t e g

a t

Ø resund

Ba l t ic Sea

ATLANTIC

OCEAN

North

Sea

G u l

f o f

B o t h

n i a

Lågan R.

G låm

a R.

Klarälven Österdalälven

Ljusnan

Angermanälven

Umeälven

Skellefteälven

Piteälven

Tornioälven

ikoji meK

iranI ekaL

B a r e n t s

S e a

Lake Vänern

La ga

n R.

nrettäV ekaL

Gu l f o

F i n l a n

NORTHERN (NORDIC) EUROPE

National capitals are underlined

Road

Gasfield

Gas pipeline

Oilfield

Oil pipeline

400 Kilometers

50 100 250 Miles150

200 300

200

Under 50,000

50,000–250,000

250,000–1,000,000

1,000,000–5,000,000

Over 5,000,000

POPULATION

Core area

Railroad

European Core Boundary

100

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84 C H A P T E R 1 ● E U R O P E

Norwegians have a strong national consciousness and a spirit of independence. In the mid-1990s, when Swe- den and Finland voted to join the European Union, the Norwegians again said no. They did not want to trade their economic independence for the regulations of a larger, even possibly safer, Europe.

Denmark, territorially small by Scandinavian stan- dards, has a population of 5.5 million, second largest in Norden after Sweden. It consists of the Jutland Peninsula and several islands to the east at the gateway to the Baltic Sea; it is on one of these islands, Sjaelland, that the cap- ital of Copenhagen is located. Copenhagen, the “Singa- pore of the Baltic,” has long been a port that collects, stores, and transships large quantities of goods. This break-of-bulk function exists because many oceangoing vessels cannot enter the shallow Baltic Sea, making the city an entrepôt where transfer facilities and activities prevail. The completion of the Øresund bridge-tunnel link to southern Sweden in 2000 enhanced Copenhagen’s situation (Fig. 1-22).

Denmark remains a kingdom, and in centuries past Danish influence spread far beyond its present confines. Remnants of that period now challenge Denmark’s gov- ernance. Greenland came under Danish rule after union with Norway (1380) and remained a Danish possession when that union ended (1814). In 1953, Greenland’s status changed from colony to province, and in 1979 the 60,000 inhabitants were given home rule with an Inuit name: Kalaallit Nunaat. They promptly exercised their rights by withdrawing from the European Union, of which they had become a part when Denmark joined. Another restive dependency is the Faroe Islands, locat- ed between Scotland and Iceland. These 17 small islands and their 45,000 inhabitants were awarded self- government in 1948, complete with their own flag and currency, but even this was not enough to defuse de- mands for total independence. A referendum in 2001 confirmed that even Denmark is not immune from Europe’s devolutionary forces (Fig. 1-12).

Finland, territorially almost as large as Germany, has only 5.3 million residents, most of them concentrated in the triangle formed by the capital, Helsinki, the textile- producing center, Tampere, and the shipbuilding center, Turku (Fig. 1-22). A land of evergreen forests and glacial lakes, Finland has an economy that has long been sus- tained by wood and wood product exports. But the Finns, being a skillful and productive people, have developed a diversified economy in which the manufacture of preci- sion machinery and telecommunications equipment (pro- minently including cell phones) as well as the growing of staple crops are key.

As in Norway and Sweden, environmental challenges and relative location have created Nordic cultural land- scapes in Finland, but the Finns are not a Scandinavian

people; their linguistic and historic links are instead with the Estonians to the south across the Gulf of Finland. As we will see in Chapter 2, ethnic groups speaking Finno- Ugric languages are widely dispersed across what is today western Russia.

Estonia, northernmost of the three “Baltic states,” is part of Norden by virtue of its ethnic and linguistic ties to Finland. But during the period of Soviet control from 1940 to 1991, Estonia’s demographic structure changed drasti- cally: today about 25 percent of its 1.3 million inhabitants are Russians, most of whom came there as colonizers.

After a difficult period of adjustment, Estonia today is forging ahead of its Baltic neighbors (see Data Table inside back cover) and catching up with its Nordic counterparts. Busy traffic links Tallinn, the capital, with Helsinki, and a new free-trade zone at Muuga Harbor facilitates com- merce with Russia. But more important for Estonia’s future was its entry into the European Union in 2004.

Iceland, the volcanic, glacier-studded island in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic just south of the Arctic Cir- cle, is the sixth Nordic country. Inhabited by people with Scandinavian ancestries (population: 340,000), Iceland and its small neighboring archipelago, the Westermann Islands, are of special scientific interest because they lie on the Mid- Atlantic Ridge, where the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates of the Earth’s crust are diverging and new land can be seen forming (see Fig. G-3).

Iceland’s population is almost totally urban, and the capital, Reykjavik, contains about half the country’s inhabitants. The nation’s economic geography is almost entirely oriented to the surrounding waters, whose sea- food harvests give Iceland one of the world’s highest standards of living—but at the risk of overfishing. Dis- putes over fishing grounds and fish quotas have intensi- fied in recent decades; the Icelanders argue that, unlike the Norwegians or the British, they have little or no alter- native economic opportunity.

THE EASTERN PERIPHERY

In the past, “Eastern Europe” was one of those regional designations that had various interpretations. Figure 1-13 suggests that it incorporated all of Europe east of Germany, Austria, and Italy, north of Greece, and south of Finland. The Soviet communist domination of Eastern Europe (1945–1990) behind an ideological and strategic “Iron Cur- tain” served to reinforce the division between “West” and “East.” That fateful division entrenched the peripheral con- dition of the eastern states, and not even the subsequent eastward expansion of the EU could, in the short term, erase the disadvantages with which they were burdened.

Today, with the Soviet occupation mostly a distant memory and the European Union extending from the

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T H E E A S T E R N P E R I P H E R Y 85

British Isles to the Black Sea, it might seem that the geo- graphic notion of an Eastern Europe is defunct. But not so fast. Take a look at the statistics in the Data Table at the end of the book, and you will see that, with some notable but still minimal exceptions, there remain sig- nificant contrasts between Europe’s west and east. True, Estonia has taken its place as one of Nordic (no longer Eastern) Europe’s economic success stories. And in the south, Slovenia is another winner. But these small coun- tries in favorable locations are less representative of Europe’s eastern Periphery than poorly governed Poland, deeply indebted Hungary, or corrupt Slovakia—not to mention barely post-communist Romania and economi- cally troubled Bulgaria (with a per-capita GNI less than one-third of that of the Core).

Eastern Europe’s tumultuous history played itself out on a physical stage of immense diversity, its landscapes ranging from open plains and wide river basins to strate- gic mountains and crucial corridors. Epic battles fought centuries ago remain fresh in the minds of many people living here today; pivotal past migrations are celebrated as though they happened yesterday. Nowhere in Europe is the cultural geography as complex. Illyrians, Slavs, Turks, Magyars, and other peoples converged on this

region from near and far. Ethnic and cultural differences kept them in chronic conflict.

