Okay, okay, now hang on. I know I'm in AskHistorians, not AskGeologists (if such a thing exists), so I'm not asking about the Ural Mountains and tectonic plates, etc.
Rather, I'm asking geopolitically why Europe is a continent. It seems to me that geographically it's just a little peninsula jutting off of Asia, but whenever anyone lists the continents of the world, Europe always gets a mention, when there may or may not actually be any real geographic distinction between Europe and Asia. Indeed, Europe gets mentioned more consistently than North and South America, which are sometimes amalgamated into the Americas, and Australia/Oceania sometimes gets subsumed into greater Asia.
I would guess that it's mostly because Europe has and has had all the guns and all the empires, so when the question of Europe being a continent came up in the past, it was simply 'because we said so.' And if anyone said 'you and whose army', Europe had a mighty good comeback to that.
Is that pretty much it? Is Europe only really continent because it's so powerful? Or is there another reason I can't see?
Hi! Nothing so nefarious, I'm afraid. "Europe" is just the name the Greeks gave to all that land over there, ie. to the west and on the north side of the Mediterranean. Here's the FAQ :
While not an expert on the history of geopolitics or geographical terminology, I can say that in reality there is not a clear definition for what a continent really is, it kind of depends on the context and the particular agenda in which the word is used. So for example, in some english speaking countries the answer to how many continents there are is seven. However, that is far from being the norm; in Latin American countries, kids are taught that there are 5 continents, plus antartica. Other places combine Europe and Asia into Eurasia and count Antartica to say that there are 5 continents. It would be interesting to follow the historiography of the word continent, so if anyone can elaborate about that it will be very enlightening