External and internal European borders

Abstract

The concept of Europe and its external /internal borders has been changing dramatically throughout History. From the most ancient concepts developed by the Greeks and the Romans about what Europe was and how it was physically up to present time , our continent has exceedingly changed its external and internal shapes depending on the knowledge which was being obtained about it. Thus from an eminently Mediterranean Europe as described and observed by the Greeks and Romans ,it started to turn into a continental Europe where new peoples, unknown up to then, were appearing in the centre and the north of the continent. These changes are due to both the geographic science development and the interest in discovering and studying all those peoples which were considered European ones. The overall result is our present concept of Europe and our sense of being members of this community.

The internal borders in our continent have dramatically changed along its complex and long History. Most times these border movements have been the reason for wars which have caused a lot of victims. The change of borders among the European countries in the 20th century has been very tragic especially in the case of both World Wars which meant, as well as war killed people, a massive movement of people from their lands of origin to other different places. Luckily it seems that this stage has been got through and presently we tend to remove borders and to create a Common European Space.