Geographers call such a region a shatter belt, a zone of persistent splintering and fracturing. Geographic ter- minology uses several expressions to describe the breakup of established order, and these tend to have their roots in this part of the world. One of those expressions is balkanization. The southern half of eastern Europe is referred to as the Balkans or Balkan Peninsula, after the name of a mountain range in Bulgaria. Balkanization denotes the recurrent division and fragmentation of this part of the region, and it is now applied to any place where such processes take place. A more recent term is ethnic cleansing—the forcible ouster of entire popula- tions from their homelands by a stronger power bent on taking their territories. The term may be new, but the process is as old as eastern Europe itself.

Cultural Legacies

Each episode in the historical geography of eastern Europe has left its legacy in the cultural landscape. Twen- ty centuries ago the Roman Empire ruled much of it

F R O M T H E F I E L D N O T E S

“The most cheerful corner of Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, is enlivened by the bright colors of the homes built on what was the original site of settlement here on the Davis Strait. Nuuk offers a few surprises: a supermarket featuring vegetables grown in Greenland, a nine-hole golf course being expanded into 18 holes, and a vigorous debate over the prospect of independence. With a population of only about 60,000, considerable autonomy from former colonial power Denmark, and substantial investment from Copenhagen, the citizens of Kalaallit Nunaat are nonetheless divided on the question of their future. Climate change, the prospect of oil reserves to be found offshore, and freedom to fish (including whales) like the Norwegians do, are factors seen by many indigenous Greenlanders as potential rewards of independence. Danish residents and those of Danish (but local) ancestry tend to see it differently. In the June 2009 election, the party representing indigenous interests did better than expected, and ‘KN’ seemed to be on course toward sovereignty.” © H. J. de Blij

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86 C H A P T E R 1 ● E U R O P E

(Romania is a cartographic reminder of this period); for most of the second half of the twentieth century, the Soviet Empire controlled nearly all of it. In the inter- vening two millennia, Christian Orthodox church doc- trines spread from the southeast, and Roman Catholicism advanced from the northwest. Turkish (Ottoman) Mus- lims invaded and created an empire that reached the en- virons of Vienna. By the time the Austro-Hungarian Empire ousted the Turks, millions of eastern Europeans had been converted to Islam. Albania and Kosovo today remain predominantly Muslim countries.

The collapse of the Soviet Empire in the early 1990s freed the European countries that had been under Soviet rule, and with only one exception—Belarus—those coun- tries turned their gaze from Moscow to the west. Mean- while, the European Union had been expanding eastward, and membership in the EU became an overriding goal for the majority of the liberated eastern states. This generat- ed a new map of the region (Fig. 1-23), integrating most of embattled old Eastern Europe into the EU and creating, as we saw earlier, a new layout of insiders and outsiders.

The Geographic Framework

As Figure 1-13 reminds us, the Eastern Europe of old, like the realm’s southern and northern peripheries, also has countries that are contiguous to the European Core. Especially since the momentous EU expansions of 2004 and 2007, several of these countries are likely to become part of the European Core as their governments improve, economies grow, and incomes rise. As we saw, the Czech Republic has already become integrated into the Core region, and Slovenia is likely to be the first post- Yugoslavia state to merit similar inclusion. Things are changing fast in the eastern Periphery.

On the basis of this combination of dynamics and location, the countries of Europe’s eastern Periphery can be grouped as follows (Fig. 1-23). As you will see, each of these groups has a key state whose geographic impor- tance outweighs all others:

1. EU countries contiguous to the European Core (4) Key state: Poland

2. EU countries disconnected from the European Core (6) Key state: Greece

3. Non-EU countries in the South (7) Key state: Serbia

4. Non-EU countries in the East (3) Key state: Ukraine

When studying Figure 1-23, it is important to take note of still another one of those anomalous territories that mark the map of Europe: Kaliningrad, located on the Baltic Sea between Poland and Lithuania. This is an

exclave of Russia, acquired following the end of World War II, and potentially important as an outpost in Europe of Russian influence at a time when the EU as well as NATO* are advancing toward Russia’s borders in what was once the Soviet Union’s front yard.

EU Countries Contiguous to the European Core

As Figures 1-13 and 1-23 show, the four states in this group all share borders with EU Core country Germany or Austria. Of these four, the most important state is Poland, which was also the largest and most populous country among the ten that joined the EU in 2004. With 38.1 million people and lying between two historic ene- mies, Poland has borders that have shifted time and again, but its current status may be more durable than in the past. As the map shows, the historic and once-central capital of Warsaw now lies closer to Russia than to Ger- many, but the country looks west, not east. During the Soviet-communist period, Silesia became its industrial heartland, and Katowice, Wroclaw, and Krakow grew into major industrial cities amid some of the world’s worst environmental degradation. The Soviets invested far less in agriculture, collectivizing farms without mod- ernizing technologies and leaving post-Soviet farming in abysmal condition. All this made governing Poland dif- ficult, but the prospect of EU membership (with the promise of EU subsidies) motivated the government to get its house in order. After entering the EU, Poland saw hundreds of thousands of workers leave for jobs in the European Core, but many have returned and the econo- my is growing.

Government also was the problem in neighboring, landlocked Slovakia, where during the communist period the people were far more pro-Soviet than the Czechs next door. Many observers of the 2004 EU expansion wondered whether misgoverned Slovakia should be admitted because the capital, Bratislava, had become synonymous with corruption and inefficiency. Slovakia’s Hungarian minority, comprising about 10 percent of the population of 5.4 million and concen- trated in the south along the Danube River, was at odds with the Slovak regime. Moreover, additional concerns were raised over reports of mistreatment of the small- er Roma (Gypsy) minority (see the box titled “Europe’s Stateless Nation”). But again the promise of

*NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) is a military alliance that was established at the height of the Cold War in 1949. This U.S.-led supranational defense pact shielded postwar Europe against the Sovi- et military threat. Today, in the post-Soviet era, NATO is modifying its objectives as well as expanding its membership (up from the orig- inal 12 countries in 1949 to 28 in 2009).

deblij_c01_038-097hr.qxd 25-08-2009 17:16 Page 86

A d r i a t i c

S e a

Elbe R.

Vistula R.

Danube R.

D on

Dnieper R.

Dniester R.

Aegean Sea

B la ck S e a

Sea of

Azov

Maritsa R.

Oder R.

Ionian Sea

B a l t i c S e a

N eisse

R .

Gulf of Riga

Western D

v i n a R.

SERBIA

I T A

L Y

45°

25°20°

45°

50°

55°

50°

15° 20° 35° 40°

55°

Longitude East of Greenwich

25° 30°

40°

15° 30° 35°

grobetöG

SWEDEN

ömlaMDEN.

