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Continental Europe

Mainland Europe, excluding European islands / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Continental Europe or mainland Europe is the contiguous mainland of Europe, excluding its surrounding islands.[1] It can also be referred to ambiguously as the European continent,[2][3] – which can conversely mean the whole of Europe – and, by some, simply as the Continent.[citation needed] When Eurasia is regarded as a single continent, Europe is treated as a subcontinent, and called the European subcontinent.[4]

Mainland_Europe_%28orthographic_projection%29.svg
Extent of the contiguous mainland of Europe, continental Europe
European_Russia_laea_location_map_%28Crimea_disputed%29.jpg
The European continent's eastern half in Russia, as bounded by the Caucasus Mountains to the south, and which extends as far as the Ural Mountains
Europe_As_A_Queen_Sebastian_Munster_1570.jpg
Europa Regina map (Sebastian Munster, 1570), excluding the greater part of Fennoscandia, but including Great Britain and Ireland, Bulgaria, Scythia, Moscovia and Tartaria; Sicily is clasped by Europe in the form of a globus cruciger.

The old notion of Europe as a cultural term was centred on core Europe (Kerneuropa), the continental territory of the historical Carolingian Empire, corresponding to modern France, Italy, German-speaking Europe and the Benelux states (historical Austrasia).[5] This historical core of "Carolingian Europe" was consciously invoked in the 1950s as the historical ethno-cultural basis for the prospective European integration (see also multi-speed Europe)[6][7]


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Extent of Carolingian Europe
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The "core Europe" of the Inner Six signatories of the Treaty of Paris (1951) (shown in blue; the French Fourth Republic shown with Algeria)