National composition of foreign Europe. General characteristics of foreign Europe

The national composition of the population of foreign Europe is heterogeneous, there are one-national states and states with a complex structure in ethnic terms. What are these countries? What are the main groups distinguished by national composition? What factors influenced the formation of the ethnic composition of European countries? This and much more will be discussed in the article.

Factors that influenced the national composition of foreign Europe

Currently, more than 62 peoples live in Europe. Such a motley national mosaic was formed on this territory for several millennia under the influence of historical and natural factors.

Plain territories were convenient for the settlement of people and the emergence of ethnic groups. Thus, for example, the French nation was formed on the territory of the Paris Basin, and the German people was formed on the North German Plain.

Mountainous territories complicated the ties between ethnic groups, in such territories, as a rule, a motley ethnic composition was formed, for example, the Balkans and the Alps.

Migration processes had a significant impact on the national composition of Europe. From the 16th century and until the beginning of the 20th century. Europe was mainly a region of emigration, and from the second half of the 20th century. became a region of immigration.

After the revolution of 1917, a stream of migrants poured from Russia to the countries of foreign Europe, the number of which amounted to about 2 million people. They formed ethnic diasporas in France, Germany, Great Britain, Switzerland, Italy, Yugoslavia.

They had a huge impact on the national composition of foreign Europe and numerous internecine wars and conquests, as a result of which many peoples developed a very complex gene pool. So, for example, the Spanish people was formed as a result of mixing over several centuries of Arab, Celtic, Romanesque, Jewish blood. The Bulgarian ethnos was influenced by Turkish rule for 4 centuries.

Since the middle of the 20th century, migration to Europe from former European colonies has intensified. Thus, millions of Asians, Africans, Arabs, Latin Americans permanently settled in foreign Europe. In the 1970s and 1990s, several waves of political and labor migration from Yugoslavia and Turkey were noted. Many of them assimilated in Great Britain, France and Germany, which led to a change in the modern look of the French, British and Germans.

The most acute ethnic problems in Europe are national separatism and ethnic conflicts. As an example, we can recall the confrontation between the Walloons and the Flemish in the 80s in Belgium, which almost split the country. For more than a decade, the radical organization ETA has been operating, which demands the creation of a Basque state in southwestern France and northern Spain. Recently, relations between Catalonia and Spain have escalated, in October 2017 a referendum for independence was held in Catalonia, the turnout was 43 percent, 90% of those who voted for independence, but it was recognized as illegal and null and void.

Types of countries of foreign Europe by national composition

In this regard, they are divided into:

• Mono-ethnic, when the main nation in the share of the population of the country is approximately 90% or more. These include Norway, Denmark, Poland, Bulgaria, Italy, Iceland, Sweden, Germany, Austria, Portugal, Ireland, Slovenia.
• With the predominance of one nation, but with a significant percentage of national minorities in the population structure of the country. These are, for example, France, Finland, Great Britain, Romania, Spain.
• Binational, that is, the national composition of the country is dominated by two nations. An example is Belgium.
• Multinational - Latvia, Switzerland.

Three types of countries of foreign Europe are predominant in terms of national composition - single-national, with a predominance of one nation and bi-national.

In many European countries, very complex interethnic relationships have developed: Spain (Basques and Catalans), France (Corsica), Cyprus, Great Britain (Scotland), Belgium.

Language groups of the population of foreign Europe

In terms of language, the vast majority of the population of Europe belongs to the Indo-European language family. It includes:

• Slavic branch, which is divided into two groups: southern and western. South Slavic languages ​​are spoken by Croats, Slovenes, Montenegrins, Serbs, Macedonians, Bosniaks, and West Slavic languages ​​are spoken by Czechs, Poles, Slovaks.
• The Germanic branch, which is divided into western and northern groups. The West Germanic group includes German, Flemish, Frisian, and English. To the North Germanic group - Faroese, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic,
• Romance branch, the basis of which was the Latin language. This branch includes the following French, Italian, Provencal, Portuguese, Spanish.
• The Celtic branch is currently represented by only 4 languages: Irish, Gaelic, Welsh, Breton. Approximately 6.2 million people speak the language group.

The Indo-European language family includes Greek (more than 8 million people speak) and Albanian (2.5 million people) languages. is also Indo-European. Before the Second World War, there were about 1 million gypsies in Europe, today about 600 thousand of them live in countries of foreign Europe.

Languages ​​spoken in foreign Europe:

• The Uralic language family - its Finno-Ugric branch - Finns, Hungarians, Saami.
• Altai language family - Turkic branch - Tatars, Turks, Gagauz.

The Basque language occupies a special place, it does not belong to any language family, it is the so-called isolated language, the historical ties of which have not been established, about 800 thousand people are native speakers of the language.

National and religious composition of foreign Europe

The dominant religion in Europe is Christianity, only Jews profess Judaism, and Albanians and Croats - Islam.

Catholicism is practiced by Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians, French, Irish, Austrians and Belgians, Poles, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks.

It should be noted that there are many Protestants among the Czechs, Slovaks and Hungarians.

In Switzerland and Germany, Catholics are approximately 50%.

Protestantism is professed by Norwegians, Swedes, Finns, Germans. Moreover, Lutheranism is widespread.

Orthodox Christianity is widespread in the countries of the southeast and east of Europe - in Greece, Romania, Bulgaria.

However, according to the religious principle, it is impossible to judge the national identity of a person. Many peoples adopted the religion of the state in which they lived. For example, many gypsies profess Christianity, but there are entire camps that consider Islam their religion.

History of statistical accounting of the national composition of the population of Europe

About 500 million people live in Europe, the predominant part of the population, according to anthropological characteristics, is the Caucasian race. Europe can rightfully be considered the ancestral home of the national self-consciousness of peoples. It was here that national groups began to emerge, the relationship between which created the history of Europe and beyond. Here, population statistics began to develop, taking into account the national composition. But the principles for determining a particular nationality in different countries of Europe were different.

Initially, the national identity of the people was associated with linguistic affiliation. One of the first countries of foreign Europe that carried out a statistical accounting of the national composition of their citizens, depending on the knowledge of the language, were Belgium in 1846 and Switzerland in 1850 (during the population census, the question was: “What is your main spoken language?”). Prussia took up this initiative, and in the census in 1856 the question of the "mother" (native) language was used.

In 1872, at the Statistical Congress in St. Petersburg, it was decided to introduce a direct question of nationality into the list of issues of statistical accounting of the country's citizens. However, until the 20s of the 20th century, this solution was not implemented.

All this time, they kept a statistical record of citizens on a religious or linguistic basis. This situation in the population census remained practically until the beginning of the Second World War.

The complexities of ethnic statistics at present

In the post-war period, many countries of foreign Europe either did not set the task of taking into account the national composition of the population at all, or they limited it too much.

More reliable data are based on the registration of nationality in five European countries: Albania (1945, 1950, 1960 census), Bulgaria (1946, 1956 census), Romania (1948, 1956 census), Czechoslovakia (1950 census) and Yugoslavia (census 1948, 1953, 1961). All censuses included a question on nationality and mother tongue.

In countries where only the linguistic affiliation of the population was recorded, the ability to determine the national composition becomes more difficult. These are Belgium, Greece, Finland, Austria, Hungary, Switzerland, Liechtenstein. Nationality does not always coincide with language, many peoples speak the same language, for example, the Swiss, Germans, Austrians speak German. In addition, many peoples completely assimilated into the territory to which they moved, and the concept of "native language" as a determinant of ethnicity does not work in this case.

Countries such as Denmark, Iceland, Italy, Malta, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Great Britain, Ireland, Spain, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, France did not set themselves the task of determining the national composition of the population during the census. First, in these countries the concept of "nationality" is synonymous with "citizenship"; secondly, in some countries there is a relatively homogeneous national composition (Iceland, Portugal, Denmark, Ireland); thirdly, in some countries, relatively accurate information is available only for individual peoples, for example, for the Welsh in Great Britain.

Thus, the poor development of statistics on the national question and the multiple changes in the political borders of states created significant problems in the formation of reliable data on the national composition of the population of foreign Europe.

Dynamics of the number of peoples in foreign Europe

The dynamics of the number of peoples of foreign Europe was not exactly the same throughout the centuries of history.

In the Middle Ages, the number of Romanesque peoples increased fastest of all, since they were more developed culturally and economically. In modern times, the German and Slavic peoples intercepted the championship.

The normal natural development of some peoples of Europe was disrupted by world wars. Significant losses during the last world war were among the Jewish people, whose numbers decreased by more than 3 times, among the gypsies by 2 times.

As for the forecasts for the future, in the national composition of the countries of Europe, an increase in the percentage of Slavic peoples and a decrease in the percentage of Germanic peoples is possible.

Factors affecting the dynamics of the number of peoples of foreign Europe

One of the main factors affecting the number of individual peoples in the national structure of the countries of foreign Europe is migration, as a result of which the number of people decreases. For example, after the resettlement of Jews in Israel, their number in Europe sharply decreased. But there were exceptions. For example, the Greeks, whose numbers increased dramatically due to the resettlement of Greeks from Turkey to Europe.

The population dynamics of a particular nation is affected by the birth rate and mortality rate, but most of all it depends on the degree of its assimilation in the country of residence. Many migrants of the second and third generations lose their national identity, having almost completely assimilated. So, for example, in France, Spaniards and Italians are gradually becoming French.

Instead of output

The national composition of foreign Europe is characterized by comparative homogeneity. Europe is dominated by single-ethnic countries and countries where the vast majority are representatives of a particular nation. There are very few countries that are ethnically complex, but national issues in them are very acute.

In the overwhelming majority of countries of foreign Europe, the system of compulsory primary education was established relatively long ago; by the mid-1930s, illiteracy was actually eliminated only in a few countries (Great Britain, Germany, Sweden, etc.); at that time, among people over 10 years old, there were still 15% of illiterates (over 40 million people). The percentage of illiterates was especially high in predominantly agrarian countries: in Albania - over 75% of illiterates, in Portugal - 60%, etc. (see also Table 7).

After the end of the Second World War and the establishment of people's democratic power in the countries of Central and South-Eastern Europe, a significant part of the population of which could not read and write, issues of cultural construction, and in particular the fight against illiteracy, were given great attention. School education covered not only all children, but also a significant part of adults. And although in some of these countries the percentage of illiterates, especially among women, is still quite high according to the latest data, the illiteracy curve is falling incomparably faster than in the capitalist countries. Among the latter, Portugal especially stands out, where the illiteracy of the masses is directly connected with the reactionary regime and the dominance of the Catholic clergy.