Rostock GERMANY

Berlin

gizpieL

Prague

onrB

avartsO CZECH

REPUBLIC

Linz

CeskeBudejovice

Graz

AUSTRIA

Gdansk

Szczecin

P O L A N D

Poznan

Wroclaw

zdoL

Katowice

Krakow

Lublin

Warsaw

SLOVAKIA Bratislava

HUNGARY

Debrecen

Pecs

Gyor

Szeged

Oradea

Arad

Ruse

Piraeus

Nicosia

Burgas

SLOVENIA Zagreb

tilpS

CROATIA

BOSNIA

Sarajevo

Belgrade

Nis

Skopje

Patrai

Irakleion

MACEDONIA

ALBANIA

Naples

GREECE

CYPRUS

MALTA

Thessaloniki

BULGARIA

Plovdiv

Sofia

Athens

Varna

lubnatsI

TURKEY

tserahcuB

Timisoara Brasov

Braila

R O M A N I A Cluj

Chisinau

AVODLOM

Constanta

Galati

Klaipeda LITHUANIA

suinliV

Liepaja

Riga LATVIA

Pskov

Rzhev

Tver

R U S S I A

aluT

ksnayrB lerO

ksruK

hzenoroVBELARUS Brest

leymoH

vivL

Kiev (Kyyiv)

aystynniV

AIRTSEINDSNART

U K R A I N E

asedO

Zaporiz hya

ksvorteporpinD

vikrahK ksnahuL

kstenoD lopuiraM

lopotsaveS

negahnepoC

Kosice

(RUSSIA) KALININGRAD

nedserD

nezlP

solóVasiráL

Budapest

ESTONIA

Kaliningrad

anneiV

Gabcikovo Dam

Mosco w

BOHEMIA

MORAVIA

SILESIA

hiRyyvyrK

Makiyiv ka

Poltava

Yenakiy eve

aemirC alusnineP

istvinrehC

Chernihiv

Horlivk a

Chornobyl

SABNOD

Moravian Gate

VOJVODINA

Ljubljana

Trieste

ksneM )ksniM(

Tirane TURKEY

ITALY

Gdynia

slipstneV

Bydgoszcz

Dubrovnik

Rijeka

MONTENEGRO

CRETE

Podgorica Pristina

C RO

ATIA

KOSOVO

Kálámai

EASTERN EUROPEAN PERIPHERIES

Railroad

Gas Pipeline Oil Pipeline

0 100 200 300 400 Kilometers

0 50 100 200 Miles150

Road

European Core Boundary

EU countries contiguous to the European Core EU countries disconnected from the European Core

Under 50,000

50,000–250,000

250,000–1,000,000

1,000,000–5,000,000

Over 5,000,000

POPULATION

National capitals are underlined

Non-EU countries in the South

Non-EU countries in the East

EU membership led to some reforms, and after 2004 the economy perked up. Following another downturn in 2007, a more enlightened administration took over, and in 2008 Slovakia surprised many by meeting the terms of admission to the European Monetary Union

(EMU), adopting the euro in 2009 before the Poles or the Hungarians could.

Many economic geographers anticipated a bright future for also-landlocked Hungary following the col- lapse of the Soviet Empire and the opening of the door

T H E E A S T E R N P E R I P H E R Y 87

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Europe’s Stateless Nation

88 C H A P T E R 1 ● E U R O P E

ened their asylum rules, their objective was not only to stem the flow from Islamic countries but also within the EU itself, with the Roma the primary target. EU efforts to help Roma in their source countries through subsidies and other assis- tance have been hampered by the high levels of corruption in those countries where Roma minorities are largest.

EVERY ETHNIC GROUP in the European population, it seems, has its homeland, whether it is a state or a sub- unit. From the Frisians to the Corsicans and from the Norwegians to the Greeks, everyone has a historic base, whether it is a State or a province or some other entity, no matter how small.

But there is one significant exception: the Roma. About 8 million Roma, formerly (and derisively) called gypsies, constitute Europe’s troubled, stateless nation. Although their origins are uncertain, the Roma are believed to have originated in India and migrated westward along several routes, one of which carried them via present-day Iran and Turkey into Europe. They never established a domain; they have retained their mobile, nomadic lifestyle to the pre- sent day; and they live, mostly in poverty, in a discontin- uous arc across Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. Wherever they have gone, they have found themselves facing discrimination, resentment, unemployment, and poor health conditions. Their mobile lifestyle contributes to low educational levels and to the perception and reality of associated crime.

The Roma were an issue during the debate preceding the EU’s 2004 enlargement and again prior to the accession of Bulgaria and Romania in 2007, when many Europeans talked of a “Roma deluge” as a reason to oppose expansion. Even before 2004, some Roma had been entering the Euro- pean Core as asylum-seekers, arriving in English towns and setting up their wagons and encampments in public parks and village squares. When several Core countries strength-

F R O M T H E F I E L D N O T E S

“Turbulent history and prosperous past are etched on the cultural landscape of the old Hanseatic city of Gdansk, Poland. Despite major wartime destruction, much of the old architecture survives, and restoration has revived not only Gdansk but also its twin (port) city, Gdynia. Gdansk was the initial stage for the rebellion in the 1980s of the Solidarity labor union against Poland’s communist regime, and after that regime was toppled, the country went through difficult economic times. Today Poland, a full member of the European Union, is making rapid progress; its historic cities, from Gdansk in the north to Krakow in the south, attract throngs of foreign visitors and the tourist industry is booming. Note: don’t let that Dutch tricolor mislead you. Attracting foreign visitors is one way to raise revenues, and the historic old city on the Baltic is becoming a tourist draw.” © Sigmund Malinowski.

Concept Caching www.conceptcaching.com

Europe’s largest minority, the stateless Roma, also are the realm’s poorest. Slovakia is one of several European countries with substantial Roma populations, and its government has been criticized by the EU for its treatment of Roma citizens. This depressing photograph of a Roma settlement in Hermanovce shows a cluster of makeshift dwellings virtually encircled by a moat bridged only by a walkway. The village of Hermanovce may itself not be very prosperous, but that moat represents a social chasm between comparative comfort and inescapable deprivation. © Tomasz Tomaszewski/ngs/Getty Images, Inc.

deblij_c01_038-097hr2.qxd 29-09-2009 12:13 Page 88

to Europe. The Hungarians (Magyars) moved into the middle Danube River Basin more than a thousand years ago from an Asian source; they have neither Slavic nor Germanic roots. They converted their fertile lowland into a thriving nation-state and created an imperial power that held sway over an area far larger than pre- sent-day Hungary. Ethnic Magyar remnants of this Greater Hungary can still be found in parts of Roma- nia, Serbia, and Slovakia (Fig. 1-24), and the govern- ment in the twin-cities capital astride the Danube River, Budapest, has a history of irredentism toward these ex- ternal minorities.

The concept of irredentism—a government’s support for ethnic or cultural cohorts in neighboring or distant countries, derives from a nineteenth-century campaign by Italy to incorporate the territory inhabited by an Ital- ian-speaking minority of Austria, calling it Italia Irre- denta or “Unredeemed Italy.” One advantage of joining the EU, obviously, was that much of the reason for Hun- garian irredentism disappeared. When and if Serbia joins the EU, it may disappear altogether.

