Europe

 

THE MODERN WORLD, FOR BETTER OR WORSE, SPRINGS from Europe. This western outpost of the great Eurasian land mass gave birth to the Enlightenment, which led to the Industrial Revolution, which has resulted in what we now see around us every day. For that we can give thanks to, or blame, Europe’s location.

The climate, fed by the Gulf Stream, blessed the region with the right amount of rainfall to cultivate crops on a large scale, and the right type of soil for them to flourish in. This allowed for population growth in an area in which, for most, work was possible all year round, even in the heights of summer. Winter actually adds a bonus, with temperatures warm enough to work in but cold enough to kill off many of the germs which to this day plague huge parts of the rest of the world.

Good harvests mean surplus food that can be traded; this in turn builds up trading centres which become towns. It also allows people to think of more than just growing food and turn their attention to ideas and technology.

Western Europe has no real deserts, the frozen wastes are confined to a few areas in the far north, and earthquakes, volcanoes and massive flooding are rare. The rivers are long, flat, navigable and made for trade. As they empty into a variety of seas and oceans they flow into coastlines which are, west, north and south, abundant in natural harbours.

If you are reading this trapped in a snowstorm in the Alps, or waiting for flood waters to subside back into the Danube, then Europe’s geographical blessings may not seem too apparent; but, relative to many places, blessings they are. These are the factors which led to the Europeans creating the first industrialised nation states, which in turn led them to be the first to conduct industrial-scale war. 

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Geographically, the Brits are in a good place. Good farmland, decent rivers, excellent access to the seas and their fish stocks, close enough to the European Continent to trade and yet protected by dint of being an island race – there have been times when the UK gave thanks for its geography as wars and revolutions swept over its neighbours.

The British losses in, and experience of, the world wars are not to be underestimated, but they are dwarfed by what happened in Continental Europe in the twentieth century and indeed before that. The British are at one remove from living with the historical collective memory of frequent invasions and border changes.

There is a theory that the relative security of the UK over the past few hundred years is why it has experienced more freedom and less despotism than the countries across the Channel. The theory goes that there were fewer requirements for ‘strong men’ or dictators, which, starting with Magna Carta (1215) and then the Provisions of Oxford (1258), led to forms of democracy years ahead of other countries.

It is a good talking point, albeit one not provable. What is undeniable is that the water around the island, the trees upon it which allowed a great navy to be built, and the economic conditions which sparked the Industrial Revolution all led to Great Britain controlling a global empire. Britain may be the biggest island in Europe, but it is not a large country. The expansion of its power across the globe in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries is remarkable, even if its position has since declined.