The ethnic composition of the population of foreign Europe

The modern ethnic composition of foreign Europe, as shown below, in the section “Main Stages of Ethnic History”, has developed as a result of a long historical process of development and interaction of numerous peoples who differed from each other in anthropological characteristics, language and culture. However, these differences, perhaps due to the relatively small size of foreign Europe, were not as significant as in other parts of the world. The predominant mass of the population of foreign Europe, according to its anthropological characteristics, belongs to a large Caucasoid ("white") race (see below, "Anthropological types"), and in terms of language it belongs to the Indo-European family. The Slavic branch of this family is represented here by its two groups: western and southern. The West Slavic languages ​​are spoken by the Poles and the Kashubians (in the lower reaches of the Vistula), who have merged with them at present, the Czechs and Slovaks, as well as the Lusatians (in the GDR). The Yugoslav group includes the languages ​​of the Bulgarians and the peoples of Yugoslavia - Serbs, Croats, Montenegrins, Bosnians, Slovenes and Macedonians.

The second major branch of the Indo-European family in foreign Europe is the Germanic languages, currently represented by two groups: western and northern (the eastern - Gothic - group has long since died out). The first of these includes the following languages: German, dominant in Germany, Austria and most of Switzerland, Flemish (in Belgium and the Netherlands), Dutch (in the Netherlands), Frisian (in some coastal and island regions of the Netherlands, North-West Germany and Denmark ) and, finally, English, which is widely spoken in addition to England itself also in Wales, Scotland and Ireland. Based on one of the German dialects, the Yiddish language also developed, which is still used by some Jews in Poland, Romania and other European countries. The second group of Germanic languages ​​- North Terman, or Scandinavian - includes the languages ​​​​of Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic and Faroese (in the Faroe Islands).

The third major branch of the Indo-European language family in Europe, Romance, developed from the now dead Latin language. Living Romance languages ​​include: Romanian, Italian, Rheto-Romknian (in eastern Switzerland and northeastern Italy), French (with a Walloon dialect in northeastern France and Belgium), Provençal (in southern France), Catalan (in northeast of Spain), Spanish, Portuguese and Galician close to it (in Galicia - the northwestern Spanish province). A modified Old Spanish language formed the basis of the so-called Spagnol language, which is spoken by some groups of Jews in southern Europe, North Africa and Southwest Asia. Small Romance-speaking ethnic groups, close to Romanians, are also found in Albania, Greece and Yugoslavia (Aromans, Istro-Romanians).

The fourth European branch of the Indo-European family - Celtic - which was very widespread in the past, is currently represented by only four living languages: Irish (or Irish) in Ireland, Gaelic in the highlands of Scotland, Welsh in Wales and Breton in Brittany, in the northwest France. The total number of peoples of the Celtic group is 6.2 million people (1.4% of the population of foreign Europe).

The Indo-European family also includes Albanian and Greek. The first of them is spoken by 2.6 million people, the second by 8.1 million people. The Indo-European language (Indian branch) is, finally, the language of the gypsies, who settled, starting from the 15th century, in almost all countries of Europe (in the largest number - in the countries of the Balkan Peninsula and the Danube basin). Before World War II, there were about 1 million Gypsies in foreign Europe, now there are about 0.6 million people.

Non-Indo-European languages ​​of foreign Europe are used by more than 20 million people (about 5% of the total population). The Finno-Ugric branch of the Ural family in foreign Europe includes the languages ​​of the Hungarians, Finns and Saami (Lapps). Turkic languages ​​of the Altaic family are spoken by Turks, Tatars and Gagauz living in Bulgaria, European Turkey and other countries of the Balkan Peninsula. The Semitic-Hamitic language family is represented in Europe by a small people of the Semitic group - the Maltese. The Basque language occupies a separate place in the system of linguistic classification. Among the population of foreign Europe there are many people whose language belongs to other language groups and families, but almost all of them are relatively recent immigrants from Africa, Asia and America. The number of main language groups is given in Table. 8.

Europe may be called the birthplace of national movements; it was here that, earlier than in other parts of the world, national communities began to emerge on the ruins of feudalism, the relationships of which largely determined European, and not only European, history. It is not surprising, therefore, that the developing statistics of the population of European countries included accounting for the national composition among their main tasks, although the principles for determining nationality in different countries were presented differently. At first, nationality was identified with linguistic affiliation; such a method of continuous accounting of the national composition of its population was Belgium (1846 census - a question about the knowledge of the main languages ​​​​of the country) and Switzerland (1850 census - a question about the main spoken language). for the first time, the question of the native ("mother") language was used, and at the St. Petersburg International Statistical Congress in 1872, a decision was made on the advisability of introducing a direct question about nationality; however, this decision was not implemented until the early 1920s. At the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century, accounting for the linguistic composition of the population, supplemented and sometimes replaced by accounting for religious affiliation, was used in most countries of foreign Europe (except France, Denmark and some others); this position was largely preserved in the interwar period. It should be noted that only during this period in some countries of Eastern Europe (in Poland, Romania), undoubtedly, under the influence of the methods of population censuses of the USSR, the question of nationality was raised. Unfortunately, subsequent significant changes in the ethnic composition of the countries of foreign Europe (and especially Eastern Europe) greatly devalued the materials of their previous censuses.

At present, the countries of foreign Europe are far from homogeneous in ethno-statistical terms, since in many countries the population censuses carried out after the Second World War either did not set themselves the task of accounting for the national composition at all, or severely limited it. Sufficiently reliable ethnic statistics, based on direct registration of nationality, covers only five countries in which only 15% of the population of foreign Europe is located: Albania (censuses of 1945 and 1955 - the question of nationality; census. 1960 - the question of nationality and mother tongue), Bulgaria (1946 and 1956 censuses - question on nationality), Romania (1948 census - question on mother tongue; 1956 census - on nationality and mother tongue), Czechoslovakia (1950 census - question about nationality) and Yugoslavia (the 1948 census - a question about nationality; the 1953 and 1961 censuses - about nationality and mother tongue). It must be said, however, that the materials of some of these censuses (for example, for Albania) have not yet been published or have not been published in full.

A much smaller possibility of determining the national composition is given by the materials of the censuses of those countries where the language of the population was taken into account. These countries include: Austria, Belgium, Hungary, Greece, Liechtenstein, Finland, Switzerland. National affiliation, as you know, does not always coincide with linguistic affiliation; many peoples of foreign Europe speak the same language (for example, Germans, Austrians, Germano-Swiss and others speak German). We also note that relatively reliable results are obtained when taking into account the mother tongue, but in all countries of foreign Europe in which such a question was asked during the census, the concept of mother tongue was, in essence, replaced by the concept of the main spoken language. Due to the strong linguistic assimilation of national minorities, the use of language as an ethnic determinant leads to an underestimation of their number and an exaggeration of the number of the main nationality of the country.

The censuses of other countries of foreign Europe (Great Britain, Denmark, Ireland, Iceland, Spain, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, France, Sweden and small countries) did not aim to determine the national or linguistic composition. The term "nationality" used in the qualifications of many of these countries (Great Britain, France, etc.) has a special interpretation, different from that adopted in the USSR and Eastern European countries, and corresponds, as a rule, to the concept of citizenship or citizenship. Some states (Ireland, Iceland, Denmark, Portugal, etc.) have a relatively homogeneous national composition, and therefore the number of the main nationalities of these countries can be determined with acceptable accuracy. In some other countries, sufficiently reliable information is available only for individual peoples. For example, determining the number of the Celtic-speaking peoples of Great Britain - the Welsh and Gaels - is facilitated by the fact that the programs of the censuses of Scotland and Wales have long included the question of knowledge of the Gaelic or Welsh languages.

Particularly serious difficulties arise "when determining the national composition of those countries where the ethnic heterogeneity of the aboriginal population is supplemented by the presence of large groups of foreigners (France - over 1 million 500 thousand foreigners, Great Britain - over 500 thousand, etc.). Although the countries of origin of foreigners in most cases are known, the determination of their national composition is possible only with a great approximation; ethnicity, as you know, is not associated with citizenship, and, in addition, the composition of foreigners is quite variable due to fluidity.

The weak development of ethnic statistics in most countries of foreign Europe and the repeated changes in political boundaries create almost insurmountable obstacles to a detailed analysis of the dynamics of the national composition of these countries and the dynamics of the number of individual peoples. We therefore confine ourselves to a few remarks. The dynamics of the number of peoples, as well as the dynamics of the population of individual countries, is primarily determined by the peculiarities of the relationship between birth and death rates. Already on the basis of the differences noted above in the natural movement of the population of the countries of foreign Europe, it can be concluded that the dynamics of the number of peoples was far from the same. There is reason to believe that in antiquity, and perhaps in the Middle Ages, the number of the most economically and culturally developed Romance peoples grew faster than others, but in modern times they gave way to the primacy of the Germanic, and then the Slavic peoples. The increased natural growth of the Germanic peoples, due mainly to a decrease in mortality, turned out to be short-lived. In the 20th century, the Slavic peoples came to the fore in terms of their growth rates, in which the decrease in mortality was not accompanied by a decrease in the birth rate; in second place was the majority of the Romance peoples (Italians, Spaniards, Romanians, etc.), and the Germanic peoples moved to third place. It should be noted that the "normal" demographic development of a number of peoples of foreign Europe was sharply disrupted by the two world wars. Especially heavy losses during the Second World War were suffered by Jews (their number decreased by more than three times), gypsies (their number decreased by about two times), Germans, Poles, Serbs, etc. Based on the current rates of natural increase in the population of foreign Europe, in In the future, we can expect some increase in the percentage of Slavic peoples in its composition and a decrease in the percentage of Germanic peoples.

A significant impact on the dynamics of the number of individual peoples was their participation in non-European migrations; in some cases (Irish, Jews) losses from emigration exceeded the natural increase and led to a reduction in the number of people, in other cases (Scots, Swedes, etc.) they slowed down the growth in numbers. The only exception is the dynamics of the Greek population, which increased markedly after the arrival of Greek settlers from Turkey.

