Europe

Europe
/yoor"euhp, yerr"-/ for 1; /yoo roh"pee, yeuh-/ for 2, n.
1. a continent in the W part of the landmass lying between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, separated from Asia by the Ural Mountains on the E and the Caucasus Mountains and the Black and Caspian seas on the SE. In British usage, Europe sometimes contrasts with England. 702,300,000 including the Russian Federation; ab. 4,017,000 sq. mi. (10,404,000 sq. km).
2. Class. Myth. Europa (def. 1).

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Second smallest continent on Earth.

It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Mediterranean, Black, and Caspian seas. The continent's eastern boundary runs along the Ural Mountains and the Ural River. Its area includes numerous islands, archipelagoes, and peninsulas. Indented by bays, fjords, and seas, continental Europe's irregular coastline is about 24,000 mi (38,000 km) long. Area: 4,000,000 sq mi (10,400,000 sq km). Population (2001 est.): 666,498,000. The greater part of Europe combines low elevations with low relief; about three-fifths of the land is below 600 ft (180 m) above sea level, and another one-third is between 600 and 3,000 ft (180 and 900 m). The highest points are in the mountain systems crossing the southern part of the continent, including the Pyrenees, Alps, Apennines, Carpathians, and Balkan Mountains. A well-watered continent with many rivers, Europe has few sizable lakes. Glaciers cover an area of about 44,800 sq mi (116,000 sq km), mostly in the north. Roughly one-third of Europe is arable, and about half of that land is devoted to cereals, principally wheat and barley. One-third is forested. Europe was the first of the world's regions to develop a modern economy based on commercial agriculture and industry, and it remains one of the world's major industrial regions, with average annual income per capita among the world's highest. The people of Europe constitute about one-seventh of the world's population. Most of the continent's approximately 60 native languages belong to either the Romance, Germanic, or Slavic language groups. Europe's population is overwhelmingly Christian. Modern humans supplanted the scanty Neanderthal population in Europe about 40,000 years ago, and by the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC the general population groups that would become the historical peoples and countries of Europe were in place. The Greek civilizations were the earliest in Europe, and in the Classical period the Greeks were a conduit for the advanced civilizations of the Middle East, which, along with the unique Greek contribution, laid the foundation for European civilization. By the mid-2nd century BC the Greeks had come under Roman control, and the vast Roman Empire brought to the conquered parts of Europe the civilization the Greeks had begun. It was through the Romans that Christianity penetrated into Europe. The Roman Empire in the West finally collapsed in the 5th century AD, which led to an extensive breakdown of Classical civilization. This civilization was not to be revived until the Renaissance (15th–16th centuries), which began the modern European traditions of science, exploration, and discovery. The Protestant Reformation of the 16th century ended the dominance of the Roman Catholic church over western and northern Europe, and the Enlightenment period of the 17th and 18th centuries stressed the primacy of reason. In the late 18th century, Enlightenment ideals helped spur the French Revolution, which toppled Europe's most powerful monarchy and spearheaded the movement toward democracy and equality. The late 18th century also marked the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, which led to Europe's military and political dominance over much of the world for the next century. In the early 20th century the European powers were divided in World War I, which led to the effective end of monarchy in Europe and created a host of new countries in central and eastern Europe. World War II marked the passing of world power from the states of western Europe and was followed by the rise of communism in eastern Europe, with the Soviet Union and its satellites sharply dividing the continent. The Soviet Union collapsed in the late 20th century, leading to a general demise of communism throughout the continent. Soviet satellites became independent, and most began to democratize; East and West Germany were reunified; and Yugoslavia and its successor states were devastated by ethnic conflict (see Kosovo conflict; Bosnian conflict). See also European Union; NATO.

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Introduction

      second smallest of the world's continents, composed of the westward-projecting peninsulas of Eurasia and occupying nearly one-fifteenth of the world's total land area. It is bordered on the north by the Arctic Ocean, on the west by the Atlantic Ocean, and on the south (west to east) by the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Sea, the Kuma and Manych rivers, and the Caspian Sea. The continent's eastern boundary (north to south) runs along the eastern Ural Mountains and the Emba River. Europe's islands and archipelagoes include Novaya Zemlya, Iceland, the British Isles, Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, Crete, Malta, and Cyprus. Its major peninsulas include the Scandinavian, Iberian, Italian, Balkan, and Jutland. Indented by numerous bays, fjords, and seas, continental Europe's highly irregular coastline is about 24,000 miles (38,000 kilometres) long.

      Among the continents, Europe is an anomaly. Larger only than Australia, it is a small appendage of the great landmass that it shares with an Asia more than four times its size. Yet the peninsular and insular western extremity of Eurasia, thrusting toward the North Atlantic Ocean, provides—thanks to its latitude and its physical geography—a relatively genial human habitat, and the long processes of human history came to mark off the region as the home of a distinctive civilization. In spite of its internal diversity, Europe has thus functioned, from the time it first emerged in the human consciousness, as a world apart, concentrating—to borrow a phrase from Christopher Marlowe—“infinite riches in a little room.”

      All the continents are conceptual constructs, but only Europe was not first perceived and named by outsiders. “Europa,” as the more learned of the ancient Greeks first conceived it, stood in sharp contrast to both Asia and Libya, the name then applied to the known northern part of Africa. Literally, “Europa” is now thought to have meant “Mainland,” rather than the earlier interpretation, “Sunset.” It appears to have suggested itself to the Greeks, in their maritime world, as an appropriate designation of the broadening, extensive northerly lands that lay beyond, lands with characteristics but vaguely known; yet these characteristics were clearly different from those inherent in the concepts of Asia and Libya, both of which, relatively prosperous and civilized, were associated closely with the culture of the Greeks and their predecessors. Traders and travelers reported that Europe possessed distinctive physical units, with mountain systems and lowland river basins much larger than those familiar to inhabitants of the Mediterranean region. It also was clear that a succession of climates, markedly different from those of the Mediterranean borderlands, were to be experienced as Europe was penetrated from the south. The spacious eastern steppe and, to the west and north, primeval forests as yet only marginally touched by human occupancy further underlined environmental contrasts. Europe was culturally backward and scantily settled. It was a “barbarian”—that is, a non-Greek—world, its inhabitants making “bar-bar” noises in unintelligible tongues.

      The Roman Empire, at its greatest extent in the 2nd century AD, revealed, and imprinted its culture on, much of the face of the continent, while trading relations beyond its frontiers also drew the remoter regions into its sphere. Yet it was not until the 19th and 20th centuries that modern science was able to draw with some precision the geologic and geographic lineaments of the European continent, the peoples of which had meanwhile achieved domination over—and set in motion vast countervailing movements among—the inhabitants of much of the rest of the globe.

      As to the territorial limits of Europe, while these seem clear on its three seaward flanks, they have been uncertain and hence much debated on the east, where the continent merges, without sundering physical limits, with parts of western Asia. Even to the north and west, many island groups—Svalbard (Spitsbergen), the British Isles, the Faeroes, Iceland, and the Madeira and Canary islands—that are European by culture are included in the continent, although Greenland is conventionally allocated to North America. Further, the Mediterranean coastlands of North Africa and southwestern Asia also exhibit some European physical and cultural affinities, and Turkey and Cyprus, while geologically Asian, possess elements of European culture and may, perhaps, be regarded as parts of Europe. Eastward limits, now adopted by most geographers, assign the Caucasus Mountains to Asia and are taken to run southward along the eastern foot of the Urals and then across the Mugodzhar Hills, along the Emba River, and along the northern shore of the Caspian Sea. West of the Caspian, the European limit follows the Kuma-Manych Depression and the Kerch Strait to the Black Sea.

      This conventional eastern boundary, however, is not a cultural, political, or economic discontinuity on the land comparable, for example, to the insulating significance of the Himalayas, which clearly mark a northern limit to South Asian civilization. Inhabited plains, with only the minor interruption of the worn-down Urals, extend from central Europe to the Yenisey River in central Siberia. A relatively homogeneous, highly centralized, Slavic-based civilization dominates much of the territory occupied by the former Soviet Union from the Baltic and Black seas to the Pacific Ocean. This civilization is distinguished from the rest of Europe by legacies of a medieval Mongol-Tatar domination that precluded sharing many of the innovations and developments of European “Western civilization”; and it became further distinctive during the relative isolation of the Soviet period. In partitioning the globe into meaningful large geographic units, therefore, most modern geographers treated the former Soviet Union as a distinct territorial entity, comparable to a continent, that was separate from Europe to the west and from the rest of Asia to the south and east; this distinction undoubtedly will be maintained for Russia, which occupied three-fourths of the Soviet Union. The following discussion of Europe focuses primarily upon the territories and peoples lying west of the Russian border, although note is taken of physical and cultural features shared by the “European” portion of Russia with the rest of the continent.

      Europe occupies some four million square miles (10.4 million square kilometres) within the conventional borders assigned to it. This broad territory reveals no simple unity of geologic structure, landform, relief, or climate. Rocks of all geologic periods are exposed, and the operation of geologic forces during an immense succession of eras has contributed to the molding of the landscapes of mountain, plateau, and lowland and has bequeathed a variety of mineral reserves. Glaciation, too, has left its mark over wide areas, and the processes of erosion and deposition have created a highly variegated and compartmentalized countryside. Climatically, Europe benefits by having only a small proportion of its surface either too cold or too hot and dry for effective settlement and use. Regional climatic contrasts nevertheless exist: oceanic, Mediterranean, and continental types occur widely, as do gradations from one to the other. Associated vegetation and soil forms also show continual variety, but little is left of the dominant woodland that clothed most of the continent when humans first appeared.

      All in all, Europe enjoys a considerable and long-exploited resource base of soil, forest, sea, and minerals (notably coal), but its people, considerable numerically, as well as technically highly qualified, are increasingly its principal resource. The continent contains a shrinking seventh of the total population of the world, but this represents a collection of people of high skill and initiative. Europe thus supports high densities of population, concentrated in industrialized regions. In manufacture, commerce, and agriculture it still occupies an eminent, if no longer necessarily predominant, position, and, as agriculture increasingly rationalizes its structure, city life is everywhere becoming the norm.

      Europe is preeminently the homeland of white peoples. Its early and continuing economic achievements, evidenced by a high standard of living, and its successes in science, technology, and the arts spring from the vigour of its peoples in developing a high civilization, the roots of which lie in ancient Greece and Rome, the Byzantine Empire, and Palestine. Whatever its indebtedness, Europe has always shown its own powers of creativity and leadership: although wracked and exhausted by continued internal conflict, it has nevertheless advanced sufficiently to leave as its heritage the exploration, colonization, and development of other peoples and regions of the globe, if not always to the benefit of the other peoples and regions.

W. Gordon East Thomas M. Poulsen
      This article treats the physical and human geography of Europe. For discussion of individual countries of the continent, see specific articles by name—e.g., Italy, Poland, and United Kingdom. For discussion of major cities of the continent, see specific articles by name—e.g., London, Rome, and Warsaw. The principal articles discussing the historical and cultural development of the continent include European history (Europe, history of); European exploration; colonialism; Aegean civilizations; ancient Greek civilization; ancient Rome; Byzantine Empire; and Holy Roman Empire. Related topics are discussed in such articles as those on religion (e.g., Ancient European Religions; Judaism; and Roman Catholicism) and literature (e.g., Dutch literature; Homer; and Spanish literature).

Geologic history
      The geologic record of the continent of Europe started about three billion years ago and has continued intermittently to the present. It is a classic example of how a continent has grown through time. The Precambrian rocks in Europe range in age from about 3.8 billion to 540 million years. They are succeeded by rocks of the Paleozoic era, which continued to 245 million years ago; of the Mesozoic era, which lasted until 66.4 million years ago; and of the Cenozoic era, which continues to today. The present shape of Europe did not finally emerge until the late Tertiary period, about five million years ago. The types of rocks, tectonic belts, and sedimentary basins that developed throughout the geologic history of Europe strongly influence human activities today.

General considerations
Tectonic framework
 The tectonic map of Europe shows the distribution of the main tectonic units. The largest area of oldest rocks is the Baltic Shield, which has been eroded down to a low relief; the youngest rocks occur in the Alpine (Alps) system, which still survives as high mountains. Between these belts are basins of sedimentary rocks that form rolling hills, as in the Paris Basin and southeastern England, or an extensive plain, as in the Russian Platform. The North Sea is a submarine sedimentary basin on the shallow-water continental margin of the Atlantic Ocean. Iceland is a unique occurrence in Europe, because it is a volcanic island situated on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge within the still-opening Atlantic Ocean.

      Precambrian rocks occur in three basic tectonic environments. The first is in shields (continental shield), like the Baltic Shield, which are large areas of stable Precambrian rocks usually surrounded by later orogenic belts. The second is as the basement to a younger cover of Phanerozoic sediments (i.e., deposits that have been laid down since the beginning of the Paleozoic). For example, the sediments of the Russian Platform are underlain by Precambrian basement, which extends from the Baltic Shield to the Ural Mountains, and Precambrian rocks underlie the Phanerozoic sediments in southeastern England. The Ukrainian Massif is an uplifted block of Precambrian basement that rises above the surrounding plain of younger sediments. The third is as relicts in younger orogenic belts. For example, there are Precambrian rocks in the Bohemian Massif that are one billion years old and rocks in the Channel Islands in the English Channel that are 1.6 billion years old, both of which are remnants of the Middle Proterozoic era within the late Paleozoic Hercynian belt (Hercynian orogenic belt). In the Hercynian belt in Bavaria, detrital zircons have been dated to 3.84 billion years ago, but the source of these rocks is not known.

      Paleozoic sedimentary rocks either occur in sedimentary basins like the Russian Platform—which has never been affected by any periods of orogenesis and thus has sediments that are still flat-lying and fossiliferous—or occur within orogenic belts, such as the Caledonian (Caledonian orogenic belt) and Hercynian, where they have commonly been deformed by folding and thrusting, partly recrystallized, and subjected to intrusion by granites.

      Mesozoic–Cenozoic sediments occur either in a well-preserved state in sedimentary basins unaffected by orogenesis, as within the Russian Platform and under the North Sea, or in a highly deformed and metamorphosed state, as in the Alpine system.

Chronological summary
      The geologic development of Europe may be summarized as follows. Archean rocks (those more than 2.5 billion years old) are the oldest of the Precambrian period and crop out in the northern Baltic Shield, Ukraine, and northwestern Scotland. Two major Proterozoic orogenic belts (i.e., between 2.5 billion and 540 million years old) also extend across the central and southern Baltic Shield. Thus, this shield has a composite origin, containing remnants of several Precambrian orogenic belts.

      About 540 to 500 million years ago a series of new oceans opened, and their closure gave rise to the Caledonian, Hercynian, and Uralian orogenic belts (Uralian orogenic belt). There is considerable evidence which suggests that these belts developed by plate-tectonic processes, and they each have a history that lasted hundreds of millions of years. Formation of these belts gave rise to the supercontinent of Pangaea; (Pangea) its fragmentation at the beginning of the Middle Triassic epoch (about 240 million years ago) gave rise to a new ocean, the Tethys Sea. Closure of this ocean early in the Tertiary period, about 50 million years ago, by subduction and plate-tectonic processes led to formation of the Alpine orogenic system, which extends from the Atlantic to Turkey and contains many separate orogenic belts (which remain as mountain chains), including the Pyrenees, Baetics, Atlas, Swiss-Austrian Alps, Apennines, Carpathians, Dinaric Alps, and Taurus and Pontic mountains. During the time that the Tethys was opening (about 180 million years ago), the Atlantic Ocean also began to open; the structure and age of the seafloor between Iceland and the continental margin of the British Isles and Norway are well known. The Atlantic is still opening along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge under the ocean, with Iceland constituting an area of the ridge that is raised above sea level. The youngest tectonic activity in Europe is represented by the present-day volcanic eruptions in Iceland; volcanoes, such as Etna and Vesuvius; and earthquakes, as in the Aegean and Turkey in the Alpine system, which result from current stresses between Europe and Africa.

