the names and boundaries of continents are arbitrary and don’t matter. that said, the most common definition, really more of a vibe, of a continent is size. Europe is 3 times larger than India. It’s twice as large as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, and Afghanistan combined.
I don’t think Europe or the West as a geopolitical force is the same as the continent. There are other areas that are unambiguously in Europe that aren’t part of “Europe” similarly to how Russia isn’t. Are Belarus, Bosnia, Serbia, or Moldova really part of the club the way France and Germany are? Of course not. Greece or Hungary arguably aren’t either.
not gonna argue that, greece relative to europe occupies the position of peurto rico relative to the US.
I just think that the self-concept of europe is chauvinist and it’s more of desired boundary than anything real, and calling it ‘a continent’ gives it legitimacy that it does not deserve.
There’s way more tectonic plates than continents and a lot of landmasses we think of as contiguous are on different plates. Itd be very impractical to try to make them the same. Iceland would be a transcontinental country, California would be its own continent, Asia would be several continents, there would be continents that are just patches of the Pacific Ocean or the Caribbean, and so on
the names and boundaries of continents are arbitrary and don’t matter. that said, the most common definition, really more of a vibe, of a continent is size. Europe is 3 times larger than India. It’s twice as large as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, and Afghanistan combined.
Bold move including Russia as part of Europe considering how the europeans have been acting (without western russia europe is 2x the size of India).
I don’t think Europe or the West as a geopolitical force is the same as the continent. There are other areas that are unambiguously in Europe that aren’t part of “Europe” similarly to how Russia isn’t. Are Belarus, Bosnia, Serbia, or Moldova really part of the club the way France and Germany are? Of course not. Greece or Hungary arguably aren’t either.
not gonna argue that, greece relative to europe occupies the position of peurto rico relative to the US.
I just think that the self-concept of europe is chauvinist and it’s more of desired boundary than anything real, and calling it ‘a continent’ gives it legitimacy that it does not deserve.
Every continental boundary is more of a desired boundary than anything real. There are no “real” continents.
I can’t disagree with wanting to delegimitize it
I was under the impression that continent boundaries were defined by tectonic plates. Is that not correct?
There’s way more tectonic plates than continents and a lot of landmasses we think of as contiguous are on different plates. Itd be very impractical to try to make them the same. Iceland would be a transcontinental country, California would be its own continent, Asia would be several continents, there would be continents that are just patches of the Pacific Ocean or the Caribbean, and so on