With a population of 9.9 million, a distinctive culture, and a considerable and varied resource base, Hungary should have good prospects, and its economic potential

B l a c k S e a

Sea of

Azov

Ae gea

n S ea

A dr ia t ic

Sea

Ba lti

c Se

45°

BOSNIA

ALBANIA

KOSOVOCROATIA

RUSSI A

BELARUS

LATVIA

LITHUANIA

POLAND

SWEDEN

GERMANY

CZECH REPUBLIC

SLOVAKIA

AUSTRIA

HUNGARY

SLOVENIA

CROATIA ROMANIA

ITALY

GREECE

UKRAINE

MOLDOVA

ESTONIA

BULGARIA

50°

TURKEY

15° 20° 25°

30°

25°15° 20°

RUSSIA

MACEDONIA

40°

45°

55°

50°

35°

10° 30°

Longitude East of Greenwich

40°

SERBIA

MONTENEGRO

DENMARK

ITALY

ETHNIC MOSAIC OF EUROPE’S EASTERN FLANK

0 100 200 300 Kilometers

500 100 150 Miles

After Hoffman, 1953

Slavic

Czechs

Slovaks

Slovenes

Croats

Muslims

Bulgars

Macedonians

Serbs

Ukrainians

No group over 50%

Non-Slavic

Russians

Turks

Magyars

Albanians

Romanians

Belarussians

Poles

Pomaks

Latvians

Lithuanians

Montenegrins

T H E E A S T E R N P E R I P H E R Y 89

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90 C H A P T E R 1 ● E U R O P E

was a strong factor in its 2004 admission into the EU. But mismanagement, political corruption, and growing indebtedness have set Hungary back. Behind the ele- gance of Budapest, a primate city nearly ten times the size of Hungary’s next-largest urban center, lies an econ- omy still mired in its rural past.

The success story among the four countries in this grouping remains modest, with most of it accounted for by progressive Slovenia, which lies wedged against Aus- tria and Italy in the hilly terrain near the head of the Adri- atic Sea (Fig. 1-23). With 2.0 million people, a nearly homogeneous ethnic complexion, and a productive economy, Slovenia was the first “republic” of the seven that emerged from the collapse of Yugoslavia to be invited to join the EU. Shortly thereafter, Slovenia became part of the euro zone.

EU Countries Disconnected from the European Core

In our Introduction we emphasized that core areas are a matter of scale, and that smaller core areas and periph- eries exist within larger ones. Here is a good example of this phenomenon. By definition, we are dealing here with the European Periphery. The key state in this group, Greece, forms a subsidiary core among the countries not directly connected to the European Core itself.

Greece’s land boundaries are with Turkey, Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Albania; as Figure 1-25 reveals, it also owns islands just offshore from mainland Turkey. Al- together, the Greek archipelago numbers some 2000 islands, ranging in size from Crete (8260 square kilo- meters [3190 sq mi]) to small specks of land in the Cyclades. In addition, Greeks represent the great major- ity on the now-divided island of Cyprus.

Ancient Greece was a cradle of Western civilization, and later it was absorbed by the expanding Roman Em- pire. For some 350 years beginning in the mid-fifteenth century, Greece was under the sway of the Ottoman Turks. Greece regained independence in 1827, but not until near- ly a century later, through a series of Balkan wars, did it acquire its present boundaries. During World War II, Nazi Germany occupied and ravaged the country, and in the postwar era the Greeks quarreled with the Turks, the Alba- nians, and the newly independent Macedonians. Today, Greece finds itself between the Muslim world of South- west Asia and the Muslim communities of the eastern European Periphery.

Volatile as Greece’s surroundings are, Greece itself is a country on the move, another EU success story. Polit- ical upheavals in the 1970s and economic stagnation in the 1980s are all but forgotten in the new century: now Greece, its economy thriving, is described as the loco-

motive for the Balkans, a beacon for the EU in a crucial part of the world. Recent infrastructure improvements, in conjunction with hosting the 2004 Olympics, have focused on metropolitan Athens, where nearly one-third of the population is concentrated, and include new sub- ways, a new beltway, and a new airport.

Greece is strongly affected by the recent enlargement of the EU, particularly the admission of Romania and its neighbor, Bulgaria, in 2007. Until 2007, Greece lay sep- arated from the contiguous EU by nonmember-states, but when Romania and Bulgaria joined the EU, Greece became part of the conterminous Union. The effect of what will eventually become a far more porous border with Bulgaria may still be distant, but more immediate- ly, Greece will lose much of its EU subsidy as the poor- er new members start receiving EU financial support. Meanwhile, Greece’s democratic institutions still need strengthening, its educational institutions need modern- izing (street riots greeted the introduction of private uni- versity education, an EU regulation), and corruption remains a serious problem. And although Greece is on better terms today with its fractious neighbors and invests in development projects in Macedonia and Bulgaria (for example, an oil pipeline from Thessaloniki to a Greek- owned refinery in Skopje, Macedonia), it will take skill- ful diplomacy to navigate the shoals of historic discord.

Modern Greece is a nation of 11.2 million centered on historic Athens, one of the realm’s great cities. With its

The Mediterranean Sea, a maritime link between global core and global periphery, has claimed an unknown number of victims trying to reach European coasts. Overloaded fishing boats such as the one shown here, carrying more than 230 hopeful (but illegal) migrants, often fail to make the crossing in a sea known for its sudden storms. If they do reach European shores, their occupants risk arrest and deportation; this boat was apprehended and escorted into the Sicilian port of Licata. EU countries, less in need of unskilled labor than they once were and more inclined to close their borders, are taking a harder line against undocumented immigrants and asylum-seekers. © Antonio Parrinello/Reuters/Landov

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T H E E A S T E R N P E R I P H E R Y 91

port of Piraeus, metropolitan Athens contains about 30 percent of the Greek population, making it one of Europe’s most congested and polluted urban areas. Athens is the quintessential primate city; the monumental architecture of ancient Greece still dominates its cultural landscape. The Acropolis and other prominent landmarks attract a steady stream of visitors; tourism is one of Greece’s lead- ing sources of foreign revenues, and Athens is only the beginning of what the country has to offer.

Deforestation, soil erosion, and variable rainfall make farming difficult in much of Greece, but the country remains strongly agrarian, reflective of Europe’s Periph- ery. It is self-sufficient in staple foods, and farm prod- ucts continue to figure prominently among exports. But other sectors of the economy, including manufacturing (textiles) and the service industries, are growing rapid- ly. Volatile politically, Greece will be challenged to main- tain its growth after the momentous recent EU

