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• Ethnic/religious groups of Habsburg Empire
• Historical breakup of Yugoslavia ('91-'09)
• Muslim populations in European countries
• History of Christianization of Europe
• Soviet Union, Communist influence
• Map of European ethnic groups
• Map of Fascism in Europe (1922-75)
• History of Islamic conquest in Europe
• Religions & ethnic groups in Russia
• Detailed map of French colonization
• Detailed map of British colonization
• Napoleon's conquests & legacy
• Ethnic & religious map of pre-Nazi Poland

--MORE & NON-ENGLISH--



• Pecs, Hungary: collision point between
Muslim and Christian empires

• Auschwitz and Birkenau
• Poland's resistance to Nazis in pictures
• Muhammad cartoon crisis in pictures
• Stalin's private summer home
• Ravenna: capital of Gothic empire
• Czar Nicholas II's Ukrainian palace
• European traditional cultural costumes
• Inside the Vatican, house of all wealth
• Banknotes/currencies of Europe
• Croatia's Dubrovnik, untarnished gem

--MORE & NON-ENGLISH--

• Islamic Mujahidin vs. Christian Spain
• Poland-Lithuania vs. Teutonic Order
• Nevskiy's Russia vs. German Crusaders
• Prussia vs. France (Nazi Propaganda)
• Libya: Europe will soon be Islamic
• Ivan the Terrible vs. Muslim Tatars
• Soviet Propaganda: Defeat of Germany  

--MORE & NON-ENGLISH--

An analysis of Mussolini's 1938 racialist legislation
The disastrous effects of Soviet collectivization on Kazakhstan
Changing meaning of Italian identity under Fascist rule
Yugoslavia's independent break from East and West
The Galicians: the Celts of Spain
The modern Macedonian Slavs and Alexander the Great
• An argument for the Romanians' links to ancient Dacians
• Mussolini's Italian death camp for Jews, Slovenes, and Marxists
• The disappeared Jews of Hungary and the Arrow Cross regime
• The Gypsies in history and today, Europe's public enemy
• History of Jihad in Chechnya vs. Russians
• History of the Muslim Tatars in Eastern Europe
• Post-WWII expulsion of 10 million ethnic German civilians
• Ethnic & religious history of Serbs, Croats, & Bosnians
• Breakaway states and independence movements in Europe
• The ancient Germanic Runic alphabet and Runestones
• Teutonic Order and their 800-year legacy in Eastern Europe
• 460-year struggle for Albanian homeland, and 540 for Kosovo
• 2,800-year-old white mummies of China, bringers of Buddhism?
• Alexander the Great's Greek descendents in Pakistan?
• Visual History of Yugoslavia and its breakup (1918-2008)

 

--MORE & NON-ENGLISH--

 

Map of world ethnic groups & related genetic families
by James Mayfield (Chairman, European Heritage Library)

Print this Article        About the Author        Bibliography/Sources

Below is an exclusive map the EHL has published charting the major dispersal of dominant ethnic and cultural groups in the world. As with religion, ethnic heritage is the keystone which symbolizes the heritage and identities of all cultures of the world. The modern conceptualization of each society owes itself to an eclectic heritage of culture, language, genetics, experience, and ethnicity. If you have any questions, please feel free to notify us.

Mapping Information & Extra Notes:

The field of ethnocartography is difficult and often controversial. Many communities and cultures claim falsely to be be completely independent ethnic or racial groups because of independence movements and nationalism. Other communities include other unrelated groups as their relatives for the same political reason. Russians have considered Romanians to be Slavic in order, in part, to annex them, whilst Romanians bitterly deny that they are Slavic. Poles, too, sometimes referred to themselves as Iranian Sarmatians in order to avoid Russian pan-Slavic claims. Some Europeans dismiss the Albanians as Slavic tribes who mixed with the hated Muslim enemy (i.e. with the Turkish race), though Albanians claim descent from an ancient Roman-era culture (the Illyrians) despite having almost no factual basis for it. This makes ethnic cartography difficult. Further, the growth of modern multicultural and liberal characteristics, primarily derived from American academia, have worked to transfer the meaning of "ethnicity" from genetic heritage to language use. On this map, each color represents a different ethnic and genetic amily in Europe. For example, "German" and "Danish" are not known instead of "Germanic" to denote their same genetic relation, and Portuguese and Spaniards are linked as "Iberian" because of a common ethnic heritage. All of these interpretational conflicts are clearly noted where it applies. Also be aware that due to the finite number of colors, some colors are re-used. This does NOT imply that the two groups are related unless otherwise stated.

On a global map, this is even more difficult. Less developed regions lack cultivated national, ethnic, and cultural affiliations and thus it is sometimes difficult to determine racial or genetic ancestory using other means than physiognomy. Places like Africa have historically had such little formal national development that it is impossible to know whether or not there are 500 completely unique racial or cultural groups in Sub-Saharan Africa or 5. This all compounds the difficulty of charting the ethnic groups and races of the world. The fact that on this map Africa is charted as "African", and the Americas are charted as "Native American" is not Eurocentric, but a legitimate reflection of these region's lack of specific development on ethnic, cultural, or national grounds. Further, scholars disagree on different terminology and classifications for political means. America lumps the many different ethnicities of Europe -- just as diverse as any other part of the world -- into the monolithic "Caucasians" at the same time as they espouse the diversity of Africa and Latin America. So too, the actual Caucasians (Circassians, Armenians, Georgians, Azeris) are not European at all. This proves the difficulty in understanding ethnicity uniformly.

Note that colours are re-used due to a finite amount of different colour combinations; they do not imply a common origin.

Colors which extend beyond nations (like the Asiatic Malay Indonesian color extending into western Papua) is intentional, included to show that these portions are dominant Asiatic in a black ethnic territory.

Click the below map for the full-size version! Click on the map to zoom.

If an error has been made, or you think some important information has been omitted and needs inclusion for clarity, please notify the EHL Staff.

 

 

________________________________________

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

James Mayfield is a historian and the Chairman of the European Heritage Library. I have a Cum Laude BA in History with a Minor in Germanic Studies (language and history), am presently working for my Masters in History, and plan to immediately progress to my PhD Doctorate. I have a special academic interest in Europe's diverse ethnic identities, languages, and cultures, and the political struggles of native European and immigrant minority identities. See my staff entry for more information.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY/SOURCES USED:

The image used as the basis for the map is widely redistributed and is not protected. The map was entirely made by me.

 


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