Historical regions (or historical countries) are delimitations of geographic areas for studying and analysing social development of period-specific cultures without any reference to contemporary political, economic or social organisations.[1]
The fundamental principle underlying this view is that older political and mental structures exist which exercise greater influence on the spatial-social identity of individuals than is understood by the contemporary world, bound to and often blinded by its own worldview - e.g. the focus on the nation-state.[2]
There is no universally accepted definition of a region[3],and the word does not differentiate between macroregions such as Europe, territories of traditional states, or smaller microregional areas. A geographic proximity is the often required precondition for emergence of a regional identity.[3] In Europe the regional identities are often derived from the Migration Period, but for the contemporary perspective are related to the 1918-1920 time of territorial transformation, and another in the post-Cold War period.[4]
Some regions are entirely invented, such as the Middle East in 1902 by a military strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan to refer to the area of the Persian Gulf.[5]