Stratigraphy and structure
The Precambrian (Precambrian time)
      This major period of geologic time can be subdivided into the older Archean (Archean Eon) and the younger Proterozoic eons, the time boundary between them being 2.5 billion years ago. Compared with most of the other continents, Europe has few exposed Archean rocks. Some granitic gneisses (gneiss), which are more than three billion years old, crop out in the northern Baltic Shield, the Ukrainian Massif, and northwestern Scotland. These rocks were recrystallized at a depth of about 12 miles (20 kilometres) in the Archean crust, but their tectonic environment is poorly understood. The Baltic Shield exhibits successively younger orogenic belts toward the south, from the Archean relicts in the north to the Late Proterozoic belt of the Sveconorwegian in southwestern Norway. A major orogenic belt, the Svecofennian, developed in the Early Proterozoic era (2.5 to 1.6 billion years ago); it now occupies the bulk of the Baltic Shield, especially in Finland and Sweden, where it extends from the Kola Peninsula to the Gulf of Finland near Helsinki. The Sveconorwegian is a north–south-trending orogenic belt that developed between 1.2 billion and 850 million years ago. It occupies southern Norway and the adjacent area of southwestern Sweden between Oslo and Göteborg. On its northern side it has been reactivated almost beyond recognition within the Caledonian orogenic belt. The Ukrainian Massif and the small Laxfordian belt in northwestern Scotland consist mainly of granitic rocks and highly deformed and metamorphosed schists and gneisses that originally were sediments and volcanics, their age similar to that of the Svecofennian belt. In northwestern Scotland there is a north–south-trending belt of red sandstones and conglomerates belonging to the Torridonian group that is about one billion years old; these sediments may be the erosional products or molasse of a 1.2-billion-year-old orogenic belt, of which there are a few relicts within the Paleozoic Caledonian belt of Scotland. The Bohemian Massif is a diamond-shaped block in the heart of Europe, which has been heavily affected by the late Paleozoic Hercynian orogeny.

      Many of the rocks formed in the Late Archean (about 2.7 billion years ago) or Early Proterozoic (Svecofennian times) or later in the Proterozoic (about one billion years ago) were strongly deformed in several Precambrian orogenies and thus are now schists, gneisses, and amphibolites, accompanied by a variety of granites. Near the end of the Precambrian—about 800 to 540 million years ago—there was widespread deposition of conglomerates, sandstones, clays, and some volcanic sediments, which make up the Eocambrian (or Vendian) group; these were derived from the erosion of uplifted Precambrian mountains. They are well known for two features: First is their glacial sediments, which were deposited at a time of worldwide glaciation; they occur in northwestern Scotland (Islay Island), western Ireland, Norway (Finnmark and West Spitzbergen), Sweden, France (Normandy), and the Czech Republic (Bohemian Massif). Second is the occurrence of impressions of soft-bodied organisms, such as seaweed, jellyfish, and worms, which represent the beginnings of Metazoan life before the explosion of life-forms with hard parts for skeletons that became abundant in the Early Cambrian. These impressions occur in Charnwood Forest in central England, southern Wales, northern Sweden, Ukraine, and several localities in the Russian Platform. The Precambrian rocks of Europe provide a rich source of economic minerals that sustain human activities, such as major iron ore deposits at Kiruna in northern Sweden and Kryvyy Rih (Krivoy Rog) in Ukraine; tin deposits associated with granites in Finland; extensive copper–nickel sulfide ores across Finland, especially at Outokumpu, and in Sweden; and magnetite ores containing vanadium and titanium in northern Finland.

      The Paleozoic (540 to 245 million years ago) tectonic geology of Europe can be divided into two parts: the major orogenic belts of the Caledonian (or Caledonides), the Hercynian (or Hercynides), and the Uralian (or Uralides); and the undisturbed, mostly subsurface (and thus poorly known) Paleozoic sediments in the triangular area between these belts in the Russian Platform.

      The major factor that controlled the early mid-Paleozoic development of Europe was the opening and closing of the Iapetus Ocean, which gave rise to the Caledonian orogenic belt that extends from Ireland and Wales through northern England and Scotland to western Norway and northward to Finnmark in northern Norway. The belt is confined between the stable blocks of the Baltic Shield and the Precambrian belt of northwestern Scotland. Remnants of the Iapetus seafloor are seen in ophiolites at Ballantrae in the Strathclyde region of Scotland, and near Bergen in Norway. During the Cambrian period (540 to 505 million years ago) widening of the Iapetus gave rise to extensive shelf seas on the bordering continents, which deposited a thin cover of limestone and shale with a remarkable diversity of fossils of numerous marine invertebrates. The existence of this sea can be demonstrated by the presence of trilobites and graptolites in northern Scotland, which was on one side, that are significantly different from those in central England and southern Norway, which were on the other. In the Ordovician period (505 to 438 million years ago) the sea began to close by subduction, giving rise to major magmatic belts with lavas and tuffs in the Lake District of northern England and in Snowdonia National Park in northern Wales—where there is associated gold and copper mineralization—and to many granites in the Highlands of Scotland. In the Silurian Period (438 to 408 million years ago) the Iapetus Ocean closed, with the result that the bordering continental blocks collided, giving rise to deformation, metamorphism, and the orogeny of the Caledonian belt. In the Late Silurian, early land plants and the first freshwater fish appeared in lakes on the belt. The rifts of the Orkney Basin developed in the Devonian period (408 to 360 million years ago) on top of the thickened and unstable crust of the Caledonian orogenic belt in a manner comparable to the Quaternary rifts of Tibet (i.e., those that have appeared in the past 1.6 million years) that have a crust thickened by the Himalayan orogeny of the Tertiary period (66.4 to 1.6 million years ago). Erosion of the uplifted mountain belt in the Devonian led to deposition of sandstones and conglomerates in basins over a wide region from the British Isles to the western Russian Platform, often called the Old Red Sandstone continent.

      The Hercynian, or Variscan, orogenic belt evolved during Devonian and Carboniferous times, from about 408 to 286 million years ago. The belt extends from Portugal and western Spain, southwestern Ireland, and southwestern England in the west through the Ardennes, France (Brittany, Massif Central, Vosges, and Corsica), Sardinia, and Germany (Oden Forest, Black Forest, and Harz Mountains) to the Czech Republic (Bohemian Massif). The orogeny was formed by plate-tectonic processes that included seafloor spreading, continental drift, and the collision of plates. Remnants of the original ocean floor are preserved as ophiolites in the Harz Mountains and in the Lizard Peninsula of southwestern England. In the Devonian a continental margin ran along the north side of the belt in Devon and Cornwall (England) on which extensive sandstones derived from the continent were deposited. In the Carboniferous Period shallow-water limestones were laid down in the area of the Pennines of England on a shelf or carbonate bank; this formation passes southward into deeper-water shales of the Culm Trench of southwestern England, within which are found the pillow lavas, gabbros, and serpentinites of the Lizard ophiolite. In Brittany there is an island arc with lavas and granites that resulted from subduction of the ocean floor. The main Hercynian suture zone of the collided plates extends from the south side of Brittany to the Massif Central. Throughout much of Europe there is evidence of extensive thrusting, implying that there was appreciable thickening of the continental crust and the formation of a Tibetan-style plateau across the Hercynian orogeny. The thickening led to melting of the lower crust and the formation of large numbers of Late Carboniferous granites, especially in the Massif Central. The plateau became overly thick and unstable, and this caused the formation of rifts that developed into coal-bearing basins—as in Silesia (Poland) and the Massif Central—in the Late Carboniferous and Permian periods (i.e., between about 320 and 245 million years ago). The varied tectonic development of the Hercynian orogeny gave rise to widespread mineral deposits in many environments, which have been exploited in the economic development of many countries. Lead and zinc deposits occur in shelf carbonate sediments in Ireland and the Pennines of England; there are deposits of copper, lead, and zinc sulfides that formed in rifts in Silesia (Poland and eastern Germany) and at the Riotinto Mines in southwestern Spain; and important mineral deposits of tin, tungsten, and uranium are associated with crustal melt granites in Cornwall, the Massif Central, and Spain and Portugal.

      The Uralian orogenic belt, which forms the traditional eastern boundary of Europe, extends for about 2,175 miles (3,500 kilometres) from the Aral Sea to the northeasternmost tip of Severny Island, one of the two large islands that constitute most of Novaya Zemlya in the Arctic Ocean. It encompasses the Mughalzhar Hills north of the Aral Sea, the Ural Mountains proper (which stretch for some 1,550 miles from the bend of the Ural River in the south to the fringe of the Arctic in the north), the fingerlike extension of the Pay-Khoy Ridge, and Novaya Zemlya. The belt developed late in the Paleozoic as a result of collision between Asia and Europe. The earliest rifts in old Precambrian basement rocks began in the Late Cambrian–Early Ordovician, about 500 million years ago, and these developed into the floor of a new ocean. Island arcs formed in the Silurian period, and countless ophiolitic slabs of ocean floor were thrust onto the continental margins. In Devonian times a considerable amount of thrusting and metamorphism occurred, and the final parts of the ocean floor were subducted (i.e., thrust under continental masses); the result of this activity was that in the Permian (Permian Period) there was a final collision between the continents of Europe and Asia that gave rise to the Uralian orogenic belt. In the Permian there was widespread deposition of limestones followed by red sandstones, which were derived by erosion of the mountains. In the 1840s the British geologist Sir Roderick Murchison coined the term Permian System, named for the city of Perm. The Ural Mountains are rich in mineral deposits—especially chromite, platinum, nickel, copper, and gold—which are associated with the major ophiolitic slabs of ocean floor distributed along the chain.

The Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras
      During the Mesozoic Era a new ocean, the Tethys, evolved in what is now southern Europe, and during the Cenozoic Era this ocean was destroyed by subduction, with the result that many small plates collided. These events gave rise to the present-day tectonic mosaic that extends eastward from the Atlas Mountains of North Africa, the Baetic Cordillera of southern Spain, and the Pyrenees via the Alps of maritime France, Switzerland, and Austria to the Carpathians, the Apennines, the Dinaric Alps, the Alpine belt of Bulgaria, and the Taurus and Pontic mountains of Turkey and finally to the Caucasus. Within these belts must also be included the Pannonian Basin of Romania and the Algerian (or Balearic), Alborán, Tyrrhenian, and Adriatic basins of the Mediterranean Sea. The main cause of this Alpine orogeny during the Cenozoic was the northward compression of Africa into Europe.

      The first rifting of the older continent began with salt and evaporite deposition in lakes in rift valleys in the Early Triassic (245 to 240 million years ago). By 220 million years ago, in the Late Triassic, the continental margins of the new, narrow Tethys were commonly covered by shallow water over fossiliferous, carbonate shelf sediments. During the Middle Jurassic, about 180 million years ago, these carbonate shelves began to fragment, and in the Cretaceous (144 to 66.4 million years ago) the ocean floor was subducted in many places. This gave rise to volcanic island arcs, such as those of present-day Indonesia, and slabs of the Tethys ocean floor were thrusted as ophiolites onto the continental margins. Extensive remnants of these ophiolites can be seen today, especially in the northern Apennines and in the Yugoslav region, Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus. Collisions between many of the continental microplates took place in the Eocene–Oligocene (about 58 to 24 million years ago) epochs. For example, the Iberian Peninsula rotated to give rise to the Pyrenees, the Italian Peninsula drove northward and compressed into Europe, causing growth of the Swiss-Austrian Alps, and Anatolia moved westward and gave rise to the Aegean arc and the mountains of Greece. It is interesting to consider that it was the opening of the Red Sea that caused the Arabian Peninsula to slide northward along the fault defined by the Dead Sea and the Jordan Valley and in so doing to form at its front the Zagros Mountains of Iran, which, in turn, pushed Anatolia westward and caused the deformation in Greece. This scenario illustrates the interlinking and interdependence of all these movements and structures in Europe with those outside the continent. In the Late Miocene (11.2 to 5.3 million years ago) many of the early Mediterranean basins (e.g., Balearic, Tyrrhenian, Ionian, and Levantine) became isolated from the main Atlantic and Indo-Pacific oceans, and in these basins were laid down huge deposits of salt and gypsum in evaporites up to more than a mile thick. There are several important economic mineral deposits in the European Alpine system that can be related to the several stages of geologic evolution described above. Lead and zinc deposits occur in Triassic shelf limestones at Blei Hill in western Germany. Chromite ores are found in the ophiolites of the Yugoslav region, Greece, and Turkey. Copper ores formed in pillow-bearing basaltic lavas of the Tethyan ocean floor; copper mines have been worked since antiquity in Cyprus, which lent its name to this element. The Tethys, however, was a relatively narrow ocean, and thus its limited subduction was not able to give rise, for example, to many granites and volcanic rocks, which might have contained useful mineral deposits. Active seismic disturbances expressed as earthquakes are a reflection of the continuing compression between several of the European microplates; they are common in the Atlas Mountains, the island arc of the South Aegean, Greece, the island arc of the Tyrrhenian Sea in southern Italy, Turkey, and the Caucasus Mountains.

The North European and Russian platforms
      An approximately triangular area is described between the Caledonian orogeny in the west, the Hercynian orogeny and the Alps in the south, and the Urals in the east. This area includes the Russian and North European platforms and the North Sea. Within this area the Phanerozoic sedimentary rocks are either undeformed or only weakly deformed, and thus this area contrasts with the surrounding orogenic belts described above where such sediments are strongly deformed. Thus, throughout much of the extensive Russian Platform the Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic sediments have escaped the effects of the surrounding orogenies, and they are almost as horizontal as when they were laid down. Farther west in the portion of the North European Platform that includes southeastern England and northern France, Mesozoic and early Cenozoic sediments have been weakly deformed into anticlines and synclines by the Tertiary deformation of the Alpine orogenic belt to the south. This took place at a shallow level of the crust, and the sediments are still unmetamorphosed. Thus, the best place to find beautifully preserved Phanerozoic fossils is in this central triangular area of Europe. Under the North Sea there are gas reserves in Permian and Triassic sediments, and there are major oil reservoirs in Jurassic sediments. This is a subsided fragment of the continental margin of Europe flooded with water from the melted glaciers of the last Ice Age.

The Tertiary (Tertiary Period) igneous province of northwestern Britain
      From about 61 to 52 million years ago (early in the Tertiary) there were important igneous extrusions and intrusions in northwestern Britain. In Northern Ireland and northwestern Scotland, basaltic lava flows (e.g., the Giant's Causeway and the northern part of the isle of Skye) are associated with northwest–southeast-trending basaltic dikes and many plutonic complexes, which are probably the roots of volcanoes. The dikes extend southeastward across northern England and continue under the North Sea. Related lavas occur in the Faeroe Islands (Faroe Islands), belonging to Denmark. These igneous rocks formed in the faulted and thinned continental margin of northwestern Europe contemporaneously with the rifting and seafloor spreading that gave rise to the Atlantic Ocean.

      The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is a major plate boundary separating the North American and the Eurasian plates, and it extends through the centre of Iceland. Along this ridge the Atlantic Ocean is still growing, and on Iceland this activity is expressed as major rifts, volcanoes, and steam geysers. The entire island is made of lavas, the oldest of which on the northwestern coast came from eruptions about 16 million years ago. Iceland thus preserves a unique record of the last stages of development of one of the world's major accreting plate boundaries, most of which is elsewhere submarine.

