Module 3
Europe
a. Area and Population
Europe has traditionally been classified as one of the world’s seven continents, but one
look at the globe reveals what an arbitrary designation that is. Europe is not a distinct landmass
such as Australia or Africa. It is rather an appendage or a subcontinent of the world’s greatest
landmass, Eurasia (a term combining the names Europe and Asia). Nevertheless, the popular and
scholarly designation of Europe as a region distinct from the rest of Eurasia is a time-honored and
useful organizing device. In this text, Europe is the culture region made up of the countries of
Eurasia lying west of Turkey, Russia, and three former constituent republics of the Soviet Union:
Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova. (Incidentally, the traditional physical dividing line between
Europe and Asia is drawn from the Ural Mountains down to the Caucasus, technically placing
Turkey, a good part of Russia, and all three of those republics within Europe.) Under our
definition, Europe is a great peninsula, fringed by lesser peninsulas and islands and bounded on
its seaward sides by the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Black Sea.
The European core is northwestern and north central Europe. It consists of the United
Kingdom, Ireland, France, the Benelux countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxem bourg),
Switzerland, Austria, and Germany. These countries have the largest populations and play major
economic and political roles in contemporary Europe. Within the European core are also the
microstates of Andorra, Monaco, and Liechtenstein. Northern Europe is made up of Denmark,
Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and Finland. Southern Europe includes Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece,
Malta, and Cyprus. Eastern Europe includes Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech
Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, and Slovenia.
All of Europe has an area only about half as large as that of the 48 contiguous United
States. The average European country is some 50,000 square miles (130,000 sq km), or about the
size of Arkansas. Four countries—Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy—far outsize
the others in Europe in population. Their respective populations range from about 82 million for
Germany to approximately 60 million each for France, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Together,
the four countries represent about half of Europe’s population, which is about 87 percent of the
population of the Europe’s population of approximately 532 million people in 2007 was nearly
twice that of the United States. One of every 12 people in the world is a European, and they live
in a space half the size of the United States. Europe’s population density varies widely, from
1,020 persons per square mile (394/sq km) in the intensively developed Netherlands to about 7
per square mile (3/sq km) in Iceland but overall is greater than the world average of 127 per
square mile (49/sq km). Comparisons with the United States reveal about the same range, but the
European countries are generally more densely populated.
The greatest densities in population are in two belts of industrialization and urbanization
near historical sources of coal and hydroelectric power; these energy resources were critical in the
location and rapid development of many European cities. One belt extends from the United
Kingdom to Italy. In addition to large parts of Britain, it includes extreme northeastern France,
most of Belgium and the Netherlands, Germany’s Rhineland, northern Switzerland, and northern
Italy (south of the Alps). The second belt of dense population goes from Britain to southern
Poland and continues out of the region into Ukraine. It overlaps the fi rst belt as far east as the
Rhineland, where it forms a narrow strip eastward across Germany, the western Czech Republic,
and Poland.
Although these two belts cover a minor portion of Europe’s geography, they contain
more large cities and generate a greater value of industrial output than the rest of Europe
combined. Only in eastern North America and Japan are there urban-industrial belts of such
complexity and importance. All these regions have overwhelmingly urban populations. Europe’s
population overall is 74 percent urban. In the United Kingdom, Iceland, and Belgium, 90 percent
or more of the population is urban; in Belgium, it is 97 percent. The least urban are the countries
of Albania, Bosnia, and Slovenia, with urban percentages between 45 and 49 percent.
Europe essentially defi ned the demographic transition, with a trajectory from
preindustrial high birth rates and high death rates to postindustrial low birth rates and low death
rates. Over a period of decades, Europe recovered from the demographic setbacks of two world
wars (for example, France lost more than 3 percent of its prewar population in World War I, and
Poland lost 19 percent in World War II). The population peaked in 1997 and then began a slow,
steady decline to what is widely acknowledged as a “birth dearth.” Today, birth rates are low in
this region of relative affluence and high urbanization, where increasing numbers of employed
and educated women are saying, “There is no time for motherhood, and children are too
expensive anyway.”
The region’s fertility rate is in fact below population replacement level, with no European
country maintaining its population through births. Typical of Europe are the United Kingdom and
the Netherlands, both with annual population change rates of 0.3 percent; the highest growth rate
is in Ireland (0.9 percent) and the lowest in Bulgaria and Latvia (both –0.5 percent). Birth rates in
eastern Europe are particularly low because of economic challenges faced following cuts in state
subsidies (many of the former communist governments once provided free housing, education,
and child care). Perceiving better working opportunities elsewhere in Europe, women or couples
from the east are also moving westward in search of education and work, delaying childbirth or
deciding not to have children.
Europe’s population is aging faster than that of any other world region. The median age
in Italy is projected to rise from 42 in 2007 to 53 by 2050. The populations of the Czech Republic
and Spain are expected to contract by about 20 percent by 2050, and the Netherlands’ may shrink
by 10 percent. The Italian government is trying to slow a similar trend by offering parents a
“baby bounty” equivalent to $1,200 for each child after their fi rst—but only if the mother is
Italian or carries a European Union (EU) passport. France offers similar cash incentives for third
children.
Europe’s shrinking, aging population could use a youthful boost from immigration,
which is already the main source of population growth in most European countries. Studies have
shown what additional levels of immigration would be needed to prevent major population
declines in Europe and to maintain the existing ratio of workers aged 15 to 64 to those over 65
needing support. If birth rates remain at their current low level, the EU will have a shortfall of 20
million workers by 2030. The EU countries would need an annual infl ow of about 3 million
migrants a year (about twice the current rate) to prevent the future support ratio from dropping
sharply. But that prospect raises a number of concerns in the individual countries and for the
European Union itself.
In some countries, notably Denmark and the Netherlands, welfare benefi ts were
extremely generous and in themselves provided a strong magnet for immigration. There is now a
backlash. Denmark has passed tough anti-immigration laws and reduced welfare benefi ts for new
arrivals. Increasing numbers of Dutch nationals are expressing weariness with paying the tax
burden to support literacy, technical training, and health care costs for immigrants, who now
make up 10 percent of the country’s population. The country’s second-largest city, Rotterdam,
has almost as many nonnative (mainly Moroccan and Turkish) as native Dutch inhabitants. The
native Dutch fear they may become a minority in their own country, pointing out that Moroccan-
born women who reside in the Netherlands have a birth rate four times that of Dutch women. The
country is now exploring ways to slow down immigration, even as increasing numbers of the
Dutch, citing their fears, emigrate to Australia, the United States, and Canada.
