What is Europe? Subregions of foreign Europe. Formation of the Ural Mountains

Europe is one of the smallest continents on Earth. About 40 thousand years ago in Europe, modern people replaced the Neanderthals, and since then European civilization began. According to ancient Greek mythology, Europa was the name of the daughter of the Phoenician king Agenor and Telephassa, who was kidnapped by Zeus. Subsequently, Europa became the wife of Zeus.

Geography of Europe

Europe is washed by the waters of the Arctic Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, as well as the Mediterranean, Black and Caspian Seas. The eastern border of Europe runs along the Ural Mountains.

The continent of Europe includes numerous islands, peninsulas and archipelagos. The coastline of continental Europe covers 38,000 kilometers. The total area of ​​Europe is 9.938 million square meters. km (this is 2% of the Earth's territory). Europe is part of the Eurasian Peninsula.

The climate in most of Europe is temperate, Southern Europe– Mediterranean and even partially subtropical with warm, humid winters and hot summers. The Svalbard archipelago, which geographically also belongs to Europe, has a subarctic and arctic climate.

The longest river in Europe is the Volga (3645 km), flowing through Russia. The list of the largest European rivers also includes: Danube (2960 km), Dnieper (2201 km), Don (1870 km), Kama (1805 km), Dniester (1352 km), Rhine (1233 km), Elbe (1165 km) , Ural (2428 km), Vistula (1047 km), Tagus (1038 km), Loire (1012 km), Oder (854 km) and Neman (937 km).

There are several very large, and also very beautiful, lakes in Europe. Among them are Lakes Ladoga, Peipsi and Onega in Russia, Lake Vänern in Sweden, Lake Balaton in Hungary and Lake Geneva in Switzerland and France.

Approximately 17% of Europe's territory is occupied by mountains - the Pyrenees, Alps, Apennines, Carpathians, Balkans, Caucasus, Ural and Scandinavian mountains. The highest mountain on this continent is Elbrus (Russia), its height is 5,642 meters.

Population of Europe

On this moment Europe's population already exceeds 842 million people. This is about 13% of the entire world population. Most Europeans live in Eastern Europe.

Almost the entire population of Europe belongs to the Caucasian race, which is divided into several smaller races:

• Atlanto-Baltic race (Great Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia, Iceland, northern Germany, the Netherlands, Estonia and Latvia);
• Central European race ( central regions Western Europe, most of the territory of Eastern Europe, Ukraine and the European part of Russia);
• Balkan-Caucasian race (Albania, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, northern Greece, Bulgaria, southern Austria and northern Italy);
• Indo-Mediterranean race (Spain, Italy, France, southern Greece, Cyprus and Malta);
• White Sea-Baltic race (northern territories of Russia, Lithuania and partly Latvia).

Countries of Europe

At the moment, there are 56 countries in Europe (of which 6 countries are so-called unrecognized republics). The largest European country is Russia (its territory occupies 17,098,242 sq. km), and the smallest is the Vatican (0.44 sq. km). By the way, more than 291 million people now live in Russia.

Regions of Europe

Europe is sometimes divided into 5 regions (Western, Eastern, Northern, Southern and Central), which in turn are divided into seven geographical subregions:

• Scandinavia (Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark);
• British Isles (Great Britain and Ireland);
• Western Europe (France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Monaco);
• Southern Europe (Portugal, Spain, Andorra, Italy, Malta, San Marino and Vatican City);
• Central Europe (Germany, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary);
• Southeastern Europe (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and European Turkey);
• Eastern Europe (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Russia, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan).

Many European cities were founded before our era. Now the most densely populated city in Europe is Istanbul, the former capital of Turkey, which is home to more than 12.2 million people.

Other major cities in Europe are Moscow, London, St. Petersburg, Berlin, Madrid, Rome, Kyiv, Paris, Bucharest and Budapest. However, some European cities that play a significant political and cultural role in the world have relatively few inhabitants. These cities include Athens, Oslo, Brussels, Copenhagen and Geneva.

Europe is the smallest and at the same time the most “cramped” part of the world in the world. Its closest neighbor is Asia, and together they form the largest continent - Eurasia. But today the focus is on Foreign Europe.

General information

There are different approaches to dividing Europe into regions. Until the end of the 80s of the last century, in history and geography, the term “Western Europe” was understood as a set of independent European states that, after the end of the Second World War, continued capitalist development. There were 32 of them, and the countries of the socialist camp - Eastern Europe - served as a counterweight to them. In 1991, after the collapse of the USSR and the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a new concept of “Foreign Europe” appeared.

It unites 40 countries located in Europe, except those that are part of the CIS.