The dynamics of the number of peoples, in contrast to the dynamics of the population of individual countries, depends not only on indicators of natural movement and migration, but also on ethnic processes: the process of assimilation, which consists in the absorption by one or another people of individual, usually small, groups of another people located in its midst, and the process of consolidation, i.e., the merging of peoples or large groups of them into new, larger ethnic formations. The object of ethnic assimilation are, on the one hand, the national minorities of their countries, on the other hand, newcomers to the country from outside, i.e. immigrants. Assimilation is especially intense among the latter group, since immigrants from the very beginning find themselves cut off from their ethnic base and surrounded by a foreign environment. Quite often, the second generation of immigrants who have settled in a country and accepted its citizenship completely change their national identity and do not separate themselves from the people of the nationality surrounding them. Similar processes are observed, for example, in France, where the mass of Italian, Spanish and other immigrants is gradually being assimilated by the French. Of great interest is the assimilation of aboriginal national minorities, such as the Welsh, by the British, the Gaels - by the Scots, the Bretons - by the French. The development of ethnic assimilation among these three peoples of the Celtic group, which was widespread in Western Europe in the past, is characterized by the loss of the native language and the gradual transition to the main language of the country, which is accompanied by a weakening of national identity. The number of people who know the Gaelic language has decreased from 225 thousand people in 1891 to 95 thousand people in 1951, of which only about 2 thousand people do not know English. The number of people who know the Welsh language has declined from 977,000 in 1911 to 703,000 in 1951, of whom just over 40,000 speak only Welsh. The number of Bretons, which in the mid-1920s, according to official figures, was about 1 million 400 thousand people, is currently estimated at 1 million 100 thousand people, and this figure includes 1 million bilingual Bretons, of of which about 300 thousand people prefer to speak French in everyday life. The processes of ethnic consolidation are, unfortunately, much less known, although in some countries, for example in the Netherlands, where the Dutch, Flemings and Frisians merge into a single Dutch nation, their influence is very noticeable.

All countries of foreign Europe according to the complexity of their national composition can be divided into three main groups: the first group - mostly one-national countries with a small (less than 10%) non-national population; the second group - countries with a significant percentage of national minorities and multinational countries with a sharp numerical predominance of one nationality; the third group - multinational countries in which the largest nationality is less than 70% of the total population.

As the table above shows, the overwhelming majority of countries in foreign Europe have a relatively homogeneous national composition. There are few ethnically complex countries, but the solution of the national question in them is sharply different.

In the capitalist countries of Europe, national minorities usually do not have the opportunity to develop their language and culture and are doomed to be absorbed by the main nationality of the country; in some of these countries, for example, in Francoist Spain, a policy of forced assimilation of national minorities is pursued. In the countries of Eastern Europe, large national minorities have received national-territorial autonomy and have all the conditions for economic and cultural development.

Europe, the largest peninsula of the Eurasian continent, has long been considered a special part of the world. The reason for the allocation is not at all geographical, because there are no such natural boundaries - a sea strait or a watershed - that would justify it. Etymologically, the name denotes only a geographical landmark: the Greek Europe (from the Assyrian Erebus) means "the country of the west", in this case, the west of Eurasia. Only the great role of the peoples of the western peninsula of Eurasia in the world culture and history of the peoples of the Earth, the huge influence of the civilization created by the centuries-old labor of the Romanesque, Germanic and Slavic peoples of Europe on the development of all mankind underlies the recognition of Europe as part of the world.

The land of Europe has changed its shape more than once, but has always been characterized by a strong indentation of the sea coast and great accessibility for settlement both from the coast and overland from Asia. Three-quarters of the European land mass, with nine-tenths of the current population and economic potential, are located within 300 km of the sea. The deepest regions are only 600 km from the sea and are almost everywhere connected to the sea by navigable rivers.

Within the boundaries of Europe itself, many divisions have been adopted, which are based on modern or past socio-economic, ethnic, geographical, anthropological and confessional criteria.

So, when they talk about different social systems - capitalist and socialist - in modern Europe, it is customary to divide it into Western and Eastern - along the eastern border of Finland, Germany, Austria, Italy and the northern border of Greece and Turkey. In the Soviet Union there is also the concept of Foreign Europe. It includes all the countries of Europe in addition to the actual European part of the USSR.

For the 1st millennium BC. e. the ethnic concept of "Celtic Europe" was adopted, extending to most of Foreign Europe, and from the middle of the 1st millennium AD. e. up to the 20th century. dynamic ethnic concepts - Romance-speaking, German-speaking, Slavic-speaking parts of Europe. The names “blond”, “brown”, “brunette”, referring to the indigenous population of Europe and characterizing the degree of pigmentation of their hairline, contain the most generalized definition of the inhabitants of this part of the world from north to south according to the anthropological groups of the Caucasoid large race. According to the confessional criterion from the 3rd c. AD Christian Europe is often contrasted with pagan Europe, from the 14th century. - Muslim; Christian Europe itself is divided into Catholic and Orthodox, from the 16th century. - Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox and Muslim.

Europe is the smallest part of the world after Australia. Its area, together with the islands, is 9.7 million square meters. km (7.1% of the world's land area). The territory of Foreign Europe is 5 million square meters. km, or 3.6% of the land area of ​​the whole world, the population is 480.5 million people (1978), or 12% of the population of all mankind, its average density is 96 people per 1 sq. km. km - significantly exceeds the average population density in any other part of the world or on average on the planet (27 people per 1 sq. km). In terms of economic development, foreign Europe occupies one of the leading places in the world. It accounts for one third of world industrial production.

Ethnic characteristic. 58 peoples live in Foreign Europe. This number does not include representatives of almost fifty more peoples - immigrant minorities who found themselves in this part of the world after the Second World War in the position of foreign, or "guest" workers and partly naturalized there.

96% of the population of Foreign Europe, occupying approximately the same part of its territory, speaks the languages ​​​​of the Indo-European family. The most significant of this family, both in terms of the number of peoples and in terms of total number, is the Germanic group. It consists of 17 peoples and is 177.7 million people. The second largest Romance group. It includes 15 peoples, and it has 177 million people. The Slavic group is represented in Europe abroad by 11 peoples with a total number of 79 million people. The Celtic group is not numerous (4 peoples) and unites 7.4 million people. The Indo-European family also includes gypsies (0.9 million). The Greek and Albanian groups are, respectively, Greeks (9.5 million) and Albanians (4 million). Three peoples in Foreign Europe belong to the Finno-Ugric group (18 million people) of the Ural language family: Finns in their own national state, as well as in Sweden (as the largest national minority there, accounting for 2.5% of the country's population), Sami, or Lapps, in the north of Norway, Sweden and Finland, as well as the Hungarians (Magyars) in their national state and as national minorities in neighboring ones. Two peoples of Foreign Europe are part of the Turkic group of the Altaic language family: the Turks within the European part of Turkey and as a national minority in Bulgaria and the Gagauz in Bulgaria. The Semitic group of the Semitic-Hamitic family is represented in Foreign Europe by a small population of the island of Malta. A special language that is not part of any language family is spoken by the Basques, a people inhabiting the northwestern part of the Pyrenees.

anthropological composition. Back in the 17th century. The anthropological originality of the peoples of Europe was attributed by Francois Bernier to one Caucasoid racial type common to both the peoples of Western Asia and North Africa. In all subsequent classifications, anthropologists distinguish this type as one of the three or four large human races of the Earth called Caucasoid, Caucasian, or white, in contrast to Negroid, Mongoloid and Australoid.

From the end of the 19th century several detailed schemes of large races appeared, in particular the Caucasoid large race, taking into account pigmentation and geographical variations of individual characters. Observed here and there in southern Europe, especially in the south of France, some traits of Negroidity are a consequence of the fact that the "Euro-African type" was a stage of development common to both Negroids and Caucasoids proper. A peculiar position among Caucasians is occupied by the Sami, or Lapps. These northern Caucasians are distinguished by dark pigmentation, the shortest stature in this part of the world, a broad face, a round head, deep-set eyes and a concave nasal bridge. The complex of these features, together with a certain Mongoloid character, characterizes the Lopanoid type.

Greeks. The reliable beginning of this ethnos on the lands of modern Greece is the oldest in Europe. Crete-Mycenaean texts, as proven by the latest research, belonged to one of the ancestors of the Greeks - the Achaeans and belonged to 3-2 millennia BC. e. The period of rapid economic and cultural development of the ancient Greeks was the 8th - 5th centuries. BC e. It was then that crafts, trade flourished and the so-called great Greek colonization took place - the construction of numerous colonial cities on the shores of the Mediterranean, Black and Azov seas, a common Greek cultural unity was established, a common ethnic self-name - the Hellenes and the name of the homeland - Hellas. Ancient civilization played an outstanding role in the development of the entire subsequent culture of Europe and the Middle East. The Romans called the Hellenes-colonists of Southern Italy Greeks, and through the Romans this ethnonym spread among European, and then other peoples.

But modern Greeks go back not only to the ancient Hellenes. In the 6th -8th centuries. AD Slavs settled in the Balkans, including the Peloponnese. It was as a Slavic ethnic element that they survived on the northern outskirts of modern Greece (Macedonians), while the rest were assimilated by the Hellenes, although traces of their presence remained in toponymy (for example, Mount Helikson in Boeotia is now called Zagora). In the 13th - 14th centuries. Albanians settled in northern Greece, and some of them were also assimilated by the Greeks. The descendants of the local population, either the Thracians or the Celts, are the Greek Vlachs (Aromanians), Romanized in the second half of the 1st beginning of the 2nd millennium AD. Capture of Greece by the Ottoman Turks in the 15th century. caused the struggle of the Greeks for liberation and contributed to the awakening of their national consciousness.

Today, the Greeks live not only in their homeland and in Cyprus (Cypriots, 0.5 million people), but also in many countries of the Mediterranean, in other countries of Europe, the Americas, and Australia.

The most characteristic economic activities of the Greeks since ancient times are the cultivation of grapes, olives and almonds, transhumance of sheep and goat breeding, pottery and carpet weaving. The cultivation of cereals does not satisfy its own demand. In the postwar years, the importance of high-value subtropical crops, cotton, as well as fishing and maritime trade, increased. The basis of Greek food is beans seasoned with lemon, olive oil, garlic, parsley, as well as sweet peppers, eggplant, tomatoes, pickled olives, Turkish pilaf, cheese and sour milk.

The buildings of traditional settlements are crowded, houses are built of raw stone, one- and two-story, in the latter case, livestock is placed on the first floor, the second serves as housing. The windows and verandas of the houses face the sunny side. The dwelling is heated by a brazier with coals. The folk men's costume is better preserved among the population of the islands: black or blue trousers, a white shirt, a vest with many buttons, a red or black sash, a red fez, sometimes with a black tassel, a woolen cloak. Women's costume: a long white shirt of a tunic cut, with wide and long sleeves, an embroidered hem, a wide long skirt, there is a variant of a sundress.

