European Regions and Cultures

acid precipitation

Rain or snow that has a higher level of acidity because of a chemical reaction between water in the atmosphere and industrial pollutants.

afforestation

The replanting of forests.

Afro-Asiatic

The language family that dominates much of the Middle East and North Africa. Includes Arabic, Hebrew, and Maltese

. Age of Discovery

The period from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries during which European mariners, notably the Spanish, Portuguese, British, Dutch, and French, traveled the world in search of resources, lands, and peoples to claim for their respective crowns.

agribusiness

Large-scale, commercialized, market-oriented agriculture.

alluvial soils

Loose, fertile soil deposited by water flowing over floodplains.

Alpine period

Period of significant tectonic activity between c. 65 and 2.5 million years ago that resulted in the creation of east-west mountain ranges in Europe, such as the Alps and the Pyrenees.

Altaic

A language family thought to have originated around the Altai Mountains of Central Asia. Includes Turkish, Tatar, Azeri, and Gagauz.

andosols

Rich and porous soils found in volcanic areas.

animism

Religious beliefs that imbue objects such as rocks, heavenly bodies, mountains, forests, and rivers with souls.

anti-empire nationalism

The effort by a national group living within an empire to create a sovereign nation-state of its own.

arable land

Land suitable for agriculture.

Armenian Orthodox Apostolic Church

Officially a branch of Eastern Orthodoxy, it has an independent status because it never acknowledged the supremacy of the patriarch at Constantinople.

Ashkenazim

Jews who settled primarily in western and southern Germany, the Kingdom of Poland, and adjacent parts of Russia and Ukraine. They often spoke Yiddish, a German-derived language written in Hebrew.

autocephalic

Self-governing (church), derived from Greek auto (self) and cephalous (head).

Azores anticyclone

A high-pressure system generally situated in the North Atlantic. Its seasonal movement off the northwest African and southwest Europeancoasts contributes to the Mediterranean climate found throughout much of southern Europe.

Baltic

A subfamily of the Indo-European languages originating west of the Pripyat Marshes. Over time it lost ground to Germanic and Slavic speakers and is now represented by Latvian and Lithuanian.

bora

A periodic wind that blows from north to south into the Adriatic, Greece, and Turkey, particularly in the winter. It brings cold snaps to parts of southeastern Europe.

Brexit

An abbreviation referring to the departure of the United Kingdom (Britain) from the European Union.

British city

The type of city found in the British Isles that generally has a higher degree of semidetached, single-family residences and greater functional zonation than the typical continental European city.

capitalism

An economic system based on private ownership in which land andgoods are exchanged at prices determined by free-market competition.

Caucasic

A language family to the southeast of the Indo-European family in the Caucasus. Includes Georgian

Celtic

A subfamily of Indo-European that was once dominant throughout Europe but now is mostly confined to the northwestern periphery. Includes Welsh, Breton, Cornish, and Gaelic.

central European city

The most common type of city found in Europe, characterized by compactness, a low degree of functional zonation, a core that is both historic and relatively prosperous, and surrounding suburbs, some of which are industrial and relatively poor.

checkerboard village

A village with a relatively rigid rectilinear street pattern, a legacy of the Roman imperial land survey.

chernozem

A black-colored topsoil rich in organic matter that produces a high agricultural yield. This soil is found only in cool to temperate climates.

city-states

Cities that function as independent political entities. The ancient citystates of Greece are classic examples.

collective agriculture

The system implemented in Communist states in which fragmented private landholdings were replaced by large communal farms.

colonialism

Rule by an autonomous power over a subordinate, usually distant people and territory. Because of the scope and scale of European colonialism that began in the sixteenth century, the term is often used to refer specifically to the European colonial project of the last 500 years.

