Map of the countries included in a minimum definition of Northwestern Europe
Northwestern Europe, or Northwest Europe, is a loosely defined subregion of Europe, overlapping Northern and Western Europe. The term is used in geographic,[1] history,[2] and military contexts.[3]
Geographically, Northwestern Europe is given by some sources as a region which includes Great Britain,[4] Ireland,[4] Belgium,[5] the Netherlands,[5] Luxembourg,[6] Northern France,[5] parts of or all of Germany,[7][6]Denmark,[4]Norway,[6]Sweden,[6] and Iceland.[2][8] In some works, Switzerland, Finland, and Austria are also included as part of Northwestern Europe.[6]
Under the Interreg program, funded by the European Regional Development Fund, "North-West Europe" (NWE) is a region of European Territorial Cooperation that includes Belgium, Ireland, Luxembourg, Switzerland, the Netherlands and parts of France and Germany.[7]
Ethnography
During the Reformation, some parts of Northwestern Europe converted to Protestantism,[9] in a manner which differentiated the region from its Roman Catholic neighbours elsewhere in Europe.[10][11]
A definition of Northwestern Europe was used by some late 19th to mid-20th century anthropologists, eugenicists, and Nordicists, who used the term as a shorthand term for the part of Europe with a predominantly Nordic population.[12][13][14][15] For example, Arthur de Gobineau, the 19th-century aristocrat who published works on the pseudoscience of scientific racism, included parts of Northwestern Europe in what Leon Baradat described as his "Aryan heaven".[16]
Genetics
There is close genetic affinity among some Northwest European populations,[17] with some of these populations descending from Bell Beaker populations carrying steppe ancestry.[citation needed] For example, the Beaker people of the lower Rhine overturned 90% of Great Britain's gene pools, replacing the Basque-like Neolithic populations present prior.[18]
↑Pounds, Norman J. G. (September 1967). "Northwest Europe in the Ninth Century; Its Geography in Light of the Polyptyques". Annals of the Association of American Geographers (Taylor & Francis Ltd) 57 (3): 439–461. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8306.1967.tb00615.x.
↑ 7.07.1"Interreg North-West Europe". Interreg NWE. https://www.nweurope.eu/. Retrieved 17 August 2023. "The North-West Europe area [..] programme covers Belgium, Ireland, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Switzerland as well as parts of France and Germany"
↑Novembre, John; Johnson, Toby; Bryc, Katarzyna; Kutalik, Zoltán et al. (2008). "Genes mirror geography within Europe". Nature456 (7218): 98–101. doi:10.1038/nature07331. PMID18758442. Bibcode: 2008Natur.456...98N. "A statistical summary of genetic data from 1,387 Europeans based on principal component axis one (PC1) [..] may reflect a special role for this geographic axis in the demographic history of Europeans [..] PC1 aligns north-northwest/south-southeast".