Historical region

The fundamental principle underlying this view is that older political and mental structures exist which exercise greater influence on the spatial-social identity of individuals than is understood by the contemporary world, bound to and often blinded by its own worldview - e.g.

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Encyclopedia

Historical regions are delimitations of geographic areas for studying and analysing social development of period

List of time periods

The categorization of time into discrete named blocks is called periodization. This is a list of such named time periods as defined in various fields of study....
-specific cultures without any reference to contemporary political, economic or social organisations.

The fundamental principle underlying this view is that older political and mental structures exist which exercise greater influence on the spatial-social identity of individuals than is understood by the contemporary world, bound to and often blinded by its own worldview - e.g. the focus on the nation-state.

There is no universally accepted definition of a region

Region

Region is a geographical term that is used in various ways among the different branches of geography. In general, a region is a medium-scale area of land or water, smaller than the whole areas of interest , and larger than a specific site A region may be seen as a collection of smaller units or as one part of a larger whole ....
,and the word does not differentiate between macroregion

Macroregion

A macroregion is a geopolitical subdivision that encompasses several traditionally or politically defined regions the meaning may vary, the common denominator being cultural, economical, historical or social similarity within a macroregion....
s such as Europe, territories of traditional state

State

A state is a political Social contract with effective sovereignty over a geographic area and representing a population. These may be nation states, State or multinational states....
s, or smaller microregion

Microregion

Microregion is a term used for formal and informal geographic divisions on the local level....
al areas. A geographic proximity is the often required precondition for emergence of a regional identity. In Europe the regional identities are often derived from the Migration Period

Migration Period

The Migration Period, also called Barbarian Invasions or V?lkerwanderung , was a period of human migration which occurred within the period of roughly 300?700 Common Era in Europe, marking the transition from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages....
, but for the contemporary perspective are related to the 1918-1920 time of territorial transformation, and another in the post-Cold War period.

Some regions are entirely invented, such as the Middle East

Middle East

File:GreaterMiddleEast1.pngThe Middle East is a region that spans southwestern Asia, western Asia, and northeastern Africa. It has no clear boundaries, often used as a synonym to Near East, in opposition to Far East....
 in 1902 by a military strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan

Alfred Thayer Mahan

Alfred Thayer Mahan was a United States Navy flag officer, Geostrategy, and educator. His ideas on the importance of sea power influenced navies around the world, and helped prompt naval buildups before World War I....
 to refer to the area of the Persian Gulf.

Sources

• Sven Tägil, (ed.), Regions in Central Europe: The Legacy of History, C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, 1999
• Marko Lehti, David James Smith, Post-Cold War Identity Politics: Northern and Baltic Experiences, Routledge, 2003 ISBN 0714654280
• Compiled by V. M. Kotlyakov, A. I. Komarova, Elsevier's dictionary of geography: in English, Russian, French, Spanish, German, Elsevier, 2006 ISBN 0444510427
• Martin W. Lewis, Kären Wigen, The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography
  Metageography
  
  Metageography can refer to:*the idea that mapping the world as a whole is always subjective and never objective;*the core concept of Martin W....
  , University of California Press, 1997 ISBN 0520207432

See also

• Lists of informal regions