Powerful economic forces tend to trump governmental restrictions on migration. With the
rich countries of Europe creating jobs, the underemployed young in the poor countries want to fi
ll them; simple laws of supply and demand keep the fl ow going. Governments are often reluctant
to impose harsh measures that would restrict migration. Borders are porous. Today, about 1.3
million people enter the European Union legally each year, and about 500,000 come illegally.
Germany is home to an estimated 1 million “illegals,” as Europeans call their undocumented
workers, and France has 300,000. Most of the illegal aliens cross land or sea borders unlawfully,
but perhaps a third are visitors who overstay tourist or student visas. Concerned about a new fl
ood of undocumented workers that might inundate the older, richer EU countries, the European
Union will not allow citizens of the 12 newest EU countries the freedom of movement between
member states now enjoyed by the others.
The EU is considering offering African immigrants temporary visas as a move to
encourage “circular migration,” in which the immigrant would work for no longer than a specifi
ed period in a European host country and then return home. The Europeans believe this approach
would offer three advantages: African countries would benefi t from remittances (earnings sent
home by migrant workers), migrants would have both legal jobs and safe means of reaching
them, and Europe would fi ll some of its labor shortages.
In Europe, especially northern Europe, a large source of legal immigration is people
seeking asylum. A 1967 protocol signed by the European countries gives everyone the right to
seek asylum in Europe and gives refugees the right not to be sent to a place where they may be
tortured or persecuted. At fi rst, few people took advantage of this opportunity, but a tide of
asylum seekers rose during the confl icts in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Asylum claims in
EU countries have fallen by more than half since the early 1990s but still number about 200,000
people each year. Iranians, Afghans, and others still want to come, claiming asylum from
persecution but perhaps more often motivated by poverty. This accounts for why about 80 percent
of the applicants are rejected.
b. Physical Geography and Human Adaptations
Europe has diverse physical features. Among its most distinctive physical characteristics
are its irregular shape, its high latitude, and its temperate climate. One of its most striking
characteristics, readily seen on a map, is its jagged coastal outline. The main peninsula of Europe
is fringed by numerous smaller peninsulas, notably the Scandinavian, Jutland, Iberian, Italian, and
Balkan Peninsulas. Offshore are numerous islands, including Great Britain, Ireland, Iceland,
Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and Crete. The island of Cyprus lies far in the eastern Mediterranean.
Around the indented shores of Europe, arms of the sea penetrate the land in the form of estuaries
(the tidal mouths of rivers), and harbors offer protection for shipping. This complex mingling of
land and water provides many opportunities for maritime activity, and much of Europe’s history
has focused on seaborne trade, sea fi sheries, and sea power.
Another remarkable environmental characteristic of Europe is its northerly location:
much of Europe lies north of the 48 conterminous United States. Despite their moderate climate,
the British Isles are at the same latitude as Hudson Bay in Canada. Athens, Greece, is only
slightly farther south than Saint Louis, Missouri. The high latitudes have predictable implications
for people. Northern Europeans revel in the long summer days but pay a price with long, dark
nights in winter. Scandinavians in particular celebrate the summer solstice as “midsummer” with
great fervor.
Europe’s mild climates, especially in winter, are particularly surprising given its high
latitudes. London, for example, has about the same average temperature in January as Richmond,
Virginia, which is 950 miles (c. 1,500 km) farther south. Relatively warm currents of water
account for Europe’s warmth. The Gulf Stream and its appendage the North Atlantic Drift, which
originate in tropical western parts of the Atlantic Ocean, fl ow to the north and east and cause the
waters around Europe to be much warmer in winter than the latitude would warrant.
With winds blowing mainly from the west (from sea to land) along the Atlantic coast of
Europe, the moving air in winter absorbs heat from the ocean and transports it to the land. This
makes winter temperatures abnormally mild for this latitude, especially along the coast. In the
summer, the climatic roles of water and land are reversed: instead of being warmer than the land,
the ocean is now cooler, so the air brought to the land by westerly winds (also known as
westerlies) in the summer has a cooling effect. These infl uences are carried as far north as the
Scandinavian Peninsula and into the Barents Sea, giving the Russians a warm-water port at
Murmansk, even though it lies above the Arctic Circle.
The same winds that bring warmth in winter and coolness in summer also bring abundant
moisture. Most of this falls as rain, although the higher mountains and more northerly areas have
considerable snow. Abundant, welldistributed, and relatively dependable moisture has always
been one of Europe’s major assets. The average precipitation in most places in the European
lowlands is 20 to 40 inches (c. 50 to 100 cm) per year. This is enough for a wide range of crops,
because mild temperatures and high atmospheric humidity reduce the rate at which plants lose
their moisture.
Europe’s topographic features are extremely diverse, with plains, plateaus, hill lands,
mountains, and water bodies all well represented. Enriched by the human associations of an
eventful history, Europe offers distinctive and often highly scenic landscapes.
One of the most prominent surface features of Europe is an undulating or rolling plain
that extends without a break from near the French-Spanish border, across western and northern
France, central and northern Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, northern Germany, Poland, and
far into Russia. Known as the North European Plain, it has outliers in Great Britain, the southern
part of the Scandinavian Peninsula, and southern Finland. The North European Plain contains the
greater part of Europe’s cultivated land, and it is underlain in some places by deposits of coal,
iron ore, potash (used in the production of soaps, glass, and certain compounds), and other
minerals that were important in the region’s industrial development.
Geographic characteristics of the North European Plain have had important impacts on
human settlement. Many of the largest European cities, including London, Paris, and Berlin,
developed on the plain. From northeastern France eastward, a band of especially dense population
extends along the southern edge of the plain. It coincides with fertile soils formed from deposits
of loess (a windblown soil of generally high fertility), providing an important natural
transportation route skirting the highlands to the south, and a large share of the region’s mineral
deposits.
South of this northern plain, Europe is mainly mountainous or hilly, with scattered plains,
valleys, and plateaus. The hills are geologically old, erosion having reduced their heights over
long periods. But many mountains in southern Europe are geologically young and often high and
ruggedly spectacular, with jagged peaks and snowcapped summits. They reach their zenith of
height and grandeur in the Alps with the summit of Mount Blanc (15,771 ft/4,807 m) on the
French-Italian border. Another formidable mountain chain, the Pyrenees, forms a wall up to
10,695 feet (3,404 m) high along the border of Spain and France. Lower but legendary chains of
mountains, the Transylvanian Alps and the Carpathian Mountains, meet in Romania.