Brian Frederick Windley

The Quaternary period (Quaternary)
      The Pleistocene Epoch occupies the Quaternary period (the last 1.6 million years), with the exception of the last 10,000 years, which are called the Holocene epoch. Although the precise causes of the Ice Ages that mark the Pleistocene are controversial, it is known that prior to this glaciation northern Europe had risen to a much higher elevation than now and that ice formed to great depths there, as in the rest of the Atlantic landmass and the Alpine areas. The Pleistocene was punctuated by warm interglacial periods separating glacial advances; during its latter part, humans occupied niches in the more southerly parts of the continent.

      Glaciers are the most powerful engines provided by nature for the transport—by plucking or quarrying—of large masses of rock, and certainly the European glaciers transformed the physique both of their source areas and of the lands to which they moved. Many physical forms of northern and Alpine Europe resulted from glacial erosion, supplemented by weathering, and the surfaces of areas where the glaciers eventually withered away consisted of masses of transported material. Southern Scandinavia, southern Finland, the Swiss Plateau, and the North European Plain were thickly plastered with a variety of forms, including boulder-studded clay, gravels, sands, and the windblown deposits known as loess. New drainage patterns were formed. The melting of so much ice raised the level of the oceans by an estimated 320 or more feet, while former ice-clad lands, including the North Sea area, began to rise isostatically. It was not until quite late in the Holocene that the northern seas of Europe—the Irish, North, and Baltic—took, by stages, their present shape.

The modern geologic framework
      Although the exposed rocks of Europe are obscured increasingly by the works of humans, and while detailed understanding of rock patterns present challenges even to the expert, the major formations of the continent are clear. In the north lie wide areas of ancient worn-down rocks, stripped of soil by the glaciers but compensated in some measure by the coastal plains created by uplift. In contrast, southern Europe, although incorporating such relicts as massifs of Paleozoic rocks, is essentially a youthful world, not yet fully fashioned, as evidenced by continuing seismic disturbances. Eastern Europe, based on the vast Russian Platform, is a stable world still young in surface, since the floor of its shield rocks is deeply concealed beneath Mesozoic and Tertiary deposits, above which glacial material covers the northern half and loess deposits enrich the south. Although in scale this platform is a continental area, river development facilitates access to inland seas in both the north and the south. Ancient rocks, lying near the surface, offer mineral wealth, and the former Volga–Ural seas have left a residue of petroleum and mineral salts. For the rest, western and central Europe show great diversity of landforms and landscape as well as varied soil and mineral resources. Alpine ranges in the south and southeast combine high altitude and relief with scenic attractions and—more importantly—with high precipitation and water dispersion. Highland areas, remnants of faulted Hercynian belts surrounded by younger strata, provide another type of wooded landscape, with their contained coalfields. Iceland has the youngest landscape of Europe, with its spectacular semiactive volcanoes, high waterfalls, extensive glaciers, and steam geysers. Lastly, lowlands, of great human value, recall their varied origins—former sea and lake basins; lowlands of glacial deposition; parts of eroded synclinal structures; and alluvial and marine plains won from the sea by isostasy or, as exemplified by the Dutch polders, by the work of humans.

W. Gordon East Brian Frederick Windley

The land
 A contrast exists between the configuration of peninsular (or western) Europe, and eastern Europe, which is a much larger and more continental area. A convenient division is made by a line linking the base of the Jutland Peninsula with the head of the Adriatic Sea. The western part of the continent clearly has a high proportion of coastline with good maritime access and often with inland penetration by means of navigable rivers. Continental shelves—former land surfaces that have been covered by shallow seas—are a feature of peninsular Europe, while the coasts themselves are both submerged or drowned, as in southwestern Ireland and northwestern Spain, and emergent, as in western Scotland and southern Wales where raised former beaches are in evidence. East of the Vistula River, Europe's expansive lowlands have something of the scale and character of those of northern Asia, but the continent also comprises numerous islands, some—notably the Faeroes and Iceland—located at a distance from the mainland. Fortuitously, Europe has no continuous mountain obstacle aligned north–south, corresponding, for example, to the Western Cordillera of North America and the Andes of South America, that would limit access into western Europe from the ocean.

Relief
Elevations
      Lands lying at high altitude can, of course, be lands of low relief, but on the European continent relief tends to become more rugged as altitude increases. The greater part of Europe, however, combines low altitude with low relief. Only hill masses less than 800 feet (240 metres) in height rise gently within the East European (or Russian (Russian Plain)) Plain, which continues northward into Finland, westward into the North European Plain, and southward in the Romanian, Bulgarian, and Hungarian plains. The North European Plain, common to much of Poland, northern Germany, and Denmark, broadens in western France and continues, across the narrow seas, in southeastern Great Britain and Ireland. The major peninsula of Scandinavia is mostly upland and highland, with its relief greatest at the descent to the Norwegian fjords and the sea; eastward and southward the seas are approached more gently. The highest points reached in Norway and Sweden are, respectively, Galdhø Peak (8,100 feet) and Mount Kebne (6,926 feet). Iceland's highest peak is Mount Hvannadals, at 6,952 feet, while Ben Nevis, the highest summit in Great Britain, stands at a height of only 4,406 feet. Greater relief is found in those areas in the heart of western and central Europe where uplifted and faulted massifs survive from the Hercynian orogeny. The worn-down Ural Mountains also belong in this category, and their highest point, Mount Narodnaya (Narodnaya, Mount) (6,217 feet), corresponds approximately to that of the Massif Central in south central France. Altitudes in these areas are mainly between about 500 and 2,000 feet, and many steep slopes are to be seen.

      The highest altitudes and the most rugged relief of the European continent are found farther south, where the structures of the Cenozoic orogeny provide mountain scenery. In the Alps, Mont Blanc (Blanc, Mont) rises to a height of 15,771 feet (4,807 metres), which is the highest point on the continent. In the Pyrenees and the Sierra Nevada of Spain, the highest of the peaks exceed 11,000 feet. The Apennines, Dinaric Alps, and Balkan Mountains, as well as the arc-shaped Carpathian Mountains and their southern portion, the Transylvanian Alps, also exhibit high altitudes. The highest peaks in these ranges are Mount Corno (9,554 feet) in the Abruzzi Apennines, Bobotov Kuk (8,274 feet) in the Dinaric Alps, Mount Botev (7,795 feet) in the Balkan Mountains, Gerlachovský Štít (Gerlach; 8,711 feet) in the Western Carpathians, and Mount Moldoveanu (8,347 feet) in the Transylvanian Alps. Above all, in southern Europe—Austria and Switzerland included—level, low-lying land is scarce, and mountain, plateau, and hill landforms dominate. The lowest terrain in Europe, virtually lacking relief, stands at the head of the Caspian Sea; there the Caspian Depression reaches some 95 feet (29 metres) below sea level.

Physiographic units
      Four broad topographic units can be simply, yet usefully, distinguished in the continent of Europe: coastal and interior lowlands, central uplands and plateaus, the northwestern highlands, and southern Europe.

      More than half of Europe consists of lowlands, standing mostly below 600 feet but infrequently rising to 1,000 feet. Most extensive between the Baltic and White seas in the north and the Black, Azov, and Caspian seas in the south, the lowland narrows westward, lying to the south of the northwestern highlands; it is divided also by the English Channel and the mountains and plateaus of central Europe. The Danubian and northern Italian lowlands are thus mountain-ringed islands. The northern lowlands are areas of glacial deposition and, accordingly, their surface is diversified by such features as the Valdai Hills of western Russia; by deposits of boulder clay, sands, and gravels; by glacial lakes; and by the Pripet Marshes, a large ill-drained area of Belarus (Belorussia) and Ukraine. Another important physical feature is the southeast–northwest zone of windblown loess deposits that have accumulated from eastern Britain to Ukraine. This Börde (German: “edge”) belt lies at the northern foot of the Central European Uplands and the Carpathians. Southward of the limits of the northern ice sheets are vales and hills, with the Paris and London basins typical examples. Superficial rock cover, altitude, drainage, and soil have sharply differentiated these lowlands—which are of prime importance to human settlement—into areas of marsh or fen, clay vales, sand and gravel heaths, or river terraces and fertile plains.

Central uplands and plateaus
      The central uplands and plateaus present distinctive landscapes of rounded summits, steep slopes, valleys, and depressions. Examples of such physiographic features can be found in the Southern Uplands of Scotland, the Massif Central of France, the Meseta Central of Spain, and the Bohemian Massif. Routes detour around, or seek gaps through, these uplands—whose German appellation, Horst (“thicket”), recalls their still wooded character, while their coal basins give them great economic importance. The well-watered plateaus give rise to many rivers and are well adapted to pastoral farming. Volcanic rocks add to the diversity of these regions.

Northwestern highlands
      The ancient, often mineral-laden rocks of the northwestern highlands, their contours softened by prolonged erosion and glaciation, are found throughout much of Iceland, Ireland, and in northern and western Britain and Scandinavia. These highland areas include lands of abundant rainfall—which supplies hydroelectricity and water to industrial cities—and provide summer pastures for cattle. The land in these areas, however, is of little use for crops. The coasts of the northwestern highlands—and in particular the fjords of Norway—invite maritime enterprise.

Southern Europe
      A world of peninsulas and islands, southern Europe is subject to its own climatic regime, with fragmented but predominantly mountain and plateau landscapes. Iberia and Anatolia (Turkey) are extensive peninsulas with interior tablelands of Paleozoic rocks that are flanked by mountain ranges of Alpine type. The restricted lowlands lie within interior basins or fringe the coasts; those of Portugal, Macedonia, Thrace, and northern Italy are relatively large. Runoff from the Alps furnishes much water for electricity-generating stations, as well as for the flow regimes of major rivers.

Drainage
Topographic influences
      The drainage basins (drainage basin) of most European rivers lie in areas originally uplifted by the Caledonian, Hercynian, and Alpine mountain-building periods that receive heavy precipitation, including snow. Some streams, notably in Finland and from southern Poland to west central Russia, have their sources in hills of Tertiary rocks, while others, including the Thames (Thames, River) and Seine rivers (Seine River), derive from hill country of Mesozoic rocks. Drainage is directly, or via the Baltic and the Mediterranean seas, to the Atlantic and the Arctic oceans and to the enclosed Caspian Sea.

      The present courses and valley forms of the major rivers result from an intricate history involving such processes as erosion by the headstream, downcutting, capture of other rivers, faulting, and isostatic changes of land and sea levels. The Rhine (Rhine River), for example, once drained to the Mediterranean before being diverted to its present northerly course. The courses of many rivers—notably those of Scandinavia and the North European Plain—have been shaped since the Pleistocene epoch. While the Alps, Apennines, and Carpathians provide watersheds, other mountain ranges have been cut through by rivers, as by the Danube (Danube River) at Vienna, Budapest, and the Iron Gate and by the Olt (in Romania). In the East European Plain (Russian Plain) the rivers are long and flow sluggishly to five seas. In western, central, and eastern Europe, rivers are largely “mature”; i.e., their valleys are graded, and their streams are navigable. Northern and southern Europe, in contrast, present still “youthful” rivers, as yet ill-graded and thus more useful for hydroelectricity than for waterways. The Atlantic rivers have scoured estuaries widening seaward, while, in the Baltic, Mediterranean, and Black seas, with minimum tidal influences, deltas and spits have been created. The upper Dnieper (Dnieper River) (Dnepr), since post-Pleistocene times, has failed to drain effectively the low area of minimal relief known as the Pripet Marshes.

      The water volume of, and discharge from, the rivers of Europe are governed by factors that include local conditions of rainfall, snowmelt, and rock porosity. In consequence, the rivers in the western area have more volume and higher discharges in the winter season and are at their lowest in summer. In areas of mountainous and continental climate, thanks to the runoff of snowmelt, the rivers are highest in spring and early summer. The longer rivers of the continent, notably the Rhine and the Danube, have complex regimes, since their basins extend into areas of contrasting climate. Although embanking measures have reduced the problem, flooding (flood) is a continued threat. Thus, the rivers of European Russia are liable to flood with the spring thaw; oceanic rivers, after heavy or prolonged rain over the whole basin; and Alpine rivers, when the warm foehn wind rapidly melts the snow. In the Mediterranean region some rivers—as in peninsular Greece—tend to dry up in summer through a combination of scant rainfall, evaporation, and porous limestone beds. In the Abruzzi region of central Italy, however, heavy rainfall, mainly in winter, permeable and porous rocks within the basin, and abundant snow combine to regulate the river regimes.

      The Rhône (Rhône River) achieves a steady flow throughout the year, deriving a high input from the Cévennes Mountains—which experience heavy winter rain—plus abundant spring and summer snowmelt (Volga River) from the Alps via Lake Geneva. The Rhine and Danube tap supplies from the Alps in spring and summer, and the Rhine, especially, taps areas of winter rainfall maximum. The Volga has its highest water in spring and early summer, thanks to snowmelt, and falls to a summer low. The Saône (Saône River), lying within the oceanic climatic area, tends to have a good flow year-round. The winter freeze of the east only rarely seriously affects the Danube and western European rivers.

Lake systems and marshes
      Lakes cover less than 2 percent of Europe's surface and occur mostly in areas subjected to Pleistocene glaciation. The Scandinavian Peninsula and the North European Plain account for four-fifths of the area of lakes; and in Finland lakes cover one-fifth of the surface. The other major zones of lakes lie marginal to the Alpine system, while Scotland, too, has its many “lochs” and Ireland its “loughs.” Lakes survive where the inflow of water exceeds loss from evaporation and outflow and should eventually disappear through alluvial accumulation. Their origins lie in the glacial excavation of softer rocks, in the building of dams by morainic material, and in tectonic, or deforming, forces, which may create depressions. This second explanation clearly applies to Alpine lakes; to many of those in the British Isles, including the small but scenic ones of the Lake District of England; and also to those of central Sweden. Volcanic crater lakes are found in central Italy, and small lakes of the lagoon type are found along the Baltic and Mediterranean, where spits have lengthened parallel to the coast and hence cut off sea access.

      A well-developed zone (the Marschen) has formed along the low-lying and reclaimed marshes along the North Sea in Germany and The Netherlands, and characteristically the estuaries of Europe's tidal rivers are edged by flat alluvial marshes. Fens (fen), as exemplified by the polders in The Netherlands and the lowlands in eastern England, are made up of either alluvium or peat and stand too low to be drained effectively, except by continuous pumping. The continent's largest marshland is the Pripet Marshes of Belarus and Ukraine.

Soils
Regional divisions
      The soil patterns of Europe are clearly and zonally arranged in the East European Plain but are much more complicated in the rest of the continent, which exhibits a more varied geology and relief. Tundra soils occur only in Iceland, the most northerly parts of Russia and Finland, and in high areas of Sweden and Norway; they tend to be acidic, waterlogged, and poor in plant nutrients. South of this zone and extending around the Gulf of Bothnia and across Finland and Russia north of the upper Volga, cool-climate podzols are characteristic. These soils, formed in a coniferous woodland setting, suffer from acidity, the leaching of minerals, hardpan formation and permafrost beneath the topsoil, and excess moisture; given the climate, they are virtually useless for crops.

