Europe: Spatial Interaction

The European realm [euworsm] has amassed fortunes at home and has established global influence due to its colonial exploitation abroad.  It has survived a ruinous 20th century in which it was nearly destroyed by two world wars and realignment into east and west blocs during the Cold War.  Although Europe constitutes a geographic realm, it exhibits little geographic homogeneity, physically or culturally.  Regionalism in Europe is heightened by disunifying forces – also known as devolution -as it attempts to unify the realm into a common economic sphere.

Europe’s environments and resources present opportunities for human contact and interaction.  This spatial interaction is best explained around a set of geographic principles.

1. Complementary-one area has a surplus of a commodity in demand by another region.

2. Transferability-the ease with which a commodity may be transported from one region to another.

3. Intervening opportunity-potential trade between two places even if the first two conditions are met, will only develop in the absence of a closer intervening opportunity.

Globally, Europe’s relative location, at the heart of the land hemisphere [euldhemi], is one for maximum efficiency for contact with the rest of the world.  Almost nowhere is Europe far from the sea and it interfaces with the land as it does no where else on Earth.  Southern and Western Europe [euregs] consist almost entirely of peninsulas and islands from Greece, Italy and the Iberian peninsula (Spain and Portugal) to the British Isles, Denmark and the Scandinavian peninsula (Norway and Sweden).  Southern Europe faces the Mediterranean and Western Europe virtually surrounds the North Sea as it look out over the Atlantic Ocean. 

Europe has long been a place of contact between peoples and cultures, of circulation of goods and ideas.  The hundreds of miles of navigable waterways [euriver];  the easily traversed bays, straits and channels between numerous islands and peninsulas and the Mainland;  and the highly accessible Mediterranean, North and Baltic Seas [euwater] all provided the routeways for these exchanges.  Later, even the oceans become avenues of long distance spatial interaction.

This historic advantage of moderate distances applies on the mainland as well.  Europe’s Alps [eumtns] may form a transcontinental divider, but what they separate still lies in close contact.  No place in Europe is very far from anyplace else on the continent, although nearby places are often sharply different from each other.  Short distances and large differences make for much interaction which is typical of European geography over the past 1000 years.

[The text of the above was written by Scott Girhard, San Antonio College from his online course GEOG 1301 World Geography. Used with permission.]