Glaciation—a geologic and climatologic process in which great ice sheets formed in the
Arctic and Antarctic and advanced toward the equator—played a major role in shaping the
landscapes of Europe. Continental ice sheets formed over the continent, beginning on the
Scandinavian Peninsula and Scotland, during the Ice Age of the Pleistocene (c. 2 million to
10,000 years ago). Evidence suggests that there were four major periods of widespread glacial
coverage. Today, landscapes of glacial scouring—the erosive action of ice masses in motion—
characterize most of Norway and Finland, much of Sweden, parts of the British Isles, and Iceland.
These changes created many favorable sites for hydroelectric installations. Glacial deposition—
the process of offl oading rock and soil in glacial retreat or lateral movement—had a major effect
on the present landscape. Glacial deposits were left behind on most of the North European Plain
and are productively farmed today.
The North European Plain is bordered by glaciated lowlands and hill lands in Finland and
eastern Sweden and by rugged, ice-scoured mountains and fjords in western Sweden and most of
Norway. The British Isles also have extensive areas of glacially scoured hill country and low
mountains, along with lowlands where glacial deposition occurred.
Despite its relatively small size, Europe also has remarkable climatic and biotic diversity.
A marine west coast climate extends from the coast of Norway to northern Spain and inland to
west central Europe. Comparable to the climate found in the U.S. Pacifi c Northwest, the main
characteristics are mild winters, cool summers, and ample rainfall, with many drizzly, cloudy,
and foggy days. Throughout the year, changes of weather follow each other in rapid succession as
different air masses temporarily dominate or collide with each other along weather fronts. Most
precipitation is frontal in origin or results from a combination of frontal and orographic
(highland) influences. In lowlands, winter snowfall is light, and the ground is seldom covered for
more than a few days at a time. Summer days are longer, brighter, and more pleasant than the
short, cloudy days of winter, but even in summer, there are many chilly and overcast days. The
frost-free season of 175 to 250 days is long enough for most crops grown in the middle latitudes
to mature, although most areas have summers that are too cool for heat-loving crops such as corn
(maize) to ripen.
Inland from the coast, in western and central Europe, the marine climate gradually
changes. Winters become colder and summers are hotter; cloudiness and annual precipitation
decrease. Infl uences of maritime air masses from the Atlantic diminish and are modifi ed by
continental air masses from inner Asia. Farther inland, conditions are different, and two new
climate types are apparent: the humid continental short-summer (cold) climate in the north
(principally in southern parts of Sweden and Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland,
Slovakia, eastern Hungary, and northern Romania) and the humid continental long-summer
(warm) climate in the warmer south (mainly in southern Romania, Serbia, and northern Bulgaria).
The natural vegetation is mostly temperate mixed forest, and soils vary in quality. Among the
best soils are those formed from alluvium and loess along the roughly 1,800-mile (3,000-km)
valley of the Danube River.
Southernmost Europe has a distinctive climate: the Mediterranean climate, with a pattern
of dry summers and wet winters. This pattern results from seasonal shifts in atmospheric belts. In
winter, the belt of westerly winds shifts southward, bringing precipitation at a time of relatively
low evaporation and helping replenish subsurface waters. In summer, the belt of subsiding high
atmospheric pressure over the Sahara shifts northward, bringing desert conditions. Mediterranean
summers are warm to hot, and little precipitation occurs during the summer months when
temperatures are most advantageous for crop growth. Winters are mild, and frosts are rare.
Drought-resistant trees originally covered Mediterranean lands, but little of that forest remains,
having been depleted by centuries of human use. It has been replaced by the wild scrub that the
French call maquis (called chaparral in the United States and Spain) or by cultivated fi elds,
orchards, or vineyards. Much of the land consists of rugged, rocky, and eroded slopes where
thousands of years of deforestation, overgrazing, and excessive cultivation have taken their toll.
Subtropical temperatures allow a great variety of crops, but irrigation is needed in the dry
summers. This climate is also a draw for summer travelers, and tourism has immense economic
importance in Mediterranean Europe.
Europe has many river systems important for transport, water supply, electricity
generation, and recreation. Rivers were a critical part of Europe’s transport system at least as far
back as Roman times, and they still make it possible to move cargo at low cost. The most
important rivers for transportation are those of the highly industrialized areas in the core area of
west north central Europe. An ex tensive system of canals connects and supplements the rivers.
Some are quite old; the Romans built canals throughout northern Europe and Britain, mainly for
military transport.
The Dutch developed the pound (pond) lock for canals in the late 14th century, leading to
the expansion of regional connections of waterways through canals and to the use of canals to
link farmlands with the coasts. Starting in the late 1700s, the British built canals to move raw
materials toward factory locations. By the mid-19th century, the expanding infl uence of railroads
and the steam engine competed with canals. Although canals continue to play a signifi cant
transport role, since the 1950s, railroads and highways have been the main means to transport
goods throughout Europe.
c. Cultural and Historical Geographies
The apparent crowding of so many countries into the relatively small land area of Europe
is an indication of the region’s extraordinary cultural diversity. Travelers in Europe experience
this richness. A brief train ride, for example, takes the visitor from French-speaking western
Switzerland eastward into the country’s mainly Germanic region and southward through
mountain tunnels into the Italian world. Today, almost all of Europe’s peoples coexist
harmoniously, but this harmony was a long time in coming.
Europe emerged from prehistory as the homeland of many different peoples. In ancient
and medieval times, some of them expanded vigorously, and their languages and cultures became
widely diffused. The fi rst millennium b.c.e. witnessed a great expansion of the Greek and Celtic
(pronounced kel’-tik) peoples. In peninsulas and islands bordering the Aegean and Ionian Seas,
the early Greeks developed a civilization that reached previously unsurpassed heights of
philosophical inquiry and literary and artistic expression. Greek adventurers, traders, and
colonists used the Mediterranean Sea as their highway to spread classical Greek civilization and
its language along much of the Mediterranean shoreline. Evidence of the geographic range and
infl uence of the Greek language and culture is apparent in the many Greek elements in modern
European languages. But over time, the use of Greek in most areas disappeared as new peoples
and languages were introduced and expanded. Several language families are represented in
Europe today, and language is one of they key components of European ethnicity.
Europe’s Celtic languages expanded at roughly the same time as Greek and, like Greek,
are represented today only by remnants. Preliterate Celtic-speaking tribes radiated from a culture
hearth in what is now southern Germany and Austria, eventually occupying much of continental
Europe and the British Isles. Conquest and cultural infl uence by later arrivals, mainly Romans
and Germans, eventually eliminated the Celtic languages except for a few traces that survive
today as Gaelic (or Goeidelic) and Brythonic tongues in isolated pockets in the British Isles
(notably in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland) and in French Brittany.