Geographical location of Foreign Europe

Speaking about the physical-geographical position of Foreign Europe, it should be said that it occupies a fairly compact globe territory: her total area is 5.4 million sq. km. The island of Spitsbergen is the extreme point in the north, and the island of Crete is in the south. The length of the region from north to south is 5,000 km, and from west to east - 3,000 km. Foreign Europe is washed on three sides by the waters of the Atlantic and Arctic oceans and their seas. The coastline is very indented. Most of the territory is dominated by plains, and only about 17% is occupied by mountains. Among them the main ones are the Alps, Pyrenees, Apennines, Carpathians, mountains on the Balkan and Scandinavian peninsulas. This region is dominated by four climatic zones, which gradually replace each other from north to south:

• arctic (Arctic islands of Europe): the maritime arctic climate “rules” here with very frosty winters and cold summers;
• subarctic (Iceland and northern coast of mainland Europe): characterized by the predominance of a marine subarctic type of climate with cold, sometimes mild winters and cool summers with strong westerly winds;
• moderate (British Isles, most of mainland Europe): There are two types of climate here - maritime temperate and continental temperate.
• subtropical (southern Mediterranean part of Europe): The typical climate type for these latitudes is Mediterranean with warm winters and dry, hot summers.

Rice. 1 Regions of Foreign Europe

Regional division

Geographically, Foreign Europe is divided into four regions according to the cardinal points: Northern, Southern, Western and Eastern. However, recently, in addition to Northern, Southern and Western Europe, new terms have appeared in the everyday life of geographers - Central-Eastern and Eastern Europe. The latter includes Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova and Russia - countries that are part of the CIS. How many states, and which regions of Overseas Europe are “credited”, are summarized in the following table:

Rice. 2 Modern leaders of the G7 countries

Economic development

Foreign Europe is among the most economically developed areas in the world. Both politically and in the sectoral and territorial structure of the region’s economy, there is diversity and richness. If you imagine Foreign Europe as a large four-story apartment building, then the countries with transition economy: Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia. In the second and third are developed countries with market economy: Spain, Greece, Denmark, Norway, Iceland and others. However, their level of economic and social development has not yet reached the high level of leaders, which include the “neighbors” from the top floor - Great Britain, Germany, France and Italy. They account for about 70% of total GDP. They are also members of the “Group of Seven” or “Big Seven” - an association of seven leading economic developed countries(USA, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Japan.

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The leaders of these states gather annually to discuss not only the problems of Foreign Europe, but the pressing issues facing humanity: political, military (general security, terrorism, causes of exacerbation of local conflicts), social (protection of human rights, support and terms of cooperation with developing countries), environmental (global warming, climate change) and economic (science and finance, market regulation, import and export volumes).

Peculiarities

Among the many features of Foreign Europe, one important thing is worth noting - the presence of a “Central Axis of Development”. This term refers to the Western European part with a length of 1600 km, which, in fact, is the center, the core of the Old World with the greatest concentration of population (300 people per 1 km2) and the main economic sectors. The conditional border of the “axis” originates from Manchester, then “rushes” through Hamburg, Venice, Marseille and returns to Hamburg again, forming a loop shaped like a banana. It covers a large area of ​​Europe, including the following parts: regions of Great Britain, the western states of Germany, northern and southern France, Switzerland and northern Italy.

If you look at a map of Europe, you can see that on the territory of the “Central Axis of Development” there are “world centers” - London and Paris, each of which houses about thirty headquarters of the largest corporations. In addition, it is the place of concentration of more than half of all industrial potential Europe: coal and metallurgical enterprises, general mechanical engineering, automotive industry, chemical industry enterprises, the latest high-tech industries, port-industrial complexes and much more.

Rice. 3 “Central development axis” of Europe

What have we learned?

The peculiarities of Foreign Europe are under the radar of our attention. After considering this topic in geography for grades 10 and 11, we come to the following conclusion: a relatively small territory on a huge continent is one of the most successful, developed in terms of the quality of life of the population, in terms of production structure, in scale economic activity and level of technological development. Many factors contributed to this: geographical position, favorable natural conditions, the small size of countries and their close proximity, and much more.

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If we do not take into account dependent regions and incompletely recognized states, then Europe in 2017 covers 44 powers. Each of them has a capital, in which not only its administration is located, but also the highest authority, that is, the government of the state.

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European countries

The territory of Europe extends from east to west for more than 3 thousand kilometers, and from south to north (from the island of Crete to the island of Spitsbergen) for 5 thousand kilometers. The majority of European powers are relatively small. With such small sizes of territories and good transport accessibility, these states either closely border each other or are separated by very short distances.

The European continent is divided territorially into parts:

• western;
• eastern;
• northern;
• southern

All powers, located on the European continent, belong to one of these territories.

• There are 11 countries in the western region.
• In the east - 10 (including Russia).
• In the north - 8.
• In the south - 15.