GREECE

BULGARIA

ROMANIA

HUNGARY

MOLDOVA

UKRAINE

MACEDONIA

ALBANIA

SYRIA

LEBANON

BOSNIA

SERBIA

KOSOVO

MONTENEGRO

T U R K E Y

RUSSIA UKRAINE

TURKISH REPUBLIC OF NORTHERN CYPRUS

REPUBLIC OF CYPRUS

EASTERN MACEDONIA & THRACE

ATTICA

EPIRUS

WESTERN MACEDONIA

CENTRAL MACEDONIA

THESSALY

CENTRAL GREECE

C R E T E

PELOPONNESUS

W ESTERN

GREECE

I O

N I

A N

I S

L A

N D

25°Longitude East of Greenwich 30° 35°

35°

40°

20°

40°

35°

20° 25° 30°

ovejaraS

Sofia

Skopje

Pristina

Thessaloníki

Vólos

asiráL

Athens Piraeus

iartaP

Kálámai

enariT

lubnatsI

rimzI

Limassol Larnaca

aisociN

Kyrenia Famagusta

Ankara Eskisehir

Bursa

Antalya

Konya

Zonguldak

Sivas

Gaziantep

Iskenderun

Adana Ceyhan

Afyon Kayseri

Denizli

Podgorica

Ephesus

Balikesir

Corum

Samsun

Kozáni

Xánthi

Kardítsa

Aleppo

Homs

Beirut

Damascus

Irakleion

)esab.K.U(iritorkA

Dhekelia (U.K. base)

Yumurtalik

Edirne

Plovdiv

Gebze

Usak

Isparta

Tarsus

Antakya

Osmaniye

OrduSariyer

Izmit

Stara Zagora

Mersin

Oradea

Varna

tserahcuB

tsepaduB

edargleB

Timisoara

vosarB

Braila

Cluj Chisinau

Constanta

Galati

Kryvyy Rih

asedO

Burgas

Lesvos

Thera (Santorini)

Cyclades

Dodecanese Is lands

Hios

Rodos (Rhodes)

Kar pas

Pen insu

T o

r o s M o u

n t

a i

n s

K o r o g l

u M o u n

t a i n s

A N A T O L I A

Mediterranean Sea

I o n i a n S e a

Aegean

A d

riatic Sea

Sea

Da rda

nel les

Bo sp

oru s

Sea of Marmara

Sea of Crete

B l a c k S e a

Mediterranean

Sea

33° 34° 35°32°

33°32°

35° 35°

TURKEY

Paphos iritorkA

Larnaca Limassol

Famagusta

Dhekelia aisociN

Kar pas

Pe n.

Kyrenia

33° 34° 35°32°

33° 34°32°

35° 35°

TURKEY

Paphos iritorkA

Larnaca Limassol

Famagusta

Dhekelia aisociN

Kar pas

Pe n.

Kyrenia

CYPRUS Present Partition

CYPRUS Proposed Partition

0 50 100 Kilometers

250 50 Miles

Turkish area Greek area British sovereign territory

THE SOUTHEASTERN PERIPHERY

Under 50,000

50,000–250,000

250,000–1,000,000

1,000,000–5,000,000

Over 5,000,000

Road

Ruins

Highway

Railroad

Oil pipeline

National capitals are underlined

POPULATION

0 125 Kilometers

25 50 75 Miles

62.5

deblij_c01_038-097hr.qxd 25-08-2009 17:16 Page 91

92 C H A P T E R 1 ● E U R O P E

expansions and against the backdrop of a still-unstable Balkan neighborhood.

Also in this southeastern corner of the European Periphery lies the island country of Cyprus, whose polit- ical geography merits special attention because of the complications it created, and continues to create, for the EU. As Figure 1-25 shows, Cyprus lies closer to Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon than it does to any part of Europe, but it is peopled dominantly by Greeks. In 1571, the Turks conquered Cyprus, then ruled by Venice, and controlled it until 1878 when the British took over. Most of the island’s Turks arrived during the Ottoman period; the Greeks have been there longest.

When the British were ready to give Cyprus inde- pendence after World War II, the 80-percent-Greek majority mostly preferred union with Greece. Ethnic conflict followed, but in 1960 the British granted Cyprus

independence under a constitution that prescribed major- ity rule but guaranteed minority rights.

This fragile order broke down in 1974, and civil war engulfed the island. Turkey sent in troops and massive dis- location followed, resulting in the partition of Cyprus into northern Turkish and southern Greek sectors (Fig. 1-25, inset map). In 1983, the 40 percent of Cyprus under Turk- ish control, with about 100,000 inhabitants (plus some 30,000 Turkish soldiers), declared itself the independent Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Only Turkey rec- ognizes this ministate (which now contains a population of about 200,000); the international community recognizes the government on the Greek side as legitimate. This legit- imacy, however, is questionable in light of the Greek side’s rejection of the United Nations plan to allow both the Greek and the Turkish side of the island to join the EU in 2004. The Turkish-Cypriot voters accepted it, yet they

TAKE A MAP of Greece. Draw a line to encompass its land area as well as all the islands. Now find the geo- graphic center of this terrestrial and maritime territory, and you will find a major city nearby. That city is Athens, capital of modern Greece, culture hearth of ancient Greece, source of Western civilization.

Athens today is only part of a greater metropolis that sprawls across, and extends beyond, a mountain- encircled, arid basin that opens southward to the Bay of Phaleron, an inlet of the Aegean Sea. Here lies Piraeus, Greece’s largest port, linked by rail and road to the adja- cent capital. Other towns, from Keratsinion in the west to Agios Dimitrios in the east, form part of an urban area that not only lies at, but is, the heart of modern Greece. With a population of 3.2 million, most of the country’s major industries, its densest transport network, and a multitude of service functions ranging from government to tourism, Greater Athens is a well-defined national core area.

Arrive at the new Eleftherios Venizelos Airport east of Athens and drive into the city, and you can navigate on the famed Acropolis, the 150-meter (500-ft) high hill that was ancient Athens’ sanctuary and citadel, crowned by one of humanity’s greatest historic treasures, the Parthenon, temple to the goddess Athena. Only one among many relics of the grandeur of Athens 25 centuries ago, it is now engulfed by mainly low-rise urbanization and all too often obscured by smog generated by facto- ries and vehicles and trapped in the basin. Conservation- ists decry the damage air pollution has inflicted on the city’s remaining historic structures, but in truth the great- est destruction was wrought by the Ottoman Turks, who

plundered the country during their occupation of it, and the British and Germans, who carted away priceless trea- sures to museums and markets in western Europe.

Travel westward from the Middle East or Turkey, and Athens will present itself as the first European city on your route. Travel eastward from the heart of Europe, howev- er, and your impression of its cultural landscape may dif- fer: behind the modern avenues and shopping streets are bazaar-like alleys and markets where the atmosphere is unlike that of any other in this geographic realm. And beyond the margins of Greater Athens lies a Greece that lags far behind this bustling, productive coreland.

AMONG THE REALM’S GREAT CITIES . . . Athens

Piraeus

ATHENS Keratsinion

Agios Dimitrios

Nea Liosia

Nea Ionia

Peristerion

Nikaia

Kallithea

Ilioupolis

Aiyaleo

Kaisariani

Zografos

Acropolis

Eleftherios Venizelos

Intl. Airport

A i g a

l e o s

M t s

I m i t

t o s

M t s

P a r n i s

M t s .

Khalandrion

Ilisos R.

