Eurasia

Eurasia, geological and geopolitical term that relates in the former sense to the single enormous landmass composed of the continents of Europe and Asia and in the latter sense to the sociopolitical entity within that landmass whose exact borders are debated by scholars. The term is a portmanteau of the words Europe and Asia.

Although the physical combination of Europe and Asia constitutes the geologic Eurasia, the land boundary between those two continents is not universally agreed upon. For geographers the term continent is more than just a physical definition: it exists in the realm of culture. The boundary between Europe and Asia, then, is a historical and cultural construct that has been defined variously. Only as a matter of agreement is it tied to a specific borderline. The most convenient geographic boundary and the one that has been adopted by most geographers is a line that runs south from the Arctic Ocean along the Ural Mountains and then turns southwest along the Emba River to the northern shore of the Caspian Sea. West of the Caspian Sea, the boundary follows the Kuma-Manych Depression to the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait of the Black Sea. Thus, the isthmus between the Black and Caspian seas, which culminates in the Caucasus mountain range to the south, is part of Asia. Europe lies to the west of this line and Asia to the east.

There is even less consensus on the geopolitical definition of Eurasia, which is largely determined by the political and national orientation of the individual who is doing the defining and which comes as a consequence of the growing international political significance of the regions in question. For most western European political scientists, the term Eurasia gained heightened currency following the collapse of the Soviet Union and is used to discuss the economic and political integration of Russia and Europe (including Ukraine). Russian political scientists, on the other hand, initially conceived of Eurasia as coinciding with boundaries of imperial Russian on the eve of World War I, including portions of eastern Europe. In the 21st century Russians are more likely to view Eurasia as comprising central and western Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan,Uzbekistan, and part of the Caucasus. Among the other geopolitical definitions of Eurasia is one that sees “Greater Eurasia” as being made up of Russia, China, and Central Asia.