In present-day Europe, the overwhelming majority of the people speak Romance,
Germanic, and Slavic languages. Like Greek and Celtic, these are Indo-European languages. The
Romance languages evolved from Latin, originally the language of ancient Rome and a small
district around it. In the few centuries before and just after the beginning of the Common Era, the
Romans subdued territories extending through western Europe as far west as Great Britain, and
the use of Latin spread to this large empire. It is often said that the Mediterranean Sea became the
“Roman Lake.” Latin had the greatest impact in the less developed and less populous western
parts of the empire. Over a long period, well beyond the collapse of this part of the empire in the
5th century, regional dialects of Latin survived and evolved into Italian, French, Spanish, Catalan
(still spoken in the northeastern corner of Spain), Portuguese, Romanian, and other Romance
languages of today.
It is important to point out that language frontiers do not always coincide with political
frontiers. For example, the French language extends to western Switzerland and also to southern
Belgium, where it is known as Walloon. French was Europe’s dominant language as recently as
the 18th century, when France was the continent’s intellectual capital. French is still widely
spoken outside the handful of countries in which it is the leading language and is second only to
English as a leading tongue in European affairs.
In the middle centuries of the fi rst millennium c.e., the power of Rome declined, and a
prolonged expansion by Germanic and Slavic peoples began. Germanic (Teutonic) peoples fi rst
appeared in history as groups inhabiting the coasts of Germany and much of Scandinavia. They
later expanded southward into Celtic lands east of the Rhine. They repelled Roman attempts at
conquest, and the Latin language had little impact in Germany. In the 5th and 6th centuries,
Germanic incursions overran the western Roman Empire, but in many areas, the conquerors were
eventually absorbed into the culture and language of their Latinized subjects.
However, the German language expanded into, and remains, the language of present-day
Germany, Austria, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, the greater part of Switzerland, the previously
Latinized part of Germany west of the Rhine, and parts of easternmost France (Alsace and part of
Lorraine). The Germanic languages of Europe include many tongues other than German itself. In
the Netherlands, Dutch developed as a language closely related to dialects of northern Germany,
and Flemish—virtually identical to Dutch—became the language of northern Belgium. Danish,
Norwegian, Swedish, and Icelandic descended from the same ancient Germanic tongue.
English is a Germanic language, but it has many words and expressions derived from
French, Latin, Greek, and other tongues. Originally, English was the language of the Germanic
tribes known as Angles and Saxons who invaded England in the 5th and 6th centuries c.e. The
Norman Conquest of England in the 11th century established French for a time as the language of
the English court and the upper classes. Modern English retains the Anglo-Saxon grammatical
structure but borrows much vocabulary from French and other languages. English is now the
principal language in most parts of the British Isles, having been imposed by conquest or spread
by cultural diffusion to areas outside England.
Slavic languages—also in the Indo-European language group—are dominant in most of
eastern Europe. Russian and Ukrainian are the primary languages of Europe’s adjoining region of
Russia and other former republics of the Soviet Union along Europe’s edge; Polish, Czech, and
Slovak are spoken in central Europe; and Serbian, Croatian, and Bulgarian prevail in the Balkan
Peninsula. They apparently originated in eastern Europe and Russia, spreading and differentiating
from each other during the Middle Ages as people traded and migrated. Closely related to the
Slavic languages are the Baltic languages of Latvian and Lithuanian.
One of the principal culture traits of Europe is the dominance of Christianity (see the map
of Europe’s faiths. Initially outlawed by the Romans, Christianity was embraced as the faith of
the realm by the Emperor Constantine in the 4th century, and it became a dominant institution in
the late stages of the empire. It survived the empire’s fall and continued to spread, fi rst within
Europe and then to other parts of the world. In total number of adherents, the Roman Catholic
Church, headed by the pope in Vatican City in Rome, is Europe’s largest religious group (with
280 million followers, or 45 percent of Europe’s Christians), as it has been since the Christian
church was fi rst established. Today, it remains the principal faith of a highly secularized Europe.
The main areas that are predominantly Roman Catholic are Italy, Spain, Portugal, France,
Belgium, the Republic of Ireland, large parts of the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Austria,
Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Croatia, and Slovenia.
In the 16th century, the Protestant Reformation took root in various parts of Europe, and
a subsequent series of religious wars, persecutions, and counterpersecutions left Protestantism
dominant in Great Britain, northern Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden,
Iceland, and Finland. Except for the Netherlands, where a higher Catholic birth rate has since
reversed the balance, these areas are still mainly Protestant, with the Church of England and
Calvinism the strongest sects in Britain and Lutheran Protestantism dominant in Germany and
Scandinavia. Among the three Baltic countries, Lutheran Protestantism is the dominant faith in
Estonia and Latvia, while most Lithuanians are Catholic.
Far more than any other region, Europe has shaped the human geography of the modern
world. Before the late 15th century, Europe played only a minor role in world trade patterns:
goods moved from southern France and northern Italy northwest to Britain, for example, and
more active trade connected Italy with the margins of the Mediterranean Sea and beyond to
southwestern Asia. But the most important global trade routes were much farther east and south.
The longest link was the 5,000-mile (8,000-km) Silk Road that moved goods overland (and on the
Mediterranean Sea) from Chang-an (Xi’an) in China to Venice.
The balance of world affairs started shifting to Europe with the beginning of the Age of
Discovery in the 15th century. European sailors, missionaries, traders, soldiers, and colonists
burst onto the world scene. Although these agents had different motives, they shared a conviction
that European ways were superior to all others, and by various means, they sought to bring as
much of the world as possible under their sway. Economic benefi ts for the European homelands
were among their main motivations. By the end of the 19th century, Europeans had created a
world in which they were economically dominant and exercised great infl uence on indigenous
cultures.
The process of exploration and discovery by which Europeans fi lled in the world map
began with Portuguese expeditions down the west coast of Africa. In 1488, a Portuguese
expedition headed by Bartholomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of
Africa and opened the way for European voyages eastward into the Indian Ocean. In 1492, North
America was brought into contact with Europe when a Spanish expedition commanded by a
Genoese (Italian) man named Christopher Columbus (Cristóbal Colón) crossed the Atlantic to the
Caribbean Sea. Less than half a century later, these early feats of exploration culminated in the fi
rst circumnavigation of the globe by a Spanish expedition commanded initially by a Portuguese
man, Ferdinand Magellan. Worldwide exploration continued apace for centuries, with the Dutch,
French, and English eventually wresting leadership from the Spanish and Portuguese.
d. Economic Geography
Europe had signifi cant material and cultural riches, and the colonial system built on that
endowment to make Europe the world’s wealthiest region for several centuries. The European
capitalist system and huge strides in science and technology helped launch the region into
economic supremacy. Parts of Europe had already developed capitalist institutions by the end of
the Middle Ages, and the colonial era saw further rapid development of economic enterprise in
the region. Profi t became an acceptable motive, and the relative freedom of action afforded by
the capitalistic system provided opportunities for taking risks and gaining wealth. Energetic
entrepreneurs mobilized capital into large companies and used both European and overseas labor.