Ki fis

Bay of Phaleron (Falirou)

Saronic Gulf

Parthenon

CBD

5 Kilometers

3 Miles

deblij_c01_038-097hr.qxd 25-08-2009 17:16 Page 92

T H E E A S T E R N P E R I P H E R Y 93

were left out when the Greek side of the island was admit- ted to the EU in 2004. Resentment was high on the Turk- ish side and in Turkey itself as well—just as discussions on Turkey’s own admission to the EU were getting under way. It was—and remains—a reminder that Cyprus’s “Green Line” separating the Greek and Turkish commu- nities constitutes not just a regional border but a bound- ary between geographic realms.

Just how Romania managed to persuade EU leaders to endorse its 2007 accession remains a question for many Europeans. As the Data Table inside the back cover indicates, Romania has some of Europe’s worst social indicators; its economy is weak, its incomes are low, its political system has not been sufficiently upgraded from communist times (many “apparatchiks” have acquired state assets under the guise of “privatization” and are controlling the political process), and political infighting and corruption are endemic.

But Romania is an important country, located in the lower basin of the Danube River and occupying much of the heart of eastern Europe. With 21.4 million inhabitants and a pivotal situation on the Black Sea, Romania is a bridge between central Europe and the realm’s south- eastern corner, where EU member Greece and would-be member Turkey face each other across land and water.

Romania’s drab and decaying capital of Bucharest (once known as the Paris of the Balkans) and its sur- rounding core area lie in the interior, linked by rail to the Black Sea port of Constanta. The country’s once-pro- ductive oilfields have been depleted, about a third of the labor force works in agriculture, poverty is widespread in the countryside as well as the towns, and unemploy- ment is high. Many talented Romanians continue to leave the country in search of opportunities elsewhere. Roma- nia has been described as the basket case of the Balka- ns, but that did not derail its EU membership drive.

Across the Danube lies Romania’s southern neighbor, Bulgaria. The rugged Balkan Mountains form Bulgaria’s physiographic backbone, separating the Danube and Maritsa basins. As the map shows, Bulgaria has five neighbors, several of which are in political turmoil.

The Bulgarian state appeared in 1878, when the Rus- sian czar’s armies drove the Turks out of this area. The Slavic Bulgars, who form 85 percent of the population of 7.5 million, were (unlike the Romanians) loyal allies of Moscow during the Soviet period. But they did not treat their Turkish minority, about 10 percent of the pop- ulation, very kindly, closing mosques, prohibiting use of the Turkish language, and forcing Turkish families to adopt Slavic names. Conditions for the remaining Turks improved somewhat after the end of the Soviet period. They improved further as Bulgaria became a candidate and then in 2007 a member of the European Union, which required judicial and other social reforms.

Bulgaria has a Black Sea coast and an outlet, the port of Varna, but the main advantage it derives from its coastal location is the tourist trade its beaches generate. The capital, Sofia, lies not on the coast but near the oppo- site border with Serbia, and in its core-area hinterland some foreign investment is changing the economic landscape—but slowly. Bulgaria’s GNI is on a par with Romania’s, although the telltale agricultural sector is much smaller here.

Bulgarians, too, are emigrating in droves—and this worries the countries of western Europe, where an un- controlled influx of immigrants with newly-won access to their job markets would create serious problems. In 2006 the United Kingdom announced that it would place severe restrictions on workers from Romania and Bulgaria—a surprising reversal for a country that has long championed openness in the EU job market. It was a signal that, by admitting these two states, the EU’s lead- ers had crossed a line.

As Figure 1-13 reminds us, the boundary of the Euro- pean Core that traverses the Baltic Sea includes south- ern Norway and Sweden but excludes Latvia and Lithuania. The economies of these two Baltic states are improving but are not yet on a par with those of Scan- dinavia. Latvia, centered on the port of Riga, was tight- ly integrated into the Soviet system during Moscow’s long domination. Still today, only 59 percent of the pop- ulation of 2.3 million is Latvian, and nearly 30 percent is Russian. After independence ethnic tension arose be- tween these Baltic and Slav sectors, but the prospect of EU membership required the end of discriminatory prac- tices. Latvians concentrated instead on the economy, which had been left in dreadful shape, with the result that it qualified for 2004 admission. Consider this: 20 years ago, virtually all of Latvia’s trade was with the Soviet Union. Today its principal trading partners are Germany, the United Kingdom, and Sweden. Russia figures in only one category: Latvia’s import of oil and gas.

Lithuania (3.4 million) has a residual Russian mi- nority of only about 7 percent, but relations with its giant neighbor are worse than Latvia’s—this despite Lithua- nia’s greater dependence on Russia as a trading partner. One reason for this bad relationship has to do with neigh- boring Kaliningrad, Russia’s Baltic Sea exclave (Fig. 1-23). When Kaliningrad became a Russian territory after World War II, Lithuania was left with only about 80 kilometers (50 mi) of Baltic coastline and a small port that was not even connected by rail to the interior capi- tal of Vilnius. Lithuania in 2005 called for the demilita- rization of Kaliningrad as a matter of national security. Despite these problems, Lithuania’s economy during 2003 had the highest growth rate in Europe, spurred by foreign investment and by profits from its oil refinery at Mazeikiai, facilitating EU admission in 2004.

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94 C H A P T E R 1 ● E U R O P E

Non-EU Countries in the South

We now turn to a part of the European Periphery that has undergone wrenching changes since 1990, a process that started with the violent dismantling of communist Yugoslavia during the last decade of the twentieth cen- tury and continues, fortunately less violently, today. Here the European Union has made only slight progress, and just one of the countries that emerged from Yugoslavia’s disintegration, Slovenia, has joined the EU. Discussions with Croatia, Slovenia’s neighbor, have repeatedly been put on hold. No other state in this area is a serious can- didate for admission at present.

The key state on the new map is Serbia, the name of what is left of a much larger domain once ruled by the Serbs—who were dominant in the former Yugoslavia. Centered on the historic capital of Belgrade on the Danube River, Serbia is the largest and potentially the most important country of this subregion of the old East- ern Europe. But the Serbs are having to accommodate some major changes. First, more than 1 million of them live in neighboring Bosnia, where they have an uneasy

relationship with the local Muslims and Croats (Fig. 1-26). Second, the coastal province named Montenegro broke away from Serbia in 2006, when voters there opted to form an independent state. Third, its Muslim-majori- ty province of Kosovo declared independence in 2008, its sovereignty immediately recognized by the United States and a majority of (but not all) European govern- ments. And fourth, Serbia still incorporates a Hungari- an minority of some 400,000 in its northern province of Vojvodina on the northern side of the Danube at a time when Hungary has already joined the EU.

Serbs have a history of prominence and dominance in the former Yugoslavia and even earlier, but the Serbian sphere of influence continues to shrink. Still, with a pop- ulation of 7.3 million today, this remains former Yugoslavia’s key country. The Serbs objected vigorous- ly to Kosovo’s secession, in which they were supported by their fellow Slavs, the Russians. EU planners worry that the Russians may encourage the Serbs to defer mem- bership in the EU even if it were offered, and there are also concerns that Serbs may face new difficulties in Bosnia.

D an

ub e

R .

Danube R. Sava R.

