Re: What's Going on in Europe
Reply #48 –
Eurasia is one geographical landmass, Africa is somewhat separate. Eurasia is conventionally divided into Europe and Asia, but the actual conventions have varied over time. You are using an 18th century convention that was politically expedient at the time, while I prefer older conventions.
Culturally Europe and North Africa are extensions of the Middle East. West Asia (roughly similar to the term Middle East, but these terms are vaguely defined as well) and Europe together are one of the three big ones, together with India and China.
That simplifies massively, e.g. South-East Asia would merely be Indo-China, a mix of the two, North Eurasia would be barbarian lands, and people everywhere would be insulted by being grouped with their neighbours and habitual enemies.
Geographically these three are divided by some brutal and near-impassable terrain, deserts and mountain ranges, like Africa is divided by Sahara. The cultural watershed East-West goes in my opinion by Afghanistan. Europe is thus safely in the West, and in the Western-most part of West Eurasia at that.
"Europe" was another Greek invention, as was "Greek". By their conventions Europe ended somewhere in the Caucasus. Armenia and probably Georgia would be in Europe, while Azerbaijan would probably be in Asia. By Greek definitions almost all of Russia would probably end up as Asia, even the "European" west-of-Ural part. Turkey on the other hand would be Europe. Then again the Greeks were unlikely to venture much into today's Russia, they seemed to be more comfortable along the coastline than trekking into the Russian steppes.
Historically, politically, demographically there are no absolute boundaries either. The Phoenician are seen as Asians (but "Europa" was a Phoenician princess, by the Greeks), but had colonies as far west as Portugal. Likewise the Greeks and the Romans went as far east as to squabble with the Persians.
The Ottoman empire, which in many ways defined modern Turkey, was heavily involved in European affairs, but it was predominantly Muslim while Europe had different sects of Christianity. However, excluding the Ottomans would mean excluding the Balkans from Europe, including the Greeks who gave the subcontinent the name.