Language and Religion: Cultural Geography
Language and Religion: Cultural Geography
Language. The physical diversity of Europe is reflected by its cultural variety expressed in language. The languages spoken by nine out of ten Europeans in the nineteenth century were Indo-European. The most important subfamilies within this heritage are the Romance, Germanic, and Slavic. Speakers of Romance languages generally inhabit western and southern Europe and include the Spanish, Portuguese, Catalans, French, and Italians. Romanian is also a Romance language. Geographically, the region of Romance dominance reflects the areas where the Roman Empire was most deeply established, and, not surprisingly, Romance languages are in part derived from Latin. Germanic languages dominate in northwestern, central, and northern Europe, all regions never completely integrated into the Roman Empire. By the nineteenth century these languages included English, German, Dutch, and the Scandinavian tongues of Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, and Icelandic. The third major subfamily of the common Indo-European stock is Slavic. Again, beyond Roman influence, the Slavic languages geographically encompass parts of central Europe (Polish, Czech, and Slovak), parts of southern Europe including all of the Balkans (Serbian, Croatian, Slovnian, Macedonian, Montenegrin, and Bulgarian), and all of eastern Europe (Russian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian). Minor Indo-European subfamilies include Celtic (Irish, Scots Gaelic, Welsh, and Breton), Baltic (Latvian and Lithuanian), Greek, and Albanian. Of the 10 percent of Europeans who do not speak an Indo-European tongue, the largest groups are the Uralic Finns of Finland, the Magyars of Hungary, the Altaic Turks in the southeastern Balkans, and the Basques in northwestern Spain.
Mind-Set. The significance of these languages in understanding Europe during the industrial era is how they contributed to the powerful mind-set of nationalism. As Europeans increasingly embraced their nation-states with emotional commitment and loyalty, national pride came to be expressed in terms of national distinction. This development, in turn, was linked to linguistic uniqueness and solidarity. One of the defining characteristics of a nation came to be its national language.
Religion. Another politically and culturally significant aspect of Europe during the period under consideration was religion. Like language, it served to unify regions and nations culturally and distinguish them from others. Europe had three dominant religions between 1750 and 1914: Roman Catholic Christianity, Protestant Christianity, and Orthodox Christianity. The regions that remained within the Church of Rome during the Reformation of the sixteenth century largely encompassed southern Europe (Italy, Spain, and Portugal) and parts of western and central Europe (France and portions of Germany such as Bavaria). Protestantism splintered into countless sects during the Reformation and after, but, in general, the geographic regions of these branches of Christianity that renounced the authority of the Church of Rome were located in northern and central Europe (most of Great Britain, Scandinavia, and northern portions of Germany). Orthodox Christianity dominates in eastern Europe (including Russia) where, unlike Protestantism, it did not emerge as a result of a break with Rome during the Reformation. It had been independent of Rome since the time of the Roman Empire. Its believers stretched southward into the Balkans, and thus Orthodox Christianity was, and is, the dominant faith in Serbia, Macedonia, Romania, and Bulgaria as well as Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine in the former Soviet Union. Islam also found its adherents in Europe, but only in the extreme southeastern section. The Ottoman Turks had controlled Greece and part of the Balkans until well into the nineteenth century (Greece gained its independence in 1829), and so the dominant religion in Bosnia and Albania, as examples, was Islam. Judaism, another of the world’s great religions, also counted its adherents within Europe, but nowhere were they in the majority. Centuries of persecution had forced Jews to be mobile (they were often expelled from cities, and sometimes even from entire kingdoms), but during the nineteenth century more were clustered in the cities of central and eastern Europe than anywhere else. Where a religion was dominant, it often served the forces of nationalism. Catholicism in Ireland linked up with nationalism and together led the charge toward home rule (granted in 1922) and eventually independence from the foreign (and Protestant) “oppressor,” Great Britain. Religion could, indeed, have political ramifications.
Sources
Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983).
John Merriman, A History of Modern Europe: Volume Two, From the French Revolution to the Present (New York: Norton, 1996).
Christopher Moseley and R. E. Asher, eds., Atlas of the World’s Languages (London … New York: Routledge, 1994).
Lester Rowntree, and others, Diversity Amid Globalization (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2000).