      The larger zone to the south stretches from central Russia westward to Great Britain and Ireland and southward from central Sweden, southern Norway, and Finland to the Pyrenees, Alps, and Balkan Mountains. In this region temperate-climate podzols (Podzol) and brown forest soils have developed in a mixed-forest environment, and these soils, which are highly varied, usually have a good humus content. Locally, the farmer recognizes soils of heavy to light texture, their different water-holding capacities, depth, alkalinity or acidity, and their suitability for specific crops. The soils, rich in humus, within this zone that cover loess are excellent loams; lowland clays, when broken down, also exhibit high quality, as do alluvial soils; in contrast, areas covered with dry, sandy, or gravelly soils are more useful for residential and amenity purposes than for farming. In southwestern Russia, portions of the Transcaucasus region, and especially in Ukraine, some soils that have been formed in areas of grass steppe are chernozems (black earths)—deep, friable, humus-rich, and renowned for their fertility. In the formerly wooded steppe lying to the north of the grass steppe in both south central Russia and the lower Danubian lowlands, soils of somewhat less value are known as degraded chernozems and gray forest soils. At best, chestnut soils—some needing only water to be productive—and, at worst, solonetzic (Solonetz) (highly saline) soils cover areas of increasing aridity eastward of Ukraine to the Ural River. Lastly, in southern Europe, where the countryside is fragmented by mountains, plateaus, and hills, much soil has been lost from sloping ground through forest destruction and erosion, and a bright red soil (terra rossa), heavy and clay-rich, is found in many valleys and depressions.

Problems of classification
      The origin, nature, variety, and classification of Europe's soils raise highly complex problems: so much is involved—bedrock, drainage, plant decomposition, biological action, climate, and the time factor. Humans, moreover, have done much to modify soils and, with increasing scientific knowledge, to render soils of greater and continuing value by drainage, crop rotation, and the input of suitable combinations of chemicals. In such ways, naturally poor soils can—as has been shown in Denmark—be made productive. The practice of an enforced “resting” of soils, by leaving fields fallow to recuperate, began to disappear with the agricultural revolution of the 18th century, and agronomic science continues to show how the best results can be achieved from specific soils and also how to check soil erosion. Europe's arable land lies mainly in the lowlands, which have podzols, brown, chernozem, and chestnut soils, although the upper elevation level of cultivation, as of animal husbandry, rises southward. New land is won from the sea, and this more than offsets coastal losses through erosion, but the continued losses to urban expansion and to such competitors for level land as airfields, on the other hand, have become increasingly serious.

Climate
      As Francis Bacon, the great English Renaissance man of letters, aptly observed, “Every wind has its weather.” It is air-mass (air mass) circulation that provides the main key to Europe's climate, the more so since masses of Atlantic Ocean origin can pass freely through the lowlands, except in the case of the Caledonian mountains of Norway. Polar air masses (polar air mass) derived from areas close to Iceland and tropical masses from the Azores bring, respectively, very different conditions of temperature and humidity and produce different climatic effects as they move eastward. Continental air masses (continental air mass) from eastern Europe have equally easy access westward. The almost continuous belt of mountains trending west–east across Europe also impedes the interchange of tropical and polar air masses.

Air-pressure belts
      Patterns of some permanence controlling air-mass circulation are created by belts of air pressure over five areas. They are: the Icelandic low, over the North Atlantic; the Azores high, a high-pressure ridge; the (winter) Mediterranean low; the Siberian high, centred over Central Asia in winter but extending westward; and the Asiatic low, a low-pressure, summertime system over southwestern Asia. Given these pressure conditions, westerly winds prevail in northwestern Europe during the year, becoming especially strong in winter. The winter westerlies, often from the southwest, bring in warm tropical air; in summer, by contrast, they veer to the northwest and bring in cooler Arctic or subarctic air. In Mediterranean Europe the rain-bearing westerlies chiefly affect the western areas, but only in winter. In winter the eastern Mediterranean basin experiences bitter easterly and northeasterly winds derived from the Siberian high, and their occasional projection westward explains unusually cold winters in western and central Europe, the exceptionally warm winters of which, on the other hand, result from the sustained flow of tropical maritime air masses. In summer the Azores high moves 5°–10° of latitude northward and extends farther eastward, preventing the entry of cyclonic storms into the resultantly dry Mediterranean region. The eastern basin, however, experiences the hot and dry north and northeast summer winds called etesian by the ancient Greeks. In summer, too, the Siberian high gives place to a low-pressure system extending westward, so that westerly air masses can penetrate deeply through the continent, making summer a wet season.

      It is because of the interplay of so many different air masses that Europe experiences very changeable weather. Winters get sharply colder eastward, but summer temperatures relate fairly closely to latitude. Northwestern Europe, including Iceland, enjoys some amelioration because of warm Gulf Stream waters, which keep the Russian port of Murmansk open throughout the year.

Climatic regions
      Four regional European climatic types can be loosely distinguished, each characterized by much local topographically related variation. Further, the great cities of Europe, because of the scale and grouping of their buildings, their industrial activities, and the layout of their roads, create distinct local climates—including a central “heat island” and pollution problems.

Maritime climate
      Characterizing western areas heavily exposed to Atlantic air masses, the maritime type of climate—given the latitudinal stretch of these lands—exhibits sharp temperature ranges. Thus, the January and July annual averages of Reykjavík (Iceland) and Coruña (Coruña, A) (Spain) are, respectively, 32° F (0° C) and 53° F (12° C), and 50° F (10° C) and 64° F (18° C). Precipitation is always adequate—indeed, abundant on high ground—falling the year round. The greatest amount of precipitation occurs in autumn or early winter. Summers range from warm to hot depending on the latitude and altitude, and the weather is everywhere changeable. The maritime climate extends across Svalbard, Iceland, the Faeroes, Great Britain and Ireland, Norway, southern Sweden, western France, the Low Countries, northern Germany, and northwestern Spain.

Central European (transitional) climate
      The central European, or transitional, type of climate results from the interaction of both maritime and continental air masses and is found at the core of Europe, south and east of the maritime type, west of the much larger continental type, and north of the Mediterranean type. This rugged region has colder winters, with substantial mountain snowfalls, and warmer summers, especially in the lowlands. Precipitation is adequate to abundant, with a summer maximum. The region embraces central Sweden, southern Finland, the Oslo Basin of Norway, eastern France, southwestern Germany, and much of central and southeastern Europe. The range between winter and summer temperatures increases eastward, while the rainfall can exceed 80 inches (2,000 millimetres) in the mountains, with snow often lying permanently around high peaks. The Danubian region has only modest rainfall (24 inches per year at Budapest), but the Dinaric Alps experience heavy cyclonic winter, as well as summer, rain.

Continental climate
      The continental type of climate dominates a giant share of Europe, covering northern Ukraine, eastern Belarus, Russia, most of Finland, and northern Sweden. Winters—much colder and longer, with greater snow cover than in western Europe—are coldest in the northeast, and summers are hottest in the southeast; the January to July mean temperatures range from 50° to 70° F (10° to 21° C). Summer is the period of maximum rain, which is less abundant than in the west: Moscow's (Moscow) annual average is 25 inches, while, in both the north and southeast of the East European Plain, precipitation reaches only between 10 and 20 inches annually. In parts of the south, the unreliability of rainfall combines with its relative scarcity to raise a serious aridity problem.

      The subtropical Mediterranean climate characterizes the coastlands of southern Europe, being modified inland (for example in the Meseta Central, the Apennines, and the North Italian Plain) in response to altitude and aspect. The main features of this climatic region are mild and wet winters, hot and dry summers, and clear skies, but marked regional variations occur between the lands of the western and the more southerly eastern basins of the Mediterranean; the former are affected more strongly by maritime-air-mass intrusions. Rainfall in southern Europe is markedly reduced in areas lying in the lee of rain-bearing westerlies: Rome has an annual mean of 26 inches, but Athens has only 16 inches.

The effects of climate
      The local and regional effects of climate on the weathering, erosion, and transport of rocks clearly contribute much to the European landscape, and the length and warmth of the growing season, the amount and seasonal range of rainfall, and the incidence of frost affect the distribution of vegetation. Wild vegetation in its turn provides different habitats for animal life. Climate is also an important factor in the making of soils, while modern European industry and urban life depend increasingly on water supplies, with rivers and lakes continuing to provide important commercial waterways in some areas. The winter freeze in northern and eastern Europe is another effect of climate, and the spring thaw, by creating floods, impedes transport and harasses farmers. The snow cover of the more continental regions is useful to people, however, for it stores water for the fields and provides snow for sled users.

      Regional variations of climate also help determine where crops are grown commercially. In southern Europe the climate supports specially adapted wild vegetation and precludes all-year grass in coastal lowlands, while the practice of moving flocks and herds to pastures seasonally available at different altitudes is clearly adapted to other conditions set by climate. In sum, in only a modest proportion of Europe does climate somewhat restrict human occupation and land use. These areas include regions of high altitude and relief, such as the subarctic highlands of the Scandinavian Peninsula and Iceland, the Arctic areas along the White Sea of northern Russia, and the arid areas of interior Spain.

Plant life
Major vegetation zones
      The terms “natural,” “original,” and “primitive,” as epithets applied to the vegetation of Europe, have no precise meaning unless they are related to a specific time in geologic history. It is, nevertheless, possible to envisage continental vegetation zones as they formed and acquired some stability during postglacial times, although such zones are only rarely recalled by present-day remnants.

The tundra
      Tundra vegetation, made up of lichens and mosses, occupies a relatively narrow zone in Iceland and the extreme northern portions of Russia and Scandinavia, although this zone is continued southward in the mountains of Norway. Vegetation of a similar kind occurs at altitudes of 5,000–6,000 feet in the Alps and the northern Urals.

The boreal forest
      Southward, the virtually treeless tundra merges into the boreal (northern) forest, or taiga (boreal forest). The more northerly zone is “open,” with stands of conifers and with willows and birch thickets rising above a lichen carpet. It is most extensive in northern Russia but continues, narrowing westward, across Sweden. South of this zone, and with no abrupt transition, the “closed” boreal forest occupies a large fraction—mainly north of the upper Volga River—of Russia and Scandinavia. Conifers, thin-leaved and resistant to cold, together with the birch and larch, predominate.

      The northern vegetation may superficially suggest its primeval character, but the zone of mixed forest that once stretched across the continent from Great Britain and Ireland to central Russia has been changed extensively by humans. Only surviving patches of woodland—associations of summer-leaf trees and some conifers, summarily described as Atlantic, central, and eastern—hint at the formerly extensive cover.

The Mediterranean complex
      In southern Europe, Mediterranean vegetation has a distinctive character, containing hard-leaf forests and secondary areas of scrub, especially maquis (macchie), which is made up of trees, shrubs, and aromatic plants. Such scrub is scattered because of summer drought, particularly in areas where the soil is underlain by limestone or where there is little, if any, soil.

Steppe and semidesert
      The wooded-steppe and grass-steppe vegetation zones are confined primarily to southwestern Russia and Ukraine, although they also extend into the Danubian lowlands. Finally, semidesert vegetation characterizes the dry lowland around the northern and northwestern shores of the Caspian Sea.

The shaping of vegetation zones

Climatic change
      The primeval vegetation of Europe began to take shape as the climate ameliorated following the retreat of the Pleistocene ice sheets. The microscopic study of pollen grains preserved in datable layers of peat and sediments has made it possible to trace the continental spread, in response to climatic improvement, of forest-forming trees. The double barrier of the Alps and the Mediterranean Sea had checked the retreat of trees at the onset of the Great Ice Age, and there were relatively few indigenous species to return northward from unglaciated refuges. In the first postglacial climatic phase (the Boreal), spruce, fir, pine, birch, and hazel nevertheless established themselves as far north as central Sweden and Finland. During the succeeding climatic optimum (the Atlantic phase), which was probably wetter and certainly somewhat warmer, mixed forests of oak, elm, common lime (linden), and elder spread northward. Only in the late Atlantic period did the beech and hornbeam spread into western and central Europe from the southeast.

      During postglacial times, therefore, when small numbers of humans were living within Europe, the continental surface was thickly clad with trees and undergrowth, except where tree growth was precluded by extreme cold, high altitude, bad drainage, or exposure to persistent gales. Even those relatively attractive areas where windblown loess had been deeply deposited are now known to have had woods of beech, hawthorn, juniper, box, and ash, as did also limestone plateaus. The Mediterranean peninsulas also had evergreen and mixed forests rooted in an ample soil.

The role of humans
      From prehistoric times onward, with ever-increasing force, humans, seeking optimum economic use of available resources, have acted as a vigorous agent of vegetation change. The effects of grazing animals may well explain why some heathlands (scrubland) (e.g., the Lüneburg Heath in north central Germany) replaced primeval forest. By fire and later by ax, forest clearance met demands for homes and ships, for fuel, for charcoal for iron smelting, and, not least, for more cultivation and pasture. The mixed boreal forests suffered most because their relatively rich soils and long and warm growing season promised good returns from cultivation. The destruction of woodlands was markedly strong when population was growing (as between about AD 800 and 1300). It was later intensified by German colonization east of the Rhine and reached maximum scale in the 19th century. In southern Europe—where naval demands were continuous and sources of suitable timber sharply localized—tree cutting entailed, from classical antiquity onward, serious soil loss through erosion, increased aridity, floods, and marsh formation. Farther north throughout the continent, as present distribution of arable land shows, former forests were reduced to remnants; only in the north and below the snow line of Alpine mountains have forests of large and continuing commercial value survived. These coniferous forests (coniferous forest) of Sweden, Finland, and northern Russia are “cropped” annually to preserve their capital value. On the more positive side may be noted the reclamation of marshlands and the soil improvement of hill grasslands and heaths, their wild vegetation being replaced by pasture and crops; in timber-deficient countries the afforestation of hillslopes, chiefly with quickly growing conifers, belatedly attempts to restore some of the former forests. Another drastic vegetation change brought about by humans has been the virtual elimination of the wooded and grass steppes, which have become vast granaries.

Exterior influences and European survivals
      To a surprising degree, European vegetation stemmed from the importation of plants from other continents, although some imported crops—notably citrus fruits, sugarcane, and rice—can grow only marginally in Europe, and then by irrigation. From an original home of wild grasses in Ethiopia, cultivated varieties of wheat and barley reached Europe early, via the Middle East and Egypt, as did also the olive, the vine, figs, flax, and some varieties of vegetables. Rice, sugarcane, and cotton, of tropical Indian origin, were introduced by the Arabs and Moors, especially into Spain. The citrus fruits, peaches, mulberries, oats, and millet reached Europe from original Chinese habitats, and Europe owes corn (maize), tobacco, squashes, tomatoes, red peppers, prickly pears, agave (sisal), and the potato—first grown for fodder but destined to become the cheap staple food for the large families of low-paid workers of the 19th century—to the Americas. Europe has drawn greatly on East Asia and North America for trees, especially ornamental trees, while some acacias and the eucalyptus derive from Australia. The sugar beet, however, was a European discovery, first grown when much of Napoleonic Europe was subjected to maritime blockade.

      The forests of northern Europe and the Alpine ranges, although in no sense primeval, represent unchanging land use during the postglacial period. The “closed boreal forest” occupies some one million square miles (2.6 million square kilometres), made up of a spruce–fir association (but with stands of pine, birch, and larch) above an undergrowth of mosses and herbs. This large and valuable reserve of timber is of world importance; forests once covered 80 percent of Europe's surface, and they still occupy about 30 percent.

Human adaptations
      Clearly, animal life, wild and domesticated, has been adjusted to fit largely man-made patterns of vegetation, which, in turn, reflect agelong attempts to achieve chiefly economic ends. With such endeavours are associated varieties of modes de vie, or “modes of livelihood.” In the mountains as in the boreal forests, the environment is exploited by winter lumbering and by the transport of felled trees by river after the spring thaw. So, too, agriculture in its many forms—in part for subsistence but commonly for urban markets—is a basic occupation of the lowlands, long cleared of extensive forests or steppe vegetation. In Mediterranean Europe, rural life, based on horticulture and arboriculture rather than on large-scale cultivation, as well as on the rearing of sheep and goats and wheat cultivation, continues, little changed in many areas. For such deeply rooted fruit-bearing trees as the olive and vine, use is made of sloping, broken, and terraced land. Farming also extends to specialized forms with respect to the subtropical crops that climate, sometimes supplemented by irrigation, permits.

