Midterm 3 Book Notes Flashcards
Berlin can be seen as a poster child for
Europe’s complex geopolitical history of war, ruin, rebirth, division, unification, and regional hotspot of globalization
Cold War
1945-1990
divided the continent and the world into two hostile and highly armed camps- Europe and US against former Soviet Union and its allies
European Union
Supranational organization made up of 27 countries
environmental diversity of Europe: western extension has
the newest and oldest landscapes in the world
Environmental diversity of Europe: Lattitudinal extent
from the Arctic to the mediterranean; subtropics affects climate, vegetation, and human activities
Environmental diversity of Europe: Latitudinal control
modified by moderating influences of Atlantic Ocean as well as Baltic, Mediterranean and Black Seas
Environmental diversity of Europe: human settlement
long history of human settlement has transformed and modified Europe’s natural landscapes in fundamental ways over thousands of years
European Lowland
also known as the North European Plain
- economic focus of western Europe
- high population density
- intensive agriculture
- major industrial regions
- Includes rivers of {Rhine, Loire, Thames, and Elbe}
- home to many of Europe’s important ports {London, Le Havre, Rotterdam, Hamburg}
Rhine River
divides the unglaciated southern European Lowland from the glaciated plains to the north
Alpine Mountain system
- forms topographic spine of Europe
- consists of mountains running east to west; {Pyrenees, Alps, Apennines, Carpathians, Dinaric Apls and Balkan Ranges}
Pyrenees
political boundary between france and spain; include microstate of Andorra
home to Basque people (west) and Catalan-speaking minorities (east)
Centerpiece of Europe’s geologic system
Alps
Central Uplands
important to western europe because they contain raw materials
Western Highlands
backbone of Norway and Sweden and Finland
Oldest mountains
fjords
flooded valley inlets in Norway
Maritime climate
Along Atlantic coast
most important
no winters below freezing
summers are cloudy and overcast
Continental climates
inland, hot summers and cold winters
Mediterranean climate
southern Europe from Spain to Greece
Transition between maritime and continental climate
between France and Germany
close to the Rhine River
Schengen Agreement
can cross national boundaries without stopping or showing passports
Germanic Languages
dominate Europe north of the Alps
90 mil speak german
English is second largest
90% of Europe speaks
Germanic, Romance, or Slavic (indo-european)
Two main alphabets of slavic language
latin- strong Roman catholic heritage (east)
Cyrillic- Greek derived (west)
irredentism
state policies for reclaiming lost territory and peoples
balkanization
geopolitical processes of small-scale independence movements based upon ethnic fault lines
podzol soils
Acidic typical of northern forest environments
limit growing season/ output
chernozem soils
steppe environments dominated by grasslands by fertile “black earth”
Trans-Siberian Railroad
a key railroad passage to Pacific
From Vladicostok to Moscow
South
baikal-Amur Mainline BAM railroad
to the north
thinner than Trans-Siberian
runs from baikal lake to Amur river
Gulag Archipelago
collection of political prisons in which inmates often disappeared or spent years far removed from their families/communities
Russification
resettling Russians into non-Russian portions of the Soviet Union
millions given inscentives to move elsewhere in order increase Russian Dominance
mikrorayons
large-Soviet era housing projects of the 1970s and 1980s
Cossacks
slavic-speaking christians who had earlier mgirated to the region seeking freedom in the ungoverned steppes
Moldova
Romanian language dominant
socialist realism
style devoted to the realistic depiction of workers heroically challenging nature or struggling against capitalism
Bolsheviks
faction of Russian communists representing industrial workers, seized power
Autonomous areas
republics gave special recognition to smaller ethnic homelands
exclave
portion of a country’s territory that lies outside its contiguous land area
glasnost
greater openness theory from Mikhail Gorbachev
perestroika
restructuring of the planned centralized economy, was an admission that domestic economic conditions increasingly lagged those of western Europe and the US
Commonwealth of Independent States
CIS
looser political union of most of the former republics
all former republics expect three Baltic states joined
Denuclearization
return of nuclear weapons from outlying republics to Russian control and their partial dismantling was completed during the 1990s
siloviki
members of the nation’s military and security forces
