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Written by Thomas M. Poulsen , Brian Frederick Windley , W. Gordon East See All
Fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Last Updated: Jan 8, 2024 • Article History
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Europe, second smallest of the world’s
continents, composed of the westward-projecting
peninsulas of Eurasia (the great landmass that it
shares with Asia) and occupying nearly one- zoom_in
fifteenth of the world’s total land area. It is
keyboard_arrow_right
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, Europe
the Kuma-Manych Depression, and the Caspian
Sea. The continent’s eastern boundary (north to
south) runs along the Ural Mountains and then
roughly southwest along the Emba (Zhem) River, terminating at the northern Caspian
coast.
Europe’s largest islands and archipelagoes include Novaya Zemlya, Franz Josef Land,
Svalbard, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, the British Isles, the Balearic Islands, Corsica,
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Sardinia, Sicily, Malta, Crete, and Cyprus. Its
major peninsulas include Jutland and the
Scandinavian, Iberian, Italian, and Balkan
peninsulas. Indented by numerous bays, fjords, zoom_in
and seas, continental Europe’s highly irregular
coastline is about 24,000 miles (38,000 km) long. keyboard_arrow_right
Among the continents, Europe is an anomaly.
Sveti Stefan
Larger only than Australia, it is a small appendage Sveti Stefan, Montenegro.
of Eurasia. Yet the peninsular and insular western
extremity of the continent, 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.”
As a conceptual construct, Europa, as the more
learned of the ancient Greeks first conceived it,
stood in sharp contrast to both Asia and Libya, the
zoom_in
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 Athens: Acropolis
suggested itself to the Greeks, in their maritime The Acropolis and surrounding area,
Athens.
world, as an appropriate designation for the
extensive northerly lands that lay beyond, lands
with characteristics vaguely known yet 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. From the Greek perspective then, Europa was culturally backward and
scantily settled. It was a barbarian world—that is, a non-Greek one, with its inhabitants
making “bar-bar” noises in unintelligible tongues. Traders and travelers also reported that
the Europe beyond Greece possessed distinctive physical units, with mountain systems and
lowland river basins much larger than those familiar to inhabitants of the Mediterranean
region. It was clear as well that a succession of climates, markedly different from those of
the Mediterranean borderlands, were to be experienced as Europe was penetrated from the
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south. The spacious eastern steppes and, to the west and north, primeval forests as yet only
marginally touched by human occupancy further underlined environmental contrasts.
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The empire of ancient Rome, at its greatest extent
in the 2nd century CE, revealed, and imprinted its
culture on, much of the face of the continent.
Trade relations beyond its frontiers also drew the zoom_in
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
Pont du Gard, Nîmes, France
continent, the peoples of which had meanwhile
Pont du Gard, an ancient Roman
achieved domination over—and set in motion vast aqueduct near Nîmes, France.
countervailing movements among—the
inhabitants of much of the rest of the globe (see
Western colonialism).
As to the territorial limits of Europe, they may
seem relatively clear on its seaward flanks, but
many island groups far to the north and west—
Svalbard, the Faroes, Iceland, and the Madeira and
Canary islands—are considered European, while
Greenland (though tied politically to Denmark) is
conventionally allocated to North America.
Furthermore, the Mediterranean coastlands of zoom_in
North Africa and southwestern Asia also exhibit
some European physical and cultural affinities.
Turkey and Cyprus in particular, while geologically
Asian, possess elements of European culture and
may be regarded as parts of Europe. Indeed,
Turkey has sought membership in the European
Union (EU), and the Republic of Cyprus joined the
La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain
organization in 2004.
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Europe’s boundaries have been especially uncertain, and hence much debated, on the east,
where the continent merges, without sundering physical boundaries, with parts of western
Asia. The eastward limits now adopted by most geographers exclude the Caucasus region
and encompass a small portion of Kazakhstan, where the European boundary formed by
the northern Caspian coast is connected to that of the Urals by Kazakhstan’s Emba River
and Mughalzhar (Mugodzhar) Hills, themselves a southern extension of the Urals. Among
the alternative boundaries proposed by geographers that have gained wide acceptance is a
scheme that sees the crest of the Greater Caucasus range as the dividing line between
Europe and Asia, placing Ciscaucasia, the northern part of the Caucasus region, in Europe
and Transcaucasia, the southern part, in Asia. Another widely endorsed scheme puts the
western portion of the Caucasus region in Europe and the eastern part—that is, the bulk of
Azerbaijan and small portions of Armenia, Georgia, and Russia’s Caspian Sea coast—in
Asia. Still another scheme with many adherents locates the continental boundary along the
Aras River and the Turkish border, thereby putting Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia in
Europe.
Europe’s 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. Slavic-based civilization dominates much of the territory occupied
by the former Soviet Union from the Baltic and Black seas to the Pacific Ocean. That
civilization is distinguished from the rest of Europe by legacies of a medieval Mongol-Tatar
domination that precluded the sharing of many of the innovations and developments of
European “Western civilization”; 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 somewhat separate from Europe to
the west and from Asia to the south and east; that distinction has been maintained for
Russia, which constituted three-fourths of the Soviet Union.
Europe occupies some 4 million square miles (10 million square km) within the
conventional borders assigned to it. That 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
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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 only portions of the dominant woodland that clothed most of the
continent when humans first appeared now remain.
All in all, Europe enjoys a considerable and long-
exploited resource base of soil, forest, sea, and
minerals (notably coal), but its people are
increasingly its principal resource. The continent,
zoom_in
excluding Russia, contains less than one-tenth of
the total population of the world, but in general its
people are well educated and highly skilled. European Parliament
Europe also supports high densities of population, European Parliament building,
concentrated in urban-industrial regions. A Strasbourg, France.
growing percentage of people in urban areas are
employed in a wide range of service activities,
which have come to dominate the economies of most countries. Nonetheless, in
manufacturing and agriculture Europe still occupies an eminent, if no longer necessarily
predominant, position. The creation of the European Economic Community in 1957 and
the EU in 1993 greatly enhanced economic cooperation between many of the continent’s
countries. Europe’s continuing economic achievements are evidenced by its high standard
of living and its successes in science, technology, and the arts.
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., Rome, Warsaw, and London. The principal articles discussing the historical
and cultural development of the continent include history of Europe; European
exploration; Western 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., Judaism and Roman Catholicism) and literature (e.g.,
Greek literature; Dutch literature; and Spanish literature).
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