Historical regions (or historical areas) are geographical regions which, at some point in history, had a cultural, ethnic, linguistic or political basis, regardless of latter-day borders. [1] There are some historical regions that can be considered as "active", for example: Moravia, which is held by the Czech Republic, is both a recognized part of the country as well as a historical region. They are used as delimitations for studying and analysing social development of period-specific cultures without any reference to contemporary political, economic or social organisations.
The fundamental principle underlying this view is that older political and mental structures exist which exercise greater influence on the spatial-social identity of individuals than is understood by the contemporary world, bound to and often blinded by its own worldview - e.g. the focus on the nation-state. [2]
Definitions of regions vary, [3] and regions can include macroregions such as Europe, territories of traditional sovereign states or smaller microregional areas. Geographic proximity is generally the required precondition for the emergence of a regional identity. [3] In Europe, regional identities are often derived from the Migration Period but for the contemporary era are also often related to the territorial transformations that followed World War I and those that followed the Cold War. [4]
Some regions are entirely invented, such as the Middle East, which was popularised in 1902 by a military strategist, Alfred Thayer Mahan, to refer to the area of the Persian Gulf. [5]
Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east. Europe shares the landmass of Eurasia with Asia, and of Afro-Eurasia with both Asia and Africa. Europe is commonly considered to be separated from Asia by the watershed of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Greater Caucasus, the Black Sea, and the waterway of the Bosporus Strait.
Western Europe is the western region of Europe. The region's extent varies depending on context. The concept of "the West" appeared in Europe in juxtaposition to "the East" and originally applied to the ancient Mediterranean world, the Roman Empire, and medieval "Christendom". Beginning with the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery, roughly from the 15th century, the concept of Europe as "the West" slowly became distinguished from and eventually replaced the dominant use of "Christendom" as the preferred endonym within the region. By the Age of Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, the concepts of "Eastern Europe" and "Western Europe" were more regularly used. The distinctiveness of Western Europe became most apparent during the Cold War, when Europe was divided for 40 years by the Iron Curtain into the Western Bloc and Eastern Bloc, each characterised by distinct political and economical systems.
Eastern Europe is a subregion of the European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. Its eastern boundary is marked by the Ural Mountains, whilst its western boundary is defined in various ways. Most definitions include the countries of Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, Moldova and Romania while less restrictive definitions may also include some or all of the Balkans, the Baltic states, the Caucasus and the Visegrád group.
Manchuria is a term that refers to a region in Northeast Asia encompassing the entirety of present-day Northeast China, and historically parts of the modern-day Russian Far East, often referred to as Outer Manchuria. Its definition may refer to varying geographical extents as follows: the Chinese provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Liaoning but broadly also including the eastern Inner Mongolian prefectures of Hulunbuir, Hinggan, Tongliao, and Chifeng, collectively known as Northeast China; the aforementioned regions plus the homelands of ancient Jurchen and their descendant Manchus, parts of these region were ceded to the Russian Empire by the Manchu-led Qing dynasty during the Amur Annexation of 1858–1860, which include present-day Amur Oblast, Primorsky Krai, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, the southern part of Khabarovsk Krai, and the eastern edge of Zabaykalsky Krai, collectively known as the Outer Manchuria or Russian Manchuria.
The Low Countries, historically also known as the Netherlands, is a coastal lowland region in Northwestern Europe forming the lower basin of the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta and consisting today of the three modern "Benelux" countries: Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. Geographically and historically, the area can also include parts of France and Germany such as French Flanders and the German regions of East Frisia, Guelders and Cleves. During the Middle Ages, the Low Countries were divided into numerous semi-independent principalities.
In geography, regions, otherwise referred to as areas, zones, lands or territories, are portions of the Earth's surface that are broadly divided by physical characteristics, human impact characteristics, and the interaction of humanity and the environment. Geographic regions and sub-regions are mostly described by their imprecisely defined, and sometimes transitory boundaries, except in human geography, where jurisdiction areas such as national borders are defined in law. More confined or well bounded portions are called locations or places.
The Baltic states or the Baltic countries is a geopolitical term encompassing Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. All three countries are members of NATO, the European Union, the Eurozone, and the OECD. The three sovereign states on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea are sometimes referred to as the "Baltic nations", less often and in historical circumstances also as the "Baltic republics", the "Baltic lands", or simply the Baltics.