After centuries of enslavement by the Turks, the Greeks received national sovereignty in 1830 with the active assistance of Russia. An important role in this struggle, as well as in the social life of the modern Greek Republic in general, was played by the Orthodox Church.

Christianity, which spread in the country from the 2nd century. n. e. adheres to almost the entire believing population, only a small number of Greeks on the island of Rhodes and in Thrace profess Islam.

Greece is still an agrarian country with a fairly significant development of industry.

Albanians. Their self-name is shchiptar, etymology is “speaking clearly”. They come from the ancient aboriginal population of the Balkans - the Illyrians or Thracians. Already in the 4th c. BC e. the first state formations of the Illyrian-Thracian ethnic groups are known on the western coast of the Balkan Peninsula, which over the next two centuries were subordinated to Rome and settled by Roman colonists. The population of the southern part of the Illyrian-Thracian territory, in particular the land of present-day Albania, was culturally and economically more developed due to close ties with Hellas, it retained its language. From the 6th c. Slavs settled in Albania. They are assimilated, but traces of their presence here are everywhere preserved in toponymy.

At the end of the 12th century the first sovereign Albanian state known from documents, Arbery, arose. At the end of the 15th century Albania was occupied by the Turks. From the 16th century Islam spread throughout the country. The centuries-old struggle for independence, especially in the guerrilla war at the beginning of the 20th century, contributed to the formation of a single Albanian nation.

The traditional and main occupation of the Albanian peasants is distant sheep breeding. In agriculture, the grain direction prevailed: barley, rye, oats and wheat were grown in the mountainous regions, and millet in the valleys. From the 17th century corn has been cultivated since the 19th century. - potatoes, in the 20th century. - also cotton and sugar beets. In the coastal strip, horticulture (olives, fruits and grapes) and winemaking have long been developed. It is known that at the end of the 1st millennium AD. e. dozens of types of crafts were highly developed in Albania: the manufacture of gold-embroidered items, silver-ornamented weapons, silk fabrics, cast silver buckles, etc. Today, most craftsmen are united in production cooperatives. Of particular importance are those crafts that are associated with folk clothes or household items: they sew white fezzes for men, cover the bride’s elegant velvet sleeveless jackets with gold embroidery, weave lint-free or nap carpets of bright colors with geometric or stylized floral ornaments.

Rural settlements of Albanians are of three types: scattered, crowded and regular (modern). In Albania, the same types of traditional dwellings are found as in other countries of the Balkan Peninsula. Two-story houses with a veranda along the upper, residential floor are common, the lower floor is a barn and other utility rooms. In northern Albania, there are two- and three-storey tower houses made of unworked (or only processed at the corners) stone with loopholes. In low-lying, partly in swampy places, wattle one-story houses plastered with clay are common.

Among believing Albanians, more than 2/3 are Muslims (of which 2/3 are Sunnis and

Uz - Shiites), who live mainly in the central regions of the country - both in villages and in cities. About a quarter of believers are Orthodox, they inhabit mainly the south of the country. The rest, a little over 10% of believers, are Catholics living in the north of Albania.

Romanskaya group pa is represented by 15 peoples: Italians (65 million in the world, of which 85% in Italy), Italian Swiss (230 thousand), Friuls (400 thousand), Romanches (50 thousand), Ladins (14 thousand), Corsicans (280 thousand), Catalans (7.2 million), Spaniards (27 million), Galicians (3 million), Portuguese (10.7 million), French (44 million), Franco-Swiss (1 million) .), Walloons (4 million), Aromanians, or Vlachs (225 thousand), and Romanians (19 million).

All 15 now Romance-speaking peoples at the origins of ethnogenesis spoke other languages, including partly the ancestors of the Italians. In the 8-3 centuries. BC e. the Romans gradually subjugated and assimilated the language-related Italian tribes on the Apennine Peninsula, as well as non-Indo-European ethnic groups - the Etruscans, or Tirsenes, then in the north-east of Italy the Illyrian tribe of Veneti, in the 1st century BC. n. e. - Numerous Celtic tribes in the Po Valley, and in the north-west of the country - Ligurians. In the south of the Apennine Peninsula and on the islands of Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, the Romans conquered multilingual peoples - Iapids, Carthaginians, Sicans, immigrants from Hellas - and Romanized them, although the Greeks retained the remnants of their language until the 15th century.

In the 3rd century BC e. the Romans managed to capture the Iberian Peninsula with its multilingual tribal composition. The south and east were occupied by the Iberian tribes, the north by the Basques, the west (present-day Galicia and Portugal) by the Celtic tribes, in the center of the peninsula in the zone of contact with the Iberian - mixed, Celt-Iberians.

Equally ethnically complex was the territory of Gaul and Belgium. The Mediterranean strip was inhabited by the Iberians, later Ligurians, Phoenicians, and Greeks settled here. The central and northern regions were inhabited by Celtic tribes, the Gauls. After the conquests of Julius Caesar (58-51 BC), the Roman colonies, founded on the site of ancient settlements of the indigenous population, became centers of the rho-lanization of these ethnic groups, which switched to local folk dialects of the Latin language.

The process of Romanization proceeded unevenly, but rather intensively, until the end of the existence of the Roman Empire (5th century AD), both on the lands of present-day France and Belgium, and on all the ethnic groups of the Iberian Peninsula. Played a significant role in cementing these ethnic groups into Romance-speaking peoples from the 3rd century. n. e. the Christian church of Rome, whose official language has always been Latin. This is how the languages ​​of the Walloons (in Belgium), the French, and on the Iberian Peninsula - the Spaniards, Catalans, Galicians, Portuguese began to take shape.

In the 1st century BC e. the Romans subjugated several multilingual tribes in the center of the Alps (these were related to the Etruscans) and north of the Adriatic Sea (native Euganeans, Illyrian Venets and Celtic-speaking Carns). Over the next five centuries, Romanization gave rise to three Romansh peoples - the Romansh living in the canton of Graubünden in Switzerland, the Ladins (there and in the Dolomites in Italy), and the Friuls - in the province of Udine in northeast Italy.

In 146 BC. e. Rome completed the conquest of Greece. However, the Greek language survived thanks to the high culture of the Hellenes. Moreover, the Greek language is widely used in Italy as the language of culture and science. But some local ethnic groups of the Balkan Peninsula were Romanized. The already mentioned Aromans also live in Albania and Yugoslavia. The ethnonym Aromun from Byzantine times has a more common, although somewhat disparaging in etymology, synonym - vlakh ("rude, uncultured") or kutsovlakh ("lame vlakh") as an allusion to the poor knowledge of the Byzantine language - Greek.

Ethnic groups also underwent Romanization north of the lower reaches of the Danube - in Dacia, which the Roman emperor Trajan captured at the beginning of the 2nd century. AD The Thracian tribes of the Dacians or Dacogetes lived here. The Roman legions and auxiliary cohorts located here played an important role in the Romanization of the province. Wherever the legionnaires were recruited from, they themselves romanized in language during many decades of service and unwittingly contributed to the romanization of the local population. This was especially facilitated by those Dacians who, having served in the Roman legions in a foreign land, settled in their homeland as landowners, artisans, and merchants. Even in the post-Roman period (after 271 AD), at least 50 settlements in Dacia retained their Daco-Romanesque character.

Unlike Roman Catholics and Protestants in Western Europe, Aromanians and Romanians are Orthodox.

The traditional occupations of Italians are gardening, grain farming and animal husbandry. Viticulture and, based on it, winemaking are in first place both in terms of the antiquity of the industries themselves, and in terms of their prevalence in almost the entire territory of Italy. Italians rank third in the world after the United States and Spain in the production of citrus fruits; apples, pears, and olives are grown from other horticultural crops. Vegetable growing has ancient origins (legumes, onions, garlic), now potatoes, tomatoes, gourds and cabbage, sugar beets, tobacco and hemp are also grown in rural areas. In the mountainous regions, the Italians are engaged in transhumance sheep breeding; in the valleys and foothills of northern Italy, cattle are bred.

In the food of Italians, pasta dishes (in Italian - "pasta") are popular. Usually, the first course (minestra) is served with pasta flavored with tomato sauce or butter and cheese, sometimes ground meat. There are a lot of spices and seasonings in the food. Village minestra - dzuppa (bean and vegetable soup with bread soaked in soup). Wheat bread, sometimes made from cornmeal. Polenta is also prepared from it - a kind of corn porridge, hominy, which is served on the table cut into slices. Vegetable salads, fried vegetables, fruits, cheeses are common. Grape wine is an indispensable accessory for lunch, coffee is very popular.

More than half of Italians live in cities. Italian cities are the oldest in the European part of the world after the Phoenician and Greek. Some cities in Italy were founded in pre-Roman times: the Greeks - Naples, the Etruscans - Bologna, and the majority - in ancient times (Rome, Genoa, etc.).

The modern Italian city is not only an administrative and cultural center, it is primarily the center of industry of a wide variety of industries. Italy is a developed industrial-agrarian country (6th place in terms of industrial production in the capitalist world).

Rural settlements of Italians - three types. In the Alpine zone in the north, partly in the center and in the south of the country, large villages and villages with a linear or radial layout are common. On the plains - farms. Peculiar type of settlement in the central foothill areas - top on the hills, reminiscent of a fortress in location and appearance.

Rural estates are characterized by four types - two suggest the location of residential and utility buildings under one roof, in the other two the buildings represent separate premises. The first type is Latin, found throughout Italy. This is a two-story stone house with a gable tiled roof. An external stone staircase with a platform at the top leads to the second floor, and the house itself is divided vertically into two parts. In one half there is a kitchen downstairs, upstairs - living rooms, in the second - above the barn there is a hayloft. The second type is alpine, distributed in the northernmost parts of Italy. The two-story house consists of a stone first floor and a log second floor. An open gallery stretches around the walls of the second floor with wooden railings and wood carvings on pillars, plank lining of the gallery, cornices and architraves. The house has a vertical division, as in a Latin house. The third type is a court, a closed rectangle formed by stone residential and utility buildings, in the center is a courtyard with a current for threshing grain. The fourth type is Apennine, which assumes a separate location of residential and outbuildings, and the entire estate is fenced. The last two types of estates date back to ancient Roman villas and are found in small patches in Romance-speaking Europe. Preserved in Italy are archaic domed stone buildings - trulli. Their walls are laid dry; inside - the only room without windows.