Danube R.

d r

i a

t i

c S

e a

Banja Luka

Sarajevo

Tuzla

Brcko

Mostar

Pale

Zagreb

Belgrade

Pristina

Podgorica

Subotica

Novi Sad

Durres

Niksic

Nis

Prizren

Mitrovica

Pec

Skopje

Tirane

Split

Dubrovnik

Rijeka

EASTERN SLAVONIA

Posavina Corr idor

Muslim Domain

Croat Domain

Serb "Republic"

Serb "Rep."

SLOVENIA HUNGARY

VOJVODINA ROMANIA

BULGARIA

GREECE

ITALY

CROATIA

B O S N I ACROATIA

MACEDONIA

ALBANIA

MONTENEGRO

S E R B I A

KOSOVO

45°

42°

20°

15° 20°

Longitude East of Greenwich

Serb communities in Kosovo

Kosovar - Albanian communities

in Serbia

Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks)

Serbs

Montenegrins

Albanian Muslims

Macedonians

Croats

Dayton Accords Partition Line

National capitals are underlined

SERBIA AND ITS NEIGHBORS

0 50 100 Kilometers

0 25 50 Miles

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T H E E A S T E R N P E R I P H E R Y 95

If EU expansion occurs here in the south, it may involve Croatia, the crescent-shaped country with prongs along the Hungarian border as well as the Adriatic coast. But here, too, there are problems. About 90 percent of Croatia’s 4.4 million citizens are Croats, but the coun- try’s Serb minority has faced discrimination and has declined from 12 percent of the population to under five. The EU took a dim view of human rights issues in Croa- tia, but these improved when EU membership beckoned. The next stumbling block came in the form of a wave of organized crime and unpunished corruption, which has stalled progress since 2007. Meanwhile, about 800,000 Croats live outside Croatia, in Bosnia, where their rela- tionships with Muslims and Serbs are not always coop- erative.

When former Yugoslavia collapsed, Bosnia was the cauldron of calamity. No ethnic group was overwhelm- ingly dominant here, and this multicultural, effectively landlocked triangle of territory, lying between the Ser- bian stronghold to the east and the Croatian republic to the west and north, fell victim to disastrous conflict among Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks (now the official name for Bosnia’s Muslims, who constitute about 50 per- cent of the population of 3.8 million). As many as 250,000 people perished in concentration camps associ- ated with ethnic cleansing practices; in 1995, a U.S. diplomatic effort resulted in a truce that partitioned the country as shown in Figure 1-26. Serbian leaders were indicted for war crimes but not captured or extradited, which delayed any EU-admission initiatives. One leader, former Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic, was arrested in 2008, but another, General Ratko Mladic, remained at large in mid-2009. Meanwhile, Serbia’s for- mer president, Slobodan Milosevic, was tried in The Hague for war crimes and died there in captivity. This is one rough corner of Europe.

The southernmost “republic” of former Yugoslavia was Macedonia, which emerged from the collapse as a state with a mere 2 million inhabitants, of whom two-thirds are Macedonian Slavs. As the map shows, Macedonia adjoins Muslim Albania and Kosovo, and its northwestern corner is home to the 30 percent of Macedonians who are nom- inally Muslims. The remainder of this culturally diverse population are Turks, Serbs, and Roma. Macedonia is one of Europe’s poorest countries, landlocked and powerless. Even its very name caused it problems; Macedonia’s Greek neighbors argued that this name was Greek prop- erty and so would not recognize it. Next, Macedonia faced an autonomy movement among its Albanian citizens, requiring allocation of scarce resources in the effort to hold the fledgling state together. Macedonians cling to the hope that eventual EU admission will bring it subsidies and bet- ter economic times.

The ministate of Montenegro has a mere 620,000 inhabitants, one-third of them Serbs, a small capital (Pod- gorica), some scenic mountains, and a short but spectac- ular Adriatic coastline—and very little else to justify its position as one of Europe’s 40 countries. Tourism, a black market, some Russian investment, and a scattering of farms sum up the assets of this country.

In 1999, amid the chaos of disintegrating Yugoslavia, NATO took charge in Kosovo, then still a formal Serbian province, after a brief but damaging military campaign. With an overwhelmingly Albanian-Muslim population of about 2 million and a small Serb minority in its north- ern corner, landlocked Kosovo has few of the attributes of a full-fledged state, but balkanization continues in this part of Europe. NATO eventually turned over Kosovo’s administration to the United Nations, and in 2008 the capital of Pristina witnessed independence celebrations as the UN administration yielded to a newly elected national government.

The only other dominantly Muslim country in Europe is Albania, where some 70 percent of the pop- ulation of 3.2 million adhere to Islam. Albania also shares with one other country—Moldova—the status of being Europe’s poorest state. Albania has one of Eu- rope’s highest rates of natural population growth, and many Albanians try to emigrate to the EU by crossing the Adriatic to Italy. Most Albanians subsist on livestock herding and farming, but the poverty-stricken Gegs in the north lag behind the somewhat better-off Tosks in the south, with the capital of Tirane lying close to this cultural divide. For all Europe’s globalization, Albania would represent the symptoms of the global periphery anywhere in the world.

Non-EU Countries in the East

West of Russia and east of EU states Poland and Roma- nia lie three countries of which one, the key state of Ukraine, is territorially the largest in all of Europe. Demographically, with a population of 45.6 million, Ukraine also firmly ranks in the second tier of European states, along with Poland and Spain. As Figure 1-23 shows, Ukraine’s relative location is crucial. Not only does it link the core of Russia, to the periphery of the European Union: it forms the northern shore of the Black Sea from Russia to Romania, including the strategically important Crimea Peninsula. And most importantly, oil and gas pipelines connect Russian fields to European markets across Ukrainian territory.

Ukraine’s capital, Kiev (Kyyiv), is a major historic, cultural, and political focus. Briefly independent before the communist takeover in Russia, Ukraine regained its

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96 C H A P T E R 1 ● E U R O P E

sovereignty as a much-changed country in 1991. Once a land of farmers tilling its famously fertile soils, Ukraine emerged from the Soviet period with a huge industrial complex in its east—and with a large (17 percent) Russ- ian minority. Ukraine’s boundaries also changed during the Soviet era. In 1954, a Soviet dictator capriciously transferred the entire Crimea Peninsula, including its Russian inhabitants, to Ukraine as a reward for its pro- ductivity.

The Dnieper River forms a useful geographic refer- ence to comprehend Ukraine’s spatial division (Fig. 1-23). To its west lies agrarian, rural, mainly Roman Catholic Ukraine; in its great southern bend and eastward lies industrial, urban, Russified (and Russian Orthodox) Ukraine. Soviet planners made eastern Ukraine a com- munist Ruhr based on abundant local coal and iron ore, making the Donets Basin (Donbas for short) a key indus- trial complex. Meanwhile, the Russian Soviet Republic supplied Ukraine with oil and gas.

