Geographical autonomy, but not independence, nor even insulation. If the other continents are locked up in the maritime mass, Europe is the terrestrial prolongation of the Asian block (with which it forms Eurasia). It is for the needs for a geopolitical “pedagogy” that one promoted the wrinkles of hills and medium mountainss of the Ural to the row of continental limit. It is thus not in a geographical isolate that one must seek the identity of Europe: it results from it that neither its image nor its adventure are transferable in a typology of general geography of the world.  

Historical concept

Historical concept, Europe is in permanent search for following days ensuring a balance to him which its sovereigns and their armies unceasingly tried to obtain. By a convergence of natural data, its geographical condition of terrestrial projection defying seas and oceans fixed at it the harbors of adventures which allotted to him - for more or less long periods - the role of director of the world.  

Europe is the fruit of the expansion of the Mediterranean culture, gréco- Latin and Christian, conveyed by languages sisters and two Churches, which separated with the Middle Ages but which keep, face outside, a community of belief and signs: the Roman Church and the orthodoxe Greek Church.

For two thousand years, Europe has resisted the political pressures and the invasions of the people from Asia: Tatars and Mongols in Russia, Turks in Balkans and in Central Europe… However, never its cultural identity was not ensured in a final way, because - revenge of the geography - the parcelling out of the territory, by changing scale, supported and maintained particularisms, which, although disputed by the gatherings, are components.  

Concept of border

It is in Europe that one invented the concept of border, while making some a topic of debate in the play of the power struggles: this continent, indeed, is as parcelled out physically as various in its traditions. It is also the history of Europe which sought and worked the direction of the modes of relation and organization of its inhabitants: people, nations, States and today communities.  

European reality

European reality took shape by stages, separated by long periods from indecision, since the time gréco-Roman until the dramas of the XX E century. The battle of Marathon (490 av. J. - C.) symbolizes the resistance of the European culture - represented by the Greek thought defended by some hoplites - with the massive push of the Barbarians, carrying another system of values. It is relayed in European historiography by another battle, symbolic system it also, that of Kahlenberg (1683): intervening a little more than two thousand years later, it puts, thanks to the co-operation of the armies Austrian and Polish, a final term with the invasions of the Othoman troops, which had skirted the Danube to reach the doors of Vienna. The time changes nothing there: the saving victories of Europe are gained under the sign of defensive alliances and academies devoting the effectiveness of the union.

Charts on Europe

One finds in top on the right of the page the following charts:

• Relief of Europe
• Languages in Europe
• Religions in Europe
• The pattern of the settlement in Europe
• Main roads of circulation in Europe
• Evolution of the European population