We list all European countries and their capitals. We will divide the list of countries and capitals of Europe into four parts according to the territorial and geographical position of the powers on the world map.

Western

List of states belonging to Western Europe, with a list of main cities:

The states of Western Europe are washed mainly by the currents of the Atlantic Ocean and only in the north of the Scandinavian Peninsula they border on the waters of the Arctic Ocean. In general, these are highly developed and prosperous powers. But they stand out as an unfavorable demographic situation. This is a low birth rate and low level natural increase in population. In Germany there is even a population decline. All this led to the fact that developed Western Europe began to play the role of a subregion in the global system of population migration; it turned into the main center of labor immigration.

Eastern

List of states located in the eastern zone of the European continent and their capitals:

Eastern European countries have a lower level economic development than its western neighbors. However, they better preserved their cultural and ethnic identity. Eastern Europe is more of a cultural and historical region than a geographical one. The Russian expanses can also be classified as the eastern territory of Europe. And the geographic center of Eastern Europe is located approximately within Ukraine.

Northern

The list of states included in northern Europe, including capitals, looks like this:

The territories of the states of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jutland, the Baltic States, the islands of Spitsbergen and Iceland are included in the northern part of Europe. The population of these regions makes up only 4% of the entire European population. Most big country Eight is Sweden, and the smallest is Iceland. The population density in these lands is lower in Europe - 22 people/m2, and in Iceland - only 3 people/m2. This is due to the harsh conditions of the climatic zone. And here economic indicators developments single out northern Europe as the leader of the entire world economy.

South

And finally, the most numerous list territories located in the southern part, and the capitals of European states:

The Balkan and Iberian peninsulas are occupied by these southern European powers. Industry is developed here, especially ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy. The countries are rich in mineral resources. IN agriculture main efforts aimed at growing food products such as:

• grape;
• olives;
• pomegranate;
• dates.

It is known that Spain is the world's leading olive harvesting country. It is here that 45% of all olive oil in the world is produced. Spain is also famous for its famous artists - Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró.

European Union

The idea of ​​​​creating a single community of European powers appeared in the middle of the twentieth century, or more precisely after the Second World War. The official unification of the countries of the European Union (EU) occurred only in 1992, when this union was sealed by the legal consent of the parties. Over time, the membership of the European Union has expanded and now includes 28 allies. And states that want to join these prosperous countries will have to prove their compliance with European foundations and EU principles, such as:

• protection of citizens' rights;
• democracy;
• freedom of trade in a developed economy.

EU Members

The European Union in 2017 includes the following states:

Today there are also candidate countries to join this foreign community. These include:

1. Albania.
2. Serbia.
3. Macedonia.
4. Montenegro.
5. Türkiye.

On the map of the European Union you can clearly see its geography, European countries and their capitals.

Regulations and prerogatives of EU partners

The EU has a customs policy under which its members can trade with each other without tariffs and without restrictions. And in relation to other powers, the accepted customs tariff applies. Having general laws, the EU countries created a single market and introduced a single monetary currency- euro. Many EU member countries are part of the so-called Schengen zone, which allows their citizens to move freely throughout the territory of all allies.

The European Union has governing bodies common to its member countries, which include:

• European Court.
• European Parliament.
• European Commission.
• The audit community that controls the EU budget.

Despite the unity, European states that have joined the community have complete independence and state sovereignty. Each country uses its own national language and has its own governing bodies. But there are certain criteria for all participants, and they must meet them. For example, coordination of all important political decisions with the European Parliament.

It should be noted that since its founding, only one power has left the European community. This was the Danish autonomy - Greenland. In 1985, she was outraged by the low quotas imposed by the European Union on fishing. You can also recall the sensational events of 2016 referendum in Great Britain, when the population voted for the country to leave the European Union. This suggests that even in such an influential and seemingly stable community, serious problems are brewing.

Drawing the boundaries of European subregions is not easy; there is no generally accepted regional division of Europe. This reflects the conventionality of regional boundaries in the most complex European tangle of economic, civilizational and other spatial relationships.

There are many options for regionalizing Overseas Europe. Before the collapse of the socialist camp, it was most often divided into Western (capitalist) and Eastern (socialist). In economic literature, the term “” is still commonly used to designate a subregion that includes all that continued capitalist development in the post-war period. Geographers usually distinguished separately, where they included the Scandinavian countries, sometimes Denmark, and, and the South, where they were “listed”, and. Now everything is more complicated. The name (or Central and Eastern) Europe (CEE), which unites most of the countries of the former socialist camp, comes into use. The Baltic republics are classified as both CEE countries and Northern Europe. The republics of the former Yugoslavia, as well as, and can be classified as both CEE and . Some geographers highlight separately. Eastern Europe is now sometimes understood as Russia and even the new states of the Caucasus.