Animal life
Patterns of distribution
      With animals as with plants, the earlier Pleistocene range and variety has been much reduced since man disposed of what nature provided. Wild fauna has been long in retreat since Upper Paleolithic times, when, as cave drawings portray, small human groups held their own against such big game as aurochs and mammoths, now extinct, and also against such survivors as the elephant, bison, horse, and boar. Hares, swans, and geese were also hunted, and salmon, trout, and pike were fished. Humans were, inevitably, the successful competitor for land use. By prolonged effort settlers won the land for crops and for domesticated animals, and they hunted animals, especially for furs. As population mounted in industrializing Europe, humans no less inevitably destroyed, or changed drastically, the wild vegetation cover and the animal life. With difficulty, and largely on human sufferance, animals have nevertheless survived in association with contemporary vegetation zones.

The tundra
      In the tundra some reindeer (caribou), both wild and domesticated, are well equipped to withstand the cold. Their spoon-shaped hooves are useful in finding food in rough ground. Their herds migrate southward in winter and eat lichens and other plants, as well as flesh, notably that of lemmings and voles. Dogs, too, are reared for traction but yield less than reindeer, which also provide meat, milk, pelts, wool, and bone. The Arctic fox, bear, ermine, partridge, and snowy owl may appear in the tundra, where, in the short summer, seabirds, river fish, and immigrant birds (swans, ducks, and snipes) vitalize a harsh environment then made almost intolerable by the swarms of biting midges.

Boreal associations
      In the boreal forests (boreal forest) the richness of animal and bird life, which had persisted throughout historical times, now has been greatly reduced. Among large surviving ungulates are the elk (moose), reindeer, and roebuck, and among big beasts of prey is the large brown bear. The lynx has been exterminated by humans, but not the wolf, fox, marten, badger, polecat, and white weasel. The sable, which is much hunted for its valuable fur, only just survives in the northeastern forests of European Russia. Rodents in the forests include squirrels, the white Arctic hare, and (in the mixed forests) the gray hare and the beaver. Among birds are the black grouse, snipe, hazel hen, white partridge, woodpecker, and crossbill, all of which assume protective colouring and are specially adapted to be able to find their food in a woodland environment. Owls, blackbirds, tomtits, and bullfinches may be seen in the forests, and, in meadow areas, geese, ducks, and lapwings may be seen.

The steppes
      The fauna of the steppe zones now lacks large animals, and the saiga antelope has disappeared. Numerous rodents, including the marmot, jerboa, hamster, and field mouse, have increased in numbers to become pests, now that nearly all the steppe is under cultivation. Equally plentiful birds include the bustard—who can fly as well as run—quail, gray partridge, and lark. These take on yellowish gray or brown protective colouring to match the dried-up grass. Eagles, falcons, hawks, and kites comprise the birds of prey; water and marsh birds—especially the crane, bittern, and heron—also make their homes in the steppes. Different kinds of grasshopper (locusts) and beetles are insect pests.

Mediterranean (Mediterranean Sea) and semidesert associations
      In Mediterranean Europe, remnants of mountain woodland harbour wild goats, wild sheep—such as the small mouflon of Corsica and Sardinia—wildcats, and wild boar. Snakes, including vipers, and lizards and turtles are familiar reptiles, but birds are few. The faunas of the semidesert areas to the north and northwest of the Caspian Sea also show affiliations with the grass steppe and the desert between which they lie. Two types of antelope (saiga and jaran) survive there, as do rodent sand marmots and desert jerboas and, as a beast of prey, the sand badger. There are many reptiles—lizards, snakes (cobras and steppe boas)—and tortoises. The Pander's ground jay and the saxaul sparrow, the latter named for the desert tree, also live there, while scorpions, the karakurt spiders, and the palangid are insects dangerous to humans and camels.

Conservation problems
      Pressure on space, hunting, either for sport or to protect crops, the pollution of sea waters and fresh waters, and the contamination of cropland have so reduced many animal species that strong efforts are now being made to preserve those threatened with extinction, in such refuges where they still, precariously, live.

      Nature reserves (nature reserve) have been set up in many European countries, with international support from the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources and the World Wildlife Fund. Seabirds find safe homes, for example, in the Lofoten Islands of Norway and the Farne Islands of northeastern England. The snowy owl, which feeds on lemmings, is seen in Lapland, the rare great bustard in the Austrian Burgenland, and the musk-ox in Svalbard. Père David's deer, which had become extinct in China, its native home, was introduced in 1898 at Woburn Abbey, Eng., where it now flourishes. Nearly half the bird species of Europe, including the egret and the imperial eagle, are represented in the Doñana National Park, within a setting of wild vegetation in the Las Marismas region of the Guadalquivir estuary in southwestern Spain; there, too, the Spanish lynx survives. In Poland the extensive Białowieza National Park, a wild forest once hunted yearly by the tsars, contains deer, wild boar, elk (moose), bear, lynx, wolves, eagle owls, black storks, the European bison (wisent), and the tarpan, a gray-coloured horse and a survivor from remote days. Contiguous with the forest in Belarus is the Belavezhs Forest Preserve, containing European bison. Italy has its reknowned Gran Paradiso National Park in the Valle d'Aosta, which preserved from extinction the Alpine ibex; Austria has a bird refuge in Neusiedler Lake (Lake Fertő), which is the only breeding site of white egrets in western Europe; and the huge delta of the Danube is largely left to wildlife. The golden eagle, Alpine marmots, and chamois are to be seen in the Bavarian Alps near Berchtesgaden, Ger.

      Other rare birds are the sandwich tern, at Norderoog Island in the North Frisian Islands of Germany, and the spoonbill and cormorant, found, respectively, at Texel Island and Norderoog Island, the former off the coast of The Netherlands. For ornithologists (as for botanists) Iceland has abounding interest, notably at Slúttnes, an island in the shallow Lake Mývatn. The beautiful wild horses of Camargue Nature Reserve (Rhône delta), the wild ponies of the New Forest (England), and the Barbary apes, maintaining a foothold on the Rock of Gibraltar, continue undiminished in popular interest.

      Thus, the European environment, once not so unequally shared by plants, animals, and people, has, with the march of civilization, been subjected to the attempt at mastery by humans. Favoured by their proximity to the Middle East, where crop cultivation and animal domestication first began, Europeans have fashioned cultural landscapes at the expense of wild nature to serve their economic and social ends. Only with difficulty—and sporadically—has wild nature survived, and only just in time has awareness of the cultural losses from the impoverishment of natural vegetation and its animal associates underlined the urgent need for careful protection and preservation of nonhuman nature for communal enjoyment and scientific research.

      Against certain pests, notably the anopheles mosquito and the rabbit, war has been waged with good effect, for malaria no longer afflicts Mediterranean Europe, and rabbits, competitors for grass, have been greatly reduced. On the credit side, too, should be listed the full use made of domesticated animals for pastoral husbandry—on high and rough ground, as well as on farms. The familiar farm animals are selectively bred and raised with some regard to the physical character of their environment as well as to market demands and government decisions. In the far north, herds of reindeer are adapted to withstand cold and to find their food in snow-covered ground. In the rough hilly scrubland of Mediterranean Europe, the sheep, goat, donkey, mule, and ass have adapted well. The horse, which in its long history has drawn chariots, carried mounted knights, and hauled the plow, wagons, artillery, stagecoaches, canalboats, and urban trams, is now largely replaced by the tractor, truck, and jeep. The horse is now raised more for racing, riding, ceremonials, and the hunting of fox and stag but is still used for farm work, especially in eastern Europe. Distribution maps of animals kept on farms show how widely they enter into farming: sheep have a special concentration in Great Britain and the Balkan countries, and cattle have a small place in southern Europe, while pigs are relatively numerous in the north, especially in the highly populated areas of Germany, Denmark, and the Low Countries.

The people
      The vast majority of Europe's (Europe) inhabitants are of the European (or Caucasoid) geographic race, characterized by white or lightly pigmented skins and variability in eye and hair colour and by a number of biochemical similarities; there is also an increasing number of people of African and Asian ancestry, although their proportion of the population is still small. The origins of the Europeans as a distinct group may never be learned. It is known, however, that the continent had a scanty population of now-extinct hominid species before modern humans appeared some 40,000 years ago and that throughout its prehistoric period it received continual waves of immigrants from Asia. The legacy of these immigrants can be seen in the variety of physical types and cultural features that are found throughout Europe.

Cultural patterns
Culture groups
 Efforts have been made to characterize different “ethnic types” among European peoples, but these are merely selectively defined physical traits that, at best, have only a certain descriptive and statistical value. On the other hand, territorial differences in language and culture are well known; these have been of immense social and political import in Europe.

      These differences place Europe in sharp contrast to such relatively recently settled lands as the United States, Canada, and Australia. Given the agelong occupation of its soil and minimal mobility for the peasantry—long the bulk of the population—Europe became the home of many linguistic and national “core areas,” separated by mountains, forests, and marshlands. Its many states, some long-established, introduced another divisive element that was augmented by modern nationalistic sentiments. Efforts to associate groups of states for specific defense and trade functions, especially after World War II, created wider unitary associations, with fundamental East–West differences. Thus, there appeared two clear-cut, opposing units—one centred around the Soviet Union and the other around the countries of western Europe—and a number of relatively neutral states (Ireland, Sweden, Austria, Switzerland, Finland, and Spain). This pattern subsequently was altered in the late 1980s and early 1990s with the dissolution of the Soviet bloc (including the Soviet Union itself) and the rapprochement between East and West.

      The map showing the distribution of European ethnic culture areas identifies some 160 different groups, including a number of groups in the Caucasus region that have affinities with both Asia and Europe. Each of these large groups exhibits two significant features. First, each is characterized by a degree of self-recognition by its members, although the basis for such collective identity varies from group to group. Second, each group—except the Jews and Gypsies—tends to be concentrated and numerically dominant within a distinctive territorial homeland.

      For a majority of groups the basis for collective identity is possession of a distinctive language or dialect. The Catalans and Galicians of Spain, for example, have languages notably different from the Castilian of the majority of Spaniards. On the other hand, some peoples may share a common language yet set each other apart because of differences in religion. In the Balkan region, for instance, the Eastern Orthodox Serbs, Muslim Bosnians, and Roman Catholic Croats all speak the Serbo-Croatian language, but the members of each group generally have antagonistic views toward the others. Some groups may share a common language but remain separate from each other because of differing historic paths. Thus, the Walloons of southern Belgium and the Jurassians of Switzerland both speak French, yet they see themselves as quite different from the French because their groups have developed almost completely outside the boundaries of France. Even when coexisting within the same state, some groups may have similar languages and common religions but remain distinctive from each other because of separate past associations. During Czechoslovakia's 75 years as a single state, the historic linkages of Slovaks with the Hungarian kingdom and Czechs with the Austrian state kept the two groups apart; the country was divided into two separate states in 1993.

      The primary European groups of the map have been associated by ethnographers into some 21 culture areas. The grouping is based primarily on similarities of language and territorial proximity. Although individuals within a primary group generally are aware of their cultural bonds, the various groups within an ethnographic culture area do not necessarily share any self-recognition of their affinities to one another. This is particularly true in the Balkan culture area. Peoples in the Scandinavian and German culture areas, by contrast, are much more aware of belonging to broader regional civilizations.

Languages

      Within the complex of European languages, three major divisions stand out: Romance, Germanic, and Slavic. All three are derived from a parent Indo-European language of the early migrants to Europe from southwestern Asia.

      The Romance languages (Roman Catholicism) dominate western and Mediterranean Europe and include French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian, plus such lesser-known languages as Occitan (Provençal) in southern France, Catalan in northeastern Spain and Andorra, and Romansh in southern Switzerland. All are derived from the Latin language of the Roman Empire.

      The Germanic languages are found in central, northern, and northwestern Europe. They are derived from a common tribal language that originated in southern Scandinavia, and they include German, Netherlandic, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, and Icelandic, as well as the minor Germanic tongue of Frisian in the northern Netherlands and northwestern Germany; Netherlandic often is referred to as being “Dutch” in The Netherlands and “Flemish” in northern Belgium and adjacent parts of northern France, but in actuality it is only one language. English (English language) is a Romance-Germanic hybrid.

      The Slavic languages are characteristic of eastern and southeastern Europe and of Russia. These languages are usually divided into three branches: West, East, and South. Among the West Slavic languages are Polish, Czech and Slovak, Upper and Lower Sorbian of eastern Germany, and the Kashubian language of northern Poland. The East Slavic languages are Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian. The South Slavic languages include Slovene, Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian, and Bulgarian.

Other languages
      In addition to the three major divisions of the Indo-European languages, three minor groups are also noteworthy. Modern Greek (Greek language) is the mother tongue of Greece and of the Greeks in Cyprus, as well as the people of other eastern Mediterranean islands. Older forms of the language were once widespread along the eastern and southern shores of the Mediterranean and in southern peninsular Italy and Sicily. The Baltic (Baltic languages) language family includes modern Latvian and Lithuanian. The Old Prussian language also belonged to the Baltic group but was supplanted by German through conquest and immigration. Europe's Gypsies speak the distinctive Romany language, which has its origins in the Indic branch of the Indo-European languages.

      Two other Indo-European language divisions were formerly widespread but now are spoken only by a few groups. Celtic languages at one time dominated central and western Europe from a core in the German Rhineland. Cultural pressures from adjacent Germanic- and Romance-speaking civilizations eliminated the Celtic culture area, save for a few remnants, including the Welsh, the Gaelic speakers of the Scottish Highlands and western Ireland, and the Celtic-speaking Bretons of the northwestern Brittany peninsula of France. The Thraco-Illyrian branch of the Indo-European languages formerly was spoken throughout the Balkan Peninsula north of Greece. It survives solely in the Albanian language.

      Non-Indo-European languages also are spoken on the continent. The sole example in western Europe is the Basque language of the western Pyrenees Mountains; its origins are obscure. In northeastern Europe the Finnish, Sami (Sami language), Estonian (Estonian language), and Hungarian languages (Hungarian language) belong to the Uralic language family, which has other representatives in the middle Volga River region. Turkic languages are spoken in portions of the Balkan and Caucasus regions.

Religions
      The majority of primary culture groups in Europe have a single dominant religion, although the English, German, and Hungarian groups are noteworthy for the coexistence of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. Like its languages, Europe's religious divisions fall into three broad variants of a common ancestor, plus distinctive faiths adhered to by smaller groups.

      Most Europeans adhere to one of three broad divisions of Christianity: Roman Catholicism in the west and southwest, Protestantism in the north, and Eastern Orthodoxy in the east and southeast. The divisions of Christianity are the result of historic schisms that followed its period of unity as the adopted state religion in the late stages of the Roman Empire. The first major religious split began in the 4th century, when pressure from “barbarian” tribes led to the division of the empire into western and eastern parts. The bishop of Rome became spiritual leader of the West, while the patriarch of Constantinople led the faith in the East; the final break occurred in 1054 (1054, Schism of). The line adopted to divide the two parts of the empire remains very much a cultural discontinuity in the Balkan Peninsula today, separating Roman Catholic Croats, Slovenes, and Hungarians from Eastern Orthodox Montenegrins, Serbs, Bulgarians, and Romanians. The second schism occurred in the 16th century within the western branch of the religion, when Martin Luther inaugurated the Protestant Reformation. Although rebellion took place in many parts of western Europe against the central church authority vested in Rome, it was successful mainly in the Germanic-speaking areas of Britain, northern Germany, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia, the latter including the adjacent regions of Finland, Estonia, and Latvia.