Columbian Exchange

The great exchange of flora, fauna, microorganisms, culture, technology, and people that followed in the wake of Christopher Columbus’s 1492 voyage across the Atlantic Ocean.

composite language

A language whose form was taken from more than one language.

continent

Conventionally a sizable landmass standing more or less separate from other landmasses. In the case of Europe and Asia, the term is stretched to denote major world regions that were once considered to be separate realms.

Coriolis effect

The process by which the rotation of the earth deflects the movement of ocean and atmospheric currents clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and counterclockwise in the Southern Hemisphere.

cottage industry

Secondary economic activities produced at home using simple technology. Generally confined to farm villages as a sideline to agriculture.

counterurbanization

The movement of people from the largest cities to smaller towns and cities that lie beyond the commuting range of their former places of residence.

cuesta

A ridge with a steep slope on one side and a gentle slope on the other.

cultural landscape

The visible trace of human presence on the land, consisting of an assemblage of tangible physical and human features found in an area.

culture area

A region that is thought of as the homeland of a people who hold numerous beliefs, behaviors, and overall ways of life in common, including ideology, technology, social institutions, and material possessions.

dechristianization

A term used to describe the move toward secularization that has occurred recently in parts of Europe.

deepening (in the context of European integration)

The expansion of the powers of the European Union into different policy realms.

deindustrialization

The decline or abandonment of industrial activity in a region.

demographic transition

The shift from high birth rates and high death rates to low birth rates and low death rates in the wake of industrialization and urbanization. Because death rates historically fell before birth rates, the demographic transition is associated with a period of rapid population increase followed by low, or even negative, population growth.

devolution

The transfer of governmental competencies from the state to substate regions.

dialect net

A linguistic zone of multiple dialects in which the speakers of each dialect can understand the neighboring ones but not those farther away in regions with which they have no regular contact.

dialects

Variants of standardized languages.

diaspora

The dispersal of a cultural or ethnic group from a homeland. Originally referred to the dispersal of the Jewish people from ancient Palestine.

dikes

Human-constructed banks along the edges of water bodies that are designed to protect against flooding.

eastern European city

An eastern European variant of the central European city characterized by large public spaces, massive public housing projects, and a particularly low degree of functional zonation.

Eastern Orthodoxy

A form of Christianity prevailing in eastern Europe that arose from the church in Byzantine Constantinople.

ecotourism

Tourism designed to promote sustainability by minimizing long-term damage to nature or local customs.

esker

Narrow, gravel-lined channel that is produced by a stream lying under an ice sheet

ethnic cleansing

An attempt to eliminate a particular ethnic group from a place or region.

Eurasia

Term combining Europe and Asia into a single continent instead of two.

Eurocentrism

A perspective that looks at developments around the world through the lens of European circumstances and beliefs. Eurocentrism typically is premised on the idea of European superiority.

Eurorussia

The portion of Russia to the west of the Ural Mountains often regarded as belonging to Europe.

Eurozone

The states that have adopted the European Union’s common currency, the euro.

external migration

Migration across national borders.

façadism

The complete gutting and remodeling of the interior of a building while preserving its façade.

federal state

A state in which internal states or provinces retain considerable power or even autonomy.

feudal system

A loosely organized political-economic system binding nobles, local landowners, and peasants together through a set of reciprocal obligations. The feudal system was found throughout much of Europe (and beyond) in the Middle Ages.

fjord

A long, narrow inlet between steep cliffs or hills created by glacial erosion and then filled by ocean water as sea levels rise with the onset of interglacials.

Föhn

In southern Germany, a warm, dry wind from the south that results when a cyclonic storm moving north of the Alps in the winter draws drier, warmer winds over the mountains from the Mediterranean lands.

fontanili

An east–west line of springs in the Po–Veneto Plain where the groundwater table reaches the surface.

functional zonation

The segregation of different functions (retailing, manufacturing, residential) in different areas within a city.

gender pay gap

The gap in wages earned by men and women.

gentrification

The rehabilitation of deteriorated or abandoned areas and the concomitant replacement of low-income people by those who are more affluent.

geolinguistics

The study of language changes over space and through time.

geomorphology

The scientific study of landforms, including the processes that shape them.