Europeans reached a level of technology generally superior to that of non-Europeans with
whom they came in contact during the early Age of Discovery. Achievements in shipbuilding,
navigation, and the manufacture and handling of weapons gave them decided advantages. Nations
such as China, once technologically superior, fell quickly behind. Europe gained almost free rein
in control and expansion of technological innovation for several centuries. The foundations of
modern science were also constructed almost entirely in Europe, and the great names in science
between about 1500 and 1900 were overwhelmingly European.
These material, cultural, and intellectual forces combined to launch the Industrial
Revolution in Europe, which was the fi rst world region to evolve from an agricultural into an
industrial society. In the fi rst half of the 18th century, primarily in Britain, industrial innovations
made water power and then coal-fueled steam power increasingly available to turn machines and
drive gears in new factories. James Watt’s invention of the steam engine in 1769 made coal a
major resource and greatly increased the amount of power available. New processes and
equipment, including the development of coke (coal with most of its volatile constituents burned
off), made iron smelting cheaper and more abundant. The invention of new industrial machinery
made of iron and driven by steam engines multiplied the output of manufactured products,
initially textiles. Then, in the 19th century, British inventors developed processes that allowed
steel, a metal superior to iron in strength and versatility, to be made inexpensively and on a large
scale for the fi rst time. These developments soon diffused to new hearths of massive,
mechanized industrial production and brought unprecedented changes to landscapes and
ecosystems around the world (for more on the revolutionary nature of the Industrial Revolution.
Among the most immediate and most signifi cant processes accompanying industrialization were
rapid population growth and a dramatic shift of people from rural areas into cities.
A striking pattern in Europe’s economic geography is that western Europe is wealthier
than eastern Europe. This trend dates to at least the 1870s, when per capita incomes in the west
were twice those in the east. The gap grew even wider throughout the 20th century. After World
War II, eastern European countries were in effect colonized by the Soviet Union, serving as
vassal states that gave up human and material resources to service the motherland. Only now,
thanks to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the admission of eastern European
countries to the European Union, can the eastern countries hope to catch up with their western
counterparts. They stand to benefi t enormously from joining the EU, as membership all but
guarantees income redistribution from west to east and promises through agricultural subsidies
and other instruments to breathe new life into the faltering farms and factories of the east.
Europe’s economy today, like its population trend, is best characterized as postindustrial.
In the European context, this means that since about 1960, the region has experienced
deindustrialization, shifting by choice and by force away from energy-hungry, labor-costly, and
polluting industries toward an economy based on production of hightech goods and on services.
The high-technology products include electronic devices, data processing hardware, robotics, and
telecommunications equipment. Other industries like drug and pesticide manufacturing make use
of these technological products to create their own, so there is an important interconnectedness
centered on high technology. Europe is also renowned for the production and export of high-
quality, expensive luxury goods, including automobiles such as the Ferrari and watches such as
the Rolex. In the service sector, growing proportions of Europeans are employed in
transportation, energy production, health care, banking, retailing, wholesaling, advertising, legal
services, consulting, information processing, research and development, education, and tourism.
Despite the dominance of a postindustrial, urban economy, some Europeans continue to
live off the land and the sea. Agriculture was the original foundation of Europe’s economy, and it
is still very important. Food provided by the region’s agriculture allowed Europe to become a
relatively well-populated area at an early time. After about 1500, a period of steady agricultural
improvement began. Introduction of important new crops such as the potato played a part, but so
did such practical improvements as new systems of crop rotation and scientifi c advances that
produced better knowledge of the chemistry of fertilizers. The continuing expansion of industrial
cities provided growing markets for European farmers, who received protection through tariff s
(tax penalties imposed on imports) or direct subsidies (payments made to domestic producers) to
encourage production and support rural incomes, in the context of similar protective measures by
the United States). As a result of European Union policies, surpluses of many products are
common, including grains, butter, cheese, olive oil, and table wines. However, Europe is not
agriculturally self-suffi cient and depends on a vital trade of foodstuffs.
e. The British Isles
The islands of Great Britain and Ireland, off the northwestern coast of Europe, are known
as the British Isles. They are home to the Republic of Ireland, with its capital at Dublin, and the
much larger United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (U.K., often referred to
simply as “Britain”), with its capital at London. The United Kingdom is made up of the entire
island of Great Britain, with its political units of England, Scotland, and Wales, plus the
northeastern corner of Ireland, known as Northern Ireland, and most of the smaller outlying
islands.
Scotland was fi rst joined to England when a Scottish king inherited the English throne in
1603, and the two became one kingdom under the Act of Union in 1707. Nearly 300 years later,
in 1997, the U.K. government yielded to increasing Scottish demands and allowed for the
devolution (dispersal of political power and autonomy) of many administrative powers (including
agriculture, education, health, housing, taxation, and lawmaking, but excluding defense and social
security) to a new Scottish parliament. In a groundbreaking 2007 election, Scottish nationalists
won political dominance in the parliament and promised a referendum on whether Scotland
should secede from the U.K. and declare independence. Scots are extremely proud of their
distinctive culture, history, and identity and bristle when they are identifi ed as “English,” as
happens all too often.
England conquered Wales in the Middle Ages, but like the Scots, the Welsh managed to
preserve their cultural distinctiveness and hold it high—especially in staying true to their Welsh
language (a member of the Celtic subfamily). Any thought that the Welsh are English may be set
aside by considering this Welsh place name (known as the longest place name in the world):
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, meaning “The Church of Saint
Mary in the hollow of white hazel trees near the rapid whirlpool by Saint Tysilio’s of the red
cave.” A 1997 referendum voted into existence a Welsh assembly dedicated to promoting Welsh
interests. While this body has some powers independent of the United Kingdom, growing
numbers of Welsh are calling for a stronger devolution of power that would transfer more
authority from the national government to a full-fl edged parliament, as Scotland has now.
The island of Great Britain is about 600 miles (c. 1,000 km) long by 50 to 300 miles (80
to nearly 500 km) wide. For its small size, this island has a wide variety of landscapes and
livelihoods. Broadly, the island has two contrasting physical areas: Highland Britain and Lowland
Britain.
The high regions of Highland Britain are the Scottish Highlands, the Southern Uplands of
Scotland, the Pennine Chain and the Lake District of northern England, the mountains that
occupy most of Wales, and the uplands of Cornwall and Devon in southwestern England. These
mountains are low by most standards—Ben Nevis in the Scottish Highlands is the tallest at 4,406
feet (1,343 m)—but many appear high because they rise so precipitously from or near sea level.