Judaism and Islāĩ
      Judaism has been practiced in Europe since Roman times. Jews (Jew) undertook continued migrations into and throughout Europe, in the process dividing into two distinct branches, the Ashkenazi and Sephardi. Although through persecution and emigration their numbers are much reduced in Europe—particularly in eastern Europe, where Jews once made up a large minority population—Jews are still found in urban areas throughout the continent.

      Islām (Islāmic world) also has a long history in Europe. Islāmic incursions into the Iberian and Balkan peninsulas have been influential in the cultures of those regions. Muslim communities still exist in several parts of the Balkans, including European Turkey, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and northeastern Bulgaria. Muslims are more numerous in European Russia, including the Kazan Tatars and Bashkirs in the Volga-Ural region, and in the Caucasus region, including the Azerbaijani and other groups.

Demographic patterns
      Europe has always been one of the most populous parts of the world. Although its estimated population numbered only one-third of Asia's in 1650, 1700, and 1800, this nevertheless accounted for one-fifth of humanity. Despite large-scale emigration, this proportion increased to one-fourth by 1900, when Europe's total just exceeded 400 million. Such high numbers, achieved by high birth rates and falling death rates, were sustained by expanding economies. As numbers have grown proportionately faster in the Americas, Asia, and Africa, Europe's population has fallen to about one-eighth of the world total.

Overall densities
      In antiquity the focus of settlement was in southern Europe; but the south lost its numerical domination as, from medieval times onward, settlement developed vigorously in western and central Europe and as, later still, the steppelands of Ukraine and Hungary were settled for crop farming. While northern Europe, from Iceland and the Scottish Highlands to northern Russia, is only scantily settled, the population reaches high densities in a more southerly belt, stretching from England across northern France and industrial Germany to the Moscow region.

      A second major population strip extends southward from the Ruhr valley in Germany through Italy. High populations are often associated with coalfields that, in the past more than today, strongly attracted industry, although giant cities like London, Paris, and St. Petersburg, offering large markets and labour forces, have created regions of high density. Other populous areas are sustained by mining, industry, commerce, and productive agriculture. The Netherlands is the most densely populated country; Iceland and Norway are the least dense. Population is scantiest in mountain regions, some highlands, arid parts of Spain, and the Arctic regions of Russia.

Urban and rural settlement
      With easier travel and the lure of developing industrial areas, many culturally rich, high-altitude areas have suffered severe depopulation. Urbanization—offering varied employment, better social services, and, apparently, a fuller life—has further reduced the rural population, a drift aided by the mechanization of agriculture. city life has, from classical antiquity, nurtured European culture, although tributary rural life was for centuries the common lot. During the 19th and 20th centuries, however, there has been a revolutionary urbanization that embraces the majority of contemporary Europeans. Some towns are old, containing architectural survivals from their historic past; many more are creatures of the Industrial Revolution.

      The great majority of Europeans—more than three in five—now live in cities. In most of the highly industrialized countries the proportion of urban dwellers is high: more than 90 percent in Belgium, The Netherlands, and Iceland and almost 90 percent in Malta, Luxembourg, San Marino, and the United Kingdom. In Germany, Denmark, and Sweden more than 80 percent of the population is urban, and in Estonia, France, Greece, Norway, and Spain the figure is greater than 70 percent. Only the countries of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Moldova, Slovenia, and Portugal have urban populations that number less than half of their national totals. Towns of different scale and varying function continue to grow rapidly, usually in concentric rings outward from the original core. Europe contains a significant number of the world's cities with a population of more than one million, and many of the more highly industrialized parts of the continent are marked by giant, sprawling metropolitan areas. One distinct type is represented by the conurbation resulting from outgrowth from London; another, as in the Ruhr, by fusing together separate cities. Both types stem from an unchecked industrial expansion associated with population growth—including immigration from rural areas. As elsewhere in the world, these giant agglomerations pose difficult social and aesthetic problems, but by concentrating population they help to prevent the countryside from becoming too built-up.

      Western and northern Europe took the lead in the medical and social “death controls” that since the mid-19th century have sharply reduced infant mortality and lengthened life expectancy. Although infant mortality rates have remained relatively high in the countries of eastern Europe, low mortality rates have been achieved virtually everywhere else on the continent.

      Birth rates and death rates, as they vary in time and place, necessarily affect the proportion of the population available to the different European countries for the economy and the armed forces. In most countries, increased longevity and lowered birth rates have generated a rising proportion of retired citizens. Also, the trend toward education over longer periods has drawn more young people from the economy. The labour force thus has been shrinking somewhat, although everywhere (except in Spain, Malta, Ireland, and Greece) it has continued to constitute more than two-fifths of the population, exceeding half the population in most countries. Labour-force totals have remained high on the continent primarily because of the increasing proportion of employed women.

emigration and immigration
      Despite heavy mortality resulting from continual wars, Europe always has been in modern times a generous source of emigrants. Since the geographic discoveries of the late 15th century, both “push” and “pull” factors explain an exodus greatly accelerated by modern transportation. The push factors often were sheer poverty, the desire to escape from persecution, or loss of jobs through economic change. The pull factors included new opportunities for better living, often at the expense of original inhabitants elsewhere. All of Europe shared in this huge transfer of population, which affected the settlement and economic development of the Americas, Australia, southern Africa, and New Zealand. Through their involvement in the horrors of the African slave trade, Europeans also produced forced migrations of nonwhite peoples that were to have immense consequences in the Old and New Worlds. Since the early 19th century an estimated 60 million people left Europe for overseas; more than half settled in the United States. Ireland lost much of its population following the potato famine of the 1840s. Northwestern Europe—Great Britain, Scandinavia, and the Low Countries—contributed the largest share of emigrants, who settled, above all, where English was spoken. Emigrants from central, eastern, and southern Europe moved later, many in the early decades of the 20th century. Affinities of languages, religion, and culture clearly explain migration patterns; South American countries, for example, had more appeal to Spanish, Portuguese, and Italians. It has been estimated that emigration from 1846 to 1932 reduced the growth rate of Europe's population by three per 1,000 per annum. The year 1913 marked a peak, with at least 1.5 million—one-third Italian and more than a quarter British—migrating overseas. Subsequent entry restrictions in the United States reduced this flood. During the late 20th century, European migrants sought new homes mainly in Australia, Canada, South America, Turkey, and the United States.

      Despite high population densities, some European countries still attract settlers from other continents, mainly because their expanding economies involve labour shortages. Thus France, to increase a labour force depleted by war losses and low 1930s birth rates, has received numerous French-Algerians (as well as other Europeans, including Turks) to supplement its labour force. The United Kingdom, which steadily supplies immigrants to Australia and Canada and specialist workers to the United States, has also attracted immigrants, notably Commonwealth citizens. These immigrants, who largely work in the construction industries, transport, hospitals, and domestic service, include also doctors, scholars, and businesspeople. Some, having established themselves, are able to provide homes for their immigrant relatives. There also has been a significant migration of Slavs to the Asian portion of Russia and to the Central Asian republics.

      Within the continent there always has been some mobility of population, high during prehistoric times and well marked during the period of decline and fall of the Roman Empire in the West, when many tribal groups—especially of Germans and Slavs—settled in specific regions where they grew into distinctive nations. During and after World War II many Germans from outlying settlements in central and east-central Europe returned to western Germany, some as forced migrants. Many eastern Europeans, too, made their way to the West until the sealing of the East–West border curtailed this flow. Migrants are chiefly workers seeking temporary work and, often with less success, new homes. The countries of the European Union (EU) draw workers from southern Europe, as does Switzerland. Two other conspicuous forms of mobility in Europe are the daily commuting of city workers and the increasing movements of tourists.

W. Gordon East Thomas M. Poulsen

The economy
      Europe was the first of the major world regions to develop a modern economy based on commercial agriculture and industrial development. Its successful modernization can be traced to the continent's rich endowment of economic resources, its history of innovations, the evolution of a skilled and educated labour force, and the interconnectedness of all its parts—both naturally existing and manmade—which facilitated the easy movement of massive quantities of raw materials and finished goods and the communication of ideas.

      Europe's economic modernization began with a marked improvement in agricultural output in the 17th century, particularly in England. The traditional method of cultivation involved periodically allowing land to remain fallow; this gave way to continuous cropping on fields that were fertilized with manure from animals raised as food for rapidly expanding urban markets. Greater wealth was accumulated by landowners at the same time that fewer farmhands were needed to work the land. The accumulated capital and abundant cheap labour created by this revolution in agriculture fueled the development of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century.

      The revolution began in northern England in the 1730s with the development of water-driven machinery to spin and weave wool and cotton. By mid-century James Watt had developed a practical steam engine that emancipated machinery from sites adjacent to waterfalls and rapids. Britain had been practically deforested by this time, and the incessant demand for more fuel to run the engines led to the exploitation of coal as a major industry. Industries were built on the coalfields to minimize the cost of transporting coal over long distances. The increasingly surplus rural population flocked to the new manufacturing areas. Canals and other improvements in the transportation infrastructure were made in these regions, which made them attractive to other industries that were not necessarily dependent on coal and thus prompted development in adjacent regions.

       industrialization outside of England began in the mid-19th century in Belgium and northeastern France and spread to Germany, The Netherlands, southern Scandinavia, and other areas in conjunction with the construction of railways. By the 1870s the governments of the European nations had recognized the vital importance of factory production and had taken steps to encourage local development through subsidies and tariff protection against foreign competition. Large areas, however, remained virtually untouched by modern industrial development, including most of the Iberian Peninsula, southern Italy, and a broad belt of eastern Europe extending from the Balkans on the south to Finland and northern Scandinavia.

      During the 20th century Europe has experienced periods of considerable economic growth and prosperity, and industrial development has proliferated much more widely throughout the continent; but continued economic development in Europe has been handicapped to a large degree by its multinational character—which has spawned economic rivalries among states and two devastating world wars—as well as by the exhaustion of many of its resources and by increased economic competition from overseas. Governmental protectionism, which has tended to restrict the potential market for a product to a single country, has deprived many industrial concerns of the efficiencies of large-scale production serving a mass market (such as is found in the United States). In addition, enterprise efficiency has suffered from government support and from a lack of competition within a national market area. Within individual countries there have been growing tensions between regions that have prospered and those that have not. This “core–periphery” problem has been particularly acute in situations where the contrasting regions are inhabited by different ethnic groups.

Resources
Mineral resources
      With rocks and structures of virtually all geologic periods, Europe possesses a wide variety of useful minerals. Some, exploited since the Bronze Age, are depleted; others have been greatly consumed since the Industrial Revolution. Useful minerals include those that provide energy, ferrous and nonferrous metals and ferroalloys, and those that furnish materials to the chemical and building industries. Europe has a long and commendable prospecting tradition, but, as in the case of North Sea gas and oil, some surprises are still encountered. In relation to the ever-mounting requirements of its economy, however, Europe—Russia and Ukraine apart—is heavily dependent on mineral imports.

      Europe commands abundant resources of hard and soft coal, which remains of considerable, if declining, importance as a source of power for smelting minerals and for its many by-products. Only exceptionally does northern Europe have coal measures of commercial scale, but coal seams are preserved in Hercynian basins throughout the continent, lying diagonally across Britain, Belgium, The Netherlands, France (especially Lorraine), North Rhine-Westphalia and Saarland (Germany), and Upper Silesia (mainly in Poland but also in the Czech Republic), and in the Donets Basin and Urals. There are numerous fields, small but often—as at Komló (near Pécs in Hungary) and in the Arctic fields of Vorkuta in Russia and Svalbard in Norway—of great locational value. Some, as in southwestern Scotland and southern Belgium, have been worked out or have become uneconomic. Deeper workable seams are sought—in the Ruhr (Germany), for example, and undersea off Yorkshire (England). Major reserves, encompassing mostly hard deposits of coking, anthracite, and steam coal, lie in the Ruhr, the Pennine fields of England, Upper Silesia, and the Donets Basin. Softer brown coal, or lignite, occurs in Germany, the Chomutov fields of Bohemia, and the Moscow-Tula field.

      Known petroleum and natural gas reserves are, except in Russia, wholly disproportionate to Europe's requirements. The Volga-Ural field is the largest in European Russia; Romania's (Romania) reserves from the Carpathian and sub-Carpathian zones, once the largest in Europe, no longer meet its needs. Many western European countries have located and exploited reserves of petroleum, particularly Norway and the United Kingdom, which have tapped gas and oil from beneath the North Sea bed. In the late 1980s Romania became a leader in extracting oil from the Black Sea.

      Sources of uranium for use in nuclear reactors have been discovered in many European countries, including France (centred on the Massif Central), Spain, Hungary (the Mecsek Mountains), Estonia, Ukraine, and, in lesser amounts, parts of central and eastern Europe.

      The largest known iron reserves are found at Krivoy Rog in Ukraine and at Magnitogorsk and near Kursk in Russia. High-quality ores (of 60 percent iron) from the first two sources have become expensive to mine, but the reserves in those two countries are more than sufficient for their needs and those of eastern Europe. The Kursk Magnetic Anomaly, located in southwestern Russia, has iron-rich quartzites. Deposits in other European countries are small and, except in France and Sweden, inadequate for large-scale heavy industry.

ferroalloy metals
      The richest ferroalloy deposits occur in Russia—in the emerged shield rocks of the Kola Peninsula (titanium and molybdenum) and the Urals—and in Ukraine. Nickel (nickel processing) also is mined at Pechenga and Kola (Kola Peninsula) and at several Ural sites. The southern Urals also have deposits of manganese, required for basic steel manufacture, but these are dwarfed by the Ukrainian deposit at Nikopol, near the Krivoy Rog (Kryvyy Rih) iron field, which is the largest and best-located in the world. Other countries have virtually no significant nickel or tin reserves and only small manganese resources. There are chromium deposits of some scale near the Russian city of Orsk and in the Balkan region, the latter of which also contains antimony and molybdenum. Wolframite (for tungsten) is mined from Iberian Hercynian rocks. Norway has molybdenum and titanium workings, and Finland has deposits of titanium, vanadium, and cobalt—valuable and scarce alloys for special steels. Russia also is an important producer of vanadium.

Nonferrous base metals
      With notable exceptions, known European reserves are small, partly as a result of the depletion, for example, of Cornish tin and Swedish copper. Deposits yielding copper, often from copper pyrites, are found in Scandinavia, the southern Urals, and Mediterranean lands. Bor, Yugos., has the largest reserve of copper (low-grade) in Europe; its reserves in lead and, especially, zinc are also high. mercury is obtained near Krivoy Rog (Ukraine), in the Yugoslav region, and in southern Spain. Europe has much bauxite, the principal ore of aluminum, with Greece, the Yugoslav region, and Hungary having the largest reserves. nepheline, an alternative raw material for aluminum, is worked near Kola.

Precious metals
      Europe's once widely available reserves of gold appear largely exhausted. Some gold and silver are still produced, mainly in Spain and Sweden.