Although folk clothes in the countryside are being supplanted by the common European costume, in some places it is preserved quite steadfastly. Italian men's folk costume: pantaloni (short, below the knee, pants), camicha (white, sometimes embroidered tunic shirt with sewn-in sleeves), jakka (short jacket) or panciotto (sleeveless jacket), hat or berretto (bag-like headdress). Women's folk costume: gona (long wide skirt, grembiule (apron), camicha, corsetto (short blouse to the waist, with lacing), jacket or dzhubetto (open outerwear - to the hips or shorter), fazzoletto (head scarf). In the Alpine regions, they wear wooden shoes with iron spikes so as not to slip on stones, and with leather socks or wear chochi (soft sandals made of untanned leather, tied to the leg over stockings or footcloths with long straps - shoes of ancient origin).

The vast majority of the believing population of Italy are Catholics.

The Romansh are close to the Italians and Italo-Swiss in traditional occupations and material culture. Among the Ladins and Romanches, the Alpine type of the estate is common, among the Friuls - the court, as well as the Carnian version of the Alpine house, extensive galleries, arcuate porticos, stairs to the second (and third) floor, often internal. There are also two characteristic Friulian dishes: brovade (turnips aged in grape pomace and grated) and dumplings with cottage cheese and raisins.

France is a developed industrial country with highly productive agriculture. In rural areas, the French are engaged in animal husbandry, field cultivation and viticulture. Cattle can be kept almost all year round on open pastures divided into paddocks. In the highlands of the Alps and the Pyrenees, transhumance is maintained.

Wheat, oats, barley, to a lesser extent rye, corn and rice are the main field crops of French peasants. Almost everywhere in France, except for the north and north-west of the country, viticulture and winemaking have long been developed on its basis. The French rank first in the world in oyster fishing (in the Atlantic).

French national cuisine has long been famous for its variety of dishes. There are a lot of vegetables and root crops in food, cheese is popular. Among the meat dishes, a significant place is occupied by the meat of rabbits, poultry, in the south - pigeons. The traditional national dish is a steak with potatoes in boiling vegetable oil. Leek soup with potatoes and onion soup topped with cheese are popular throughout the country. In Provence, bouillabaisse soup is traditional, made from various types of fish, flavored with pepper, and there is also a favorite dish - snails with gray bread, grated with garlic. Olives diversify the table of southerners. Dry wine is served twice a day. In terms of dry wine consumption, the French rank first in the world.

Two-thirds of the French live in cities, many of which date back to Roman times.

The rural settlements of the French are represented by two zones: a zone of villages of a street or ordinary plan in northeastern France, a cumulus plan in the mountainous regions of the Mediterranean coast, and a zone of farms in the rest of France. There are four types of traditional homestead. The French type is common throughout most of the country. This is a one-story building, in which residential and utility rooms are combined under one roof, stretched in a line parallel to the street. The corte type prevails in the northeast and along the middle Seine, the Alpine type in the Alps and the Pyrenees, and in the south of France and on the island of Corsica, the type most reminiscent of Latin.

The folk costume was supplanted by the French by the pan-European one before anyone else in Europe, a century ago. The men's costume consisted of trousers (in the 18th century - short, tied with woolen garters under the knees, from the end of the 18th century - long and narrow), a shirt, a waistcoat, a neckerchief, a felt or straw hat. In the last century, a loose blouse has become widespread. The suit of a modern worker is overalls or overalls, on the head - a cap or beret. In general terms, the French women's costume resembles the Italian one.

By religion, the majority of believers in the country are Catholics. About 1 million French people are Protestants.

The social life of the French is distinguished by high political activity, especially by the working class, which has gone through a great school of class struggle. The French Communist Party plays an important role in the political and cultural life of the country.

The Walloons make up 40% of the Belgian population and live in its southeastern half. They have long been known as a handicraft people. In the late Middle Ages, Walloon artisans found demand in European countries, forming in some (for example, Sweden) compatriotic colonies and constituting an ethnic minority. And now in the most developed industries of Belgium (coal, metallurgical, engineering, chemical) mainly Walloons are occupied. Agriculture attracted an insignificant part of the people, mainly for year-round feeding on open pastures of large, meat and dairy cattle. The proximity and density of urban-type settlements gave rise to a narrow specialization of farms (garden and greenhouse, poultry, pig).

Most of the Walloons live in small towns and workers' settlements, numbering no more than 15 thousand people. Such settlements, small towns, sometimes villages form a chain of settlements merging with each other and stretching for tens of kilometers. Such a chain of settlements stretches along the river. Sambra in the coal basin of Mons - Charleroi, and further along the river. Meuse, from Namur to Liege, that is, from the border of France to the border of the Federal Republic of Germany, across the whole of Belgium.

The rural settlements of the Walloons are characterized by small villages of the street or cumulus type, and in the Ardennes - large villages. Traditional buildings of the past - frame, in the Ardennes - stone, modern - brick. The sloping trussed roofs of the Walloons are covered with tiles or slate. Walloon houses are usually not plastered, and the decoration of red brick houses is provided during construction - laying a layer of white limestone bricks in the walls and lining the architraves with white stone. The Walloons traditionally have three types of homestead: a closed type, reminiscent of the court in Italy; Walloon, similar to Apennine in Italy; in the Ardennes, the Alpine type.

The peoples of the Iberian Peninsula have long been famous as skillful growers and winemakers. And now almost half of the Portuguese and Galicians and about 40% of the Spaniards and Catalans are engaged in agriculture, let's say Spain ranks first in the world in olive oil production, second in vineyard area and third in grape harvest and wine production, and the Portuguese - in first place in the world in terms of wine production per capita.

The culture of olives, introduced by the Hellenes, took root on the peninsula. Spaniards and Catalans provide half of all its world production. Similar is the importance in the economic activities of the Spaniards and Catalans of citrus fruits, in which Spain ranks first in the world in exports and second after the United States in harvesting, figs and almonds - second in the world after Italy.

Despite the arid climate of two-thirds of the peninsula, grain farming has long been developed here. They grow wheat and other crops. The irrigation system has a long tradition. There is a noria, introduced back in the centuries of Arab domination, - a wheel with buckets for scooping up water from a reservoir, driven by a donkey or horse. In the province of Valencia, the Water Tribunal is still operating - a relic of customary law. The Water Tribunal resolves all disputes between owners of irrigation canals arising from the use of water. His judgments are not subject to appeal.

Already in the Roman era in Spain and Portugal, cattle were bred on irrigated meadows. The bull was revered by the peoples of the Iberian Peninsula as a sacred animal. Cattle breeding is still one of the most important occupations of the Portuguese in the north of their country, Galicians and Spaniards. Since ancient times, the population of the peninsula has been breeding goats, using their milk, meat and wool. Merino sheep were introduced by the Arabs, and after the Reconquista, sheep breeding spread to all areas of Spain and Portugal, except for the coastal ones. Castilian wool products are known all over the world. In terms of the number of sheep and goats, Spain is inferior in foreign Europe only to England (in meat breeds) and Greece (in dairy breeds).

Fishing has very ancient origins on the peninsula, especially among the Portuguese and Galicians. In ethnographic literature, there is even an opinion that Portuguese fishermen are the descendants of the Phoenician colonists, and Portuguese fishing boats with highly raised curved bows and a traditional pair of huge eyes on the bow of the vessel seem to confirm this assumption.

Almost all the cities of the Iberian Peninsula are of very ancient origin. Many of them grew up on the site of ancient Iberian or Celtic fortified settlements, the layout of which is still visible in the centers of some cities (Spanish Seville, Sagunto). The Spanish Cadiz (Gades) was founded by the Phoenicians, the Spanish Cartagena (New Carthage) - by the Carthaginians, the Catalan Barcelona - by the Hellenes, under the Romans many villages became the most beautiful cities (Spanish Merida, Catalan Tarragona, etc.). Moorish-style features are worn by many southern cities of the peninsula, including Cordoba and Granada.

The non-urban settlements of the peninsula are divided into four types, in accordance with the main profession of the inhabitants, and sometimes with the boundaries of ethnic groups. So, along the Atlantic and

The Mediterranean coast is lined with semi-urban fishing villages, located on the site of ancient settlements. The farm type is characteristic of the Galicians. It is known that among the Portuguese in ancient times the northern regions differed from the southern ones: even now farms predominate in the north, while the rest of the Portuguese, like the Spaniards and Catalans, have street-type villages.

Rural dwellings of the Iberian Peninsula are represented by seven types. Some of them have an analogy with Italian ones. Geographically, these types conditionally correspond to climatic zones and partly reveal the influence of cultures of different ethnic groups. In the humid zone, counting from the west from northern Portugal and Galicia to the east to Navarra, two types of estates are common: Galician (among the Galicians, Asturians and northern Portuguese) - an analogue of the Apennine type in Italy, as well as Basque (see "Basques"). In the central strip, counting from the west from southern Portugal to the northeast to the middle of the Pyrenees, an adobe variant of the corte type is common. Four types of estates are typical for the south and east of the Iberian Peninsula, from Andalusia to Catalonia. The first is the Levantine barracks, a type of hut made of reed wickerwork, smeared with clay, with a high steep gable roof without a chimney, covering the outside of the wall almost to the ground. The second is the Andalusian corte, bearing traces of the traditions of the Romans and partly of the Arabs. The third - Andalusian terraced, with earthen or adobe walls and a flat roof, is common among the Spaniards of Andalusia and Murcia and the Catalans of Valencia and Catalonia, in places of the former domination of the Arabs. The fourth - the Andalusian landowner's cortijo, in general schematic terms similar to the Italian type of corte, is distinguished by the fundamental nature of stone buildings that form a closed courtyard, into which a gate leads through a tower, outbuildings are located inside the courtyard.

Variants of the Spanish folk costume survived in everyday life only in some areas, and in the most generalized form, the women's costume is represented by a wide pleated skirt with an apron, a light blouse, a corsage or a short woolen manton jacket (a motley shawl fastened on the chest), on the head - a scarf or sombrero. the composition of the men's suit: calsones (narrow and just below the knees dark trousers), camisa (white linen shirt), chaleko (vest), short woolen jacket with buttons, faja (bright fabric sash), fitter (two-horned Spanish cap) or sombrero. Outerwear: kapas (dark cloak), cloak-like capes, plaids. Zapatos (leather pointed shoes) or abarcas (rawhide boots) are worn on the feet, and in wet weather wooden almadreñas are put on top.