The most important lowlying area in Highland Britain is the Scottish Lowlands, a densely
populated industrialized valley separating the rugged Scottish Highlands from the gentler and
more fertile Southern Uplands of Scotland. The Scottish Lowlands ac count for only about one-fi
fth of Scotland’s area but more than four-fi fths of its population and its two main cities: Glasgow
(population 1.6 million) to the west and Edinburgh, Scotland’s political capital (population
700,000), to the east.
The Industrial Revolution gave a powerful boost to the growth of cities at the same time
that Britain’s total population was increasing rapidly. In 1851, the United Kingdom became the
world’s fi rst predominantly urban nation. Except for London, most of the modern large cities
developed (and remain) on or near the coalfi elds that supplied the power for early industrial
growth (see Geographic Spotlight, page XX; as on the Continent, geographical situation played a
critical role in urban development).
Like other more developed countries, the United Kingdom has few people employed in
farming and other rural pursuits. Only about 2 percent of the working population of Great Britain
is in agriculture, forestry, and fi shing. About one-quarter of the total land area is given over to
crops, with nearly half used for pasture. Grass farming for milk and meat production is a major
rural land use. Even with its broad arable base, more than 60 percent of Britain’s food supply is
imported. Britain is more self-reliant in fi sh and seafood, although its fi shing industry has been
in steady decline since the 1960s. EU policies have led to fi shing restrictions and a decline in
catch size, but even so, Britain has the third-largest fi shing fl eet in the EU. Major fi shing ports
include Hull, Grimsby, Fleetwood, and Plymouth in England and Peterhead in Scotland.
Ireland (known as Eire in the indigenous Celtic language) is a land of hills and lakes,
marshes and peat bogs, cool dampness, and the verdant grassland that earned its epithet the
“Emerald Isle”. The island consists of a central plain surrounded on the north, south, and west by
hills and low rounded mountains. The Republic of Ireland, which occupies a little over four-fi
fths of the island, is far into its transition from an agricultural to an industrial economy.
f. France: Vive la Difference!
Thanks to the Channel Tunnel, or Chunnel (also called the Eurotunnel), running 16 miles
(26 km) along the fl oor of the English Channel, it has been possible since 1994 to travel by train
from London to Paris in about three hours. Britain and France were often enemies in the past, but
the Chunnel is an appropriate symbol for how closely linked they are today.
France has long been one of the world’s most celebrated countries. Europe’s largest
country in area, it is also the region’s leading agricultural producer. France is a country of great
self-esteem, and French culture is prized in many parts of the world. It is one of the world’s major
industrial and trading nations, is a nuclear power, and is one of the fi ve permanent members of
the United Nations Security Council. France has recently distinguished itself in world affairs by
breaking some patterns of alignment with the West, especially the United States.
About four-fi fths the size of Texas, France is shaped like an irregular hexagon framed on
fi ve sides by seas and mountains. In the south, the Mediterranean Sea and the Pyrenees
Mountains form two sides of the hexagon; in the west and southwest, the Bay of Biscay and the
English Channel form two sides; in the southeast and east, the Alps and the Jura Mountains, and
farther north, the Vosges Mountains, form a fi fth side, with the Rhine River a short distance to
the east. Part of the sixth or northeastern side of the hexagon is formed by the low Ardennes
Upland, lying mostly in Belgium and Luxembourg, with lowland passageways leading into
France from Germany both north and south of the Ardennes.
Aside from the large Massif Central in south central France, all the country’s major
highlands are on the country’s periphery. Even the Massif Central, a hilly upland with low
mountains in the east, is skirted by lowland corridors that connect France’s extensive plains of the
north and west with the Mediterranean coast. These corridors include the Rhône-Saône Valley
between the Massif to the west and the Alps and Juras to the east and the Carcassonne Gap
between the Massif and the Pyrenees. France is thus a country with no serious internal barriers to
movement but with barriers at its borders. These have often failed to prevent the incursions of
foreign armies into France; Germany, for example, attacked France three times and occupied the
country throughout World War II.
Although France’s population is 77 percent urban, agriculture is a very important part of
the French economy, far more than is typical of MDCs. Some 35 percent of the French landscape
is agricultural, and another 28 percent is wooded. In 2007, France was the world’s largest
exporter of wine and barley and a major exporter of wheat, milk, butter, and meat. Since World
War II, rural-to-urban migration has accompanied economic change, and increasing
mechanization has replaced lost farmworkers.
From the dawn of the Industrial Revolution until recent decades, France tended to fall
behind its European neighbors, except for Spain and Italy, in industrialization and modernization.
But the country shifted gears after World War II. Government subsidies supporting children
spurred population growth. New energy sources replaced traditionally inadequate coal resources.
France’s membership in the EU ended the protection of many ineffi cient producers.
The French government encouraged companies to combine into larger units capable of
higher effi ciency and international competitiveness. France was well placed geographically and
structurally to move into newly developing industries, technologies, and markets. It had a large
pool of labor available for transfer from an oversupplied agriculture sector, a relatively modest
share of its labor force and capital tied up in older industries, and an excellent educational system.
Fine French wines and other exports bestow well-deserved honors on France. However
proud and confi dent the French may seem in the international arena, at home they have their
share of troubles. The economy has been sluggish, a problem that recently forced the country to
remove its cherished 35-hour cap on the workweek. French regulations make fi ring an
underperforming employee almost impossible, so trimming the fat is not as easy as in most other
industrialized countries. The French enjoy their national rights to a six-week paid vacation and
comprehensive pensions and health care. Desperate to reduce the economic costs of pensions, the
government has been trying to legislate lower retirement payments and more working years for
public employees. The workers have responded with national transportation strikes. Caught
between their privileges and the social costs these impose, the French are frustrated; a recent poll
showed that about two-thirds of the French think their country is in decline.
g. Great Germany
The Federal Republic of Germany reappeared on the map of Europe as a unifi ed country
in 1990. Between 1949 and 1990, it had been divided into two nations: democratic West
Germany (known as the German Federal Republic), formed from the zones occupied by Britain,
France, and the United States after Germany’s defeat in World War II in 1945, and Communist
East Germany (the so-called German Democratic Republic), formed from territory occupied after
the war by the Soviet Union. The former capital, Berlin, was similarly divided. West Berlin was a
part of West Germany for those decades, even though the city was entirely surrounded by East
Germany. The withdrawal of Soviet support for East Germany in 1989 and the destruction of the
Berlin Wall led to the rapid collapse of its Communist government in 1990 and to the jubilant
reunifi cation of Germany’s 16 states (Länder).