Nonmetallic deposits
      Minerals within this large category are widely available. clay minerals include fuller's earth—used to cleanse wool and to finish cloth—derived from the decomposition of feldspar. kaolinite, of similar origin, is valuable as china clay and occurs in a pure form in southwestern England; it surpasses coal as a British export. Rock salt (halite), important in the chemical industry, occurs widely, much of it being precipitated in such geologically ancient salt lakes as the Russian Lake Baskunchak (in the lower Volga basin), which contains strata 130 feet thick. Europe also has substantial sulfur deposits, and the mining of sulfur in Miocene beds in Sicily gave Italy a virtual monopoly before the opening up of New World deposits in Texas. The carbonate rock dolomite, like talc, is used as a refractory material, as in lining metal furnaces, and is widespread. graphite, a crystalline form of carbon used as a lubricant and the basis (with clay) of the “lead” in pencils, is worked in Austria, the Czech Republic, and England. Nitrates (nitrate), for fertilizers and explosives, are made from the air electrolytically in England, Norway, and Russia, and deposits generating potash and phosphate fertilizers are relatively abundant. The Russian apatite (calcium phosphate) deposits of the Kola Peninsula are the world's largest, as are the potash deposits at Solikamsk, in the Urals. Corundum, a hard abrasive, occurs widely. Building materials for cement and bricks, as well as stone, are abundant, although only regionally available, depending on geologic structure. Particular building stones—marble from central Italy, granite from Norway and Scotland—have localized sources. Except in the Urals, precious stones are rare; these mountains also contain the chief European deposit of asbestos.

Water resources
      The mountainous and upland areas of Europe collect great amounts of surface water, which supply the rivers and lakes; the lowlands, with lower rainfall, thus receive much of their water from the higher portions of their river basins. In the Mediterranean lands, surface water is minimal in summer, exceptions being northern and northwestern Iberia, which receives ample rain; the North Italian Plain, which has Alpine rivers, lakes, springs, and summer rain; and the Apennine zone of Italy. In the east, surface water is relatively abundant in Belarus and central and northern Russia, but it decreases to the south and southeast; in the drier regions, however, rivers drain extensive basins, and dams on the Volga and Dnieper (Dnepr) have created enormous reservoirs.

      The increasing water requirements of thermal power stations and industry and, to a lesser extent, domestic needs make the little-populated and little-industrialized European highlands, which offer surplus water, indispensable to the lowlands. The pollution of water by effluents containing nonoxidizable detergents from urban areas and by those from oil refineries and chemical and metallurgical plants has reached such proportions in, for example, the section of the Rhine below Basel, the Ruhr region, and Lakes Geneva and Garda as to present serious problems and to incur high reclamation costs. In reaction to water shortages, water is, as in the Thames, recycled many times, a practice that improves river water quality.

      Europe is relatively well supplied with water, for the water table is normally not far below the surface in the lowlands, and wells and springs are widely available there; underground water supplies (groundwater) that are held particularly in porous rocks are sporadically utilized through the process of pumping. A trend that appears to be growing is to artificially add to supplies of groundwater and thus integrate surface and underground water; nearly half of Sweden's urban water requirements are thus supplied. High capital costs, rather than an actual lack of water, leave some areas of the continent—notably southwestern Russia near the Caspian Sea and parts of interior Spain and Turkey—in an arid state. The needs of the major European cities and of the industrial regions involve continuing efforts to collect enough water by impounding surface water, by pumping groundwater, and by encouraging the economy, reuse, and reclamation of water.

Biological resources
      Some reference to plant, animal, and human resources is needed to complement any discussion of European resources. Reference has already been made above to what remains of Europe's plant and animal heritage, supplemented as this is by such vigorous developments as the breeding of livestock to specific purposes and the acclimatization of trees and plants of economic value, which have taken place throughout its history.

      The human resources of Europe, since they result from the efforts applied at an ever-rising technical level, are in some respects inexhaustible. Although the cultivation of soil and mining and quarrying of metallic minerals were initiated in prehistoric times, the winning of some resources began only in relatively recent times, in response to new needs and technology. The clearing of woodlands for the plow has continued since the early Middle Ages; the cultivation of the steppe lowlands of Ukraine and the lower Danube basin commenced only in the late 18th century. Effective drainage, in which the Dutch have excelled, especially during and after the 17th century, has made use of former marshlands. The large-scale mining of coal and iron ore dates from the Industrial Revolution. Some industries—many of them concerned with the products of the chemical industry and the refining of aluminum—belong to the 20th century, during which electricity was developed as a form of energy and the internal-combustion engine was developed for use on land, sea, and in the air.

      The concept of stage, too, helps an understanding of Europe's economic development, for the application to industry and agriculture of modern technology and scientific research has reached different parts of the continent successively. Great Britain, as the home of the Industrial Revolution, stimulated economic change in western, central, and northern Europe. Russia and other former Soviet republics and the countries of eastern Europe were mostly late starters, and the pace and scale of their industrialization quickened markedly after 1945. The countries of southern Europe, notably northern Italy, also advanced economically following World War II. Europe is thus a highly developed part of the world, although economic development is uneven regionally.

Agriculture
      Arable land in Europe covers almost 30 percent of the total area, a favourable comparison, for example, with the United States (20 percent). Figures for individual countries vary sharply, from about three-fifths of the land in Denmark to less than 3 percent in Norway. Europe's industrialization and urbanization tend to conceal the fact that it is a great producer of cereals, roots, edible oils, fibres, fruit, and livestock and livestock products, accounting for more than 90 percent of the world's rye output, two-thirds of the potato and oats output, and two-fifths of the wheat total.

      Europe's climatic range has helped to delineate production areas; thus the vine is commercially grown south of about latitude 50° N, and the olive is restricted to Mediterranean climatic regions. corn (maize), grown mainly for silage, is an important crop in the lower Danubian lowlands and southwestern Russia; it appears also in France and Italy. Rice (in northern Italy) and citrus fruits (in Spain, Sicily, and Cyprus) depend on irrigation. The northern countries grow few cereals (mainly oats) and concentrate on animal husbandry, especially cattle and dairying. Grain cultivation is found in the lowland belt that stretches from eastern Great Britain (United Kingdom) to the Urals. Wheat is grown on the better soils, oats and rye on the poorer soils and moister lands. Mixed farming and the use of well-tried crop rotations are widely practiced. viticulture, although widely distributed, is most important in Italy, France, and Germany. As for industrial crops, Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus are the largest producers of flax and hemp, sugar beets (also grown widely elsewhere as a rotation crop), and (except for Belarus) sunflower seeds (for edible oil). Tobacco is raised in Belarus and also is important in Bulgaria, Italy, and Macedonian Greece.

Agricultural organization
      Throughout most of the 20th century there were sharp differences in European agricultural organization and regional efficiency. The pattern in the Soviet Union and in most eastern European countries was of collective and state farming; cooperative systems, with or without individual landownership, prevailed elsewhere on the continent, with the consolidation of smaller holdings progressing steadily in western Europe. The capital-intensive agriculture of such western countries as The Netherlands and Great Britain produced markedly higher yields per acre and per person than in the extensive Soviet system, despite the benefits—notably mechanization—brought by collectivization. With the dissolution of the socialist bloc and abandonment of collectivization, however, the system in the East has come to resemble more closely that of the West.

      Disparities also exist between north and south. Only 1 percent of the working population of the United Kingdom is engaged in agriculture, but about half the workers in Albania are so engaged. The higher figure indicates high rural population densities, a lack of investment capital, and underemployment. The relative use of fertilizers (fertilizer)—high in The Netherlands and relatively low in Spain and Portugal—hints also at the range of crop productivity.

      Irrigated areas, lying mainly in southeastern Spain, the North Italian Plain, and Mediterranean France, are small but disproportionately productive. Long-term prospects for using the irrigation capacity of the lower Danube and Volga are good.

       livestock farming and dairying associated with pigs and poultry is characteristic of European farms, except in the Mediterranean lands, which are better adapted to sheep and goats. Europe produces more than a third of the world's meat, chiefly beef, pork, and bacon, but this is insufficient to meet rising living standards. Domestic production of wool, hides, and leather also is insufficient. Special features of western European farming include market gardens and the greenhouse production of tomatoes, cucumbers, green vegetables, and flowers for the urban markets. Still another feature is the production of primeurs: table fruit, new potatoes, vegetables, salad crops, and flowers, produced when prices are high and made possible by the early arrival of spring to the coasts of Brittany, Cornwall, and southern France.

      The great advances made in agronomic science during the 20th century have benefited all of Europe, but the hazards of harvest shortfalls caused by climate have not been eliminated. It has been necessary to make intermittent emergency, as well as regular, claims on areas with grain surpluses overseas. Since the 1960s, harvest shortfalls and increased feed requirements have impelled the Soviet Union and its successor states to import large amounts of grain, especially from the United States and Canada.

Industry
      Mining provides employment in all countries, although for smaller numbers as mechanization is applied. High-grade iron ores (ore) are mined in Ukraine at Krivoy Rog, in Russia near Kursk and Magnitogorsk, and in Arctic Sweden and Norway; these are supplemented by the low-grade minette ores of Lorraine (France) and Luxembourg, low-grade (quarried) Jurassic ores of England, and low-grade Spanish ores. Europe, including the European part of Russia, accounts for about one-fourth of the world's coal production and roughly three-fourths of its lignite. There was very little increase in coal production during the late 20th century, because European countries have made greater use of other forms of energy, especially oil, nuclear power, natural gas, and hydroelectricity. The chief coal producers are Poland (Upper Silesia), Great Britain, Germany (the Ruhr and Saarland), Ukraine, and Russia. The Donets Basin accounts for a considerable amount of coal production in the east. Germany also is the world's chief source of lignite, which is mined in Slovakia and west central Russia as well. Many mineral deposits are of only local interest, but, as a whole, Europe produces a fair proportion of the world's bauxite, copper, lead, and zinc. Minerals of more than domestic importance are natural gas in The Netherlands; bauxite in Greece, the Balkan region, and Hungary; petroleum from the Volga-Ural region and apatites from Kola in Russia; manganese in Ukraine; and china clay in England.

Heavy industry and engineering
      The change from charcoal to coke as fuel in blast furnaces led to the localization of Europe's iron (iron processing) and steel industries on its coalfields to economize transport costs, although imported iron ore, cheap American coal, electric furnaces, and technological efficiency have loosened this tie. Thus, Northumberland and Durham in England, North Rhine-Westphalia, Upper Silesia, and the Donets Basin have their coalfield furnaces and mills, while others are grouped near sources of the ore, as at Krivoy Rog and in Lorraine, or at such convenient estuary or port sites as Port Talbot (southern Wales), Genoa (Italy), and Dunkirk (France). Europe produces about half of the world's steel, with the countries of the European Union accounting for about one-third of the total European output. Europe also produces almost one-third of the world's iron ore. Steel-using industries that make heavy machine tools and mining, smelting, construction, and electrical equipment favour coalfield locations, while those engaged in shipbuilding and motor-vehicle and aircraft construction show a wider distribution, including new sites.

Chemical industries (chemical industry)
      Covering many products, chemical industries have expanded greatly since 1945, partly in relation to hydroelectricity generation and partly as a result of the market-oriented use of refinery by-products. Many heavy chemicals are produced on the coalfields, notably in the Ruhr, where by-products of coke ovens and metallurgical plants are available. Other chemical industries make use of Europe's deposits of salt, potash, phosphates, and sulfur; and the industry has been revolutionized by the increasing production of synthetic rubber, plastics, synthetic fibres, detergents, insecticides, and fertilizers, particularly from petrochemicals.

      A wide range of light consumer industries is found throughout Europe, but some countries have reputations for specialty goods, as in the case of English, Italian, and Dutch bicycles, Swedish and Finnish glass, Parisian perfumes and fashion goods, and Swiss precision instruments and chocolate. The United Kingdom's (United Kingdom) once-leading textile industry now concentrates on high-quality goods, including many synthetic fibres, of which, together with Germany, France, and Italy, the United Kingdom is a large producer.

      The timber and fisheries extractive industries, now mechanized, are of considerable scale. Russia, Sweden, and Finland are major producers of softwood and hardwood and exporters of timber, wood pulp, and newsprint. Fishing is a large industry for Norway, Iceland, and Russia; catches yield not only food for humans but materials for many subsidiary industries. Fishing also is important in the United Kingdom, Ukraine, and France.

Handicrafts and other industries
      Of small importance in a continent where the economies of mass production involve standardized production, handicrafts nevertheless survive to serve a wide market, including that of tourists who seek specialty goods. Knitwear and Harris tweed are produced by crofters in the Scottish islands; traditional costumes are made and displayed in many eastern European countries; and custom-made tailoring for men, like dressmaking for women, survives as a supplement to ready-made clothing. Artistic pottery making is another active craft.

      Some other European industries fall but uneasily into the preceding categories. Printing and publishing, especially in English, French, German, and Russian, are substantial industries that have worldwide effects, notably in the educational field. Europe is a large producer of pharmaceutical drugs and produces such world-famous beverages as the wines of the west and south, the northern beers, and, not least, whiskey, the status drink from Scotland. Technological and scientific researches are advanced, particularly at such facilities as the European Organization for Nuclear Research ( CERN) near Geneva. The outstanding growth industry of tourism—supplementing business, professional, and student travel—brings employment and foreign exchange to many Europeans, especially in the Mediterranean countries, with their combination of sunshine, beaches, scenery, and historical monuments. Europe, with nearly 60 percent of international tourism receipts, is the tourist Mecca of the world.

Power
      The message of the Industrial Revolution was that mechanical energy, when it is harnessed to machines, could so supplement human muscle and animal power as to produce revolutionary changes in the scale and pace of factory production. Contemporary Europe, covering less than one-tenth of the inhabited earth and with only one-seventh of its population, uses about one-fourth of the world's energy.

Coal and hydroelectric power
      Coal, used to drive steam engines and, as coke, in the smelting of metals, long held the predominant position. During the late 20th century, coal continued to provide energy to coalfield-based industries and was still important for the production of electricity.

      Hydroelectricity has (hydroelectric power) been markedly developed where precipitation and landforms provide good opportunities to dam rivers, as in northern and Alpine Europe and southwestern Russia. Norway, for example, derives almost all its electric power from this source; Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, and the Yugoslav region derive a large fraction. France has developed power-consuming industries, such as aluminum refining, close to the Alpine and Pyrenean generating sites.

Other power sources
      In other countries, hydroelectricity contributes very little, and petroleum and natural gas claim a large share of the energy consumed. By the late 20th century petroleum and natural gas together accounted for one-seventh of the world energy consumption. Natural gas has replaced coal gas in many parts of Europe, including Russia, Romania, and Great Britain. Fuel oil is widely used by diesel locomotives and electricity-generating stations and for space heating. Geothermal (geothermal energy) heat—using underground waters heated by volcanic action—is available in Italy and Iceland, while Ireland, which also lacks both coal and oil, makes efficient use of abundant peat resources. Nuclear-reactor electricity generation, promoted by the European Atomic Energy (nuclear energy) Community (Euratom) in the EC countries, provides, as in Russia and other eastern European countries, a significant source of electrical energy.

Trade
      Internal and external trade, both by land and by sea, always has been a vigorous part of Europe's economy, no less so in the late 20th century when Europe faced such strong competitors as the United States and Japan. Trade is made necessary by the regional specialization of production, largely initiated by capitalist enterprise in the past and now predominantly guided by national and, more recently, supranational policy decisions. Geology in large part accounts for the localization of production of Swedish iron and Russian petroleum, for example, while climate localizes the production of olive oil and citrus fruits. Europe acquired a central position in modern times in the well-settled Northern Hemisphere, which oceanic and air transport systems still exploit. Simultaneously providing large managerial, market, and labour-force attractions, Europe inevitably attracts extra-European traders, with its ever more sophisticated industry producing outstanding exports and its large importation of petroleum products, metals, raw materials, and foodstuffs.