The Catalans dress like the Spaniards, in addition they wear a barretina (a cap like a Phrygian cap), the Galicians have clothes more adapted to the damp climate, they prefer dense fabrics (cloth and flannel in dark tones or leather), and in the rain they put on a corosa (a long straw raincoat - cap opening at the front). The clothing of the Portuguese, unlike the Spanish, is characterized by greater brightness - for example, the favorite colors of the apron are red, yellow, green

Believing Spaniards, Catalans, Galicians, Portuguese-Catholics. Many holidays consecrated by the church are of pre-Christian origin (the Celtic origin of the Maypole holiday - mayos, the equally ancient origin of the carnival with the "fight of Flowers" in Murcia, the comic funeral of the sardine in Madrid and other cities, fairs, extravaganzas, the Valencian fallas with the burning of stuffed giants). Long-standing roots in the Pyrenees has a love for bullfighting - bullfighting.

Basques. Their self-name is euskaldunak, "speaking Basque". These are the descendants of the ancient pre-Indo-European population, occupying a position isolated in terms of language. They live in the northern part of the Iberian Peninsula on both slopes at the junction of the Cantabrian and Pyrenean mountains, most in Spain, less in France. The number of Basques is about 1 million people. Traditional occupations in the mountainous regions are transhumance sheep breeding, on the plains and in the foothills - meat and dairy farming, as well as grain farming, horticulture and viticulture. From the 14th century due to the landlessness of part of the peasantry, the role of fishing increased, and labor was freed up for sea merchant ships. Of the folk crafts, the extraction of iron ore lying on the surface (now the mining and metallurgical industries) and blacksmithing have long been developed.

The farm type of settlement in the countryside is characteristic. The settlement around the church and administration building is a relatively recent phenomenon. The Basque type of dwelling is a two- or three-story house, rectangular in plan, under one gable roof common with outbuildings, stands in the center of the estate, surrounded by arable land, a garden and a vineyard. The lower floor is made of large hewn stone, plastered, the upper one is of frame construction, sometimes the whole house is of frame construction.

Basque folk costume is worn only at carnivals. However, the purely Basque national headdress, the beret, not only remained the Basque men's headdress of any age, but also spread among other peoples on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Spanish Basques received regional autonomy in 1980.

Maltese. They are the only Semitic-speaking people in Europe inhabiting two islands (Malta and Gozzo). It was formed from many multilingual ethnic groups that successively arrived on the island. Material traces of the first settlers remained from the Neolithic in the form of burial grounds and the ruins of stone buildings. Maltese, which is closest to the Tunisian dialect of Arabic, still bears traces of the Sicilian dialect of Italian, as well as English, because from 1900 to 1964 the island was a British colony, since 1964 it became a sovereign state. There are more than 360 thousand Maltese people, they have the highest population density in Europe - more than 1 thousand people per 1 sq. km. km.

Agriculture is carried out on tiny, terraced plots, conquered for centuries in the rocky mountains for garden (potatoes, onions, garlic, beans, peas, peppers) and cereals (wheat, barley) crops, as well as vineyards and orchards. Lack of pasture limits livestock to domestic (donkeys, mules, pigs, sheep, goats). They cultivate the land in the old fashioned way - with a hoe. The climate and natural fertilizers make it possible to harvest 2-3 crops of some crops per year. Since the Middle Ages, the Maltese have been glorified by crafts: silk and cotton lace, straw weaving and filigree work.

The houses are stone, with an indispensable gallery in front of the facade. Black is predominant in clothes.

Religion - Catholicism plays a very important role in the life of the Maltese.

The democratic government of Malta is taking measures to develop the economy, primarily the port and ship repair facilities, and eliminate remnants in public and private life.

German group. 17 peoples of foreign Europe speak languages ​​or dialects of the Germanic language group. These are Germans (60 million in the FRG, 17 million in the GDR and 2 million in West Berlin), Austrians (7.2 million), German Swiss (4 million), Luxembourgers (300 thousand), Alsatians (1.4 million), Lorraine (200 thousand), Flemings (7 million in Belgium and France), Dutch (11.6 million), Frisians (410 thousand), Danes (5 million), Swedes (8 million), Norwegians (4 million), Icelanders (220 thousand), Faroese (40 thousand), English (44 million), Scots (5 million) and Ulsters (1 million).

The peoples of the Germanic group inhabit the lands of Central, Western and Northern Europe, including the islands of the North Atlantic. In the middle of the 1st millennium BC. e. the Germans occupied lands only in the north of modern Germany and the GDR, as well as Scandinavia. In the 2-3 centuries. n. e. Germanic tribes began to break into the boundaries of the Roman Empire, and in the 5th - 6th centuries. settled throughout the Western Roman Empire up to North Africa. After the collapse of the empire of Charlemagne (843) on the lands between the Rhine and Elbe and the Upper Danube, inhabited by Saxons, Bavarians, Alemans and other tribes, the German nationality began to take shape. The Danes formed on the Jutland Peninsula and the nearby islands, and the Swedes and Norwegians formed on the Scandinavian Peninsula. On the coast of the North Sea, the Dutch people were formed, in the Netherlands, in the north-west of Germany and on the islands adjacent to the mainland, the Frisian, in northern Belgium - the Flemish, close in language to the Dutch.

In the 5th -6th centuries. the Germanic tribes of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes conquered a significant part of the British Isles with their Celtic population, and then Ireland was subjected to raids by the Danes and Norwegians, accompanied by their colonization in East Anglia. As a result of these complex processes, new peoples were formed: the English, the Scots and, many centuries later, the Ulsters. Romance roots in English arose from the influence of the Romans on the language of the Celts and the Normans themselves, who by the time of the conquest of England in 1066 had almost lost their language and spoke, after a long stay in Normandy, in Old French.

The North Germans of Jutland, the Danish Islands and the Scandinavian Peninsula during the "Viking Age" (from approx. 800 to 1050) captured and colonized the islands of the North Atlantic. At the same time, immigrants from Norway gave rise to new ethnic groups - the Faroese and Icelanders, whose language is very close to Old Norse.

The traditional occupations of the Germanic peoples are animal husbandry, mainly cattle breeding, and agriculture. In mountainous Scandinavia, Switzerland, Austria, Scotland and in the south of Germany, animal husbandry has always been of a transhumance-stall character (transportation of livestock to summer pastures in the mountains while keeping it in a stall in the winter in the countryside). In Iceland, in the Faroe Islands, sheep breeding is traditionally developed, in Iceland, in addition, food horse breeding. Agriculture was more developed among the Germans and Austrians, where grain crops give high yields and their cultivation is of great importance in the economy. Thanks to the high level of equipment in agriculture with machinery, electricity and the use of chemicals, the Germans, Danes, and partly the Dutch are now getting the highest yields of wheat, rye, and potatoes in Europe. Other Germanic peoples are often engaged in agriculture as an auxiliary to livestock farming, growing fodder crops; among the Germanic peoples, the Dutch were the first to engage in fishing. Even in the early Middle Ages, they began to use salting herring. Fishing among the Scandinavians, primarily among the Norwegians, Icelanders and Faroese, acquired a commercial character only from the 19th century.

More than two-thirds of Germans now live in cities. The traditional type of settlement of the Germans, about which Tacitus wrote (1st century AD) and which survived until modern times in German lands, is large cumulus villages with randomly arranged courtyards and crooked streets. Only in the east of the GDR were circular settlements with a central square preserved, apparently inherited from the once assimilated Slavic population. In the west and south of Germany, partly among the Swedes, Danes and Faroese, there is a farm type of settlement. The farm type is almost exclusively common among the Frisians, Flemings, Dutch, Norwegians and Icelanders.

Traditional for the Germans, Flemings, Frisians, Danes and South Swedes, the construction technique of the dwelling is frame, or frame, the so-called fachtop. Log buildings are common in forest areas in the south of the FRG, the east of the GDR, among the Norwegians and Swedes, and partly among the Austrians and German Swiss. Stone and brick houses were built before only in the cities and in some places in the villages on the Rhine and in Upper Bavaria. Local features that are preserved in the material culture of the Germans are especially clearly revealed precisely in the types of dwellings. In the past, they were associated with regional division, hence the names of traditional types of houses and estates - Saxon, Franconian, Alemannic, etc.

In the northern half of Germany, in Denmark and Holland, the Saxon or Frisian house-yard prevails - a large rectangular frame building with residential and utility rooms under one roof, steep, often four-pitched, thatched, later tiled. The entire weight of the roof lies not on the walls, but on the internal pillars. Covered courtyard - a threshing floor occupies the middle of the house, opposite the entrance there is a hearth with a hanging boiler.

In the middle part of the FRG and in the south of the GDR, the frame Franconian or South Limburg type is widespread. Outside the proper German lands, it is found in Switzerland, Austria, Belgium and partly in Holland. The residential building and outbuildings separately cover the courtyard of the estate from three or four sides. In addition to the open hearth, there is a stove in the living room. The border between Saxon and Franconian manor types coincides with the border between Low German and Middle German dialects.

In the south-west of the Federal Republic of Germany (Baden-Württemberg) the log Aleman type of the estate is widespread. Log residential and utility rooms make up a continuous building under one roof and are located either in a U-shape, bordering the courtyard of the estate on three sides, or in a rectangle, forming a closed courtyard inside it. The last sub-variant is schematically similar to the Italian type of corte manor.

Upper Bavaria is characterized by the alpine type of manor, which is also common in Western Austria, Switzerland, northern Italy, and northwestern Yugoslavia.

The estates of the Norwegians, as well as the Swedes of the forest regions, consist of a log two- or three-story residential building and many outbuildings. The layout of the estate depends on the conditions of the area. On the plain, individual rooms form a rectangle around a stone-paved courtyard. On the mountain slope, the buildings were located in the "cattle row" (down the slope) and "clean" (up the slope). The most archaic forms of residential and outbuildings in Iceland and the Faroe Islands. They are built of stone (tuff, basalt), turf, floater or imported timber. The cracks between the boulders are laid with turf. On top of the stone walls, the houses are sheathed with boards. The roof is gable, made of birch bark and boards, covered with turf on a rafter crate. Artistic woodcarving is developed among the Norwegians, Swedes, Germans, German-Swiss, Austrians (platbands, supporting pillars of dwellings and storage facilities, utensils).