Germanic

A major subfamily of the Indo-European languages that arose in Jutland and surrounding areas and then spread throughout northern and west-central Europe. Includes German, English, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and Dutch.

ghetto

Originally a Jewish neighborhood, in particular the Jewish quarter in medieval Venice. The term now refers to a poor area dominated by minority groups who have little choice but to stay there.

green village

A compact village in which the houses are grouped around a central green or commons that serves as a marketplace, a festival ground, and a protected enclosure for livestock.

guest workers

Immigrants invited by national governments to come into a country for a time in response to labor shortages. Many guest workers end up staying more or less permanently.

guild

A professional organization of free artisans skilled in a particular craft

Islam

A religion arising out of the Arabian Peninsula and based on the teachings of the prophet Muhammad, as set forth in the Quran.

isogloss

A line on a map signifying a linguistic boundary of some sort.

isostatic rebound

The gradual uplift that occurs when a segment of the earth’s surface that has been depressed by the weight of an ice sheet loses the heavy layer of ice that depressed it. As the area rebounds, adjacent areas are sometimes pulled downward.

karst topography

A landscape dominated by permeable limestone, which has numerous large sinks or troughs caused by water filtering down through the limestone.

laïcité

The French tradition of secularism going back to the Revolution of 1789 that requires a strict separation of church and state.

land consolidation

Redrawing property lines to reduce or eliminate the fragmentation of holdings.

land reform

A process intended to distribute land more equally. Often large landholdings are broken up to allow more people to own their own land.

language families

A grouping of languages that share broad similarities in structure and vocabulary.

latifundia

System in which nobility has control over large estates, which are divided into small units and farmed by indentured peasants.

lingua franca

A common language that is used as a means of communication among speakers of diverse tongues.

littoral

The coast or shore of a water body.

loess

Wind-deposited, fine-textured sediment that was originally produced by glaciers and ice sheets grinding up rock.

market gardening

Also known as truck farming. Small-scale agriculture, typically orchards, vineyards, and vegetable plots.

Marxism

A body of political, economic, social, and cultural theories based on the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxism focused particular attention on the economic and social consequences of industrial capitalism.

Medieval Warm Period

Sometimes called the Medieval Optimum, a period between the ninth and twelfth centuries that brought warmer average temperatures to much of Europe.

Mediterranean agriculture

The distinctive agrarian system traditionally practiced in Cyprus, Greece, the eastern Adriatic coast, peninsular Italy, the Languedoc Plain, and southern Iberia.

Mediterranean city

A southern European variant of the central European city characterized by greater spontaneity of growth and development and less segregation by socioeconomic class.

megalopolis

An immense conurbation resulting from the growing together of several large cities.

mercantile city

An urban center in which trade is the most important economic activity. mercantilism

Milankovitch cycle

A cycle of global warming and cooling caused by changes in (1) the shape of the earth’s orbit, (2) the tilt of the earth on its axis, and (3) the earth’s position in its orbit at equinox. The Milankovitch cycle has produced repeated glacial advances and retreats during the Pleistocene.

mistral

A regular wind that blows from north to south down the Rhône-Saône corridor into the Mediterranean, particularly in the winter and spring. The mistral brings cold air into the coastal fringe of France and beyond.

modernity

A set of ideas and practices set in motion by the sixteenth-century European Enlightenment that was rooted in the idea that reason and scientific rationality would lead to progress. monotheism

moor

An expanse of open, infertile, poorly drained land, often including areas of heath and peat bogs.

moraine

Debris scraped up and deposited at the foot of glaciers.

morphology

The external form, structure, and organization of a thing or place.

motes

Small hills in Ireland erected as fortifications by invading Normans in the Middle Ages.

nation

Originally a group of people with a shared sense of culture and history and a desire to control their own affairs. Now sometimes (confusingly) used as a synonym for state.