As Figure 1-24 shows, Ukraine, with the exception of its eastern and urban-concentrated Russian minority (still 17 percent today), has an ethnically homogeneous pop- ulation by eastern European standards. Ukraine is a crit- ically important country for Europe’s future, but it suffers from numerous problems ranging from political mis- management and corruption to a faltering economy and rising crime. Yet this country has access to internation- al shipping lanes, a large resource base, massive farm production, educated and skilled labor, and a large dom- estic market.

A presidential election in 2004 first drew internation- al attention to Ukraine’s political geography. Figure 1-27 indicates voter preferences in the west and east; in effect, Ukraine’s electorate is divided diagonally between a pro- Western (and pro-EU) west and a pro-Russian east, resulting in a situation reminiscent of Czechoslovakia’s before its “velvet divorce.” In Ukraine’s case, however, the transit of energy supplies creates a complication. Ukraine’s own dependence on Russian supplies makes it vulnerable to Moscow’s decisions on prices as well as supplies. Some of Ukraine’s leaders urge speedy inte- gration into the European sphere; others prefer a middle road between Europe and Russia.

Moldova, Ukraine’s small and impoverished neighbor (which is by many measures Europe’s poorest country) was a Romanian province seized by the Soviets in 1940 and made into a landlocked “Soviet Socialist Republic.” A half-century later, along with other such “republics,” Moldova gained independence when the Soviet Union disintegrated. Romanians remain in the majority among its 4.1 million people, but most of the Russians and Ukrainians (each about 13 percent) have moved across the Dniester River to an industrialized strip of land

between that river and the Ukrainian border, proclaim- ing there a “Republic of Transdniestria” (see Fig. 1-12). But such separatist efforts form only one of Moldova’s many problems. Its economy, dominated by farming, is in decline; an estimated 40 percent of the population works outside its borders because unemployment in Moldova is as high as 30 percent; smuggling and illegal arms trafficking are rife. These misfortunes translate into weakness, and Russia’s malign influence in the form of support for Transdniestria’s separatists keeps the coun- try in turmoil. In fact, in 2007 the elected president of Moldova was persuaded by Russian pressure to recog- nize the regime of breakaway Transdniestria as legiti- mate.

The third state in this part of the European Periphery in many ways is the most peripheral of all: autocratic, backward Belarus. Landlocked and misgoverned, sus- tained in part by the transit of energy supplies from Rus- sia to Europe’s Core countries, Belarus has few functional links to Europe and little prospect of progress. More than 80 percent of Belarus’s 9.6 million citizens are Belarussians (“White” Russians), a West Slavic people; only some 11 percent are (East Slavic) Russians. A small Polish minority occasionally complains of mistreatment and discrimination. Devastated during World War II, Belarus became one of Moscow’s most loyal satellites, and the Soviets built Mensk (Minsk), the country’s cap- ital, into a large industrial center. But in the post-Soviet era, Belarus has lagged badly, and its government func- tioned in ways reminiscent of the communist era.

B la ck S e a

Sea of

Azov

Dnieper R. Dniester R.

R O M A N I A AVODLOM

R U S S I A BELARUS

U K R A I N E

Kiev (Kyyiv)

asedO

vivL

istvinrehC

vikrahK

kstenoDksvorteporpinD

POLAND

UKRAINE'S DIVIDED ELECTORATE

0 200 400 600 800 Kilometers

0 100 200 400 Miles300

Majority supporting Western-oriented candidate

Majority supporting candidates favored by Russia

FIGURE 1-27

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W H A T Y O U C A N D O 97

What You Can Do RE C O M M E N DAT I O N: Make your point in the press! Most newspapers publish letters to the editor, and often that page is the most interesting of all. Writing a letter to the editor, however, is not as easy as it might appear. When you have to make your argument in just 150 to 200 words (sometimes a few dozen more, depending on editorial policy), this has a way of focusing the mind. But if you have a geographically informed opinion on a matter of current concern, or if you have spotted an error on a map or in a story, the editor would like to hear from you (submission instructions are found on the newspaper’s editorial page and website). It takes practice, and it is best to start with a local or region- al newspaper, but the effort may pay off in several unexpected ways because even a local newspaper today attracts a global audience through its website and other electronic links. And you will be amazed how practice in accurate, con- cise writing under space limitations and for a wide audience will improve your exam-writing skills.

GEOGRAPHIC CONNECTIONS

Geographic Literature: The key introductory works on this realm were authored by Berentsen; Gottmann; Murphy, Jordan- Bychkov, & Bychkova Jordan; McDonald; Ostergren & Rice; and Shaw. These works, together with a comprehensive listing of noteworthy books and recent articles on the geography of Europe, can be found in the References and Further Readings section of this book’s website at www.wiley.com/college/deblij.

Unlike Ukrainians, Belarussians so far express lit- tle interest in joining the EU, and Belarus cannot even be viewed as a functioning part of the European Periphery. On the contrary, its long-time authoritari- an leader has made overtures toward Moscow, seek- ing to join the Russian Federation in some formal way. The Russian leadership, however, has not responded with enthusiasm.

With nearly 600 million inhabitants in 40 countries, including some of the world’s highest-income economies, a politically stable and economically integrated Europe

would be a superpower in any new world order. Howev- er, Europe’s political geography is anything but stable as devolutionary forces and cultural stresses continue to trouble the realm even as EU expansion proceeds. Euro- peans have not yet found a way to give voice to collec- tive viewpoints in the world, or to generate collective action in times of crisis. Importantly, even after the expan- sion of 2007, the EU incorporates only two-thirds of the realm’s national economies, and further enlargement will become increasingly difficult for economic, political, and cultural reasons. Europe has always been a realm of rev- olutionary change, and it remains so today.

1 You are a member of the staff of a multinational cor-poration doing business in several European countries. Your management has been used to dealing with govern- ments in the capitals of a number of countries including the Netherlands (The Hague), Poland (Warsaw), and Hungary (Budapest). Now the company has announced plans to expand operations in Spain at Barcelona, in Belgium at Antwerp, in Ukraine at Donetsk, and in the United Kingdom at Edinburgh. You have been asked to prepare a “hurdles and pitfalls” report as part of the preparation for this initiative. What advice will you provide based on your knowledge of Europe’s cultural geography and devolutionary pressures?

2 The European Union expanded from 15 to 27 member-states during the middle years of the last decade, and voters in every one of the joining countries endorsed their gov- ernments’ desire for membership. But even as other countries

hope to enter the EU in the foreseeable future, certain states have actually declined membership. What countries are these, and why would they stay out of the EU? Under what circum- stances might a member-state decide to leave the EU? Can you relate these considerations to the decision by 3 of the 15 pre-2004 members not to join the EMU and to reject the use of the euro?

3 The largest and most populous country in Europe notto be a member of the EU is largely Christian Ukraine, and in 2009 Ukraine was not even in discussions aimed at EU membership. Yet Turkey, not in Europe and almost entirely Muslim, is in the early stages of negotiations toward eventual membership. What cultural-geographic and geopolitical fac- tors explain this remarkable situation, and in what ways does this illustrate the ever-greater difficulties confronted by the EU as it makes an ever-greater impact in and on its periphery?

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