The first information about the clothing of the Germans dates back to the beginning of our era. Men wore a shirt with sewn-in sleeves or without sleeves, which consisted of two panels of fabric sewn on the shoulders, long trousers, leather soles with webbing from belts served as shoes (the same for men and women). The underwear women's shirt also consisted of two panels, which were fastened with brooches over the shoulders. Later, sleeves were sewn to this attire. At the same time, outerwear was known - a raincoat with a hood.

The Germanic peoples have developed many regional costumes. But unlike more southern peoples, corsage, jacket, skirt, apron were always sewn from warm, heavy woolen fabrics. Residents of Hesse (Germany) even now wear several short, ruched skirts (their number used to reach 20, and this emphasized prosperity), from under which the edge of a white shirt protrudes, a black corsage with sleeves up to the elbow and a small red cap. The traditional costume of the women of Franconia is designed in red and brown colors and consists of a skirt, a colorful apron with a zigzag pattern, a sweater with quilted sleeves gathered at the shoulders, a bodice with a wide neckline. Women's costume of the German-Swiss Catholics of the canton of Appenzell in Switzerland - a dark or red skirt and apron, a black corsage with silver decorations, a jacket with puffy sleeves to the elbow, a headdress made of white and black lace in the form of two large wings, a lace shoulder scarf depicting a mountain flower edelweiss . In Norway, up to 150 types of women's regional clothing have been preserved, in which women dress up for the holiday.

At present, the folk costume of all German-speaking peoples has been supplanted by the pan-European urban type and is preserved only for special occasions (holidays, choirs, etc.). Nevertheless, some details (the choice of color, ornament, decorations, etc.) are preserved, especially in women's village clothes, quite steadfastly.

Such ancient types of craft among the Germanic peoples as knitting (including sweaters, mittens, socks decorated with geometric and zoomorphic ornaments), carpet weaving, weaving, lace making and embroidery are widely used today.

Celtic group. Four peoples represent this once numerous language group. The British Isles are inhabited by Irish (3 million people in the Republic of Ireland and 500 thousand in Ulster on the same island of Ireland), Welsh (700 thousand in Wales) and Gaels (90 thousand in Scotland and the Hebrides), and on the Brittany Peninsula in France - the Bretons (1.1 million people). Only the Irish of the Republic of Ireland have their own nation-state. The struggle for cultural autonomy is acute among the Bretons and especially among the Irish of Ulster, who are opposed by the extremist organizations of the Ulsters - descendants of mixed Anglo-Irish and Anglo-Scottish families.

The traditional occupations of these four Celtic peoples until the end of the late Middle Ages, and among the Irish until the middle of the 19th century. - agriculture and animal husbandry. They grew barley, oats and wheat. Gradually, animal husbandry began to play the main role, and among the Gaels, first of all, sheep breeding, then cattle breeding. The Irish, Welsh and Bretons have cattle in the foreground. Agriculture among the Celts is aimed at growing fodder crops (root crops, oats).

The Bretons in the coastal, most developed regions are also engaged in the cultivation of vegetables for export or for the canning industry (cauliflower, peas, artichokes, etc.). One of their oldest occupations is also developed - fishing (fishing for tuna, sardines, mackerel), and after the war, algae collection and oyster fishing increased sharply. The Celts preserved old crafts - woolen and leather. The Irish are engaged, as in the old days, crafts from straw, hay and reeds. The Gaels remain masters of pottery - they make jugs and tea sets. The Bretons produce handicraft furniture of antique models; Bretons are famous for their art of embroiderers and lacemakers.

The traditional food of the Celts is not diverse. Among the Celts of the British Isles, it consists of cereals (especially porridge - liquid oatmeal), among the Gaels and Irish fish and dairy dishes, mainly soups; haggis is popular - a soup made from lamb or veal offal, boiled with oatmeal, pepper and onions. Corned beef and herring are common. National spirits - beer (ale) and whiskey. The food of the southern Bretons is more varied, they eat more vegetables and fruits.

One of the oldest cities of the Celts - Dublin was founded by the Anglo-Normans in the 12th century. In the last century and a half, rural settlements of the farm type prevail. Archaeological evidence confirms that the ancient Celts built houses of stone. In the Middle Ages, as evidenced by archeology and written sources, houses with wattle walls coated with clay spread. From the 18th century there are houses, both stone - in mountainous and coastal areas, and wattle - in flat, swampy places.

The stone houses of the Bretons, built of granite, wide, squat, with a steep, low-sloping roof, are similar to the stone houses of the Gaels, Irish and Welsh. The originality of the interior of the residential building was made up of high wooden beds with sliding doors, wardrobes in the form of drawers open at the top.

Traditional costumes are in use at folklore holidays, there are many of them especially among the Bretons (66 types of women's costume only). In the costume of older women from different parts of Brittany, the most typical black color of clothing (long wide skirt, stockings, knitted jacket or woolen cape) and shoes, even wooden clogs. Young Breton women have a long, wide skirt and a corset with sewn-on sleeves (both the skirt and corset are heavily embroidered), a long white apron and a white lace cap. In men's costume, tight short trousers were worn in Eastern Brittany (as in the rest of Romano-speaking Western Europe), and in Western Brittany wide trousers of one of two types: either long with pleats gathered at the waist, or short with pleats secured with a cord both at the waist and at the knees. A jacket with a blind collar and two rows of buttons, a sleeveless top and a hat completed the outfit.

The Irish women wore a long, ankle-length, very wide skirt in red, blue or green, fitting at the waist, a light jacket with long narrow sleeves, a round neckline and thick gathers around the neck. A dark bodice was worn over the jacket. A light checkered or striped apron was worn over the skirt, and a shawl with a colored border around the edge and a long fringe was worn over the shoulders. Capes with hoods protected from bad weather. A century ago, the Irish had a custom to dress children of both sexes in a short red skirt on a canvas bra, a knitted shirt and a brown jacket. Only after the first communion, the boy was put on pants, usually short ones.

Men's folk dress of the Irish and Gaels as early as the 14th - 15th centuries. was similar, a saffron-colored linen shirt reached the knees, and was gathered in thick folds at the neck and waist. The Gaels threw a plaid over it, which has remained a characteristic feature of the Scottish costume to this day. The costume of the Gael Highlanders consisted of a checkered knee-length skirt - a kilt, a linen white shirt with a turn-down collar, a short jacket with lapels and no collar, knitted stockings with checkered colors and coarse leather shoes with large metal buckles.

Believing Bretons and three-quarters of the Irish of the island of Ireland profess Catholicism. The Welsh and Gaels, as well as part of the Irish, belong to different Protestant churches or sects (Anglicans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists).

Finno-Ugric group. Three peoples of Foreign Europe represent the Ural family of languages: the Sami, or Lapps (50 thousand), Finns, or Suomi (5 million), and Hungarians, or Magyars (13.4 million).

The Saami are the only reindeer herding people in Foreign Europe. Some of them still lead a semi-nomadic lifestyle with herds of deer, the second is engaged in fishing on lakes and rivers or coastal sea. Settled Saami in non-fishing villages breed large meat and dairy cattle, grow fodder herbs for them, as well as potatoes for their own food. Crafts are developed: sewing fur and cloth clothes, skillfully decorated with fur and colored pieces of cloth, weaving baskets, bone carving, embroidery, making rugs. Most of the products go to meet the demand of the indigenous population, but they are also bought by foreign tourists and museums.

Folk costume - a kind of Arctic clothing - is still common today, especially among reindeer herders. Male: a long, knee-length blouse made of coarse-woolen fabric with a slit at the collar, narrow cloth pants, a four-eared cap (for the Swedish) or a cap with earflaps (for the Norwegian Sami). Female: a deaf long shirt and a cloth (or in summer - cotton) dress, straight, on a small yoke. Shoes for men and women: soft fur boots made of deerskin with fur on the inside, with turned up toes. Winter clothes - malitsa (a fur bag with a hood and sleeves), it is girded to keep warm.

Like most of the believing part of the peoples of Northern Europe, Christianity (Lutheranism) is widespread among the Lapps. The Saami do not have their own statehood, and they exercise the rights of cultural autonomy through the Saami Councils, advisory bodies at the parliaments of Norway, Sweden and Finland, as well as through the All-Saami Council at the interparliamentary Nordic Council of these states

The ancestors of the Finns appeared on the territory of present-day Finland apparently in two waves in the Neolithic era - in the 3rd - 2nd millennium BC. e. from the east and from the south-east, pushing the protolopar population to the north. The long and strong impact of Swedish culture has led to the existence of a stable ethnographic border between west and east - from the city of Kotka through the center of the country to Raha and Oulu.

Half of Finns live in cities. Rural areas are characterized by settlements in villages in the southwest, farms - in the east. Log estates consist of many buildings - residential and commercial, and do not fundamentally differ in layout from Norwegian or Swedish ones.

The traditional women's costume is characterized by a tunic-shaped shirt, a skirt, a colored bodice, an apron and a cap with lace trim, in the southeast - a towel headdress, for a man's - knee-length pants, a caftan, ornamented woolen stockings, postols, or bast shoes.

Despite the harsh, circumpolar and polar conditions, agriculture (animal husbandry and agriculture, until the late Middle Ages - slashing) is the original occupation of the Finns. But cereals (oats, rye, barley) never met the needs of the population, so the main thing was the breeding of large meat and dairy cattle. For him, fodder crops are grown on two-thirds of the arable land. Fishing, both lake-river and sea coastal, has always been an important support. The long-developed forest industries have now turned into a powerful branch of the economy.

Believing Finns are predominantly Lutherans.

The ancestors of the Hungarians lived in the southern Urals. Pressed by the Huns and Avars, they were in the middle of the 1st millennium AD. e. ended up in the Black Sea region, and by the end of the 110th century. reached modern Hungary. In language, they are related to the Khanty and Mansi peoples now living on the lower Ob in the USSR.

Although the Hungarians arrived in the middle Danube region as pastoralists, here on the fertile lands they also became farmers. perhaps having learned this branch of the economy from the Slavs. In any case, the agricultural terminology of the Hungarians is Slavic.

The main crops are cereals, especially wheat. Viticulture and winemaking, river fishing and multifaceted animal husbandry (cattle, sheep, pigs, horses) are well developed. Traditional handicraft production is very developed: furriery, cloth, felt, pottery, weaving, shoemaking.

The food of the Hungarians is varied: flour (noodles, dumplings), vegetables (products from cabbage, legumes, onions, garlic, tomatoes, etc.), meat (especially pork) with spicy seasonings, fruits. They drink grape wine.

