Europe’s population geography presents a variegated picture, which partly shows features from the continent’s long history, and partly reflects development features from recent decades. The same applies to the current map of the Europe of languages.
Europe’s population is generally old and has low birth rates and increasing mortality rates. Many countries experience birth deficits for shorter or longer periods, and in general the population grows only slowly. However, there are large regional differences, based on the pattern of the hikes.
Religions and culture. Recent hikes, which has brought many Muslims to European cities, has laid an extra pattern over the hitherto known map of Europe’s religions. Minorities have emerged in the core areas of many European states; this in a kind of contrast to the minorities of e.g. Frisians, Sami, Basques, Hungarians and Ukrainians who live on the outskirts of the states of which they are citizens.
The vast majority of Europeans are Christians, and Europe’s culture is crucially influenced by Christianity. Secularization has dampened the practice of religion and weakened the importance of the churches, although Christianity and other religions have again become stronger after the changes in Central and Eastern Europe. According to Countryaah, Roman Catholic Europe includes Italy, the Pyrenees, France, the Republic of Ireland, Austria, Poland, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia and Croatia. The Nordic countries, Estonia, Latvia and the United Kingdom are predominantly Protestant, while Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland are Catholic and Protestant. The Orthodox Church dominates Greece, Bulgaria, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Serbia and Macedonia. Turks and Albanians, including minorities around the Balkans, and many Bosnians are Muslims. In the Caucasus, the strategically important and controversial mountain country on the southern border of Russia, the population geography is very complicated. Here are a number of people, many of whom are Muslims, who speak different languages and who in various ways are trying to gain greater independence from Russia.
Europe’s population geography presents a variegated picture, which partly shows features from the continent’s long history, and partly reflects development features from recent decades. The same applies to the current map of the Europe of languages.
Europe’s population is generally old and has low birth rates and increasing mortality rates. Many countries experience birth deficits for shorter or longer periods, and in general the population grows only slowly. However, there are large regional differences, based on the pattern of the hikes.
Religions and culture. Recent hikes, which has brought many Muslims to European cities, has laid an extra pattern over the hitherto known map of Europe’s religions. Minorities have emerged in the core areas of many European states; this in a kind of contrast to the minorities of e.g. Frisians, Sami, Basques, Hungarians and Ukrainians who live on the outskirts of the states of which they are citizens.
The vast majority of Europeans are Christians, and Europe’s culture is crucially influenced by Christianity. Secularization has dampened the practice of religion and weakened the importance of the churches, although Christianity and other religions have again become stronger after the changes in Central and Eastern Europe. Roman Catholic Europe includes Italy, the Pyrenees, France, the Republic of Ireland, Austria, Poland, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia and Croatia. The Nordic countries, Estonia, Latvia and the United Kingdom are predominantly Protestant, while Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland are Catholic and Protestant. The Orthodox Church dominates Greece, Bulgaria, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Serbia and Macedonia. Turks and Albanians, including minorities around the Balkans, and many Bosnians are Muslims. In the Caucasus, the strategically important and controversial mountain country on the southern border of Russia, the population geography is very complicated. Here are a number of people, many of whom are Muslims, who speak different languages and who in various ways are trying to gain greater independence from Russia.
States, regions and geopolitics
European societies changed with colonization, emigration, and growing world trade. The population grew, and inventions, industrialization, and reorganization of agriculture led to migrations from country to city. National awareness and political conflicts and shifts in power followed with societal changes. Europe is constantly changing with both connecting or equalizing and separating or conflicting features. While state borders mean less and less in the EU, the importance of the Union’s external borders is growing. The relinquishment of sovereignty to the Union interacts with growing local self-government within the states. In federal Germany, local and regional self-government is a tradition enshrined in the Constitution. The regions, nations and minorities of other EU states, such as the Sami, Welsh, South Tyroleans and Catalans had to fight for rights and secure their cultural identity and political influence. Belgium exists in a balance between Walloons and Flemings, and Belgium’s late emergence (1830) as a cushion state between European superpowers is still felt.
Some European state borders have remained unchanged for centuries, while others have moved frequently or recently. As the Iron Curtain disappeared or began to move to the east, geographical, population, and geopolitical patterns and forces that had long been kept in ave regained importance. The simple two-part Europe of the Cold War gave way to a complicated and east-labile political map of Europe, in which concepts such as Eastern Europe, Central Europe, the Baltic Sea countries, the Balkans, etc. were given a nuanced content. Regions and states are part of both new and recreated European patterns. The Vojvodina Serbian since 1918 is geographically and culturally geographically linked to Hungary and Central Europe, while such important states as Belarus and Ukraine only from the mid-1990’s are gaining a place as states on the map of Europe and in our consciousness.
Mediterranean countries
The cultural community of the Mediterranean countries is rooted in uniform natural conditions and in ancient Greco-Roman and later Moorish, Italian, Turkish and Arab cultures and societies. They all contributed to today’s cultural landscape, including the devastation of soil and terrain that characterizes large parts of the Mediterranean landscape. There are still great landscape similarities around the Mediterranean, while in European Mediterranean countries there are great natural and business differences between the subtropical areas with “Mediterranean culture” and temperate areas with completely different cultural landscapes; Northern Italy is thus very different from southern Italy, and the Dalmatian Balkan coast is completely different from the country to the east.
Europe seen from the east
The division of the Roman Empire and the Christian Church left traces in the divisions of Europe. After the Turkish conquest in 1453 of Constantinople, present-day Istanbul, the Russians saw themselves as defenders of the Orthodox Church. Russia has since united this role and the role of the defender of the Slavic peoples with an imperialism that led to enlargements to the east, south and west. This position and the attempts to secure access to the sea led to protracted competition and conflict with Turks, Austrians and the countries around the Baltic Sea. Russia’s basic geopolitical goals have remained unchanged from tsarist and Soviet times until now. An extensive Eurasian Russia is bounded to the south by predominantly Muslim, and for the most part Turkish-speaking, neighboring countries and to the west of Ukraine, Belarus and the three Baltic states where there are Russian minorities.