      Within the continent, there was a distinction for much of the 20th century between the general trade policy of western Europe and that of the now-disbanded socialist bloc. Prior to the late 1960s the Soviet Union and the eastern European countries adhered to the doctrine of economic self-sufficiency with more interregional than international trade. In the late 1960s and the '70s these trading patterns began to change. Improved relations between the East and the West enabled the socialist countries to meet an increased amount of their technological and agricultural needs with imports from Western countries. As the countries of eastern Europe abandoned socialism—and especially since Germany was reunited and the Soviet Union was dissolved into its constituent republics—interest in external trade has grown dramatically in those countries. The nations of western Europe, on the other hand, have always relied heavily on international trade.

      Europe plays the leading role in world commerce, accounting for more than half the total of world exports and imports. The bulk of this trade is carried on by the Western countries, which own almost one-fourth of the world's oceangoing tonnage. For long periods of time, most of the European countries held political dependencies overseas where they created captive markets, and this imperialist trading momentum has persisted. Common Market countries have former colonial territories as associate members, and, similarly, the Commonwealth nations engage in much trade, now strictly competitive, with the United Kingdom; the accession of the United Kingdom to the Common Market in 1973, however, resulted in a decline in the proportion of British trade with the Commonwealth.

      One of the continuing international difficulties that Europe has faced concerns currency and fluctuating exchange rates, which at times have affected the trading capability of various countries. European financiers play an important world role, as do a variety of such finance-related industries as banking, insurance, and shipping.

Internal trade
      Within each European country a wide variety of goods is moved continually from ports and production centres to urban markets. Miscellaneous home-produced goods also are traded to consumer centres. Imported goods include fuels, tropical foodstuffs and drinks, raw materials, textile fibres, metals and metallic ores, and a wide range of manufactured goods.

      Active trading within groups of countries that have associated primarily for this purpose and to rationalize and so increase the profitability of their national economies has advanced. The policies of the EC have been directed toward economic specialization in increasingly interdependent member countries. Germany supplies coking coal and chemicals to France, which provides Belgium with iron ore from Lorraine. Steel is moved to extranational markets, and Dutch natural gas is piped to France, Belgium, and Germany. Specialty foodstuffs—wines, cheeses, spring vegetables, and fruit—find an enlarged market far beyond their production centres, as do such manufactured items as fashion goods, automobiles, and major household appliances. Although the former socialist countries no longer operate as a trading bloc, they continue to direct much of their trade to each other, with Russia remaining preeminent as a producer and a major market. Russia and the former Soviet republics supply petroleum, manganese, iron, and chromium ores, as well as cotton and other textile fibres; they receive machinery, textiles, and consumer goods.

      The European Free Trade Association (EFTA) also has encouraged trade between its members, who exchange such complementary, rather than similar, products as Swedish and Finnish timber and Swiss watches and food products. In 1977 a free-trade agreement went into effect between the Common Market and the EFTA. The agreement eliminated tariffs on most industrial goods originating in the member countries, thereby increasing trade between the countries in the two blocs.

      Trade between the West and the East increased markedly during the late 20th century. Russian natural gas was sold to Italy, France, and Germany, and Western markets also were used for the sale of gold and diamonds in exchange for ships, machinery, and chemicals. Eastern European countries supplied automobiles, canned salmon and caviar, vodka, Polish bacon, Czech glass, and Hungarian and Yugoslav wines.

      Given the continental scale of the former Soviet Union, the regional trade of Russia and the other republics, carried largely by rail and supplemented by pipelines and an elaborate waterway system, deserves special attention. From the south, grain, meat, vegetable oils, sugar, tobacco, wine, and fruits are moved to central and northern Russia, where the consumption of such items exceeds local production; dried fish and salt are carried up the Volga. Timber is moved from northern areas, including the Urals, to largely unforested southern regions, and Donets Basin coal is shipped by canal to Volgograd.

External trade
      A major part of the external trade of European countries is with each other, since—with regional specialization, dense populations, and relatively high standards of living—they provide strong markets. For the Common Market countries, as well as for those of northern Europe (EFTA), this trade proportion is very high. Nevertheless, a substantial amount of trading takes place among EC and EFTA members; and, especially in the United Kingdom and Germany, a vigorous two-way trade with the United States is conducted. Much foreign trade is still intraregional in eastern Europe and the republics of the former Soviet Union, but, for countries such as Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland, the proportion of their external trade with the West is growing rapidly. European trade also extends to all other parts of the world, including the developing countries, where—in exchange for manufactured products—vital supplies of energy, raw materials, metals, ores, and foodstuffs are obtained.

      The extracontinental exports of Europe include machine tools, automobiles, aircraft, chemicals (including pharmaceutical drugs), and such consumer items as clothing, textiles, books, expert services, and works of art. Western Europe depends heavily on imported petroleum from the Middle East, Algeria, and Libya and on many imported raw materials and metals. Europe imports much natural rubber, tea, coffee, cacao, cane sugar, vegetable oilseeds, tobacco, and fruit—fresh, canned, and dried—although it has attempted to lessen its dependence on imported agricultural products with greater domestic production and the manufacture of synthetic substitutes for natural fibres.

Transportation
Roads
      Eastern Europe is relatively deficient in engineered motor roads compared with western Europe, where a network of high-speed, limited-access highways provide fast movement for commerce and travel. Motorable roads have become more widely available; those of Spain and Ireland in particular have improved, and road tunnels now supplement railway tunnels beneath the Alpine passes. Animal transport has minimal importance yet survives locally: the horse-drawn cart may still be seen in east central Europe; and the ox-drawn plow and the loaded ass, mule, and donkey—surefooted in rough, hilly country—are still used in parts of southern Europe. In regions with long, snowy winters such as northern Russia, the dog- or reindeer-drawn sled is used.

Railways
      Railways link European ports with their hinterlands and fan out from capitals and major cities to points on the international frontiers where they meet the railway system of their neighbours. In some cases—notably from France to Spain and from Belarus and Ukraine to Poland—this involves a change of gauge. Underground and suburban railways also play an indispensable role for metropolitan commuters. Railways permit passage between the western and eastern European extremities but not quite to the extreme north; they have lost some of their passengers and freight to the automobile, coach, and truck, and many uneconomic local lines have been closed. Even so, rail services have notably improved with the use of electrified track or diesel locomotives, faster intercity passenger trains, and container freight trains. Railways remain all-important in Russia and the other republics of the former Soviet Union.

Waterways and pipelines
      Seaports have been modernized and enlarged to deal more efficiently with the increasing size of ships and volume of oceanic trade. Even landlocked Switzerland has seagoing ships that use Dutch port facilities. The United Kingdom, Norway, and Greece also hold large freighter tonnages for hire.

      Inland waterway transport, slow but cheap, is regionally important for the carriage of heavy and bulky commodities. The best waterways—the Rhine (Rhine River) below Rheinfelden and the Danube (Danube River) below Belgrade—can carry (Volga River) 1,500-ton barges. The navigable Rhine has the legal status of an international waterway open to all users. Other rivers and canals are usable by smaller vessels. The Volga, however, is a valuable waterway linking Moscow with Caspian ports and, via the Volga–Don Shipping Canal, gives water access to the Donets Basin.

      Giant tankers, up to and beyond 300,000 gross registered tonnage and too deep in draught for most seaports, deliver their cargoes by pipelines that—for petroleum, natural gas, and water—provide the cheapest overland form of transport. They have been built in the United Kingdom for North Sea gas and oil; in France, Spain, and Italy for North African oil; and within and beyond Russia and Ukraine, where crude oil is carried by pipeline from the Volga-Ural field to eastern European refineries.

      Air services between principal European cities and to all parts of the world are extensively organized. Airports at London, Frankfurt am Main, Paris, Stockholm, Amsterdam, and Moscow stand out as those of first importance. Passengers, mail, and commodities of high value in relation to their weight—such as gold and early spring flowers—make use of air transport.

W. Gordon East Thomas M. Poulsen Ed.

Additional Reading

General
Sources that provide brief but comprehensive information on European states include Western Europe 1989: A Political and Economic Survey (1988), from Europa Publications; and two surveys from “The World Today Series”: Wayne C. Thompson and Mark H. Mullin , Western Europe 1988, 7th annual ed. (1988); and M. Wesley Shoemaker, The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe 1988, 19th annual ed. (1988). Richard Mayne (ed.), Western Europe, rev. ed. (1987); and George Schöpflin (ed.), The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, rev. ed. (1986), both from the series “Handbooks to the Modern World,” are more detailed analyses. Denys Hay, Europe: The Emergence of an Idea, rev. ed. (1968), is a work of historical geography that explores the concept “Europe.” Other historical works include Gordon East, An Historical Geography of Europe, 5th ed. (1966); and Norman J.G. Pounds, An Historical Geography of Europe, 450 BC–AD 1330 (1973), An Historical Geography of Europe, 1500–1840 (1979), and An Historical Geography of Europe, 1800–1914 (1985). Annuals include The Statesman's Year-Book and United Nations, Statistical Yearbook.Thomas M. Poulsen

Physical and human geography
Geologic history
A survey of the geology of the continent is offered in Derek V. Ager, The Geology of Europe: A Regional Approach (1980). Roland Brinkmann, Geologic Evolution of Europe, 2nd rev. ed. (1969; originally published in German, 8th ed., 1959), is an introductory summary. Derek V. Ager and M. Brooks (eds.), Europe from Crust to Core (1977), collects papers on geologic events, from oldest to youngest, presented at a meeting of European geologic societies. M.G. Rutten, The Geology of Western Europe (1969), provides a general geologic background of part of the continent. Basic geologic elements are discussed in two articles published in Geologie en mijnbouw, vol. 57, no. 4 (1978): Peter A. Ziegler, “North-Western Europe: Tectonics and Basin Development,” pp. 589–626; and H.J. Zwart and U.F. Dornsiepen, “The Tectonic Framework of Central and Western Europe,” pp. 627–654. D.V. Nalivkin, Geology of the U.S.S.R. (1973; originally published in Russian, 1962), includes substantial coverage of the European part of the country. Beautiful colour maps illustrating the evolution of Europe are found in Peter A. Ziegler, Geological Atlas of Western and Central Europe (1982).Brian Frederick Windley

The land
General discussions of such topics as climate, topography, relief, vegetation zones, and animal distribution are found in George W. Hoffman (ed.), A Geography of Europe, 5th ed. (1983); Terry G. Jordan, The European Culture Area, 2nd ed. (1988); Margaret Reid Shackleton, Europe, a Regional Geography, 7th enlarged ed., rev. by Gordon East (1969); F.J. Monkhouse, A Regional Geography of Western Europe, 4th ed. (1974); and E.C. Marchant (comp.), The Countries of Europe as Seen by Their Geographers (1970). See also “Europe (Excluding Russia),” pp. 297–388 in W.G. Kendrew, The Climate of the Continents, 5th ed. (1961).Works that focus on the geography of specific regions of Europe include Brian S. John, Scandinavia (1984); Roy E.H. Mellor, The Two Germanies (1978); D.S. Walker, The Mediterranean Lands, 3rd ed. (1965); J.M. Houston, The Western Mediterranean World (1964); Norman J.G. Pounds, Eastern Europe (1969); Dean S. Rugg, Eastern Europe (1985); Paul E. Lydolph, Geography of the U.S.S.R. (1979); and Leslie Symons et al., The Soviet Union, a Systematic Geography (1983).

Historical development of anthropological and ethnological characteristics is outlined in Timothy Champion et al., Prehistoric Europe (1984); Carleton Stevens Coon, The Races of Europe (1939, reprinted 1972); Michael W. Flinn, The European Demographic System, 1500–1820 (1981); and John Geipel, The Europeans: An Ethnohistorical Survey (1969). Brian W. Ilbery, Western Europe: A Systematic Human Geography, 2nd ed. (1986), is a concise overview. Population trends of Europe in relation to those of the other continents are discussed in J. Beaujeu-Garnier, Geography of Population, 2nd ed. (1978; originally published in French, 2 vol., 1956–58). For statistical information, United Nations, Demographic Yearbook, is also useful. The growing minority nationalist movements are examined in Charles R. Foster (ed.), Nations Without a State: Ethnic Minorities in Western Europe (1980); Hugh Seton-Watson, Nations and States: An Enquiry into the Origins of Nations and the Politics of Nationalism (1977); Louis L. Snyder, Global Mini-Nationalisms: Autonomy or Independence (1982); George Klein and Milan J. Reban (eds.), The Politics of Ethnicity in Eastern Europe (1981); and Stephen Castles, Here for Good: Western Europe's New Ethnic Minorities (1984), which focuses on the problems of foreign labour forces. In addition, a broad range of other topics is treated in such special studies as Stanley Hoffmann and Paschalis Kitromilides (eds.), Culture and Society in Contemporary Europe (1981); Jan F. Triska and Charles Gati (eds.), Blue-Collar Workers in Eastern Europe (1981); S.H. Franklin, The European Peasantry: The Final Phase (1969); David Lane, The End of Social Inequality?: Class, Status, and Power Under State Socialism (1982); Richard T. De George and James P. Scanlan (eds.), Marxism and Religion in Eastern Europe (1975); and Vernon Mallinson, The Western European Idea in Education (1980).

An introduction to European economic history is useful for understanding the modern European economy. The ongoing multivolume series “Cambridge Economic History of Europe,” begun in the 1960s under the general editorship of M.M. Postan, provides comprehensive surveys. Important historical periods are explored in Harry A. Miskimin, The Economy of Early Renaissance Europe, 1300–1460 (1975), and The Economy of Later Renaissance Europe, 1460–1600 (1977); Carlo M. Cipolla, Before the Industrial Revolution: European Society and Economy, 1000–1700, 2nd ed. (1980; originally published in Italian, 1974); A.G. Kenwood and A.L. Lougheed, The Growth of the International Economy, 1820–1980 (1983); and M.C. Kaser (ed.), The Economic History of Eastern Europe, 1919–1975, 3 vol. (1986–87).General analyses of the economic character of Europe include Hugh Clout, Regional Development in Western Europe, 3rd ed. (1987); Walter Laqueur, A Continent Astray: Europe, 1970–1978 (1979); Andrea Boltho (ed.), The European Economy (1982); Andrew J. Pierre (ed.), Unemployment and Growth in the Western Economies (1984); Jozef M. van Brabant, Socialist Economic Integration: Aspects of Contemporary Economic Problems in Eastern Europe (1980); Alan H. Smith, The Planned Economies of Eastern Europe (1983); and Paul Stonham, Major Stock Markets of Europe (1982). For current information on a diversity of economic topics, United Nations, Economic Survey of Europe (annual), is useful. European agriculture is discussed in Michael Tracy, Government and Agriculture in Western Europe, 1880–1988, 3rd ed. (1989); Ruth Elleson, Performance and Structure of Agriculture in Western Europe (1983); Karl-Eugen Wädekin, Agrarian Policies in Communist Europe (1982); and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Prospects for Agricultural Production and Trade in Eastern Europe, 2 vol. (1981–82). Industry, technology, and energy are the special focus of Geoffrey Shepherd, François Duchêne, and Christopher Saunders (eds.), Europe's Industries (1983); and George W. Hoffman, The European Energy Challenge (1985).william Ashworth, A Short History of the International Economy Since 1850, 4th ed. (1987), provides an introduction to the idea of economic cooperation; and cooperation is further explored in Juliet Lodge (ed.), Institutions and Policies of the European Community (1983); Peter Ludlow, The Making of the European Monetary System (1982); Dennis Swann, Competition and Industrial Policy in the European Community (1983); and Valerie J. Assetto, The Soviet Bloc in the IMF and the IBRD (1988).Thomas M. Poulsen

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