The Orient is a term referring to the East in relation to Europe, traditionally comprising anything belonging to the Eastern world. It is the antonym of the term Occident, which refers to the Western world.
A geographical pole or geographic pole is either of the two points on Earth where its axis of rotation intersects its surface. The North Pole lies in the Arctic Ocean while the South Pole is in Antarctica. North and South poles are also defined for other planets or satellites in the Solar System, with a North pole being on the same side of the invariable plane as Earth's North pole.
Political geography is concerned with the study of both the spatially uneven outcomes of political processes and the ways in which political processes are themselves affected by spatial structures. Conventionally, for the purposes of analysis, political geography adopts a three-scale structure with the study of the state at the centre, the study of international relations above it, and the study of localities below it. The primary concerns of the subdiscipline can be summarized as the inter-relationships between people, state, and territory.
Western Ukraine or West Ukraine refers to the western territories of Ukraine. There is no universally accepted definition of the territory's boundaries, but the contemporary Ukrainian administrative regions (oblasts) of Chernivtsi, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv, Ternopil and Zakarpattia are typically included. In addition, Volyn and Rivne oblasts are also usually included. It is less common to include Zhytomyr Oblast and Podolia. It includes several historical regions such as Carpathian Ruthenia, Halychyna including Pokuttia, most of Volhynia, northern Bukovina and the Hertsa region, and Podolia. Western Ukraine is sometimes considered to include areas of eastern Volhynia, Podolia, and the small northern portion of Bessarabia.
Western Armenia is a term to refer to the western parts of the Armenian highlands located within Turkey that comprise the historical homeland of the Armenians. Western Armenia, also referred to as Byzantine Armenia, emerged following the division of Greater Armenia between the Byzantine Empire and Sassanid Persia in AD 387. Since the Armenian genocide, the Armenian diaspora as well as Armenians indigenous to modern Turkey have sought political representation in Western Armenia or reunification with the Republic of Armenia.
The Americas, also known as America, are lands of the Western Hemisphere, composed of numerous entities and regions variably defined by geography, politics, and culture.
A continent is any of several large geographical regions. Continents are generally identified by convention rather than any strict criteria. A continent could be a single landmass or a part of a very large landmass, as in the case of Asia or Europe. Due to this, the number of continents varies; up to seven or as few as four geographical regions are commonly regarded as continents. Most English-speaking countries recognize seven regions as continents. In order from largest to smallest in area, these seven regions are Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, and Australia. Different variations with fewer continents merge some of these regions; examples of this are merging North America and South America into America, Asia and Europe into Eurasia, and Africa, Asia, and Europe into Afro-Eurasia.
Territorial nationalism describes a form of nationalism based on the belief that all inhabitants of a particular territory should share a common national identity, regardless of their ethnic, linguistic, religious, cultural and other differences. Depending on the political or administrative status of a particular territory, territorial nationalism can be manifested on two basic levels, as territorial nationalism of distinctive sovereign states, or territorial nationalism of distinctive sub-sovereign regions.
A Kuppe is the term used in German-speaking central Europe for a mountain or hill with a rounded summit that has no rock formation, such as a tor, on it. A range of such hills is called a Kuppengebirge. In geology the term also refers to corresponding stratigraphic forms. The term is similar to the English topographical and geological terms, knoll and dome. It is also analogous to the French word ballon which means a mountain with a rounded summit.
A circumpolar distribution is any range of a taxon that occurs over a wide range of longitudes but only at high latitudes; such a range therefore extends all the way around either the North Pole or the South Pole. Taxa that are also found in isolated high-mountain environments further from the poles are said to have arctic–alpine distributions.
A finger lake, also known as a fjord lake or trough lake, is "a narrow linear body of water occupying a glacially overdeepened valley and sometimes impounded by a morainic dam." Where one end of a finger lake is drowned by the sea, it becomes a fjord or sea-loch.
The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography is a book by American geographer Martin W. Lewis and historian Kären E. Wigen. It was published in 1997 by the University of California Press.
Martin W. Lewis is an American historical geographer, author, and academic. He is a senior lecturer emeritus in History at Stanford University.
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