Germany arrived at its favorable economic position by skillfully exploiting the
advantages of its centrality in Europe together with the advantages of a diverse environment.
Broadly, the terrain of Germany can be divided into a low-lying, undulating plain in the north and
higher country to the south. The lowland North German Plain is a part of the much larger North
European Plain. The central and southern countryside is much less uniform. To the extreme south
are the moderately high German (Bavarian) Alps, fringed by a fl at to rolling piedmont (foothills)
that slopes gradually down to the east-fl owing upper Danube River. Between the Danube and the
northern plain is a complex series of uplands, highlands, and depressions. The higher lands are
mainly composed of rounded, forested hills and low mountains. Interspersed with these are
agricultural lowlands draining to the Rhine, Danube, Weser, and Elbe Rivers, which drain into
three different seas.
Within this environmental framework, Germany’s major cities tend to be located in the
most economically advantageous areas and those most strategic with respect to transportation. A
string of major metropolitan areas is located in the western part of Germany, along and near the
Rhine River. This waterway has been a major route since prehistoric times. Four of the eight
largest German metropolises—Düsseldorf, Cologne, Wiesbaden-Mainz, and Mannheim-
Ludwigshafen-Heidelberg—are on the Rhine itself. So is Bonn, which was made the capital of
West Germany in 1949 as a defensive move, just in case the traditional capital city of Berlin were
to fall entirely into the Soviet grip.
Billions of dollars of investment are helping to raise economic standards in the east and
to clean up the severe environmental damage incurred under Communist rule there. To complete
that transition, the former West Germans are bearing much of the tax and social burden of
bringing the former East Germans up to the standards long enjoyed in the west. Economically,
Germany has been a welfare state that subsidizes its citizens generously. The costs for that
support were partly to blame for Germany’s economic downturn in the early 2000s, when
economic growth was the slowest of all EU countries and unemployment grew to a national
average of about 10 percent, with the rate of unemployment in the former East Germany more
than twice that in the west. Germany is now making a painful transition from a welfare state to
one in which its citizens must pay more out of pocket for health care and other vital services.
Other diffi cult measures, such as cutting jobs, extending work hours without extra pay, and
outsourcing work to other countries, helped Germany’s economy rebound sharply after the
middle of the decade.
h. Benelux: Tolerance and Trade in the Low Countries
Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg have been closely associated throughout
their long histories. They are known collectively as the Benelux Countries or the Low Countries.
The northern two-thirds of Belgium and practically all of the Netherlands consist of a low plain
facing the North Sea. Luxembourg is also included in the Low Countries because of the long
historical connection among the three countries. Large sections near the coast, especially in the
Netherlands, are below sea level and have been made into major farming and urban landscapes
through the engineering of polders—land below sea level that has been reclaimed from the sea
and protected from inundation by dikes, canals, and pump. It is not surprising that the
Netherlands has played a leading role in negotiations to reduce global emissions of greenhouse
gases, which might lead to rising sea levels and increase the threat of catastrophic fl ooding from
the North Sea.
The Benelux countries have long depended on a combination of industry, agriculture, and
trade—especially international trade. Successful international trading is refl ected by the presence
of three of the world’s major port cities within a distance of about 80 miles (c. 130 km):
Rotterdam and Amsterdam in the Netherlands and Antwerp in Belgium. Amsterdam is the
constitutional capital of the Netherlands. The government is actually located at The Hague, which
is important in international circles as the seat of the International Court of Justice, the judiciary
branch of the United Nations. Portions of the Netherlands were (and still are) known as Holland,
a name that is sometimes used to stand for the whole country, and the people of the Netherlands
are known as the Dutch.
The Benelux countries are highly industrialized. Before major discoveries of natural gas
were made in the Netherlands in the 1950s, Belgium and Luxembourg had more mineral
resources. This helped them initially become more industrialized than the Netherlands. Now,
however, the Netherlands, with its advantageous trade position and natural gas, is the leading
industrial Benelux country.
Despite their small size, the Netherlands and Belgium are very productive agriculturally,
with high yields per unit of land. Parts of each country have very fertile soils, especially in the
polders of the Netherlands and the loess lands of Belgium. Great investments have been made in
water control, agricultural machinery, technical expertise, and fertilizers. Both countries have
even embraced the concept of coexistence of conventional and genetically modifi ed crops
(although some communities are declaring themselves “GMOfree zones”). Agriculture in the
Low Countries has profi ted from European Union tariff protection and subsidies for agricultural
producers, stimulating spectacular increases in output to the extent that overproduction of certain
products such as milk and butter has become a more worrisome problem than food supply.
Belgium and the Netherlands specialize in labor-intensive farm commodities such as commercial
fl owers (notably the Netherlands’ tulips) and dairy products. The dense and affl uent populations
in and near the Low Countries provide a large market for such specialties. The Netherlands is also
the world’s largest hub for international trade in fresh (“cut”) fl owers, a huge industry that links
7,000 nurseries and ships 5 billion fl owers each year.
i. Switzerland and Austria: Prosperous Mountain Fastness
On the high southern margin of Europe’s core lie Switzerland and Austria. More than
half of each country is occupied by the lofty, rugged Alps. North of the Alps, both countries
include strips of rolling, once glaciated plains and foothills. The Swiss section of the Alpine
foothills, called the Swiss Plateau, extends between Lake Geneva on the French border and Lake
Constance (known as the Bodensee in German) on the German border. The Austrian section of
the foothills lies between the Alps and the Danube River from Salzburg on the west to Vienna on
the east. A third portion of the foothills in southern Germany separates the Swiss and Austrian
sections. On their northern edges, Switzerland and Austria have mountains that are much lower
and smaller in extent than the Alps. These are the Jura Mountains, on the border between
Switzerland and France, and the Bohemian Hills of Austria, on the border with the Czech
Republic.
Economic success is often linked to a generous resource base, but in this case, less well-
endowed Switzerland has become somewhat more prosperous than Austria. Based on natural
resources alone, Austria should be the more successful country economically. With fewer
mountains, it has more arable land than Switzerland and more land per person. It also has more
forested land and a better mineral resource base. Both countries depend heavily on abundant
hydroelectric potential, but Austria’s resource base is greater. In economic success, however, the
advantage lies with Switzerland, whose GNI PPP is about 15 percent higher than that of Austria.
