The Countries of Community Europe by Geoffrey Parker - A geographical survey of contemporary issues / St. Martin's Press

Hardcover 1979

ISBN: 9780312170370  /  978-0312170370

ISBN-10: 0312170378

PAGES: 224

PUBLISHER: St. Martin's Press

LANGUAGE: English  

!!! Condition of this book is USED LIKE NEW !!!

Geoffrey Parker (b. 1933) is the Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Political Geography and Geopolitics at the University of Birmingham. His books include Geopolitics: Past, Present and Future; The Geopolitics of Domination from the Ottoman Empire to the Soviet Union; and The Logic of Unity (1986), Sovereign City and Power in Stone

Preface

The European Community has since the 1950s been a major force in West European affairs and nine of the region’s states are now members. In this book each of the nine countries will be examined separately with a view to considering the issues which are currently of greatest significance in them and the measures which are being taken, both at national and Community levels, to put things right. The countries will be considered in the order of their over-all economic strength as revealed in general terms by the size of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This order of treatment is of no very special significance, but is likely to be more useful for comparative purposes than would be a purely arbitrary one.

All the names of places and natural features, with the sole exception of the names of the countries themselves, are given in this book in the original language. This is because it is considered to be in the interest of better mutual understanding among the countries of Europe that English forms should gradually be abandoned in favour of the correct names. These anglicisations, after all, date from the days when contacts between Britain and her neighbours were on a
much smaller scale, and the average Englishman appeared to find it either impossible or undesirable to get his tongue around ‘foreign’ words. Where the English version of the name is very different from the original this will be added in brackets when it is first mentioned, for instance Kabenhavn (Copenhagen). In cases where, for some reason, a name has a number of accepted forms of equal importance the English version, if there is one, will then be used.

The book should prove to be of use to those following courses at Universities, Polytechnics and other colleges in the field of European Studies, and also to the general reader who is interested in the affairs of the European Community and its member states. It shows how the Community is involved in helping to find solutions to the problems faced by individual members and is working with the national authorities to put the solutions into practice.