Subregions of Europe (according to the classification of the World Tourism Organization)

Another new factor influencing changes in approaches to European regionalization is the process of so-called federalization within the European Union. The idea of ​​supporters of EU federalization is that the union of states is being replaced by a union of regions. Within the EU nation states deliberately deprive themselves of a significant part of their independence by deciding to share sovereignty with the Union. At the same time, a number of specific functions government controlled transferred to constituent parts of states - lands, autonomous regions, regions. From this perspective, it no longer looks fantastic, for example, the “dissolution” of Catalonia, the Basque Country, Corsica or Wallonia into a single “Franco-Germany”, or obtaining the status of independent EU entities. Whether this will become a reality or turn out to be an illusion - time will tell.

The issue of regionalization of Europe is inextricably linked with the issue of the external borders of the region. Not only geographers, but also geopoliticians, economists, historians, and cultural scientists have long been searching for the most “correct” identification of Europe and its subregions. Views are often contradictory. Thus, the famous American geopolitician S. Huntington believes that Europe generally ends where Western Christianity is replaced by Orthodoxy and Islam. Between Europe and, essentially, an equal sign is put. In this case, Greece, for example, the cradle of European civilization, falls out of Europe. This approach is categorically opposed by another American scientist, L. Ferow, who believes that European civilization extended from to. In his opinion, only the unification of Western, Central-Eastern and, including Russia, will allow the United Europe to take advantage of its geopolitical advantages, relying on the “richness of its diversity.”

Europe is a part of the world that is located in the northern hemisphere of our planet, it is washed by numerous seas and, together with Asia, forms Eurasia. In ancient Greek mythology, Europa is a Phoenician princess who was treacherously kidnapped by Zeus and taken to the island of Crete.

There is a hypothesis that this name comes from a Greek word that the Greeks used to designate all the territories located west of the Aegean Sea. There are other theories regarding the origin of this name.

General information

Today, more than 740 million people live here, or 10% of the total population of the Earth. The total territory is more than 10 million square kilometers.

The shores of Europe are washed by two oceans: the Atlantic and the Arctic, as well as numerous seas. The coast is highly indented, with numerous peninsulas occupying a large area. Most of Europe is occupied by vast plains.

It flows here a large number of rivers and there are many large lakes. The climate is temperate, in the western part - oceanic, in the eastern part - continental. Europe is rich in minerals and other natural resources. This is where the countries with the most developed economies are located.

This part of the world has played a vital role in human history. It is worth noting the enormous richness and diversity of European cultures.

Borders

The borders of Europe have changed in different periods of human history, and debates around them continue to this day. The ancient Greeks considered the northern part of their country to be Europe. Gradually, people got to know their world better, and the borders gradually moved further to the east.

However, people developed more and more new territories and moved further to the east. The famous Russian historian Tatishchev proposed dividing the continent along the foot of the Ural Mountains. This point of view was first accepted in Russia, and then by foreign geographers.

However, at the moment there are controversial issues regarding the exact boundaries of this part of the world. They are not global. Now there are several options for drawing borders. This issue plays an important political role, because where the border of Europe lies depends on which countries are included in it.

The border in the north runs along the coast of the Arctic Ocean, the west along the Atlantic Ocean, the eastern border along the foot of the Ural Mountains, along the Emba River to the Caspian Sea and along the Manych and Kuma rivers to the mouth of the Don. Then the border goes along the northern coast of the Black Sea and the Black Sea straits.

According to another opinion, the border runs along the Caucasus ridge. There are other options for drawing the border, which move it south from the Caucasus Mountains.

Countries that are part of Europe

Europe is often divided into Eastern and Western, Southern and Northern, although such a division is somewhat arbitrary. It is more related to political and cultural characteristics. On the European political map You can find both large states (Russia, Ukraine, France) and very tiny ones. Several countries are only partially located in Europe.

In total, this part of the world includes (in whole or in part) 49 countries. Of these, several states are not always considered to be part of Europe. There are also several territories with uncertain status. They declared independence, but it was not recognized by the world community.

The borders of European states have changed over the centuries as a result of numerous wars and revolutions.

So, which countries are considered European today? We have prepared a list for you, dividing it into four parts: the states of Western Europe, the countries that are located in its north, the countries of Southern and Eastern Europe. And also those countries that are only partially located in this part of the world.

West Side:

1. France
2. Great Britain
3. Austria
4. Belgium
5. Germany
6. Ireland
7. Luxembourg
8. Liechtenstein
9. Monaco
10. Switzerland
11. Ireland

East End:

1. Bulgaria
2. Romania
3. Ukraine
4. Poland
5. Slovakia
6. Hungary
7. Czech
8. Moldova
9. Belarus