The historical developments that favored Switzerland outweighed Austria’s natural resource
advantage. Switzerland enjoyed peace within stable boundaries, while Austria was rocked and
chipped away at by two world wars. Switzerland’s peace is the product of its position as a buff er
state between greater powers, the comparative defensibility of much of the country’s terrain, and
the relatively small value of Swiss economic production to a would-be aggressor. Switzerland
also has historical and political value as an intermediary between belligerents in wartime and as a
refuge for people and money. It also has a policy of strict and heavily armed neutrality.
Surrounded by countries in confl ict, Switzerland managed to stay out of both world wars.
With peace prevailing, the Swiss have had the opportunity to develop an economy fi nely
tuned to the country’s potentials and opportunities. They have exploited with special skill the fi
elds of banking, tourism, manufacturing, and agriculture. Favored by Swiss law, the country’s
banks enjoy a worldwide reputation for security, discretion, and service. The result has been a
massive infl ow of capital—once of dubious origins but less so these days—to Swiss banks.
Switzerland’s largest city, Zürich (population 1 million), is one of the major centers of
international fi nance, and other Swiss cities are also heavily involved in banking.
Austria emerged in its present form as a remnant of the Austro-Hungarian Empire when
that empire disintegrated in defeat in 1918, at the end of World War I. Austria’s population is
essentially German in language and culture—and Austria and Germany have been closely linked
historically— but unifi cation with Germany was forbidden by the victors. The economy was
racked by the loss of the empire, and the country limped through the interwar period until it was
forcefully absorbed by Nazi Germany in 1938. In 1945, after defeat in World War II, Austria was
reconstituted as a separate state but was divided, like Germany, into four occupation zones
administered, respectively, by the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet
Union. During 10 years of occupation, the Soviet Union removed a vast amount of industrial
equipment as war reparations from its Austrian Soviet Zone in the east (which included Vienna).
It was only in 1955 that this occupation was ended by agreement among the four powers, and
Austria became an independent, neutral state.
j. Northern Europe: Prosperous, Wild, and Wired
Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland are the countries of northern Europe.
The countries are often grouped geographically under the regional term Norden, or “the North,”
and their traits are qualifi ed by the adjective Nordic. These countries are also known collectively
as Scandinavia or the Scandinavian countries. But this regional name is ambiguous. It sometimes
refers only to the two countries of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Norway and Sweden. More often,
it includes these countries plus Denmark, and sometimes it includes these three plus Iceland.
When Finland is included in the group, the term Fennoscandia, or the Fennoscandian countries, is
used to acknowledge the cultural and historical differences between the Finns and the other
northern nations.
No other highly developed countries in the world have their populated areas at such high
latitudes. Westerly winds from the Atlantic, warmed in winter by the North Atlantic Drift,
moderate the climatic effects of this northern location. Temperatures average above freezing in
winter over most of Denmark and along the coast of Norway. But away from the direct infl uence
of the west winds, winter temperatures average below freezing and are more severe at elevated,
interior, and northern locations. In summer, the ocean has a cooling rather than a warming infl
uence, and most of northern Europe’s temperatures in July average no higher than the 50s or low
60s Fahrenheit (10°C to 18°C). The populations of the countries tend to cluster in the southern
sections. All except Denmark have large areas of sparsely populated terrain where the rigors of a
highlatitude environment pose problems for development.
Denmark is home to the largest city in northern Europe and is the most densely populated
of the five countries, yet it is the most dependent on agriculture. The Danish capital of
Copenhagen, with almost one-third of Denmark’s population in its metropolitan area, is clearly
recognizable as a primate city. Copenhagen is located on the island of Sjælland (Zealand) at the
extreme eastern edge of Denmark. Sweden lies only 12 miles (c. 20 km) away across the Sound
(Øresund), the main passage between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea. The city grew beside a
natural harbor well placed to control traffi c through the Sound. Before the 17th century,
Denmark controlled adjacent southern Sweden and levied tolls on all shipping passing to and
from the Baltic. Copenhagen still does a large transit and entrepôt (commercial center) business
in North Sea–Baltic Sea trade.
Norway stretches for well over 1,000 miles (c. 1,600 km) along its west side and around
the north end of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The peninsula, as well as Finland, occupies part of
the Fennoscandian Shield, a block of ancient, stable metamorphic rocks. The western margins of
the block in Norway are extremely rugged. Most areas have little or no soil to cover the rock
surface, which was scraped bare by the continental glaciation that centered in Scandinavia. Most
of Norway is rugged wilderness of coniferous forest and tundra, and only 3 percent of the land is
arable.
In the Middle Ages and early modern times, Sweden was a powerful and imperialistic
country. By the 17th century, the Baltic Sea was essentially a Swedish lake. During the following
century, however, the rising power of Russia and Prussia put an end to Swedish imperialism,
aside from a brief campaign in 1814 in which Sweden won control of Norway from Denmark.
Although it keeps a strong army as a deterrent, Sweden has not engaged in a war since then, and
it has become known as one of Europe’s most successful neutral nations. The long period of
peace has helped promote economic success and social well-being in what is today the largest and
most populous (9.1 million) country of northern Europe. Sweden is also renowned as the most
multicultural of the fi ve countries. Whereas Denmark and Norway have imposed strict controls
on immigration, Sweden has few restrictions; already 25 percent of the population is of non-
Swedish ethnicity, and that number is growing steadily.
Conquered and Christianized by the Swedes in the 12th and 13th centuries, Finland was
ceded by Sweden to Russia in 1809 and remained under Russian control for more than 100 years.
Under both the Swedes and the Russians, the country’s people developed their own culture and
sense of nationality. Finns seized the opportunity for independence provided by the collapse of
tsarist Russia in 1917. During World War II, in a bid to regain land lost to the Soviet Union,
Finland allied with Germany and fought the Soviets, losing much territory, life, and
infrastructure. Finland made a rapid postwar recovery, in part because of pressure applied by the
Soviets. Political geographers began to apply the term Finlandization to any country that, like
Finland, claimed to be neutral but fell under the heavy infl uence of the Soviet Union. The
Soviets required that a large part of the reparations paid to them by Finland after the war were in
metal goods. Several small steel plants and other metalworking establishments were built to meet
this demand, and they continue to operate today.
Iceland is a fairly large (39,699 sq mi/102,819 sq km), mountainous island in the Atlantic
Ocean just south of the Arctic Circle. Refl ecting the issland’s position astride the Mid-Atlantic
Ridge, birthplace of two major plates potatoes and some other hardy vegetables. There is some
cattle and sheep ranching. Mineral resources are almost nonexistent. The economy depends
mainly on exports of fi sh and fi sh products, which represent about 70 percent of export earnings.
Aluminum is the second most valuable export product, but next to fi sh, tourists bring in the most
money. While international visitors soak in Iceland’s hot springs and enjoy the nightlife,
Icelanders prefer Spain for their holidays.