More than half of Hungarians are rural residents. The countryside is dominated by either farms - to the west of the Danube, to the east - huge villages of the correct layout, in the Pushta (steppes). The building material of dwellings and outbuildings is clay and reed. The estates are enclosed by a fence, wattle fence or a natural green hedge and are of two types: in one, utility rooms are attached partially or all under one roof with housing; in another - all rooms are built separately. Residential building - one-story, inside - three-part (kitchen, room, pantry).

Men's costume: tight cloth trousers (in the east) or very wide linen trousers (in the west), a short linen shirt, usually with wide sleeves, a short waistcoat trimmed with braid and lacing, high black boots, a straw or felt hat. Women's costume: a very wide ruffled or pleated skirt, worn over petticoats, a pruslik (a bright sleeveless jacket that fits at the waist and is decorated with lacing, metal loops and embroidery), an apron, a cap or a scarf, high boots made of colored leather or papuchas (shoes made of velvet and leather, decorated with bright embroidery, without a back). Girls tie their heads with a wide colorful ribbon with a bow.

Two-thirds of believing Hungarians are Catholics, about a third are Protestants (Reformed).

Man began to populate Europe as the glacier retreated. The most ancient settlements arose about 22 thousand years ago on the territory of the modern Vladimir region and in England. As a result of climate warming, the glacier retreated at a speed of about 1 km. per year, and the man followed him "on the heels." 10 thousand years ago, human settlements already existed on the territory of modern Denmark, 9 thousand years ago in Finland, 8 thousand years ago in Sweden and Norway. Experts believe that the Europeans at that time looked like the modern inhabitants of Northern Europe, the Saami, who have the external features of Caucasians and Mongoloids. Even 8 thousand years ago there was one ancient European language. From its roots in Europe, apparently, only one remained, later formed the language - Basque. Approximately 5-7 thousand years ago, modern Indo-European languages ​​\u200b\u200bwere formed. For many millennia, the formation of the main ethnic groups in Europe took place. By the 5th century AD their main features were formed and their geography was formed.

The Germanic peoples settled most of Central and Northern Europe, the Germanic tribes settled in England and conquered the local Celts. The Slavs historically concentrated in the East, while the Romanesque peoples concentrated in the south. The northeastern tip of Europe was settled by Finno-Ugric peoples who came to this territory as early as the 3rd-2nd centuries. BC e.

In addition to the named peoples, the picture was supplemented by the so-called "ethnic uniques". First of all, this refers to the Greeks, the oldest ethnic group in Europe, which flourished in the 8th-5th centuries. BC e. The self-name of the ethnic group - the Hellenes (and the country - Hellas) did not take root among other peoples, but the name given to them in southern Italy, the Greeks, came into use. On the Iberian Peninsula, the Basques live compactly, speaking a complex, ancient language. They call themselves "euskaldunak", which means "basque speakers". At the other end of Europe, on the Balkan Peninsula, Albanians traditionally lived, descendants of the more ancient inhabitants of this one. Their self-name is “shkiptar”, meaning “those who speak clearly”. Basques and Albanians lived in a completely different "linguistic environment". Maybe that's why they called themselves that? In the west of Europe, centers of residence of the Celtic population have been preserved, and earlier the Celts lived on the mainland of Central Europe. Later, fate brought them to the British Isles.

In the V-X centuries. Europe was going through the era of the Great Migration of Peoples, which covered almost the entire territory of Europe and northern Africa.

By the middle of the XVI century. (this was the Renaissance) formed almost all the major ethnic communities, the predecessors of modern European nations.

From the 16th century and to the present time there have been no major changes in the ethnic composition of the population of Europe. The millions of immigrants from non-European countries, who arrived in the region mainly after the Second World War, did not significantly change the ethnic picture of Europe's 700 million population. Multinational empires - Russian, Ottoman and Austria-Hungary collapsed without creating united nations (yes, it was impossible in those conditions). They were replaced by Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and the USSR. However, they also ceased to exist. In general, we can say that in the west of Europe, ethnic processes at the end of the 20th century. proceed relatively calmly, and in the east they are often accompanied by a desire to create "ethnically pure" states (see also the article ""). This leads to numerous conflicts and even wars (as happens in the former Yugoslavia). Only the former Czechoslovakia has become an example of a calm civilized national "divorce" in the east.

Most European countries are single-ethnic, in which the vast majority of the population is made up of people of the same nationality.

Where did the inhabitants of modern Europe come from? The Trojans, the Hellenes, the descendants of Japheth, the legendary heroes of the Germans - all of them, according to historians of the past, stood at the origins of European civilization.

Japheth

According to the Bible, which is the basis of all Christian mythology, the only ancestors of modern mankind could only be representatives of the Noah family. He, according to Genesis 10, had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth. From the first came the Semites (Jews, Arabs, Assyrians), from the second, the inhabitants of North and East Africa - the Hamites (Egyptians, Libyans, Phoenicians, Ethiopians, as well as representatives of the Negroid race). Japheth is known as the progenitor of all white-faced people on earth (Japhetids). His sons scattered around the world gave birth to Greeks, Celts, Germans, Basques, Thracians, Scythians, Slavs, Armenians, as well as other peoples of Europe and nearby lands.

This version of the origin of peoples was considered the only true one in the Middle Ages - in the period when Europe was born. All chronicles, chronicles and genealogies took Japheth as a starting point. The Tale of Bygone Years, for example, begins like this: “Let's begin this story. After the flood, the three sons of Noah divided the earth - Shem, Ham, Japheth. And Shem got the east: Persia, Bactria ... Ham got the south: Egypt, Ethiopia ... Japheth got the countries of the west and the north. How the sons of Noah divided the land among themselves is clearly shown by medieval maps such as TO. Asia is signed on them with the name of Shem, Africa with Ham, and Europe with Japheth.

Hellene

Characters from the 10th chapter of Genesis often echo the legendary progenitors from the pagan mythologies of the peoples of Europe. So, Elis, the grandson of Japheth, resembles the founder of the Greek people - Hellen, the son of Deucalion (the son of Prometheus) and Pyrrha (the first mortal who was fashioned by the Gods). He became the first king after the Great Flood sent by Zeus in order to destroy the sinful human generation.

Three sons were born from Hellen and the nymph Orseida: Dor, Xuthus and Eol. From the first came the Dorians, from Aeolus the Aeolians, from the descendants of Xuthus the Ionians and Achaeans. All these peoples received the name Hellenes on behalf of their progenitor. It is believed that the biblical Elis or Elisa, who is mentioned in the interpretations of the Holy Scriptures as the progenitor of the Greeks, could be borrowed from the ancient Greek myth of Hellenes.

Aeneas

The Romans, who were considered alien people in the Apennines, in contrast to the local tribes of the Etruscans or Ligures, called themselves the descendants of the Trojans who fled under the leadership of the hero Aeneas from the doomed Troy.

After long wanderings, they ended up at the mouth of the Tiber River, where they decided to settle. Aeneas established friendly relations with the local ruler Latin, who married his daughter Lavinia to him. She gave birth to a Trojan son, Askania-Yul, who founded the city of Alba Longa in the Alban Mountains. So they lived there until the fourteenth generation, until the last king Numitor, due to the lack of male heirs, did not play out a family drama.

His treacherous brother Amulius overthrew Numitor from the throne, and gave his daughter to the priestesses of the goddess Vesta, who took a vow of celibacy. So the royal dynasty would have been interrupted if the god of war Mars himself had not visited the young maiden. From this connection, twins were born - Romulus and Remus, whom Amulius ordered to be thrown into the Tiber. But the twins did not die, but were found and fed by a she-wolf. Further history is known. Romulus and Remus got rid of their uncle, but decided to leave Alba Longa and found a new city. Remus did not live to see this moment because of a quarrel between the brothers, and Romulus in 753 BC, in the third year of the sixth Olympiad, founded the Eternal City of Rome.

Brutus of Troy

Not all the descendants of Aeneas remained in Italy. Among them was a young man named Brutus, who mistakenly killed his father and was banished. After long wanderings in the Tyrrhenian Sea, North Africa and Gaul, where he founded the city of Tours, he landed on the shores of Britain. Even during his wanderings, he had a vision of the island where his descendants would live, sent by the goddess Diana.

Recognizing the land destined for him, he named it after himself and became the first British king (1149 BC - 1125 BC). Brutus founded a city on the banks of the Thames, called it Troia Nova, that is, "New Troy", and made it his capital. Subsequently, the name was corrected to Trinovantum, today it is known as London. In the center of the city, Brutus allegedly erected an altar to the goddess Diana, in gratitude for her generous gift. This stone is still kept behind bars at 111 Cannon Street. According to local lore, if it is destroyed, London will sink under water. In the Middle Ages, the London stone marked the center of London and served to measure distances.

Subsequently, Brutus divided his lands between his three sons: Locrin, who got England, Albanakt (Scotland) and Camber (Wales).
The legend of the Trojan origin of the British first appeared in the Historia Britonum, written in the 9th century AD by the Welshman Nennius. She became famous thanks to Geoffrey of Monmouth, a 12th-century historian, creator of The History of the Kings of Britain and The Life of Merlin.

Mann

According to the list of peoples from the 10th chapter of Genesis, the progenitor of the Germanic and Scandinavian tribes was the grandson of Japheth Askenaz, who lived somewhere in the Rhine region. His descendants include the Anglo-Saxon tribes, who later emigrated to the British Isles. Until now, when it comes to Jews from Germany and Central Europe, the term "Ashkenazi" is used, recalling the settlement of the descendants of Askenaz in these territories. However, the root version of the origin of the Germanic tribes, unlike the Greek, had nothing to do with biblical legends.

We learn about it thanks to the ancient Roman historian Tacitus, who left us a detailed description of the culture and life of the Germanic tribes who lived at the ends of the Roman Empire. According to him, in ancient German chants, the god Tuiston, born of the earth, was glorified, whose son Mann became the progenitor and father of the entire German people. According to Tacitus, according to one version, three sons were attributed to him, by whose names the tribes living near the ocean were called Ingevons, in the middle - Hermiones, all the others - Istevons. According to another, Mann had many descendants, from whom the Marses, Gambrivia, Suebi, Vandylia and others descended. The word Germania, according to Tacitus, is new and recently come into use. That was once the name of the Tungurs - the first tribes who crossed the Rhine and captured the Celtic lands.