Thoughts on the Concept of West and East in Europe

Extract

EUROPE AT FIRST SIGHT SEEMS A WORD WITH A CLEAR MEANing; but a further look shows it to be most ambiguous.

The most obvious meaning is geographical: Europe is the north-west peninsula of the Asian land mass. But even this is not correct: there are three western peninsulas: Finland, Scandinavia and the main European. Usually the three are lumped together; but even at its narrowest point the sea which divides these is much wider than that which separates the Balkans from Anatolia - which is always reckoned to be Asia, and indeed one portion of which constituted the whole of Asia when that word was first used. I know this because I once swam across the Bosphorus, but would certainly never have tried the sound between Elsinore and Helsingborg.