Europe Index

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 Europe Index
 Albania  Euzkadi* (Basques)  Latvia  Russia
 Andorra  Faeroe Islands*  Liechtenstein  San Marino
 Austria  Finland  Lithuania  Scotland*
 Belgium  France  Luxembourg  Serbia
 Bosnia-Herzegovina  Germany  Macedonia  Slovakia
 Britain  East Germany*  Malta  Slovenia
 Belarus  Gibraltar*  Moldova  Spain
 Bulgaria  Greece  Monaco  Sweden
 Catalonia*  Hungary  Montenegro*  Switzerland
 Channel Islands*  Iceland  Netherlands  Tatarstan*
 Corsica*  Ireland  Northern Ireland*  Ukraine
 Croatia  Isle of Man*  Norway  USSR
 Czech Republic  Italy  Poland  Vatican
 Denmark  Kaliningrad*  Portugal  Vojvodina*
 Estonia  Kosovo*  Romania  Yugoslavia

British Empire

Baltic

Balkans

Benelux

 Central Europe

European Union

EFTA

G8 

Hapsburgs

Hegemony

Languages

NATO

Nordic states

Slavic World

Soviet Union

Europe is not a continent in the geological sense but a peninsula of the World Island sometimes called Eurasia.
It is, however, a cultural and political area. The peoples of the area share a common history. However, they are also diverse in origin and show the results of successive invasions into the area from further east - though DNA evidence also shows that many people are descended from ancestors who have been in place for millennia, no doubt since the end of the Ice Age. Thus a series of cultural invasions can be traced, with the earliest known that of the Kelts now represented in Ireland and the west of Britain. The Greeks and Italic speakers followed. Then came Germanic speaking groups, including the ancestors of the English. These in turn were followed by Slavs and the Finno-Ugrian groups of Magyars and Finns. (There are views opposing this theory of the Great Westward Shunt: that the Kelts were there from the beginning.)

Turks, who were themselves a very mixed group, invaded and besieged Wien (Vienna) as late as the mid 17th century.

The Europeans are thus not a long established genetically homogeneous group (as claimed by some extreme right politicians) but are the descendants of peoples from all over northern and central Eurasia. In recent times there have been new immigrants from other parts of Eurasia and from north and central Africa. These movements are likely to continue as a result of the wealth of Europe and the poverty of the other areas. The world is likely to continue to experience large movements of peoples, especially as drastic changes in Climate seem to be happening.

Europe can be considered an overcrowded area as its population probably could not be supported on the income of energy within its land.

Many other kingdoms, duchies and states have existed in the past.
Norman Davies - Vanished Kingdoms


Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe

  • Aragon, and its Mediterranean empire
  • the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (and Poland)
  • Bourgogne (Burgundy)
  • Strathclyde
  • Bayern (Bavaria)
  • the Papal States
  • the Swedish empire
  • and others

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